http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Wed, 22 May 2013 13:09:44 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/27058/Goodbye_Lotus_1-2-3/ http://www.osnews.com/story/27058/Goodbye_Lotus_1-2-3/ "The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run. Tue, 21 May 2013 22:06:53 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 18 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/26768/LibreOffice_4_0_released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/26768/LibreOffice_4_0_released/ "The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0, the free office suite the community has been dreaming of since 2001. LibreOffice 4.0 is the first release that reflects the objectives set by the community at the time of the announcement, in September 2010: a cleaner and leaner code base, an improved set of features, better interoperability, and a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem." Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:57:01 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 46 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/26688/LibreOffice_4_0_to_be_themeable/ http://www.osnews.com/story/26688/LibreOffice_4_0_to_be_themeable/ For years, developers decried the tight fist Sun kept on the development of its office suite, preventing the hacker culture from improving its software. So now that LibreOffice is, well, free, it's not surprising to see one ambitious hacker has developed a mechanism for theming it. Let's have a round of applause for Jan Holesovsky, whose patch in the upcoming 4.0 edition of LibreOffice allows you to style LibreOffice using FireFox Personae. Holesovsky's blog is full of other interesting UI changes made to LibreOffice, proof perhaps that letting hackers hack is the best way to keep your project improving. Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:17:21 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Features, Office 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News the_randymon http://www.osnews.com/story/26199/Using_the_new_Office_with_touch/ http://www.osnews.com/story/26199/Using_the_new_Office_with_touch/ "On Monday in San Francisco we took the wraps off of the new Office's touch experience designed for Windows 8. We showed the new touch-optimized Windows 8-style app for OneNote, and we showed how we've touch-enabled Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other apps on the desktop. The new Office is designed for a great experience whether you're sitting on a couch with a tablet, or at a desk with a mouse and keyboard. It makes common tasks fast, fluid, and intuitive, while still enabling the rich capabilities required to create high-quality documents. In this post I'll walk you through the thinking, engineering process and design framework we used to reimagine these experiences for touch." Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:41:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 19 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/26188/Microsoft_OneNote_MX_preview_the_first_Metro_Office_application/ http://www.osnews.com/story/26188/Microsoft_OneNote_MX_preview_the_first_Metro_Office_application/ So, Office 2013 is a desktop application with a new look (which I personally happen to like, ridiculous 'streaming' installation notwithstanding). Then there's OneNote MX - the first Metro Office application. It uses a rather interesting contextual radial menu to get things done - quite fascinating. It's in the Windows Store starting now. I've been playing with it for a bit, and I must say, there's a huge chance I'll be writing my OSNews articles in OneNote MX from now on; the ability to have multiple different text areas and pictures like in a real-world note/clipbook is very, very useful. Nice that it syncs across devices, too. Be sure to take a look - this is an indication of a possible future Metro Office. Wed, 18 Jul 2012 01:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 13 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/26190/Office_2013_consumer_preview_released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/26190/Office_2013_consumer_preview_released/ Microsoft has released a consumer preview for Office 2013. Highlighting the age-old internal tug-of-war between the Office and Windows divisions within Microsoft, it's just a desktop application, no Metro, and the only nod to that whole touch/tablet-thing is a special mode that does very little. So, Windows 8 is just around the corner, and still not a single serious Metro application. Not even Microsoft's own flagship suite - heck, not even a single application within that suite - could be adapted to Metro in time. Serious vote of confidence from the Office division there. Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:24:36 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 39 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25922/Apache_OpenOffice_3_4_released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25922/Apache_OpenOffice_3_4_released/ "The Apache OpenOffice Project today announced the availability of Apache OpenOffice 3.4, the first release of OpenOffice under the governance of the Apache Software Foundation." I don't think OpenOffice could have ended up in a better foster home. Tue, 08 May 2012 21:05:54 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 15 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News Francis http://www.osnews.com/story/25718/How_to_remain_safe_on_the_road/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25718/How_to_remain_safe_on_the_road/ You have just bought tickets to an exotic vacation spot. You board the flight, you land safely, you pull your netbook from your backpack, fire it up, and then check if there are any available Wireless networks. Indeed there are, unencrypted, passwordless, waiting for you. So you connect to the most convenient hotspot and start surfing. Being addicted as you are, you want to login into your email or social network just to check if something cardinal happened in the world during your four-hour flight. You're about to hit the sign in button. Stop. What you're about to do might not be safe. Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:41:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Igor Ljubuncic) Features, Office 32 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/25491/Bill_Joy_s_Greatest_Gift_to_Man_the_vi_Editor/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25491/Bill_Joy_s_Greatest_Gift_to_Man_the_vi_Editor/ In an enlightening article about the origin of the venerable vi text editor, Bill Joy reminds us that its quirks and qualities are all about the computing reality back in the 1970s: "you've got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That's also the reason you have all these funny commands. It just barely worked to use a screen editor over a modem. It was just barely fast enough. A 1200 baud modem was an upgrade." Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:46:09 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Features, Office 11 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25238/LibreOffice_Coming_to_iOS_Android_Web_Browsers/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25238/LibreOffice_Coming_to_iOS_Android_Web_Browsers/ "The LibreOffice media team has passed along some new information about what was revealed at this week's LibreOffice conference. At the Paris conference, experimental versions of LibreOffice for iOS, Android, and for web-browsers were revealed." Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:12:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 40 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News judgen http://www.osnews.com/story/25045/LibreOffice_3_4_2_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25045/LibreOffice_3_4_2_Released/ The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of version 3.4.2 of the open source LibreOffice office suite. According to TDF Steering Committee member Italo Vignoli, the third release in the 3.4.x branch of LibreOffice is now ready for both individuals and enterprises, and can be used for production. Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:12:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Features, Office 62 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News lemur2 http://www.osnews.com/story/24877/Calligra_Office_Announces_Second_Snapshot_Release/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24877/Calligra_Office_Announces_Second_Snapshot_Release/ The Calligra Office Suite has announced its second snapshot release. The project, which is a fork of KOffice, is building a suite of productivity and creativity applications and is working towards its first formal end-user release due in October. The project is seeking feedback from end users particularly in the area of usability of the GUI. With this snapshot Calligra Office Words is claiming better compatibility with .docx than LibreOffice, and also claims to be approaching the best compatibility with legacy .doc formats. Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:30:47 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Features, Office 88 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News lemur2 http://www.osnews.com/story/24649/Rock_Paper_Community_Oracle_Gives_up_on_OpenOffice/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24649/Rock_Paper_Community_Oracle_Gives_up_on_OpenOffice/ Over the weekend, Oracle basically announced its defeat in the competition with the community-created fork of OpenOffice, LibreOffice. Oracle will cease all commercial development of OpenOffice, and will turn it into a purely community-based project. Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:27:46 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 117 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24307/The_Document_Foundation_Launches_LibreOffice_3_3/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24307/The_Document_Foundation_Launches_LibreOffice_3_3/ "The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project." Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc Camen) Features, Office 7 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News http://www.osnews.com/story/24112/LibreOffice_Development_Joined_by_BrOffice/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24112/LibreOffice_Development_Joined_by_BrOffice/ The Document Foundation has announced that the software development project recently announced by BrOffice will contribute to the development of LibreOffice and other free software projects. BrOffice has 15 million users in Brazil. Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:03:43 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Features, Office 3 http://www.osnews.com/topics/3 News lemur2