Microsoft's Office 2007

Microsoft has Launched “ Office 2007 ” formerly known as office 12. The development of which is in news from mid 2005. This post features this new version of office from Microsoft. Office 2007 is a whole new software which was released in the beginning of this year.


The Ribbon of standard menus is designed to quickly access all the menu options for formatting a document. The text alignment is 2 ways, top bottom and left right. Lets see the features of each program in depth. Every application has a zooming scale in the right side corner of the application window. See the Ribbon below:



The menu is more advanced. Now, you can save the documents in the format which is compatible with earlier versions of office. Se the menu of word 2007 below:



Word



Word has become more advanced. In earlier versions, you would select the property to check whether it suits your document. But in word 2007 you can just bring the mouse pointer to that property and automatically the text will change to that property. Same is the case with the picture format. Some new format’s which has more graphical view has been introduced in this new version of office. By marking a document as final, you can make it as read only in a single click.


Power Point


Power point has become more user friendly. The major tool introduced is presenter view. This tool is used to work on power point using two monitors. In which you can do rough work (generally navigation work) in your screen while the second screen displays the presentation to the audience. You can also record your narration with just a single click



Excel


Excel has become lighter; Microsoft has put more significance to graphical user interface. Now the formulae are just a single click away. Your sheet can be more secure with the range protection password, in which you can select particular range of cells and apply permissions to different user on it. Security is at granular level.



Outlook


Outlook 2007 is intelligent enough to configure your internet mail address. Just enter your name, email address and the password. Outlook will search for the respective POP3 and SMTP server over web.

Outlook 2007 supports the mailbox hosted on Microsoft Exchange 2003. One very useful and important feature in outlook 2007 which was also available with office 2003 is the availability of RSS feeds. You can configure the RSS for your favorite bog and news websites so that you can be updated whenever that site is updated. The instance search feature provides the capability of desktop search, you just have to download this exe from Microsoft web.

You can select, the particular time at which your message should be delivered. There is a facility to insert business card in your mail. New thing is “To do bar”, in which you can track your daily tasks. Also it communicates with the share point server over web 3.0 and lists all the tasks in your account. You can also track the mail which is marked as follow-up. Overall, outlook is just same as outlook 2003 with slight modifications.

Now you can view the attachment of the mail in the same windows which you are using to view the mail. No need to open the attachmeent with a different program.



Office Publisher


With office publisher you can create, Advertisements, Award Certificates, Banners, Brochures, Business Cards, Envelops, Greeting Cards, Gift Certificates etc. You can design a whole website using office publisher.



Saving files

All the applications give you the flexibility to save the document in such a way that it has backward compatibility with previous versions of office but with some exceptions. In the save as option, you can save your document such that it can be opened with earlier versions of office.

Office 2007 has a new file format, which is based on XML. The result is the more secure and efficient office. The specialty of XML format is as follows:

1) The documents which are saved are 75% smaller than their actual size.
2) File recovery is at more granular level. Now you can recover the table from a file.
3) Document can be shared more securely with Document inspector
4) Different file extensions for easier identification (Default is .docx, .xlsx, .pptx etc…and the files which extension ends with m, contain macros.)


The Translation Issue


Translations are still a major concern for every software industry. I translated my name from English to Arabic and I got the following result.


If you know Arabic language, you would jump laughing in front of your system. This is translated from left to right but Arabic language is written from right to left.

To put it simple in front of you, it is like “nahK ilA tasariV riM”


My View about Office 2007

Overall I could say only one word, “WoW”. Enjoy the below slide which I have created in power point 2007.


Top Ten Benefits of Microsoft (Courtesy: Microsoft Corporation)

Desktop

Access 2007

Accounting Express 2007

Excel 2007

Groove 2007

Info Path 2007

OneNote 2007

Outlook 2007

Power Point 2007

Project 2007

Publisher 2007

Share Point Designer 2007

Visio 2007

Word 2007



Servers

Forms Server 2007

Groove Server 2007

Live Communication Server

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Performance Point Server 2007

Project Server 2007

SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint Server for Search 2007


Services

Live Meeting




Important Links

MSDN Blog


A Glimpse at New Office 2007 Features Via Word


Accessibility in Office 2007.

