Microsoft Office 2013 preview: details, screenshots and impressions

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More Info

• Microsoft begins Office 15 technical preview, fills up before you knew it existed
• Microsoft Office 15 leaks suggest Office 2013 name, show off Metro logo and Web Apps UI
• Office Next blog is here to answer all your burning questions about the future of spreadsheets

It's been about three years since Microsoft unveiled a new version of Office, and particularly with Windows 8 just months away from dropping, the software has been well overdue for an upgrade. Today, Redmond unveiled the latest edition -- Office 2013 (aka Office 15) -- which the company will be showing in a preview stage until the final version goes on sale (hit up the source link if you want to download it for yourself).
Perhaps the biggest news isn't any single feature Microsoft's added to Word (hello, easy YouTube embeds!), but how and where you'll access your files. With this version, the company is moving to a subscription-based model wherein your Office files are tied to your Microsoft ID. Once you sign up, you can download the various desktop apps to a certain number of devices and, as with Windows 8, your settings, SkyDrive files and even the place where you left off in a document will follow you from device to device. (It's telling, we think, that files now save to the cloud by default.) As you'd expect, too, this version is also more tablet-friendly than editions past, with a touch mode that widens the spacing between onscreen objects and flattens menus. In Word and PowerPoint, you'll also find a read-only mode that turns documents into full-screen editions, whose pages you can swipe through as you would an e-book or digital magazine.
Of course, Microsoft included plenty of granular updates like PDF editing and a behind-the-scenes Presenter View in PowerPoint. Fortunately for you, curious power users, we've been spending the better part of a week testing the software on a Samsung Series 7 Slate loaded up with Windows 8. So join us past the break where we'll give you a detailed breakdown of what's new, along with screenshots and detailed first impressions.

Overview

General look and feel
For those of you who thought Microsoft would completely overhaul Office ahead of the Windows 8 release, let's put it this way: if you could survive the transition to Ribbon menus in Office 2007, you'll quickly feel at home here. The Ribbon is, indeed, still the cornerstone of the Office experience, the visual metaphor permeating Word, Excel, Outlook and every other application in the suite.
Nonetheless, Microsoft has made some subtle changes to the UI, and they're all quite important. For starters, no matter what app you're using, you'll find your name and Microsoft account photo in the upper-right corner -- a reminder that the cloud is now the linchpin to the Office experience. From there, you can click the photo to adjust your account settings, swap in a new picture or even switch accounts.
Cloud integration

Being able to save to the cloud is hardly a new feature in Office, but for the first time saving to SkyDrive is the default, not the C drive. (SkyDrive Pro support is coming as well, says Microsoft.) And when you do hit save, you'll even see a progress bar on the bottom of the screen, confirming your latest draft made it safely to the cloud. As you'd expect, of course, the built-in options for saving to the cloud are limited to Microsoft's own services (SkyDrive and SharePoint). If you want to upload to Dropbox or Google Drive, you'll have to do it outside Office.
And since your files are stored online by default, it's fairly easy to share them on the web as well. Throughout these various Office apps, you can share your work with someone by sending them a URL, allowing them to follow along in a browser even if they don't happen to have Office installed on their local machine. To do this, just hit File, Share and choose either "Get link" or "Invite people," if you want them to have editing privileges. If, for some reason, the version fails to upload, you'll see a banner stretching across the top of the screen, prompting you to try that save again. From the same sharing menu, you can also post your work to a social network or email a document as an attachment, but that last bit isn't new.
Another perk: a feature called Resume Reading allows you pick up exactly where you left off, even if you resume editing on another device. (Okay, okay, Amazon's Kindle, for one, already bookmarks e-books this way, but isn't it a relief not to lose your place in a 44-item slide deck?) Though this feature doesn't apply to most apps in the Office family, you will see it in Word as well as PowerPoint.
Lastly, in various Office apps it's now easier to toss in a photo you found online. For example, Word is now integrated with Facebook and Flickr so that you pull pictures straight from there, instead of having to download it and then manually insert it into the doc. Obviously the only caveat is that you need an internet connection, so maybe save a Disney World photo or two on your desktop for offline emergencies.
Touch mode

Microsoft has made some subtle changes to the UI, and they're all quite important.

