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Office 2011 for Mac Announced

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“The software—not surprisingly, given the sudden ubiquity of sites like Facebook and Twitter—is big on collaboration and social networking tools.

Mac Office 2011 also offers a direct connection to Microsoft Office Web Apps, the company’s cloud-based version of the desktop suite. Users can store and access documents created on their desktop from any location with an Internet connection by uploading them to Web Apps.

Web Apps will debut alongside Office 2010, the next Windows version of the product. Office 2010 is scheduled to ship in June.

Mac Office 2011 will also feature a revamped interface. The company’s frequent GUI redesigns are often a source of frustration for customers who’ve mastered previous versions, but the software maker insists the new changes are subtle and worthwhile.

Microsoft said Mac Office 2011 “will be available later this year,” but did not provide a more specific release timetable.”

Subtle and worthwhile. Microsoft style.

Today 2.1 Available - Adds BusyCal Support

Today, which we reviewed some days ago here, has been updated to the 2.1 version. The updates introduces support of BusyCal, the popular calendaring application. Here’s the full changelog:

  • Added support for opening events and tasks externally in BusyCal;

  • Added support for Mac OS X 10.5 / Leopard;

  • Darker events should be more legible now;

  • Pressing enter in the notes field on a new event or task no longer creates the event or task;

  • Resolved issue where new event and task windows wouldn’t pop to the top;

  • Resolved issue where registration fields were editable after licensing;

  • Resolved some unsightly default layout issues in a few windows;

  • Updated the localization of each xib to hopefully have a nicer layout;

  • Resolved issue where toggling the splitview would clip the tasks lists in some instances;

  • Added x-today2-reg:// URL scheme for handling registrations;

  • Added newsletter signup prompt.

In case you haven’t yet, go download Today. A great app.

Bitspace: It’s Your Music, In the Cloud. Powered by HTML5.

Since I started the “It could be a Mac app” series on MacStories I discovered a lot of new web applications. Some have a cool interface but are unusable, some are ugly and useful, some are stunning in every single part. Indeed, I try to focus on this kind of apps, beautiful online services that combine a great UI with great features. Now, I’ve also been talking a lot about “the cloud”. Well, most everyone in the web community is talking about the cloud, as it’s what we call “the future”. Data is moving to the cloud, applications are moving to the cloud, we are indeed moving our workflows to the cloud.

But apparently, what is keeping people to entirely move to cloud-powered apps is the most obvious reason: the reliability and speed of internet connections. How much time would uploading a 50GB media library require? Hours, or days for many people. That’s why people are still skeptical about “the future”, because they can’t trust their means, and sometimes they don’t even trust the services they’re sending data to. But, this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t try cloud apps now at small doses. Or, in an ideal scenario - at large doses.

Today I’d like to talk about a web application that it’s slowly changing my way of consuming music. It’s called Bitspace, and I believe it’s what iTunes will probably look like in a matter of a few years.

Read more

SublimeVideo Now Supports Firefox

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“SublimeVideo on Firefox has pretty much all the basic features of the WebKit (Safari/Chrome) version, however there’re some secondary features which couldn’t be implemented because of Firefox limitations.

Here are the features that are currently missing:

- Sleek Zoom-in/out transitions when entering/leaving full-window mode;

- Playback speed controls (when in full-window mode);

- Other minor fade-in/out effects to highlight the poster frame and reveal the controls when mouse-hovering over the video.”

Doux Winners Announced

Thanks everyone for the comments on the Doux theme giveaway. Also, I’d like to thank Felix for the 5 licenses he gave to MacStories.

Here are the names of the winners:

Benjamin Metzler

Kevin Stauss

Anchang

Klondike

Daz Coates

You’ll receive the theme in your inbox in a few hours.

Cheers!

Pinta, Simplified Alternative to GIMP

“Pinta is a drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET. It’s goal is to provide a simplified alternative to GIMP for casual users. It is currently early in development.”

Using GIMP and think it’s too complex? Now you have yet another alternative.

Still, I wonder what’s the point.