Windows Media Player 11

It’s been a very long journey of Windows Media Player from ver 2.0 to the current ver 11. This post features the latest Media player from Microsoft i.e.., Windows Media Player 11.

If you have Windows Vista installed on your system, you also have this latest version of MP. Windows Media Player 11 is included as the default MP for Vista and it works with all the versions of Vista till date.

It is not mandatory that you should have Vista to get MP 11 on your machine. Long before the release of Vista this year, Microsoft have released MP 11 exclusive for Windows XP.


Features of Media Player 11



All of us like this player due to its new design and digital look. This was the indication of a new operating system from Microsoft. As you can see that windows media player’s look is similar to that of Vista’s

It has Back and forward buttons which we didn’t had in earlier versions. This helps you in working with multiple web pages.

Playback control features improved repeat, shuffle and full-screen options. Now there is no need to parse through the long menus to repeat a song. It is just a single click away in the playback control.




So, what are you waiting for, Download this incredible player here and enjoy the experience for real music stores in this digital world.

Important Links

See which version of MP, Microsoft recommends for your type of operating system.

There are some differences between the media player available with Vista and the one which you have downloaded for Window XP. Click here for the differences.

Google's Blog

I hope, you might have downloaded the google web gadget for cricket scores, which was described in my Previous Post. I guess, you have removed it soon after India lost the match against Bangladesh. Never mind, India is an un-predictable team.

I found a very interesting thing over web which I want to share with you. May be this is well know to all of you, but I found it recently. This is Google’s Blog on blogger.com. Google calls this blog as “ Official Google Blog”. This blog has gone live from past few months. Atlast, Google has got the time to write posts on their very own service, Blogger

You can get information about most of the new services of google, recent lauches etc.. Probably a good way to get updated about what Master Google is doing on the web.

The recent hit post on this blog was about the “Open Source Carnival”, in which google was accepting applications for programmers to write open source softwares. Visit this blog for all the latest that is happening with google. I read about “Google’s Privacy Policy” which is changed, this year. Now googler's can choose their privacy policy.

Related link to Google Base Blog

Cricket World Cup 2007

As you all know, that Cricket world has began. This time it is West Indies, which is hosting this grand Cricket Championship.

All together there are 16 teams participating in World Cup. I am sure that all of you might have started searching for different ways to get the scores on the web.


Even I am doing the same. But recently when I casually tried to add a gadget to my google desktop. I got a very useful thing. A score gadget, in which you can see live cricket scores.



This is how it looks, it is powerd by cricinfo.com, the site which I was visiting to get the lastest scores till now.

If you want to be updated with all that is happening in this world cup, Download this gadget here the prerequisits for installing this gadget is google desktop.

If you do not have Google Desktop installed in your machines, download it here

Get all the latest gadgets and widgets from google by searching with the keyword Cricket Scores in google images.

Power of Internet Protocol

The most important information which I have changed about this post is its Heading. From now on, you will be seeing it as Power of Internet. I have chosen this heading, as in future, I will be posting about all the major applications used in internet world.

I hope every body found my previous post useful, if you are visiting this blog for the first time, I recommend you to visit my previous post to get the details of this topic, you can also find the answer to why did I chose this topic, in my previous post. As I have mentioned to write about technical details of IP telephony in next post, so doing the same in this post.

Let me brief out, what I am going to write in this blog. I will be starting with the most used protocol in IP telephony that is SIP, then we will see a software review, in which I will be reviewing few softwares used in IP communication. We will also see Microsoft's strategy for Ip telephony.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

SIP is a protocol used to Initiate or terminate sessions with one or multiple participants.Companies like Vonage and Packet8 have adopted SIP as the foundation for the services they offer to consumers.PortSIP softPhone is a powerful and unique Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software phone capable of voice over IP communications. The PortSIP softphone delivers SIP-based communications and services in a software-based phone for PC-to-Phone, Phone-to-PC and PC-to-PC services. As a SIP phone, PortSIP can be used on Voice over IP networks to interact with traditional Public Switching Telecommunication Networks (PSTNs) and future IP-based telecommunication devices. But SIP is not majorly used now, this is because of its only disadvantage which is the change over of device if we change the service provider.

