From Virtual Shackles

If you’re interested in the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship product, Office 2010, then you’re only going to have to wait about 60 more days to get your hands on a copy.  Microsoft announced this week that the office suite will be available to volume license holders on 12-May-10, with general availability slated for sometime in June of 2010.

Buy Office 2007, get 2010 for free!

Customers who purchase Office 2007 between 05-Mar-10 through 30-Sep-10 will be able to upgrade to a corresponding version of Office 2010 for free. Buyers of Office Home and Student 2007 will receive a free copy of Office Home and Student 2010, while buyers of Office Standard 2007 and Office Basic 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Home and Business 2010, a new addition to the Office lineup. Purchases of Office Small Business 2007, Office Professional 2007 or Office Ultimate 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Professional 2010.

There is a limit of 25 free upgrades per person, a standard Microsoft practice meant to push businesses with multiple copies to its volume licensing deals.

Microsoft has set up a site that spells out the upgrade program in detail.

One of the many great things in GMail is its ability to fetch other accounts emails, in order to allow you to keep only one email client or browser window open without losing anything. Today they improved this further, with a “Refresh ’em all” feature.

Until today if you were waiting for some important mail to be fetched, you had to go to the “Acccounts and Import” tab in GMail “Settings” and press “Check mail now” in the account of interest. Thanks to the new GMail Lab “Refresh POP accounts” you will be able to do this with just one click on the “Refresh” link in the main GMail page.

All you have to do is to activate the feature in the “Labs” tab in the “Settings” and you will be up and running!!

Activating the feature

Let’s see if it works…

… and here you are!

This is all, but here is the Official GMail Blog post:

Posted by Emmanuel Pellereau, Software Engineer
My little sister recently setup her Gmail account to retrieve messages from her school address, so she can check all of her email accounts in one place. She no longer has to constantly log in to two email programs, and she likes using Gmail’s powerful interface for all her mail.
However, sometimes she knows an email has already been sent to her school address, and she just can’t wait for the next scheduled fetch to have it show up in her Gmail inbox. As any big brother would, I tried to solve this issue for her and millions of Gmail users.
Turn on “Refresh POP accounts” from the Labs tab under Settings, and the refresh link at the top of your inbox will not only update your inbox with your new Gmail messages, it will also fetch messages from any other accounts which you have set up.

Try it out, and let us know if you have any feedback.

I really like useful stuff that just works

I’ve said many times before that I’ve been a computing professional most of my life.  I was managing a local computer retail store at the age of 16 (The Software Station in West Bloomfield, MI for those that are curious… no, Google doesn’t show anything on it, I’ve checked…)  A few years ago when I was writing for Gear Diary, the social networking craze was just getting under way.  I got all sorts of invitations for joining this (now defunct) network or that network. 

(At the time,) I wasn’t interested.  Then came Facebook.

The new Facebook home page…

Read More …

Why not be able to view all your top information all over the net in one easy to deal with spot? Have Google reader updated with the websites that interest you and save time by not having to do the work yourself.  Google Reader pulls in info from the site’s RSS feeds, much like how people read JAMM when they don’t directly visit the site.  It is also just one click away from your Gmail account and is available offline using Google Gears. Also available on mobile web by pointing your browser to http://m.google.com/reader.  Reader has a simple interface that even a beginner can figure out but has all the features that an advanced user needs. Share your feeds with friends, make notes, and view statistics of your feeds.   The most interesting thing that I found while using reader is that it gives you recommended feeds.  These feeds seem to be pulled from my statistical data throughout all of the Google products that I use.  Helpful or scary???  Check it out here and let us know what you think, or if you already use it what’s the best feature to you?