Office 2007 has entered the RTM process, and should actually be released to manufacturing in the next few weeks, according to an email from Microsoft.

I had dinner with Ajit Jaokar, CEO of Futuretext, a publishing company that publishes tech books like Mobile Web 2.0 and Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger (he writes a VoIP blog over on ZDNet, but also has political blogs and other blogging jobs over on Weblogs Inc, among others).

It’s more than just a facelift, as Google took the existing Groups service that grew from its long-ago purchase of Dejanews into a more Googly look with an expanded set of features.

Their mobile web services available in the United States and the United Kingdom will see the beta launch of sponsored search results appearing on mobile handsets.

Yesterday, I saw some new features on MapQuest, including draggable maps.

Widgetbox, an online directory for syndicated web “widgets,” or small interactive services that can be embedded onto a webpage or blog, formally announced its launch on Monday, after completing a private and public beta.

Microsoft released a public update yesterday to the Office 2007 beta 2 suite of applications.

Yahoo has some 80 million users in the United States, and the next time they login to check their email they will be offered the opportunity to switch to the Outlook-like Yahoo Mail Beta version.

Here’s a roundup of a few Windows Vista news items:

Do you remember Microsoft FrontPage?

Windows XP users, download and enjoy beta 2 of Windows Media Player 11, just released by Microsoft.

Microsoft opened up its Windows Live OneCare Family Safety beta this week. Parents can sign up to test the service designed give them more control over what their children see and do on the Internet.

The obligatory notice about the Firefox 2 Beta 2 browser being a developer preview release made available for testing purposes only has been duly noted.

Folks testing Microsoft Windows Vista have been emailing me today complaining that in Vista the startup sound that goes off everytime the OS starts up will be forced.

The migration of users from the old version of Google’s Blogger service to the new beta will happen at an “incremental” pace.

A slate of updates to the Blogger platform run by Google provides some new features for bloggers and their readers.

SugarCRM released the beta version of its customer relationship management (CRM) software Sugar 4.5. The release adds functionalities like personalized views, internationalization and support for Microsoft Windows Server products.

Following beta testing over the past few months, version 2.1 of blog manager and editor ecto for Windows was released earlier this week.

The newest beta candidate of the Firefox 2.0 web browser has been online for only a day, but Yahoo has already made one of its technologies available to it.

The Mozilla Firefox web browser has begun moving upward again in global market share, and those users can now try out version 2.0 Beta 1 of the browser.

I meant to write this up last night but got home a bit too late for that. If you’ve been a suffering with Yahoo! Messenger on your Mac for the last few years, download the new beta and rejoice.