Other Protocols used

The codes and commands used to establish and terminate a phone call over an IP network. The protocol supports such features as conference calling, call waiting and call transfer. The primary IP telephony signaling protocols are H.323, SIP and MGCP/MEGACO. There are also proprietary protocols; for example, Cisco's Skinny is widely used.H.323* is a multimedia conferencing protocol, which includes voice, video, and data conferencing, for use over packet-switched networks


Some Models of IP Phone



This is Avaya's 2420 Model IP phone.




These are not most popular, you can see them in few Contact Centres.

The above two IP phones are most widely used, you can see them in almost every Contact Centre and It firm. These phones works same way as our normal PC, to get the IP address. They get the IP address from the DHCP server as the PC does. Through DHCP server, they can be centrally managed. Even the IP Firmware can be upgraded from the server itself rather then installing on each and every instrument.

Market Leader CISCO's Strategy

Cisco has released a voice gateway appliance designed to aid in the phased migration from time-division multiplexing (TDM) private branch exchange (PBX) networks to fully converged Cisco IP telephony and IP communications solutions. The Cisco EGW 2200 gateway supports the interworking of voice signaling protocols, Digital Private Network Signaling System (DPNSS) and Q.SIG, with Cisco CallManager call-processing software and Cisco Unity voice mail and unified messaging solutions. The Cisco EGW 2200 gateway supports the interworking of voice signaling protocols, Digital Private Network Signaling System (DPNSS) and Q.SIG, with Cisco CallManager call-processing software and Cisco Unity voice mail and unified messaging solutions.
The gateway supports commonly used DPNSS features, such as call-back, extension status, route optimization, and centralized attendant console, as well as other centralized operator functions. In addition, the Cisco EGW 2200 helps enable the interoperation of IP telephony voice mail features with legacy voice mail systems



Microsoft's PBX Strategy

Even Microsoft have entered into designing different softwares to communicate over internet. One of then which was in new last year is “Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007”. This software will integrated with other microsoft's communication products like outlook etc. Microsoft's ambition is to integrate this server software with every thing else in office suite. This product allows its user to initiate the call or conference with any person on a IP network. As far as the security is concerned, Microsoft Office Communication Server provides, single application infrastructure, a single administrator and a configuration and a single directory for IT professionals.

Find the review of it here



Software Review

The only software which I could review was SKYPE, probably the most used IP based software in the internet world. If you want to make a call on internet using free softwares, skype is the best option to go for. But the only disadvantage lies in the connection speed. Skype requires a broadband connection for reliable communication.
I tried with 128kbps, this effected the clarity of the voice and the call was getting disconnected after some time.Download Skype

Even yahoo, Google and MSN provides such kind of services through its softwares.

Integration of IP and PSTN Phone


Sphere’s VG3 media gateways deliver PSTN connectivity as well as support for legacy analog and digital phones ensuring you have a migration path and enabling you to protect your existing investments.

The figure shows the integration of IP and PSTN lines, the VOIP gateway is used to create addition lines for the PBX system. As VOIP can produce the standard telephone or T1/E1 lines, they can be terminated to a PBX line card.

Future of Internet Telephony

The Ip based communication is growing a very fastly. As it grows, so the competition in this industry. Free PC based VOIP is dominated by skype software. If you are opting for this service, keep in mind that even the smaller ISP's will offer VOIP service. But it depends on you to chose the best third party tool which would work the best. Study reviels free services like Yahoo!, Skype, and MSN are broadly used.

So if these third party tools offer free service then what would ISP do. They would opt for a firmware which would offer PC based programs. Here lies the brutality, now the customer should opt only for the paid service of the ISP rather than the third party free tools. Visit Brutal Future of VOIP for more details.

But how long will this persist, broadband will not be able to keep their charges high. There will be time when they will be forced to reduce the prices.