Reviewed: Office 365

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Office 365 safely keeps your work in the cloud

Office 365, announced today, gives professionals and small businesses a subscription service that lets them work from anywhere using familiar-feeling Web-enabled applications. Combined with hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync, Office 365 is designed to enable users to share, collaborate, and communicate in the cloud. In our testing during the beta, we found the tools worked well across the board (with some hiccups), and expect that many people who use Office on desktop Macs and PCs will appreciate the familiar look and feel, which should help them get up and running quickly.

Office 365 moves work to the clouds

    
Obviously, Office 365 is going to draw comparisons to Google Docs along with Google Apps, the enterprise version of Google's online office suite. Google Docs remains free, making it an easy choice for many users, while Office 365 will cost at least $6 per user per month (see pricing at the bottom of this review). Microsoft is probably betting that with so many businesses already accustomed to the desktop versions of Microsoft Office, it will be an easy transition to Office 365. With today's launch, we will soon find out if people are willing to make the switch or choose Google's offerings instead.
Many businesses will also understandably wonder whether Office 365 will be a reliable alternative to desktop office suites and whether their information will be safe. Microsoft says that the company will guarantee 99.9 percent uptime for Office 365 servers to make sure you always have access to your work. Microsoft also includes its Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, which scans continually for viruses and spam in an effort to keep your business and its important information secure.

E-mail and calenders


Powered by Microsoft Exchange Online, Office 365 gives businesses access to e-mail, calenders, and contacts from virtually anywhere, on almost any device. The Microsoft Outlook Web app has a similar look and feel to Outlook for desktops, and can be connected with Office 2010 or Office 2007 so you have the same e-mail inbox everywhere. Unfortunately, those who use older versions of Microsoft Office for the desktop will be out of luck.
Office 365
Color-coded calenders let you plan appointments and schedule meetings with your coworkers.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)
Along with e-mail you'll be able to use calenders with all the features you need to schedule meetings and appointments. You'll be able to go to the calender app, view your coworker's availability, then set up a meeting time; your calender will now show the meeting time on whatever device you log in with.

Office Web apps


When it's time to create documents, Microsoft Office Web apps act as companions to the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, powered by Microsoft SharePoint. Though you won't have the laundry list of options found in the desktop versions, the Web apps offer enough features to create and edit documents while keeping the same formatting on your desktop and on the Web.
Office 365
Change text styles, add tables and images, and format your Word documents away from your desktop.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)
Like all of the Office 365 apps, Microsoft Word Online uses the Ribbon, the all-in-one tool across the top of every document found in the desktop version of the Office suite. The Ribbon in Word Online offers only Home, Insert, and View tabs that let you format, edit and style text; insert tables, pictures, clip art, and links; and switch between editing and reading views. More advanced settings, like tracking editing changes, for example, are not included in the online version of Word. But you always have a button in the Office 365 interface to open a document in your desktop version of Word.
Excel Online also offers basic features only, but you will be able to create tables, format fields including text and number formats, add links, and refresh data in Pivot Tables (think quick visual graphs based on the data) that are connected to those sections of the spreadsheet. Again, you will not get any of the more advanced features found in Excel on the desktop, so the Office 365 version is more for edits and tweaks on the go.
Office 365
Create, edit, and change the order of slides, add graphics, and make quick tweaks to PowerPoint presentations.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)
Similarly, in PowerPoint Online you'll be able to create and edit basic slides, but you'll want to do most of the heavy lifting for major presentations using your desktop version of Office. While it will be great for last-minute additions while on the road, PowerPoint Online lacks more advanced tools like animations and transitions.
OneNote provides the simultaneous collaboration piece of the online Office suite, letting you work with co-authors to gather and enter information. You can create separate section headings for different types of information and you can categorize your work using tags to point out specific areas of your project to other users. In our testing, we encountered some errors we could reliably recreate that would force us to exit or reboot OneNote. We'll give Microsoft some leeway here, because we know our version is still officially in beta at the time of this writing. Let's hope Microsoft will iron out the bugs in time for launch.

