Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Software : Office for iOS adds Box, Citrix and Salesforce integration

Software : Office for iOS adds Box, Citrix and Salesforce integration

Office for iOS adds Box, Citrix and Salesforce integration

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Office for iOS adds Box, Citrix and Salesforce integration

Microsoft has opened up the back-end of its Office for iOS and Office Online apps to allow third-party cloud storage providers to integrate their services with the productivity suite.

Box, Citrix and Salesforce are inaugural members of the Microsoft Cloud Storage Partner Program meaning Office for iPhone and iPad users can open, edit and save previously created documents to the respective cloud storage services right away with support for Office Online to follow.

Apple's iCloud storage service was added to the Office for iOS apps just yesterday and it means there are other options beyond OneDrive available to users, however, newly created documents can still only be saved to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and DropBox.

Office to remain number one

Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team, explained that the decision has been made as they "want Office to be the preferred way to work with documents no matter where they're stored".

It means that Office for iOS and Office Online users can both save and edit documents for free by creating a new Microsoft account with a range of transactions within the app itself allowing you to upgrade to a full Office 365 subscription that starts at £5.99 ($6.99, or AU$9.00) per month for one PC, one tablet and one smartphone plus 1TB of storage.

Via: Microsoft

Download of the Day: Kodi

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Download of the Day: Kodi

Managing all of your media files alongside online sources for easy access is tricky at the best of times, but thanks to Kodi that never has to be a problem again.

Why you need it

While you might be happy enough to flit between Windows Media Player and sites such as BBC iPlayer it is a lot more helpful to have it all under one roof, which is where Kodi comes into its own.

Known as XBMC up until last year, Kodi has an easy-on-the-eye interface that categorises your content as either pictures, video, audio, programs and can even be loaded with a PVR to record live TV.

It doesn't end there, with various add-ons available to allow users to customise the program by adding news feeds from their favourite sites, weather from different locations and even sports scores for favourite teams. Searching online also reveals hundreds of video repositories for online video sites such as YouTube, the Guardian, Vimeo, ITV Player, 4oD, and more are added on an almost hourly basis.

Anyone worried that quality will be lost by using a third-party service need not be concerned as any pictures will be the same as when they were taken, songs come in at the exact bitrate they were ripped at and videos retain their quality.

You can go even further than simply using it as a media centre on your PC by hooking your machine up to a TV through the HDMI port and then using Kodi as your home's central media source.

Put simply Kodi is probably the only media player you'll ever need for your PC and entire home.

Key Features

Works on: PC and OS X.

Versions: Free

Organise your favourites: Whether it's pictures from your latest holiday, videos on YouTube or a selection of tunes from your hard drive, they can all be displayed on the home screen by using the add to home screen button in skin settings.

HD quality streaming: Online streams are offered at the exact the same level as on the website that hosts them meaning that episodes of EastEnders or Match of the Day will be in crystal-clear HD at all times.

Add-ons: Kodi comes into its own in the add-ons department with plenty of ways to watch content from the world's biggest media producers in addition to hundreds of user created add-ons offering absolutely anything you can possibly think of.

Apple iPhone VR headset discovered in recent patent

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Apple iPhone VR headset discovered in recent patent

Virtual reality products continue to make headlines, but it's anyone's guess who will eventually dominate the market - but armed with a stack of new patents, Apple is showing a renewed interest in this space.

Patently Apple reported Tuesday that Apple has been granted another 41 patents published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and one of them in particular appears targeted directly at virtual reality (VR) rivals Google and Samsung.

First filed in 2008 and credited to inventor Quin Hoellwarth, patent number 8,957,835 describes a "video headset frame" which works in tandem with an iPhone or iPod to supply video and audio content.

It's probably not much of a coincidence this headset sounds a lot like the Samsung Gear VR, which uses a compatible Galaxy smartphone attached to the front and beams virtual reality entertainment to the wearer.

Apple VR patent 2015

Line of sight

In addition to just broadcasting iOS-based picture and sound to the headset, Apple's patent also describes a picture-in-picture (PIP) feature, which can be used to keep an eye on the real world around you while wearing the device.

Judging from the patent details, Apple plans to incorporate some amount of tactile physical controls on the headset itself, but is also leaving the door open for other options, such as Siri voice control.

The headset patent also elaborates on "advanced haptics" located within the earplugs, which can be used to enhance sound effects and music from the movie content being viewed.

Apple's video headset ambitions date back to at least 2008, but the iPhone maker has been relatively quite of late on VR-related patents, with the last batch having turned up nearly four years ago - and recent job postings related to the technology having been mysteriously scrubbed from existence.

Office for iOS finally supports iCloud integration

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Office for iOS finally supports iCloud integration

Office for iOS users can now benefit from Apple iCloud integration after a new update added the ability to use another storage option with the popular productivity apps.

The decision is a big one for Apple users as it eliminates the need for an Office 365 subscription to access the most basic features with the more advanced features still only accessible for users that have a subscription including OneDrive storage.

Before it was only possible to use either OneDrive or DropBox, although as you might expect it's nowhere near as easy to actually find the option to save to iCloud as it is hidden within the More tab that appears once you click to open or save a file, although you still cannot save user created documents to iCloud.

Office and iWork go head-to-head

Microsoft's decision to add iCloud to its iOS productivity suite comes a matter of days after Apple took its cross-platform aspirations to the next level by opening up iWork, which includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote, to everyone.

Right now Office for iOS users can both save and edit documents for free by creating a new account with transactions within the app itself allowing you to upgrade to an Office 365 subscription that starts at £5.99 ($6.99, or AU$9.00) per month for one PC of Mac, one tablet and one smartphone plus 1TB of OneDrive storage.
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