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Microsoft Online Store Lets You Download Windows and Office
Posted by Matt Buchanan at 12:45 AM on November 15, 2008
Microsoft is just now launching a real online store? Yep. It's still definitely a 1.0 experience—not a bad start, just very basic. You can buy meatspace goods like hardware, software discs and Xbox 360 games, but the kicker is that you can directly download software now, even Windows and Office. It seems wrong that the world's largest software company is just now really jumping into digital distribution, when someone like Valve has been doing it amazingly for the last few years. That said, I still wouldn't go the download route for Windows, for a whole lotta reasons, but mainly this one:
Paper shredders are usually simple and utilitarian-designed boring boxes, which may be why Bluelarix Designworks went to town on this reimagining of the machine. Paper2Dust is bizarrely sculptural, and works by having a "fast turning cord" spinning inside the top that literally rips the paper you slide into it into dust. The glass lid of the machine lets you see how pulped the paper's getting—when you're satisfied you simply release the power button, and the dustified paper slips down into the machine's leg. There's the usual safety features of course, but if it ever made it into a real product I think its selling power would be the therapeutic value of seeing hated paperwork being vaporised. [
Nobody knows exactly what Bill Gates is doing with 
It was a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally announced that they will be bringing lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote online. Like existing services from Google and Zoho, users will be able to use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. The online version is also designed to integrate with the next desktop version of Office, so there are no plans to ditch the software component just yet. However, Microsoft is definitely focusing heavily on the Windows Live experience—as we saw recently with their decision to 
The developers of Documents to Go--and Microsoft Office documents editor for BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile, and Symbian--are finally bringing it out for the iPhone. This is going to be an interesting one to see, specially since the iPhone doesn't have any copy and paste capabilities, which are crucial for editing documents of any kind, being from Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Dataviz says the application is "Coming Soon"... could this mean they are actually waiting for Apple to implement it or they are just developing it so it works within their own Office editor?
Every office has a pompous windbag or ten that monopolises meeting time with their constant interruptions. And while making fun of those idiots after the fact is a staple of office life, the sad truth is that thousands of hours are lost to these interruptions, and efficiency suffers because of them. Lucky for office life, the brainpower at MIT is hard at work on a series of devices and badges that implement "reality mining" to eliminate these blowhards forever. And no, this has nothing to do with military lasers.
Our sister site Kotaku posted the NPD's PC software sales charts for the month of September, and it's pretty interesting to see how mega-games like Spore measure up to less-exciting products like Microsoft Office. Spore may have nabbed the top spot, but MS Office 2007 grabs two spots, and despite its early troubles, MobileMe sneaks onto the list at number 19. What's most interesting is that antivirus and anti-spyware software take a whopping 9 out of the top 20 spaces. Looks like digital security is the hot buy of the season. [
If you're working at Dunder-Mifflin and you're lifting a highlighter or two every now and then, Michael may feign disapproval, but that's about it. On the other side of the coin is Victor Papagno, a sysadmin for the US Naval Research Laboratory, who was recently busted for jacking over 20,000 pieces of gear worth $US120,000--from ink cartridges to hard drives to software--over the course of 10 years.