Communication and collaboration


Office 365 enables you to keep your organization's work in one place by creating a Team Site that's only available to users you choose. Here you'll be able to keep shared documents for collaboration, post messages for co-workers, or create new team subsites for specific projects. The Team site is highly customizable with plenty of tools with which to personalize the look and layout. You can also Check Out (as at the end of a workday, for example) so everyone knows who is or isn't online.
Office 365
Customize your Team site to show all your current projects and share documents with your team.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)
Even with access to Office 365 from anywhere, sometimes you need to contact someone directly--even if it's over the Web. Powered by Microsoft Lync Online, you can have a quick chat over a secure IM client, hold online meetings with audio and video, or share your desktop to show an employee exactly what you mean. Even people outside of your company can be given access so you can meet up with clients online.

Public Web site


When you're ready to share your work with the world, you can use Office 365 to create and maintain a public-facing Web site. The service gives you several layouts, and you can pick from hundreds of themes to match your type of business. You can make further changes to style and text for even more site variations and you can include custom CSS code if you want to create a style sheet of your own.
Office 365
Create a public-facing Web site with hundreds of different themes and colors to choose from.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Pricing


Office 365 for small businesses under 25 employees costs $6 per user, per month. Larger businesses can choose from four enterprise plans, from $10 per user to $27 per user per month for more options and advanced tools.

Conclusions


Overall, we think Office 365 is off to a good start, offering basic office-suite tools most workers can pick up and use right away due to the familiar feel of Office products. Though the tools are not as advanced as those found in the desktop versions, we think businesses will appreciate the collaboration tools and the way the Team site ties all of your projects together. We are also impressed with the editing tools for the public-facing Web site that give you tons of options for creating a good-looking landing page for your business. Finally, we did encounter some bugs in our testing, but we're willing to reserve judgement and update this review when the service launches officially.
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60GHz tech promises wireless docking, USB, HDMI