Across the various apps, too, you can use a new touch mode to make the software a little more finger-friendly. To expose this option, click on that small arrow in the upper-left corner of the screen -- you know, the one you already use to customize which icons are visible and which ones are hidden. Once you select touch mode, the icon that appears should look like a circle with a dotted line around it.
It's easy to imagine that, with the press of a button, Office would somehow take on more of a Metro-inspired look, with large, finger-friendly icons and -- dare we say it -- a more dumbed-down interface. Actually, the adjustments Office makes in touch mode are far more subtle. In short, enabling this mode widens the spacing between onscreen objects, making it less likely that you'll tap the wrong thing. This mode also causes various menus to flatten so that you can see options with less finger input involved. Again, that doesn't mean the objects on screen suddenly become larger to accommodate finger input, but this mechanism at least cuts down on the amount of tapping you'll end up doing.
Etc.
Spend enough time in Office 2013 and you'll notice dozens of visual flourishes that serve to give the software that extra bit of spit and polish. Office comes bearing glossy new icons, for one. Different apps like Word and PowerPoint have improved alignment guides, which become visible when you're inserting tables and other objects (we first noticed this while inserting a YouTube clip).
Also, animated transitions are everywhere: a slide of the screen when you hit the File tab, Excel charts growing before your eyes. As a Microsoft rep explained it, the idea is to offer some visual feedback to new users, who might not totally know their way around yet. Whether you require that kind of babying is debatable, but we're sure of this much: the animations are slick -- pretty, even -- and everything about the suite feels fast: fluid, brisk and refreshingly devoid of bugs.

Getting started

This isn't your old-school software installation, kids. The beauty of Office 2013's software-as-a-service model is that you get automatic updates and all that jazz you've come to expect from the other web-based services in your life. So it's fitting, then, that the installation begins not with a software download, but by selecting your preview version and then signing in with your Microsoft / Windows Live ID. Wait a few minutes for the setup to unfold, and then download Office to your various devices. (Take note: Office 2013 will run on Windows 7 and the Win8 Release Preview; it's not compatible with Vista, and it won't work with earlier builds of Windows 8, such as the Consumer Preview.) Armed with a speedy WiFi connection, we were up and running in five minutes and, again, the experience was smooth and crash-free.
This might be a good time to clarify the minimum hardware requirements. So long as you have 3.5GB of free disk space and an X86 or X64 system clocked at 1GHz or higher, you should be good to go. DirectX10 graphics are required, along with a minimum resolution of 1024 x 576. Microsoft also recommends 1GB of RAM for 32-bit systems, and 2GB for 64-bit machines.

Word

Look and feel

When you open Word for the first time, you'll notice some changes to that introductory start page. Now, the left-hand pane shows recent documents, while the area to the right showcases templates, some of them new. Of course, the thing you'll probably want most – a blank document – is still sitting in an easy-to-spot corner, toward the top of the screen.
Head on into a blank document and you'll see the Ribbon UI has made room for a new Design tab, which claims to let you make all your design changes in one place. Options include things like fonts, paragraph spacing, themes and adding watermarks to documents. Thankfully, though, Microsoft kept the feature where if you highlight text and then hover over it with your mouse, you'll see some pop-up controls right there, allowing you to change the font color and make other simple tweaks.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview (Word)

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Tracking changes

Of all the new features in Office 2013, this is the one we Engadget editors hold dearest to our hearts. With this version of Office, tracking changes has been tweaked so that unless you're actively reading through changes and comments, all that noise simply shows up as a bunch of red lines. When you're ready to focus on editing, just click the line to expand the thread. And we do mean threads. Now, if you get into a back-and-forth with another editor ("Can we call this phone a Galaxy Note clone?" "No"), those comments will appear in a single conversation that flows alongside the page, in the margins. If you've ever used track changes to collaborate on a document, you know that previously such an inane exchange would mean seeing a separate comment bubble for each person's response, even if they were all addressing the same issue.
And control freaks, rejoice: you can now lock tracking, which means someone needs to enter a password to make Word stop tracking changes. The point being, unless that person knows the password, he or she can't make any changes without you knowing.
Live Layout and adding online video

