Microsoft brings Windows, Office online

		November 1, 2008

	Microsoft brings Windows and Office to the cloud This week Microsoft unveiled Azure and online versions of its Office applications--both Web initiatives that take traditional software products and put them right in your browser. Of the two, the one you're likely to use is the online office suite, which will retain many of the core features of its software counterpart. However, Windows Azure might be the more interesting product in the long-run, as it lets you run virtual versions of Windows in your browser which are hosted on Microsoft's servers. This could open things up for immensely powerful Web and software applications that run on any hardware. Read all of this week's Windows coverage here Josh Lowensohn Associate Editor, Webware.com New on Webware.com LinkedIn's apps platform goes live Posted by Caroline McCarthy LinkedIn users now have another reason to hang around on the service besides polishing their resumes and looking for jobs. This week the company introduced an applications platform, letting users add a wide variety of tools that have been created by third-party developers.  Read more  Shop Amazon.com in 3D Posted by Josh Lowensohn Want to browse Amazon's selection of new music, books, and DVDs in 3D? Check out WindowShop, a new browsing experience that lets you fly through the latest products with your mouse or keyboard. It's not just eye candy though; you can find the latest products a lot easier than on Amazon's standard site.  Read more  When browser meets media player Posted by Rafe Needleman Radus is an ambitious browser-based media-viewing service that gathers up text, video, audio, and photo items from multiple blogs and content sites (like Flickr and YouTube) and lets you view them all in one interface that strips away the framework of the originating sites so you can focus on the content.  Read more  Hands-on with Netflix for Mac Posted by Josh Lowensohn We get an early hands-on look with Netflix Watch Instantly for Mac, which is coming soon to all Netflix subscribers. The new version on both Macs and PCs uses Microsoft's Silverlight to stream movies and TV shows straight to your browser.  Read more  Third Chrome beta a notch faster Posted by Stephen Shankland The latest beta of Google's browser, Chrome, shows a 37 percent JavaScript performance improvement over the initial beta released two months ago. JavaScript is a programming language used to add some pizazz to innumerable Web pages, but more importantly from Google's perspective, to power sophisticated Web applications such as Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Gmail. Users of Chrome should see that speed bump in other JavaScript services too.  Read more  All things Google Gmail chat gets SMS support Posted by Stephen Shankland Users of Gmail's Labs have a new option to send SMS text messages to Google Chat contacts right from their e-mail in-box. Behind the scenes, Gmail Chat sends text messages to people's phones from a specific Google phone number--one of about 1,000 the company reserved for the purpose--and each pair of people communicating gets to keep that number for future use.  Read more  Google Docs gets 99.9% uptime Posted by Stephen Shankland Burned by Google Docs going down in the past? This week Google announced a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for its paying customers. What happens if the service goes down during that time? Users get a refund. There are no plans to bring that same uptime guarantee to non-paying users, but the increased focus on reliability could carry over.  Read more    Related Newsletters Stay informed on the tech topics that matter to you most CNET offers a wide variety of newsletters on everything from tech industry news to the latest games and gear. Browse the entire list now. Manage newsletters More Webware  Webware RSS feed  The Webware 100  About Webware.com Sponsored Links
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