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Microsoft has opened the tap on its cloud-based Office 365 and is now offering the service as a public beta for anyone to try out.

Available in 38 countries and in 17 languages, the new beta follows several months of limited testing among a couple thousand businesses that were able to kick the tires on the service. After the public beta, Office 365 will officially launch later this year.

Unveiled last October, Office 365 is Microsoft's attempt to offer businesses a cloud-based alternative to some of its traditional desktop and server products. The service combines Office Web Apps with … Read more

Among the news items this week from the world of Apple, the folks over at AppleInsider uncovered a rumor that Apple may be having a launch event next week for a new line of MacBook Pros. According to the story, this would put the launch event a week ahead of schedule.

As usual, Apple remains tight-lipped about what features will be unveiled in the new laptops, but the one sure thing is that it will include Intel's latest generation Sandy Bridge processor.

Whatever is introduced next week (if the rumor turns out to be true), you can bet we'll have all the details here. Make sure to check back on launch day for photos, specs, and everything else about Apple's latest devices.

This week's apps include an image enhancement tool that produces cool-looking shots and an RTS game that closely resembles one of the most popular strategy games of all time.… Read more

A major difference between the NGP and 3DS lies in the two devices' touch-sensitive technologies. The 3DS will reuse the original DS' resistive touch screen, whereas the NGP will have two capacitive touch areas (front and rear), of the type most tablets and smartphones use today (including the iPhone and iPad).

The 3DS' resistive touch screen requires some depression (hence the stylus), but can also respond to a finger press. The technology offers a nice level of precision (like when handwriting or pecking at small virtual keys), but certainly requires a bit of a learning curve when being used in tandem with a stylus.

With the introduction of the NGP's front and rear touch capabilities, players will essentially have another dimension of interaction at their disposal. At first glance the rear pad might seem silly, but after the insightful video to the right, we're beginning to think it might actually provide a more seamless gaming experience. The video showcases a game called Little Deviants, in which the player drags a finger across the rear panel to manipulate the world onscreen. We're excited to see that for the first time gamers can interact with a portable gaming device without their fingers blocking the screen.… Read more

It's almost considered certain among fanboys that Apple's next iPad--which so far we're imaginatively calling the iPad 2--will come out in the next couple of months. It might be as early as April, as it was April of last year that saw the launch of the original iPad, which now has 87 percent of tablet market share.

Because the supposed unveiling is so close--some say within the next few weeks--the gossip mongers are in overdrive trying to find out what it will and won't have. And the latest rumor, which we spotted on Mac Rumors, … Read more

DigiTimes reports that Taiwanese camera lens manufacturer Largan Precision will supply lenses for Apple's forthcoming iPad 2, widely expected to support at least a front-facing camera for use with applications like FaceTime.

With FaceTime available on every iPhone 4 and new iPod Touch, as well as on the Mac, there is little doubt a front-facing camera will be included on the second-generation iPad.

Largan Precision declined to comment when asked about market rumors that pegs them as the sole supplier of lenses for the iPad 2 update, most likely to be released in the first quarter of 2011. These … Read more

Google is putting its data liberation philosophy to work in a direct slap at Facebook.

Techcrunch noticed last night that Google made a subtle change to a paragraph in the guidelines that govern how external services can let their users import contacts data from Google. Now those services will have to allow their users to export that data in a manner similar to how Google handles data export, which means Facebook will have to change its policy if it wants to allow users to morph Gmail contacts with Facebook friends.

Facebook has long resisted the notion of allowing people to … Read more

If you have a Mac and an iPhone 4, this trick is for you. iOS currently provides no way to tell if the photos you've taken were from the front camera or the rear camera on your iPhone 4. Using iPhoto Smart Albums, you easily keep them organized.

This hint is fairly basic, but you will need a Mac running iPhoto '09 and an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1. For those of us who use both of the iPhone 4's cameras prolifically, this hint is an easy way to sort your photos based on which camera you … Read more

According to a report by AppleInsider, sources with direct knowledge of Apple's product plans claim that production of a FaceTime-capable iPad could be available in time for the holiday shopping season.

Although Apple has maintained a fairly predictable 12-month release cycle for its mobile devices, the source claims "that as of last month, there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year's holiday shopping season.

Typically Apple will release updates to its iPod lineup in September (as we saw last week) and then update its Mac lineup … Read more

Chances are, if you've had your computer for any amount of time, you've burned a CD or DVD and needed a cover for it. UnderCoverXP makes it easy to create covers for a variety of types of digital media. It's not a design program, exactly; it's more of a utility for scaling images to the right size and printing them so that they'll fit in whatever type of case you're using. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of making covers; UnderCoverXP gets the dimensions right every time.

The program's interface is … Read more