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Ted Curran

First look: Office 365 beta shows promise but lacks polish | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld - 0 views

www.infoworld.com/...shows-promise-lacks-polish-943

shared by Ted Curran on 10 Mar 11 - Cached
  • From what we've seen of the Office 365 beta, it still has a long way to go before it can be considered a true turnkey solution for business.
  • The most attractive tiers bundle a full license to Office Professional Plus 2010 for each user, which is arguably Microsoft's greatest advantage over online-only competitors such as Google Docs. You can save a little money if you already have your own Office licenses or if you plan to conduct all your document management in the Office Web Apps -- but we think the latter is unlikely.
  • [ Also on InfoWorld: Dueling demos of Microsoft Office 365 and Google Cloud Connect bring the two titans' larger-than-life struggle into sharp relief. See "Microsoft and Google launch new assaults on the cloud." ]
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  • Office 365 users have immediate access to email, calendar, contacts, and chat via Outlook Web Access, and access to SharePoint sites via Web browser. For rich client access, they can download and install the Microsoft Online Services Connector, Lync client, and Office 2010 Professional Plus suite directly from the portal home page (above). The admin main page (below) is the first stop for managing Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and their users. 
Ted Curran

Why Bother Being Open? « iterating toward openness - 0 views

opencontent.org/...1735

openness oer education why technology open edtech web2.0

shared by Ted Curran on 09 Mar 11 - Cached
  • I’ve always been an “argue by describing the benefits” kind of guy as opposed to an “argue on grounds of moral superiority” kind of guy (which is why I end up in the open camp more often than the free camp).
  • a free-to-access, online “digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials… organized as courses, and often includ[ing] course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content” that does not use an open license is not an OpenCourseWare.
  • MIT OCW, the website says, “Each course we publish requires an investment of $10,000 to $15,000 to compile course materials from faculty, ensure proper licensing for open sharing, and format materials for global distribution.”
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  • 25% of the per-course publication costs (not technology infrastructure or external outreach costs – I’m talking about costs directly related to publishing a course) derive specifically from the desire for the final publication to employ an open license.
  • what is the return on this investment? What benefit are users deriving from open licensing that they could not derive if MIT published these materials online with a default copyright statement?
  • Would users still receive this benefit if MIT OCW were posted online with a traditional, full copyright statement?
Ted Curran

Previewing Microsoft's Office 365 | Microsoft - CNET News - 0 views

news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20023761-75.html

microsoft office technology

shared by Ted Curran on 10 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Lync's planned client for Windows Phone 7 and the iPhone.
    • Ted Curran
      Ted Curran on 10 Mar 11
       
      No Android, and not as ubiquitous as GTalk for Apps (which runs on ALL platforms).
  • It's also one of the places where Office 365 shows its strengths, since you can get into a shared group of documents and very quickly give them a read and an edit in the same place without leaving the page to go off to some other property
  • This is what a cohesive Web office experience should feel like, though like we mentioned earlier, it still feels like its on its own island instead of being more tightly knit with the Office 365 start page, and Outlook client.
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  • While really impressive, there are still some questions over Microsoft's vision of making Office 365 less of a jump-off point for its software and more of a one-stop solution for getting things done from any computer, anywhere.
  • it's worth looking at Office 365 for what it is, which is Microsoft continuing to move some of the very complicated pieces of its Office software ecosystem into the cloud--in part to make it easier for businesses large and small to get going. The Office software itself is a separate part of the equation--one that's well on its way in that direction.
  • Notably absent from Office 365's overall interface is Microsoft's suite of Office Web Apps, which is where many of those comparisons to Google Docs have centered
  • The first thing we should say up front is that Google Apps this is not.
  • The good news is that in our brief testing, everything worked as advertised. The bad news is that you can't get it right now, and it's still a long ways off from something that lets you every feature out of the Office ecosystem without installing software.
  • If you actually want to create something, there's still a reliance on having to have the Office software, or go off to the Office Web apps site itself, where users can save to their SharePoint.
  • The net result of all of this is that Office 365 is not yet quite the true jump to a cohesive set of all of Microsoft's services, gone online and tied together in a way where you can hop from task to task between different 365 components.
  • There is still an incredible reliance on the software itself, which is bound to change down the road, but for now makes basic workflows like creating a document and getting feedback from team members a hybrid experience, or one that involves juggling products.
  • In our preview with it, the Web client of Outlook was fast loading and had a few nice tricks up its sleeve, like letting you open up Office attachments in a pop-up Window--something that's quite useful if you're on a public computer that does not have Office installed.
  • Lync is Microsoft's an instant messaging system with presence; an audio and video conferencing tool; and a voice call service. By design this is something that users install and run locally,
  • How Lync translates to the Web experience is that users can get a slightly less capable version of it inside a browser window--all without having to install the software client
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