Now for the REAL open Office

Great news for the industry today as Microsoft release the open and royalty free Office 2003 schema documentation.

Microsoft offers open and royalty-free documentation and licenses for the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. These Reference Schemas include SpreadsheetML (the schema for Microsoft Office Excel 2003), FormTemplate Schemas (the schema for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003), WordprocessingML (the schema for Microsoft Office Word 2003), and and DataDiagramingML (the schema for Microsoft Office Visio 2003). The Schemas provide developers and representatives of business and government a standard way to store and exchange data stored in documents. Learn more about these technologies and how you can take advantage of them.

Five good computing habits

Organize your folders
Clean up your hard disk
Use system restore
Keep Windows up to date
Run antivirus software and a spyware detection and removal tool

WindowsMarketPlace

Log Parser 2.2

Great new tool released today:

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows® operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory®.

Microsoft's first official RSS reader

Microsoft do have a home grown project by Dare Obasanjo called RSS Bandit yet no real commercial RSS aggregator offering. Today this was joined by MSN releasing a module for MSN Today which supports RSS and Atom consumption. This means MSN Today can now add most headline feeds into the main page. Hopefully this is the start of something bigger for MSN or Microsoft in the RSS aggregator arena.

Google adds "nofollow" to link tags

More news over on my It News Log.com.

Getting Media Center to Join a Domain

Man it has been a busy year already. I suppose being on holiday coupled with CES 2005 and Mac Expo 2005 have caused a bit of a backlog for my reading -- the main thing is that it's still lots of fun.

Found this useful link on Mike Poulson's weblog. Well to tell you the truth I found it on NeoWin's site a while before now. Yet I didn't think Microsoft would support one of the main reasons you don't buy the cheaper Media Center version over Windows XP Pro -- go figure?

ActiveSync 3.8

Not too much news up about this release yet. Well worth looking into if you are having any problems with your Windows Mobile device.

Windows AntiSpyware beta released

From what I have seen so far the program is great. Paul Thurrott has a good write up. Download here using the Windows Advantage program to download and verify that you are using a genuine Windows XP product. For more information visit the Security at Home: Spyware site.

If you only watch one keynote this year...

The CES keynote really is an eye opener for the rest of the year for Microsoft. Some really cool stuff gets shown at this event for the home user. Well worth adding to you calendar.

Once again, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates opens the show with his vision of the year ahead in consumer electronics. Bill will present his 2005 International CES keynote address Wednesday, Jan. 5, at 6:30 p.m. PST in the Las Vegas Hilton Theater.

3D drawing on your Tablet PC

I found this on the frankgo weblog. Amazing application to bring 3D outlines to life. While the program crashed a number of times while I was working with it for the first time (it is still under heavy development). I was still amazed by this .NET applications complexity merging so well with a simple interface.

Windows Messenger 5.1

Great to see that the standard Microsoft Messenger now has good ink support. I've been using MSN Messenger 7.0 Beta with my Tablet PC and it works like a dream.

• Improvements in file transfer functionality for users with multiple network connections (such as configurations involving both wired and wireless network connections or users of VPN connections).
• Improvements in Tablet PC and laptop support. Specifically, this includes improved support for ink as well as improved performance when using power saving features in portable computers such as standby or hibernation.
• Improvements to presence integration with applications, including better presence integration when applications are in full-screen mode (to avoid unwelcome IM interruptions) and also quicker refresh of presence information in applications such as Microsoft Outlook or Windows SharePoint services.
• Improvements to the sign-in process, enabling a quicker sign in.

Microsoft Download

ConferenceXP 3.0

This is news to me? Looks like Microsoft Research have an amazing application for long distance collaboration.

With ConferenceXP, you can interact and collaborate with others in a virtual collaborative space, called a venue. ConferenceXP includes two sample capabilities: ConferenceXP Presentation and Chat. With ConferenceXP Presentation, you can collaborate with real-time ink on an electronic whiteboard or distributed Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation. Collaborate with others in style with the latest release of ConferenceXP Client.

PC setup cheat sheet

Here are some handy tips that Microsoft have complied for those lucky people who got a WinTel (Windows/Intel) computer for Christmas.