Microsoft has not been very good at making headlines as of late.  In fact they are so bad at marketing and promoting that I almost completely forgot about the new Office Live Online offered for free.  I decided to reactivate my old hotmail account, jamesroodhouse@hotmail.com, and then give the online office a try.  In short I must admit I am surprised,  Office Live via Skydrive is superior to Google docs and may be superior to zoho.com.  Yes that is right the online functionality of the Microsoft Office suite online is much greater than that offered by Google Docs and probably all other competitors.  Microsoft still has limited some of the functionality on the web versions of Office but no where near so as Google Docs.

How so,  first off importing docs with existing complicated formatting, lets say a resume or a multi-sheet excel spreadsheet imports almost perfectly in this online version of Office (And terribly in Google Docs).  Secondly and most importantly the feature set included in the online version of Office dwarfs that of Google,  if one were a college student or taking a class you could easily type all papers easily and efficiently with this version.  Like Google Docs you get a free 2 gigabyte drive to store your docs on and it is easy to review and share docs.

So if you have a Hotmail account give the new office online a try, it works on macs, pcs, and machines running linux.  To Access the tools login to Windows LIve and click on the Office tab.  (If you are logged into Hotmail look under the section where it says MORE and select Office Live)

Microsoft might be entering this arena late in the game compared to its competitors – but has delivered on a superior product.

Here is screenshot of Word Online Running.

Probably the best overall aspect of using WordPress is its seemingly never ending library of plugins.  In a school setting with primarily Mac’s one easy way to capture Video (with Audio) is to use the program Photobooth – easy to use – fun for students and staff.  To post and embed one of these videos into WordPress is simple using the plug-in WordTube or the Add Video button.  WordTube works with the latest version of WordPress as of the time of this writing (2.9.2) and easily accepts movies from Photobooth.  You can download version 2.2.2 directly from Here – or better yet add it through WordPress directly – see Podcast Below.

First off the advantage to using WordTube is that you can resize a movie, embed it directly in a wordpress post/page and use a built in player to start and stop.  If you use the built in Add movie button in wordpress you will save time but the movie will open in a different windows and will appear only as a link in your post.

Here is a Podcast on how to get WordTube, convert – upload – and embed a movie from photobooth nicely into A wordpress Page.

Here content created from a teachers Macbook in Photobooth uploaded to WordPress.  Here is a sample movie from Photobooth Embedded into WordPress using the WordTube Plugin.  (I also embedded my screen podcast using this plugin as well).

I came across a great plugin for WordPress today that simply makes your website look good and work easily on an Iphone.  The theme is called WPTouch and it is free and setup is almost effortless.

You can download the Plugin from the admin console of your wordpress, and simply click Activate.

After activating the Plugin – Here is a screenshot from an Iphone.

The Plugin Preserves media content and images, and overall makes reading and navigating the website pleasant from an Iphone.

You can read more about the plugin from the authors website here.

If you are not happy with the default settings, you will find under the wordpress settings WP-Touch panel – almost all themes icons, colors are customizable.

Having managed a number of Windows 2003 Servers and optimizing various Windows Desktops you will quickly see the built in disk defragment tool is lacking in speed and efficiency.  Especially in the server environment the built in defrag tool simply fails to defrag a large variety of formats, backup sets, log files, etc.  Having tried a multiple products over the years, idefraggler, Ultra Defragmenter, my defrag, contig, and Auslogics Disk Defrag – it is clear that the latest version of Ausologics Disk Defrag  is ahead of the competition.

The latest revision of this free utility tops that of many of its commercial competitors.  This is the safest, quickest and most overall effective disk defragging software available – free.  Although Disk Defragging is not a common day to day activity – it is nice to have a utility that can accomplish this task in minutes rather than hours.

I would recommend this tool for anyone running Windows Operating systems Windows XP, Vista, or Server 2003.  If you are already running Windows 7 or Server 2008 I would stick with the built in utilities as Windows has done an excellent job upgrading the scheduling and functionality of this utility in their latest iterations of the Windows OS.

Download Below or from CNET

disk-defrag-setup

When it comes to online documents, collaboration and storage most people probably think Google Docs right away. Without taking anything away from Google and its excellent selection of free services – I want to mention another cloud based system that offer better functionality in many respects.

One of the biggest complaints I have heard about Google Docs is its inability to import complex documents and its lack of features as a word processor. If you have shared these concerns I would suggest you check out Zoho.com. Zoho is very similar in functionality to Google Docs but just comes with a more full featured word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

In addition to offering full functional clones of Excel, Word and Powerpoint – Zoho offers a variety of online tools making it probably the most overall complete package in terms of providing a full suite of productivity tools online.

Zoho is a free service for individual use – Interestingly it has been rumored that Google is considering buying Zoho as a way of upgrading its current services.

With the eminent release of Office 2010 online – Zoho might find itself lost among the major players.  Still will an obvious technological advantage over Google Docs I would not be surprised to see the Zoho logo become a large G for Google.  (Easy way to catch up if Microsoft Online System is better)

Here is a screen shot of Zoho loaded running its Writer Application.  Notice the tabs across the tab – much better set of editing and formatting features than Google Docs.