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WiGig Alliance logo

Every now and again, the rules for how to build a personal computer change. One of those moments may arrive next year with a high-speed wireless technology that could let people link tablets with big-screen TVs or dock laptops when arriving in the office.
The technology, which uses the 60GHz band of radio spectrum and is designed to transfer as much as 7 gigabits of data per second, matches what many wired connections provide, either inside a computer chassis or through the profusion of ports that perforate laptop sides. A group called the WiGig Alliance is developing it, and the group announced today new specifications that could help replace the current tangle of cables.
"I fully expect to see the product ramp to start midyear next year," said Mark Grodzinsky, chairman of the WiGig Alliance's marketing group. "In 2013 you end up with an explosion of products."
The basic data-transfer rules for the 60GHz technology, developed in concert with the IEEE's 802.11ad standard, were published in May. Today, the WiGig Alliance tweaked that with version 1.1, but more importantly announced three higher-level specs that use that foundation:
• The WiGig Bus Extension (WBE), which can enable a wireless version of the PCI Express (PCIe) slots used to connect everything from video cards to hard drives. WBE is now a published specification available to members of the consortium.
• The Wireless Serial Extension (WSE) will provide high-speed serial communications link, enabling a wireless version of the newer USB 3.0 technology. This spec will be published in the second half of 2011.
• The Wireless Display Extension (WDE) governs how external monitors or TVs can be connected with wireless versions of HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. WiGig had been working with VESA, which develops DisplayPort, but now joined HDMI's group, too. WDE also will be published in the second half of 2011.
As an added bonus, the technology also is an extension of traditional Wi-Fi networking, including elements such as Wi-Fi Direct for device-to-device connections. That Wi-Fi ability is handy, but not so paradigm-shiftingly different as blowing apart a PC chassis--especially given that next year also likely will bring the debut of longer-range 802.11ac wireless with a data transfer rate of 1Gbps.
Today's Wi-Fi technology uses 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio spectrum; the 60GHz band permits faster data transfer but is limited to shorter range. The 60GHz band, like the other two, is unlicensed. That means device makers don't need to take out a government license for their devices the way, say, Verizon must to support phones using 4G LTE newtorks.
The WiGig Alliance envisions a wide range of uses for its 7-gigabit-per-second 60GHz wireless communication technology.
The WiGig Alliance envisions a wide range of uses for its 7-gigabit-per-second 60GHz wireless communication technology.
(Credit: WiGig Alliance)
What'll it look like?
The 60GHz technology is different from its predecessors. While 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks bathe a room in radio signals, but 60GHz is directional, Grodzinsky said.
A collection of 32 antennas is used to pick the best direct path from, say, a wireless access point to a laptop. It won't matter how the laptop is oriented, though, since the technology can figure out the best path, including reflections off walls and ceilings, he said.
Just don't expect a connection on the other side of the house.
"It's definitely an in-room technology," Grodzinsky said. "This is not how you'll get video distributed throughout your home. You've got a sea of Wi-Fi in your home, then you have islands of 60ghz multigigabit connectivity."
With the higher-level standards from the alliance, a number of wireless possibilities emerge. Here are some scenarios:
• You take your tablet into the living room. It links with a big-screen TV so you can look at your photos, browser the Web on a bigger screen, or play games with the tablet as a controller. It could even use an external graphics chip in a docking station to supply richer graphics.
• You bring your laptop into a conference room at work. It links up with a wireless keyboard, mouse, and projector so you can give a demonstration.
• You set down your work laptop in your home office. It connects with an external monitor for a bigger screen, an external drive to back up your data, and a wireless keyboard and mouse for more convenient controls.
• You get home from a trip and transfer photos from your camera to your computer without having to fiddle with memory cards or rubber-covered USB ports.
• You sync movies, pictures, videos, TV shows, apps and music on your phone, tablet, and computer when you walk into a room--quickly and without a proprietary connector cable that costs $19 to replace.
Grodzinsky believes the technology will first arrive in laptops and docking stations.
Big-name allies
The alliance has attracted big names in the tech industry. The high-level members are Intel, AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvel, Panasonic, Cisco, Microsoft; Dell, Toshiba, MediaTek, Nokia, and start-up Wilocity. New lower-level members are in the testing industry, an indication that the technology is moving closer toward real-world use.
Having big names on board is helpful, especially when it comes to broadcasting the assurance that a particular new technology isn't just a flash in the pan, but it doesn't guarantee success. There's real work afoot, though, too.
Supporting all three will require "tri-band" wireless chipsets. Qualcomm and Wilocity announced a tri-band chipset, the AR9004TB, in May, and Panasonic this month announced it has developed 60GHz technology.
When companies try to bring new technology to market, they often plaster product boxes with certification logos--an effort to promote the feature, educate the market that it exists, and offer assurances that it works as advertised. Expect more such logos for the 60GHz 802.11ad technology.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, which certifies that Wi-Fi gear works well with together with other devices on a wireless network, will assure compliance with the low-level 60GHz communication protocol, Grodzinsky said. The WiGig Alliance, meanwhile, will certify compliance with the higher-level WBE, WSE, and WDE standards.
Bumps in the road?
So that's the vision. The reality might not be so smooth. In particular, input-output technologies are difficult to promote because they suffer acutely from chicken-and-egg difficulties. There's no point in the extra expense of adding support to computers or routers until there are devices that can take advantage of them, but there's no point in building those devices until they have something to connect to.
Wireless USB, which aimed to accomplish a narrower subset of what the WiGig Alliance expects for its 60GHz technology, is a good cautionary tale. Many companies worked on Wireless USB half a decade ago. Though a few Wireless USB devices arrived, the technology proved to be a dud.
Grodzinsky doesn't see a repeat, though.
Wireless USB "ran into the perfect storm--regulatory issues, performance issues, and a spec battle. The things you don't want to have happen in a new technology happened there," he said. Different international regulations meant that companies couldn't make Wireless USB products they could sell globally, and the USB Implementors' Forum pitted Wireless USB with a rival approach from a group called the UWB Forum.
"There were two groups fighting over a nonexistent pie," he said. In contrast, "The WiGig Alliance did a good job rallying its players behind its banner," submitting its technology to Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers and working with the Wi-Fi Alliance, DisplayPort, and HDMI groups.
Another challenge will be matching the reliability of cables. They can be messy and inconvenient, even when you haven't misplaced them, but they're a very economical, well-understood way to get data from point A to point B.
And cables are fast. The Thunderbolt connector on new Macs--an interface developed by Intel that formerly was called Light Peak--enables two bidirectional 10Gbps connections. That's well above USB 3's speeds, and it could get faster if Intel delivers on the original vision of fiber-optic connections.
But don't count 60GHz out. It's being developed by authoritative players, including the IEEE with the 802.11ad spec, and it's a member of the powerfully successful Wi-Fi family. Wireless technology is only getting more important.

