suite

What does Winstep Xtreme do? More like, what doesn't Winstep extreme do? This powerful desktop customization allows users to tweak their computer's appearance in innumerable ways.

Users who are a fan of the Apple dock and widgets will find a functional Windows version of these features in Winstep, but this program is way more than an Apple rip-off. There are themes. There are mouse-over previews of open windows. There's e-mail checking and weather forecasts and a fortune-telling fish called Wanda. The program is jam-packed with features and options. A program this rich in options demands two things: … Read more

Welcome to the Cheapskate's Greatest Hits, where I revisit past deals that are still available--and still awesome.

The list price for Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate is a whopping $679.95. The upgrade price? It's an equally whopping $539.99. For that kind of money, it had better come with Megan Fox's Tina Fey's phone number.

Believe it or not, you can score a legal and totally legitimate copy of Office 2007 Ultimate for just $59.95. What's the catch? You need to "borrow" a college student (or, you know, be one).

Microsoft's … Read more

The Microsoft Office 2010 technical preview is available today through invite only and--though it's not in its final form--there are plenty of feature enhancements to be excited about, if Microsoft can pull it off. According to Microsoft, the focus of this update was on three things: to make work flows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. In this CNET First Take, we'll take a look at some of the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let … Read more

One of the first mobile office tool kits for the iPhone, Quickoffice Mobile Suite is a generous viewer and limited editor. You'll be able to see Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel documents with it, but the application's real power--the part you pay for--is in editing and composing Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Office 2007 documents are importantly omitted in this version, but you better believe that Quickoffice is pulling in support for it, especially since Documents To Go, a major competitor, can read and write 2007 Word files.

Quickoffice has the usual basic word processing and spreadsheet tools, … Read more

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers calls video "the killer app," but apparently, he hasn't been paying attention to trends on the Web, or even to his company's own emerging-collaboration story.

Video, while great, takes too long. We e-mail, instant-message, and tweet for a reason: it's short and to the point. Who has time to watch a video each them they want to communicate?

Perhaps even more critically, as Hampus Jakobsson pointed out to me (over Twitter, no less), video "requires full attention--the scarcest of all resources."

Cisco gets this. At least, groups within … Read more

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This week, Corel came out with a brand-new suite of office applications for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 users. Corel Home Office ($69.99) bundles in three applications: Write, the word processor, Calculate, the spreadsheet maker, and Show, the presentations builder.

Corel Home Office differs from other Corel office suites in two ways. First, it's been written with a new code base, so it's not a perfect continuation of Corel WordPerfect Office. It doesn't hurt that the suite is the near-spitting image of Microsoft Office 2007 in layout and design.

Second, it has … Read more

Corel Home Office has much to recommend it, but this new productivity suite isn't for everyone. It was never meant to be. Smaller in size, lighter in features, and with certain optimizations built-in for small-screen resolutions, Corel Home Office is squarely aimed at Netbook owners, and among them, home users--both casual consumers and those operating home businesses.

The program's familiar layout emulates Microsoft Office 2007 with tabbed menus and a clean, visual display in all three applications--Write, Calculate, and Show. Its leaner feature set contains all the basic and intermediate features you'd expect in word processing, spreadsheet, … Read more

What's happening in meetings I've been in here is likely similar to what's happening in other corporations: People are gathering to figure out how to use, exploit, or simply not get their companies embarrassed on Twitter. But no matter what we agree to in these rooms (which, in my experience, isn't much), one thing is sure: You can't manage a major corporate Twitter presence on Twitter.com itself. Nor, for that matter, can you in one of the popular client apps like Tweetdeck or the current Seesmic Desktop. You need something built for customer service or brand management. New tools are emerging for just that.

The two I recommend are Invoke's HootSuite, which is in open beta right now (version 2.0 is in private beta), and CoTweet, which is still closed. I've tried them both.

The products have much in common. Both allow you to control and monitor multiple Twitter accounts, and give other people access to those accounts as you see fit. In both, you can maintain password control of your Twitter accounts -- users need only know their HootSuite or CoTweet login to see their assigned accounts and reply on your company's behalf. You can add or take people off accounts without having to get into the weeds in Twitter itself.

Both products let you post from any of your configured Twitter accounts, or all of them together if you like. And the both support the automatic addition of "cotags," like the short, signed bylines (example: "^RN" for Rafe Needleman) you're beginning to see in multi-person corporate Twitter accounts. You can also set up posts to go out at future times in both products, nice for running rudimentary marketing campaigns.

Both give you stats on links you share from the service. HootSuite uses its own shortener, ow.ly, and its stats are very deep. CoTweet uses the capable Bit.ly but displays only the most rudimentary stats from that service, unfortunately.

HootSuite is the geekier tool, and it's more powerful than CoTweet in some ways. The 2.0 version (due out by July) supports multiple columns, like Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop. Its statistics, as I said, are deep. It can show you things like the most influential re-tweeters of your links.

HootSuite will also monitor RSS feeds and send headlines out in your Twitter feeds automatically. That's a pretty slick feature. I've used Twitterfeed to do that in the past (that's how the @Webware feed works), but like the idea of integrating the RSS harvester into a more comprehensive tool.

In the user management category, HootSuite lets you follow or unfollow people from within the client, as well as report spammers to Twitter HQ with one button click.

… Read more

Microsoft on Monday said that Hewlett-Packard's EDS unit and other partners have agreed to help sell its collection of hosted online services.

EDS, Accenture, and others will help sell what Microsoft calls its Business Productivity Online Suite--a collection of products that Microsoft hosts in its data centers. The products include Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server, and Live Meeting.

Microsoft launched the collection of services last November, but has been saying it also wants partners to help sell the services.

Dutch system integrator Wortell said it likes Microsoft's services because they offer both the opportunity for higher sales plus … Read more