“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. “With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.”

The suite of Office 365 services at this point include copies of the Office Professional Plus desktop software, that has integration with the new Office Web Apps.  Exchange and Sharepoint online are also part of the package.  Finally a new service called Lync Online offers messaging and even video-conferencing services, again hosted form the cloud.

Microsoft say the key benefits of the new service are…

• Anywhere-access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device*
• Work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs your users already count on everyday
• Business-class features including IT-level phone support, guaranteed 99.9% uptime, geo-redundancy, and disaster recovery
• Pay-as-you-go pricing options which give you predictability and flexibility for all or part of your organization
• Latest version of Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which has millions of business users today

The most important factor though will be the price.  It could turn out that for small businesses with only a few seats this service could be quite expensive.  There is a pricing document available here as a Word DOCX file, though it doesn’t really seem to include any firm information about the overall cost to each type and size of business.

Regardless, there can be little doubt that any hosted business and productivity service can only be a great thing for businesses of many sizes and also for the environment.  Imagine the effect this move will have on global warming where Microsoft will have a few, admittedly huge, server farms but that their capacity will only be increased to meet the overall demand for the product.  At the same time, the number of small server rooms, all pumping out more CO2 than would be proportionate for the volume of work those servers are actually asked to do can shrink.

This can only be a good thing.

Windows 7 did introduce some new features that can increase the productivity. Since my recent switch to the operating system I have discovered five that I like a lot as they help me speed up Windows 7 which increases my productivity throughout the day.

1. Taskbar previews

The taskbar has been completely revamped in Windows 7. It is now possible to stick applications to it, see the number of open windows and thumbnail previews or make use of jumplists. The features that I personally like the most are the thumbnail previews, as they allow me to quickly find the Firefox, Thunderbird or Internet Explorer tab that I was looking for and the new icons that show the amount of open windows and that display file transfers.

Especially the previews save lots of time. Think of Firefox with ten open tabs. If you wanted to access a specific tab you previously had to display the window again, locate the tab in the web browser and click on it. Now you simply hover the mouse over the taskbar icon, locate the tab and click on it to be taken directly to it in Firefox.

2. Libraries

If you are like me you store multimedia files in various locations of the operating system. They are located on various hard drives and in various structures. Vista and XP were highly inflexible by concentrating on the My Documents hierarchy for those files. This could lead to a lot of file searching or a lot of self-discipline and work to build a centralized storage location for multimedia files. Even then users could run into trouble if they ran out of hard disk space on their primary hard drive.

Windows 7 introduces libraries. Libraries are basically virtual folders that can display the contents of multiple folders in its folder structure. With that it is now possible – or shall I say more comfortable – to access multimedia files in one folder on the hard drive even if those files and folders that are displayed are spread over multiple locations and hard drives.

3. Aero Peek, Aero Shake and Snap

If you want to arrange two windows next to each other in Windows 7 you can do so by one of the windows to the right side and one to the left. They will automatically be positioned so that each is taking up half of the screen estate of the computer monitor. That’s the new Snap feature. It is also possible to move the window to the top to maximize it.

Aero Shake can be used to minimize all but the active window by shaking it around on the computer desk. Aero Peek finally can be used to peak through the windows to see the computer desktop which might be handy for users who make use of gadgets in the operating system.

4. Automatic recognition of digital cameras

Back in the days of Windows XP I had to install a software program for my digital camera so that it would be recognized by the operating system when connected. This was the only option to directly connect the digital camera to the system. I still had the option to remove the memory card and place it in a card reader but all of that meant more work than it should be.

Imagine my surprise when I first connected the digital camera to Windows 7. The operating system automatically recognized the camera and offered to copy the pictures that I had taken to the hard drive in a menu that was automatically be displayed. This was comfortable and without any pre-configuration on my part.

5. Windows 7 Homegroup

Windows 7 Homegroup makes it easier to create a home network and share files and printers with other users on the network. Setup has been simplified and takes only a few minutes tops to set it up. The shared folders and printers then appear in the places sidebar in Windows Explorer from where they can be accessed.

Verdict:

I’m still discovering new features in Windows 7. Have not even touched some of the new tools yet, like the snipping or note taking tool. While the similarities to Vista are still very clear and dominant Microsoft managed to add and change features in Windows 7 that actually aid the user in completing tasks faster and with less knowledge required. Some of the features in this list can be emulated by installing third party software that provides that functionality.

If you have worked with Windows 7: What is your experience in this regard? Do you like other features that have not been mentioned in this article? Let us know in the comments.

The software program comes with a set of pre-configured mouse gestures that allow a user to close windows, copy and paste, create new documents globally and to control various actions in Firefox and Internet Explorer such as reloading a website, opening a new tab or bookmarking a page.

One of the best aspects of High Sign is the ability to create new mouse gestures easily. All the user needs to do is to draw a new gesture on the computer screen using the right-mouse button similar to drawing lines in an image editor. Once the figure has been drawn the application will display it in a new window asking the user to identify or name it.

An application (or all applications) can then be controlled by the new mouse gesture. The user can select an application (or all) from the list and select one of the available actions. Probably the most interesting actions are to send hotkeys to a program. This could for instance mean to send a CTRL F4 command to close the application window or any other shortcut that is accepted by an application or globally.

The software program uses between 30 to 40 Megabytes of computer memory while running which should not be a huge problem for computer systems with enough RAM installed. High Sign is currently available as an alpha 2 preview version that works surprisingly stable.

JDarkRoom is a free alternative which uses Java, allowing it to be used under Linux, OS X and Windows. JDarkRoom even operates on eeePCs, providing a non-resource hogging word processor.

JDarkRoom is customisable. Should you dislike the Matrix-like green-on-black colour scheme, through pressing F6 you can choose any colours you want (providing you know their RGB values) and if you dislike the somewhat monotonous font, that can also be changed. Margins and font sizes can also be changed through the preference menu at F6.

JDarkRoom definitely utilises a minimalist approach to word processing, I cannot even spot an italicise option, but is nonetheless an efficient one.

I do have a few minor complaints with JDarkRoom. When saving a file, you are presented with your operating system’s default box for saving files, which breaks the minimalist GUI. I do not see why you can not just specify a path to which to save it. JDarkRoom also takes a couple of seconds to quit, which is once again an annoyance.

JDarkRoom is well worth a shot and if like me, you are prone to procrastinate and lose concentration, it may be for you. Perhaps if I used it, I would write more posts here!

They have some pretty useful stuff, all of them are “micro programs” designed for one specific use. They have a great text replacement utility for example, called Texter, which replaces abbreviated text, with the full one. You can use it to substitute “gH” with gHacks for example, or “sig” with your full signature.

Swept away is another good idea, it minimizes windows after a specified time when they loose focus. This means that if you have Photoshop always open (like I do), but only use it every hour or so, it will minimize itself. This is great for me, since it removes clutter from my desktop and enables me to actually work.

The post also points you to their great Greasmonkey compilation Firefox extensions like Better Gmail, Better Flickr and Better Youtube, all of which give you added functionality for these web applications. Better Gmail allows you integrate Google Reader for example, or change macros, and other cool features.

Overall, Lifehacker has produced some highly specialized, but quite usable and helpful applications. They are all free to use, so go nuts.