The preview is the first time the company shares its work with a select group of customers, under non-disclosure agreements.

“These customers play a key role in our development process by testing early builds and providing feedback, which we incorporate into the final release,” says PJ Hough, CVP of Development on Microsoft’s Office Division.

“At this early point in our development cycle, I’m not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division,” says Hough. “With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio. Quite simply, Office 15 will help people work, collaborate, and communicate smarter and faster than ever before.”

The public beta will come this summer, the company says. At that point, more details about the release will be made public, obviously.

The current preview program is full, and closed to any additional participants.

There have been no shortage of rumors in the past about Office coming to the iPad, and it is possible that the current crop of rumors will ultimately go nowhere. That being said, the timing makes sense. With new versions of Office and Windows in the works, an iOS version of Office would fit in nicely. Moreover, Apple’s own iWork productivity suite has been on the iPad for a long time, and sold well, while Office users have had to make do with third-party apps like Quickoffice [iTunes link], which are generally popular with users, but generate no revenue for Microsoft. Finally, Windows-based tablets have gained little ground in a tablet market so thoroughly dominated by the iPad that it can hardly be said to be a tablet market at all, but rather an iPad market.

That being the case, Office for iPad makes sense. However, there is no data at present on when we might expect to see Office come to the iPad, nor on pricing (though a price comparable to Apple’s iWork suite – $10 per application – seems likely). Reactions to the rumor on Twitter seem to be a mix of excitement and skepticism, with one user taking a humorously pessimistic view:

What do you think? Will Microsoft bring Office to the iPad? Will you be using it if they do? Let us know in the comments.

After watching the video, one thing’s for sure, if Microsoft’s vision comes to pass, there’s going to be an awful lot of touch technology coming down the pipe. In fact, if you fast forward to the three minute mark, you’ll see the user’s entire desk has been designed around touchscreen technology, only in this vision, it’s so much more robust. Even the keyboard the actor is using has a touchscreen function that allows him to move the incoming communication to his primary monitor.

The fact is, Microsoft’s vision for future computer use looks a lot like what Steven Spielberg showed us in Minority Report. Via touch, users would be able to control which content is displayed and how user’s interact with it. Take a look at Microsoft’s creation because regardless of your feelings on touch technology, the future envisioned by the company looks rather impressive:

All of the ideas in the video are based on real technology. Some of the capabilities, such as speech recognition, real time collaboration and data visualization already exist today. Others are not yet available in specific products, but represent active research and development happening at Microsoft and other companies.

As indicated, whether or not you are a fan of touch technology, you should check out Microsoft’s vision of the future. As a person who isn’t the biggest adopter of touch technology, I must say I’m happy the keyboard exists in Microsoft’s future, and the way it’s integrated with touch is pretty damn cool.

H/t to the WinRumors blog for pointing this out.

"Today’s promotions underscore the strength of Microsoft’s collective leadership team and set us up well to execute against a powerful lineup of products this fall," said CEO Steve Ballmer. "Not only is the team ready to capitalize on major momentum with our existing products like Office, SharePoint and Halo: Reach, but they are simultaneously bringing entirely new experiences to market with Windows Phone 7 and Kinect for Xbox 360."

DelBene has been with Microsoft for 18 years. Most recently, he led the engineering and development teams for the Microsoft Business Division, including the development of the recently launched Office 2010 products and services.

The company is quick to point out that Office 2010 has already become the fastest selling consumer version of Office. As president, DelBene assumes responsibility for the Microsoft Office Division, including both the engineering and marketing functions for clients, servers and services for information workers, including Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, Visio and Microsoft’s speech technology investment.

Lees has been with the company for 20 years. He has been at the center of the development of Windows Phone 7. He’ll continue to oversee the overall product development and marketing of the company’s mobility efforts. 

Mattrick doesn’t have as much history with the company,having joined in just 2007, leading the Interactive Entertainment business for Microsoft. He’ll oversee Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Kinect, Zune Music and Video, and Mediaroom, as well as PC and mobile interactive entertainment.

The company also announced that starting today, if customers purchase Office 2008 for Mac, they’ll be able to upgrade to 2011 for free when it becomes available.

"We develop Office for Mac to give you the tools to create great-looking and compatible documents — with options to pick the right edition for your Mac needs," says Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit. "More than ever before, Office 2011 brings the familiar productivity tools and features of Microsoft Office to a suite of applications that work great on the Mac."

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac and Messenger for Mac, and comes in two editions: a single install for $119 and a Family Pack for $149.

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 includes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac, and also comes in two editions: a single install for $199 and a Multi-Pack for $279 with two installs for a user with two machines.

There will also be a special academic version available at authorized academic stores for $99.

All versions will be available in the following languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish, Polish and Russian.

Attorney General Rob McKenna reportedly stated that, “When it comes to Internet search results, every small business wants to pull a high ranking. Merchants hoping to increase their online sales paid thousands of dollars to Visible.net and Captures.com but didn’t always receive the top listings and other services they were promised.”