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Video games given full First Amendment protection

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 Amendment protects free speech in the digital age, rejecting a 2005 California law that severely restricted the sale of "violent" video games to minors.

The statute had been blocked from taking effect by lower court rulings in suits brought by industry representatives. Following today's decision by a 7-2 majority of the court (PDF), the law is now a dead letter.
gavel
The decision was highly anticipated, and the result entirely expected.
The decision in Brown v. EMA is the second in as many weeks from the high court protecting digital content under the First Amendment. Last week, the court invalidated a Vermont law (PDF) that prohibited the "sale, disclosure, and use of pharmacy records that reveal the prescribing practices of individual doctors." The state had argued that the information was not a form of speech but a "mere commodity," with "no greater entitlement to First Amendment protection than 'beef jerky.'"
But the court rejected that narrow view of information. The data whose use Vermont sought to limit constituted facts about what drugs were being prescribed, and facts are clearly protected under the First Amendment. As the court concluded, "Facts, after all, are the beginning point for much of the speech that is most essential to advance human knowledge and to conduct human affairs."
"Obscenity" definition not extended to violence
In today's decision, California had hoped to convince the court to extend the definition of "obscenity" to include depictions of violence in video games. (States are permitted to regulate obscene content despite the First Amendment.)
California tried to shoehorn a vague definition of "violent video games" into the already narrow obscenity jurisprudence. Today's decision reflects a complete rejection of that effort, dooming California's law and similar statutes enacted by other states.
From the outset, legal scholars saw California's argument as a Hail Mary pass. Obscenity is a narrow category of speech dealing with extreme sexual content and one of a very few exceptions to the general rule that the First Amendment prohibits content-based restrictions.
During a long period in the 1960s and 1970s in which the Supreme Court struggled to define the limits of its obscenity rule, it was clear the justices were never entirely comfortable with the category and were careful to limits its use.
Even before the advent of video games, the court had consistently rejected efforts to treat violence in film, literature, and even comic books as a related category of speech lacking "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," a key criteria in the obscenity exception.
For example, in U.S. v. Stevens, a case decided last year, the court rejected efforts by law enforcement agents to prosecute the operator of Web site selling videos depicting animal cruelty. (Animal cruelty itself, including the acts depicted in films, can be punished, but not the sale or possession of the films.)
Writing for today's majority, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that "in Stevens, we held that new categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated." The holding in Stevens, he said, "controls this case."
But unlike the federal statute involved in the Stevens case, California's legislature sought only to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. That limit was not enough to save the law. Even minors, the majority noted, have significant if not full First Amendment rights.
Quoting a 1975 case involving nudity at drive-in movie theaters, today's majority agreed that "Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them."
New technologies, new moral panics
Brown v. EMA is the latest in a long line of efforts to curb or ban new technologies under the guise of protecting minors from dangerous content. New media, including video games, extend metaphors of "realness" and fidelity in expressing ideas and entertainment. As each new innovation reaches mainstream markets, it is invariably met with a kind of moral panic that often translates into outrage and prohibition.
But the First Amendment, the majority concluded forcefully, is indifferent to the medium in which protected expression is communicated. "California's effort to regulate violent video games is the latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors," the justices said.
Similar moral crusades accompanied the rise in popularity of earlier media, including movies, radio, television, and comic books.
The court devoted several pages to the history of these efforts. In each case, violence depicted in new formats was described as more intense and more lifelike than previous technologies. That difference became the basis for efforts by state and local governments to single them out for prohibition. In each case, the courts held firm to the principle of the First Amendment and rejected the ban.
Even without legal support, moral panics over new media can have long-lasting effects. Fear of censorship, for example, has left a legacy of self-regulation in each of these media, which can often be more severe and inflexible than what the government was trying to do. Few film distributors will touch a film rated "X" by the Motion Picture Association of America, though no law requires them to do so or even to uphold the restriction.
