Filed under: Internet, News, Productivity, Microsoft, Social Software

According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to release the final version of Office Live Workspace by the end of 2008. The Google Docs competitor, which was launched as a beta in December of 2007, has been downloaded by over a million users.

Office Live Workspace is NOT a web-based version of Office. Instead, it is something of an Office-add-on (though you can use it on a computer that does not have Office installed). You can upload Office documents (Word, Excel and Powerpoint files) to Office Live Workspace and then access them from another personal (so it is a virtual flash drive of sorts) or allow permission for other users to access your documents. They have the ability to then edit and upload versions and share new documents with you.

Live documents cannot be edited directly in OLW, though you can create “web notes” which are similar to Google Docs documents and spreadsheets or “web lists” — that as of right now don’t do calculations. You can also comment on an Office file, so even if you don’t have access to Word to immediately edit a document, you can comment on what changes need to be made.

I have an Office Live Workspace account, but I have to admit, it has received little use. It isn’t so much that Google Docs is that much better — the spreadsheet and forms options are, the word processing is about the same — it is just more ubiquitous and has become a more streamlined part of my workflow.

If you have a Windows Live ID (nee Passport), you can use that to sign-up or sing into the Office Live Workspace beta. It is aimed at Windows users, but works fine on a Mac running Safari (and works with Mac formatted Office documents).

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Filed under: Conventions and conferences, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS), Presidential elections

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is about to enter the “No Spin Zone.”

The Illinois senator is due to be interviewed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, host of the “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Thursday, the final night of The Republican National Convention, according to TVNewser.com. I’m sure executives at Fox parent company News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) were high-fiving each other when that interview was secured. The clash between the suave Obama and the bellicose O’Reilly will make for interesting TV. It will be like a car accident on the highway that people can’t help themselves from gawking at.

Maybe Obama views it as a opportunity to show his supporters that he is not afraid of O’Reilly, who is a pussy cat compared with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It’s also quite a contrast to the strategy of Republican John McCain, who is keeping the media at an arm’s length. His campaign even canceled an interview the candidate had scheduled with CNN’s Larry King because it didn’t like the tough questions anchor Campbell Brown asked its spokesman about the qualifiicaitons of his running-mate Sarah Palin.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions have been a dream come true for the cable news channels. More people tuned into CNN, which is owned by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), for Obama’s acceptance than for Fox, MSNBC and the broadcast networks. The address got more viewers than the American Idol final, the Oscars, or the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Fox, though, continues to attract more viewers overall, especially during the Republican get-together in St. Paul. General Electric Co.’s (NYSE: GE) MSNBC is gaining viewers too, though some might be curious to see if its feuding on-air personalities will break into a fist fight. All three of the cable news networks are raking in major bucks from those annoying 30-second Television spots that are an unfortunate part of American political life.

A winner has already emerged from the Obama-O’Reilly confrontation before a single punch has been thrown: News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch. The media baron lusts for the power to set the nation’s political agenda. Come Thursday night, that’s exactly what he’ll be able to do.

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Filed under: Products and services, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising, Economic data

Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX), reeling from declining consumer spending, is betting that healthier breakfast items such as a hard boiled egg platter will lure new customers. I wonder whether this gamble will pay off.

First of all, anyone who has eaten in a Starbucks can testify that food isn’t its forte. I just don’t see people craving their morning Starbucks muffin. Plus, in places such as New York City, people have tons of breakfast options ranging from fast-food joints to delis to food trucks. They view Starbucks as a mid-afternoon indulgence. At least, that’s how I thought of Starbucks when I worked in New York.

Getting people to change their breakfast habits will be difficult. In tight economic times, people will gulp down their morning meal at home. If they do eat out, they’ll look for cheaper alternatives than Starbucks. McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) has made serious inroads in the breakfast market, as has Dunkin’ Donuts. Sorry, Starbucks lovers, but I found their coffee far less biter than Starbucks. I even have two bags of Dunkin’ java (regular and decaffeinated) in my home.

Starbucks got in trouble from over-expansion. The company said in July that it would close 600 stores on top of the 100 locations that it previously planned to shutter. But those plans didn’t go far enough.

I recently had to meet a colleague in New York at a Starbucks. It was confusing figuring out which one he meant since there must have been about a dozen or so of the coffee shops in midtown Manhattan. In places like Washington, some streets have Starbucks across the street from one another. Don’t stores located so close to one another poach each other’s sales?

Though Starbucks shares are trading up this day, the company will need to take even more drastic action for the stock price to rebound from its more than 20% decline this year.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Best Purchase (BBY), Circuit City Stores (CC)

Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC) is joining competitor Best Purchase Stores, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) in trying to pump up the slumbering Blu-ray disc format by introducing many titles at up to half off. The latest promo puts many Blu-ray movie titles at $14.99, a discount figure of up to 40%. The main reason: Blu-ray movie titles aren’t exactly flying off the shelves these days, regardless of the high-definition resolution that fanatics claim make movies way more enjoyable.

Last week, I wrote about Best Buy’s Blu-ray disc player price drop from $399.99 to $349.99, which was a complete non-event. The hardware manufacturers must _MUST_ get Blu-ray hardware players down to under $200 or Blu-ray will never become mainstream. Of course, the manufacturers and retailers are trying to milk the early period with profits, which is a standard exercise. Promoting Blu-ray motion picture titles to $15 (and even $20) is a great way to drum up interest in the format. Circuit City’s move here, while great, still won’t make up for the fact that the hardware is still too high-priced for mass appeal.

Toshiba (OTC: TOSBF), the company that lost out in the high-definition disc format war to Sony Corp.’s (NYSE: SNE) Blu-ray, even rolled out a new upconverting standard DVD player so that consumers could watch existing DVDs in near-HD format if they didn’t want to invest in Blu-ray’s high-priced hardware prices just yet. So far, the retailers championing the Blu-ray format are promoting the format well, but it will need much more before becoming a mass format like DVD has become. Is standard DVD good enough for you? Sound off in comments below and let me know.

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Filed under: Design, World wide web, Utilities, Productivity, Web services

If you need a quick way to round the corners of an image but hate messing with a full-blown image editor, then make sure you bookmark RoundMyCorners. Similar to other apps like this we’ve covered before, it’s a very basic online tool but it works exactly as promised.

Simply choose an image from your computer then select your options. Corners can be rounded from 1 to 10 pixels and customized with just about any color you can think of. Decide if you want a reflection included, what format you want the image saved as (PNG, JPEG, or GIF), then let RoundMyCorners do its thing. The final image will download automatically to your desktop, with “rounded” thoughtfully provided in the file name.

This is a fantastically handy tool, but there are a couple of small improvements I’d like to see. A preview function would be terrific, as would the capability to name the file before it’s downloaded. The developer states additional functionality is on the way, so let’s hope these are two features that make the cut.

There’s nothing flashy or fancy about this Web site, but RoundMyCorners a great tool to get the job done.

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