The lawsuit was filed on the 12th of November, 2008, in the King County Superior Court and it accuses of Visible.net, Captures.com and their owner, Gilbert Walker, of violating the state consumer protection and telemarketing laws.

The website, ‘Webmarketingsource.com’, is also owned by the same and the services provided under these banners include Website designing, Search Optimization, E-commerce services and other Internet Marketing services. The defendants promote these services through their above-listed websites and telemarketing. The packages offered by them feature a startup fee ranging from of $3,749.99 to $9,749.99, in addition to a monthly fee ranging from $39.99 $99.99.

Paula Selis, assistant attorney general of the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit, was quoted as saying, “The Attorney General’s Office and Better Business Bureau have received nearly 90 complaints about the defendants, showing a pattern of recurring problems since at least 2005.” Among others, the lawsuit accuses the defendants of the following violations:

• Failure to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor and also failure to provide a written confirmation of a consumers’ rights under the Act of Commercial Telephone Solicitation.
• Misrepresenting the ability to significantly increase the website traffic to customer Web sites by providing top search-engine rankings and failure to deliver other promised services.
• False claim of an affiliation with other marketers including ‘Specialty Merchandise Company’, reportedly a drop-ship wholesaler.
• False claims that its customer service representatives are reachable at all times when, in fact, customers are frequently unable to reach the representatives and sometimes do not even receive return calls.
• Failure to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests.
• Continuing billing the credit cards of consumers who have attempted to cancel the services and submitting alleged debts to collection agencies.

The state is presently seeking civil penalties, consumer restitution and a court order to halt the deceptive practices of the defendant.

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The company’s announcement follows yesterday’s unveiling of its cloud-based Web apps operating platform, Windows Azure, and both are “part of a strategic companywide shift toward embracing web-based solutions.”

Office Web will allow access to the lighter versions of the classic Office programs via a Web browser. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari compatible, no word has been released yet about Google Chrome. Given that Office Web is HTML and AJAX based, one imagines Chrome shouldn’t haven’t issues.

Historically, Microsoft has been slow to embrace Web-based applications. After all, its bread has been buttered with widespread desktop machine adoption. Capossela says times have changed.

“Customers’ requirements have changed, as have their expectations of technology. While Office is synonymous with desktop productivity, the idea of “desktop” has changed from a PC-centric notion to one in which people are empowered on the PC, on the phone, and with a browser. Our customers don’t use one device, but rather several.”

Office Web will be accessible via Office Live, with both ad-supported and subscription options. Business users will get access via hosted subscriptions and existing volume licensing agreements.”
 

While that in and of itself is a perfectly fine (albeit difficult) project, Sabeer’s methods are surprisingly self-destructive. His Live Documents site (a name that makes you think of Microsoft’s Office Live) uses Office 2007’s “Ribbon” interface, designed in Flex, to power document editing, spreadsheets and presentations.

The interface is a near-copy of the one in Office 2007, just with less features, containing the same colors and structure. Microsoft does allow other software developers to use the Ribbon for free and without permission, but the only real rule is that they can’t use it for programs that compete with Microsoft Office. Bhatia is tempting a lawsuit, considering he ignored the guidelines set by Microsoft, and I don’t envy his position.

There is some good stuff, like a plugin that synchronizes documents between Office and Live Docs, and makes it easy to upload, but I wouldn’t rely on a website that is destined to be sued into oblivion. Unless Bhatia is trying to get bought out by Microsoft, Live Documents doesn’t seem set for a long life.

(via Amit)

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Crain’s Chicago Business cited the cost at $500 million, with the datacenter occupying eight football fields in size. The facility should be open for operation by mid-2008.

The added infrastructure, along with similar projects varying in size and scope, give Microsoft the ability to compete with Internet powers Google and Yahoo on web services. Offering products like Office Live requires Microsoft to create a platform that won’t have a single point of failure.

The demand for web services like Software as a Service will abate if companies can’t satisfy demand reliably. This is what happened in the early days of client/server applications in the 1970′s, leading to the growth of the PC industry.

By spreading out capacity, Microsoft can ensure uptime and service availability, the competition has similar aims. While infrastructure doesn’t grab all the hype among tech industry observers, its importance along with companies spending big dollars on it shows the seriousness of the initiatives and the firms behind it.

The structure in which the office is located looks nice enough, yet Peter Kafka, who’s been tracking down all these details, writes, “[I]t’s considered a ‘B’ building by commercial real estate standards, and it’s not really wired for state-of-the-art IT companies.”  1927 – the year the building was finished – was a long time ago, after all.

Also, the interior of Facebook’s office is not “bad” in any way that’ll interfere with work or endanger employees, but it reminds me of a poorly funded middle school.

So what’s the price tag for about 5,300 square feet of decidedly unimpressive office space?  $29,000 per month, according to Kafka.  Those of you who are familiar with New York real estate are welcome to weigh in on the matter, but to most of us, that sounds rather expensive.

Other companies are sure to see a silver lining in all this, though – the state of things at Facebook’s New York office may keep more of their employees from abandoning ship.