Microsoft joins the sensible mobile world with Office....finally

When you're mobile, you likely want robust, free software that works with a lot of apps and that can be accessed anywhere. So far, Microsoft has failed to embrace those concepts -- but it's working to change that.  Since it's release, I refused to use Office for IOS on the iPad and iPhone as it was ridiculous to make users pay to create a document, when so many other free options were available.  I think Microsoft heard the prevailing roar of the mobile world. 

The software giant on Thursday unveiled a handful of changes to its Office software on smartphones and tablets running Apple and Google's operating systems, refreshing its Word, PowerPoint and Excel apps to make them friendlier for the mobile age.

The most notable change is that users of Apple's iPhone and its iPad tablet, or of devices running Google's Android operating system will be able to create and edit Office content for free. Before this, getting access to those capabilities required an Office 365 subscription, which starts at $6.99 a month.

Microsoft is the latest company to embrace the concept of "freemium," where many core aspects of a game or app are given away, but there's also an option to pay for additional bells and whistles. The shift represents Microsoft's revamped strategy of going after as broad a market as possible.

"We want more people to use our applications," Amanda Lefebvre, an Office product manager, said in an interview. "Usage is a primary goal for us. We want to give them more reasons to use our product."

As part of the changes, Microsoft also decided to blow up Office for the iPhone, which included basic versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel all in one app. Instead, it's now providing three standalone apps of Word, PowerPoint and Excel with more capabilities, just like the company did with its Office for iPad apps.

Amazon Prime customers now get unlimited cloud storage for photos

When it comes to backing up your photo library and life's most precious memories, it's good to have multiple options. Amazon's now giving its Prime subscribers another one: the company has announced that effective immediately, Prime customers will receive unlimited cloud storage for their photo backups. Any images you've already uploaded will no longer count against your cloud storage limit. Before now, only Fire Phone owners have had the benefit of unlimited photo storage.

Amazon calls this latest membership perk Prime Photos, and describes it as a simple, secure destination for your entire photo library. Once they've been uploaded to the cloud, your shots can be viewed across iOS, Android, the web, and of course Amazon's own Fire devices. There are multiple ways to browse your library on the TV, as well: Amazon's Fire TV (and new Fire TV Stick) can access Prime Photos, as can apps for the PlayStation 4, PS3, and select smart TVs from Samsung and LG.

Amazon very carefully only mentions the word "photos" in its press release, so it doesn't seem as though videos taken with your iPhone or Android device will be eligible for the unlimited space. But the company does note that photos are preserved in their original, full resolution. (And yes, RAW files are supported.) And if you're worried about reliability, there are few cloud platforms that have proven more steady and secure than Amazon's.

But like we said, it's good to have your photos in more than one place, and cloud storage is pretty cheap (or free) almost anywhere you look these days. Google is happy to store your whole collection for free, and Flickr is still giving users 1TB of storage at no cost. Microsoft's OneDrive is another good choice — especially if you're an Office365 subscriber, and there's also Dropbox / Carousel. If you're an iPhone owner, remember that Apple now backs up plenty of photos and charges pretty reasonable rates in case you need more storage. In 2014, losing your entire photo library should be almost impossible if you're smart about it.

Microsoft Office and Dropbox getting married

Microsoft and Dropbox today announced a "strategic partnership" to make life easier for people who use Office and Dropbox. In the next few weeks, the Office apps on iOS and Android will include integrated Dropbox support in order to provide direct access to Office documents stored on Dropbox. In early 2015, both Dropbox's Web interface and Office Online will support one another, enabling opening, editing, and sharing.

Microsoft may be making OneDrive ever more appealing by offering Office 365 users unlimited storage, but the company recognizes that Dropbox is for many people the cloud storage solution of choice today. Because of this, Dropbox is already the home to many Office documents—the company claims some 35 billion of them are stored on its platform—and the new integration should make working with those documents a bit easier.

Dropbox for Business users will have a similar featureset available, though they will need an Office 365 subscription to use it.

A Dropbox client for Windows Phone and Windows Metro is also under development and is expected to ship in the next few months.

So what happens when you lose your smartphone?

Microsoft Surface shows signs of life..

Third time's the charm for Surface Pro

Back when Microsoft introduced its first Surface tablets, the company didn't really know how best to market the devices. That left consumers confused and largely interested, resulting in a stockpile of unsold inventory. Fast forward to today things are different. Microsoft is pitching the Surface Pro 3 as a tablet that can replace your laptop. It's a message that consumers are embracing, and as a result, Microsoft's Surface sales have doubled in the past year.

Microsoft reported Surface revenue of $908 million during its fiscal first quarter of 2015, compared to around $400 million in the same quarter a year ago. The Surface Pro 3 is a legitimate mobile device, and it comes without the confusion of comparing Windows RT to Windows 8/8.1.

Overall, Microsoft generated revenue of $23.20 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2014, along with operating income of $5.84 billion and diluted earnings per share of $0.54.

"We are innovating faster, engaging more deeply across the industry, and putting our customers at the center of everything we do, all of which positions Microsoft for future growth," said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "Our teams are delivering on our core focus of reinventing productivity and creating platforms that empower every individual and organization."

Looking ahead, Microsoft warned of several factors that could negatively affect revenue, including "intense competition" in each sector the company competes in, adverse results from legal disputes, cyber attacks, and the list goes on.

Automatically Mute The Audio Playing In All Inactive Tabs In Chrome

One of the recent versions of Chrome added something absolutely wonderful to the browser; a sound indicator in the tab that tells you which tab is playing any sort of audio. This feature doesn’t just work for YouTube videos or other embedded media players but also for those annoying video ads that play on their own making it very easy to identify the guilty tab. Mute Inactive Tabs is a Chrome extension that does something equally helpful in this regard; it mutes a tab playing any sound if it is inactive.

 You can toggle Mute Inactive Tabs On and Off from its button next to the URL bar. When the extension has been turned Off, the button has an ‘Off’ badge to indicate the inactive state. Any tab that is playing a video/sound is automatically muted as soon as you switch to a different tab.

Mute Inactive Tabs is really an automatic On/Off switch and it does its job well but it does leave us wanting more. Where it will mute say a YouTube video, it won’t pause it. That is obviously not what the extension claims to do but it’s a feature that would make it far more useful.

Mute Inactive Tabs also only works within a window. This means that if you switch to a different window, all tabs that were muted by the extension in the window you were previously working in will begin playing sound again and that is without doubt a major flaw. The extension has a pro version as well, not something that happens with browser extensions, and it allows you to whitelist pages that the extension should not mute. It doesn’t, however, extend the mute functionality to other windows thus making the upgrade/purchase less than what it’s worth.

Personally, I’d love to see the developer fix those little bugs and make it so that the extension can pause videos as well. Mute Inactive Tabs can be exceptionally useful in many cases not least of which is opening and queuing several YouTube videos for watching.

Install Mute Inactive Tabs From The Chrome Web Store