The video game industry itself created the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which, as the Federal Trade Commission noted, "outpaces the movie and music industries" in restricting the access of minors to content rated "mature."
Comic books had, until recently, one of the most severe self-censoring bodies, the Comics Code Authority. The CCA was created by publishers and distributors in 1954, when state and federal governments were threatening to restrict or ban wildly popular horror and crime comics.
The code forced leading publishers out of business altogether and remained a powerful force for self-censorship even as comic book readership moved from young children to young (and even not-so-young) adults. This year, recognizing at long last the transformation of its audience and standards of acceptable content for children that have long since evolved from the 1950s, the CCA disbanded.
California also tried to distinguish video games from earlier media innovations by pointing out that unlike violent literature, video games are "interactive." But interactivity, the justices replied, is a form of all literature. The court here quotes Richard Posner, a federal appellate judge and a leading First Amendment scholar. In a similar case decided in 2001, Posner wrote that the more interactive literature is, the better it is. "Literature when it is successful draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own."
Confusing correlation with causation
The court was also dismissive of psychological evidence introduced by California that purported to show a link between playing violent video games and violent behavior by minors. As I wrote last year when the case was argued, the studies that demonstrated that link were deeply flawed and at best showed correlation, not causation, between the games and minor behavioral changes.
The justices were considerably less generous in their reading of the studies, which have been rejected by every court to consider them. "They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children's feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game."
The studies themselves found no difference between violent video games and those, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, (rated E for Everyone) that the rejected law would not have restricted. Indeed, the studies cited found similar effects from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, or from being shown a picture of a gun. "The consequence," the court said, "is that [California's] regulation is wildly underinclusive when judged against its asserted justification, which in our view is alone enough to defeat it."
Concern over technological improvements to come
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for himself and Chief Justice Justice Roberts, agreed that the California law was unconstitutional but disagreed with the approach taken by the other five Justices in the majority.
"In considering the application of unchanging constitutional principles to new and rapidly evolving technology," Alito wrote in a concurring opinion, "this court should proceed with caution. We should make every effort to understand the new technology. We should take into account the possibility that developing technology may have important societal implications that will become apparent only with time."
Alito was troubled by the "vividness" of video games over traditional literature and worried that future technical innovations, including 3D and sensory feedback, could make them even more dangerous. "And if this is so, then for at least some minors, the effects of playing violent video games may also be quite different. The court acts prematurely in dismissing this possibility out of hand," he wrote
But the majority decision did nothing to preclude future efforts to prove a strong and compelling link between playing video games and violent behavior by children.
In the end, Alito seemed mostly disappointed that the majority didn't share his moral outrage at the content of some video games, which he spent several pages describing in lurid detail.
As the majority notes, "ironically, Justice Alito's argument highlights the precise danger posed by the California Act: that the ideas expressed by speech--whether it be violence, or gore, or racism--and not its objective effects, may be the real reason for governmental proscription."
Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer filed separate dissents. Justice Thomas argued somewhat incoherently that since parents have absolute control over their children, the First Amendment simply does not apply to minors. Justice Breyer argued that restricting the sales of violent video games to adults was only a "modest" restriction on speech.
For some reason, Justice Breyer also prepared a 15-page appendix listing competing and inconclusive studies on violent video games, none of which was cited by attorneys representing California in any case.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, who defended the statute while serving as the state's attorney general, had no comment on today's decision, according to a spokesperson.
Defenders of the First Amendment can celebrate a strong victory in today's decision. But if history is any guide, the ill-considered California law won't be the last effort by state governments to restrict or ban future innovations in media. As technology makes the experience of information more interactive and more vivid, the attacks will only increase in frequency and volume.

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