It's not like you couldn't previously add online video to an Office document, but it was a pain -- hardly a beginner-level move. Now, Word allows you to insert clips directly from YouTube, Bing Video or any other site, so long as you have the HTML embed code handy. Just click the Insert tab in the Ribbon, then click – you guessed it – "Online Video." Again, if we wanted we could paste in some code from Viddler, Engadget's hosting site, and insert a review video we had already uploaded. For the purposes of this walkthrough, though, we'll pretend we're searching for something on YouTube.
When you search, the results appear in a small pop-up that obscures the screen (not a browser pop-up, but a dialog box within Word). All of the search results appear as small thumbnails, and if you hover over them, you can see the title of the video (how else are you supposed to know if you've got the auto-tune remix?). Helpfully, you can also see how long a video is, so if you were looking for a music video, say, you might have an easier time weeding out the 50-second ones that obviously aren't complete. You can also preview the video first so that you don't go through the hassle of embedding it only to realize it's not what you wanted.
Once you insert the video, it's easy to resize it by dragging the corners or sides. There are also little pop-up tabs next to the frame, which you can click to select a layout option (e.g., in line with the text) or do things like cut or copy it. In theory, you can also watch a video from inside Word, without having to open up the browser. It doesn't bode well, though, that the first video we inserted had its permissions set in such a way that we had to visit YouTube if we were going to watch. Unfortunately, there's no way of clarifying that before you insert a video.
Also, in a new feature called Live Layout, the text will automatically wrap itself around a video, chart or anything else you insert into the text. And that happens in real time, even as you drag the object around. This is what we mean when we talk about Office's solid performance: as impressive as these new features are, they feel remarkably lightweight and nimble.
Editing PDFs

For a while now, Word has allowed users to save finished docs as PDF files. But until now, doing the opposite -- editing a PDF -- has required additional software, much of it not free. Here, though, when you open a PDF you can edit it as you would a Word document, and then you can either save it as such, or save it as another PDF file. We had no problem taking a PDF email attachment, typing in additional material, saving it as a PDF and then viewing it in Windows Reader. Okay, depending on who you are this might not be the most exciting new features in Office 2013, but it is certainly one of the most useful.
Reading mode

Now here's a feature Microsoft might not have bothered to include if it didn't imagine people using Office on tablets. The company's added a new reading mode -- a full-screen, read-only view that mimics the experience of reading an e-book on a tablet. To enter it, just go to the View tab in the Ribbon and find "Read Mode" all the way on the left. (Psst: This works in PowerPoint, too.)
Once you're in, the document takes up the whole screen, save for the Windows taskbar at the bottom. Like an e-book -- but very much unlike a Word document -- the pages scroll from side to side by default, instead of top-to-bottom. (If you like, you can switch to a so-called page view with vertical scrolling.) All told, it's very intuitive to find your way around: there are onscreen left and right arrows, which you can click, but you can also just swipe the screen to advance to the next page. You can also adjust the color of the text: it's black-on-white by default, but you can also choose white-on-black or a sepia theme.
Lastly, when you're in reading mode, there's a separate feature called Object Zoom, which allows you to expand a photo or table within the text by double clicking or tapping it. Like any good e-reader app, you can also search for specific words in the text, or perform a search (in this case, with Bing).
Onscreen keyboard
Sticking with this tablet theme for a moment, Microsoft built in the same well-spaced touchscreen keyboard you'll find in Windows 8. We especially appreciate that the apostrophe is to the right of the "L" key, as it is on a physical keyboard. There's also a visible Ctrl key so that you can press Ctrl + S to save your work. Lastly, we had a good experience with the predictive spelling, which presents suggestions in the form of small, unobtrusive pop-ups.

Excel

Flash Fill

We can remember a time when Sparklines, those charts-within-cells, were the marquee new feature for Excel. This year, though, you'll notice that many of the major new additions don't necessarily aim to jazz up spreadsheets so much as take the tedium out of the number-crunching. Exhibit A: Flash Fill. It's a feature that recognizes your data patterns to the point where it should be able to predict what belongs in the remaining blank cells and fill them in for you. For example, if you were to make a spreadsheet detailing on what days different departments were using the main conference room, Excel would eventually pick up on the fact that every marketing executive has a meeting there Tuesday, while the publicity people are due there on Thursday.
In theory, you just have to enter some of that data and then go to the Data tab, where you press the Flash Fill button to make it fill in the rest. For instance, in a demo spreadsheet provided by Microsoft, one column shows a list of company email addresses, each of which follow the format "firstname.lastname." After typing two first names in the blank "First name" column, Excel filled in the rest. Ditto when we added a column for last names.
In our own testing, we enjoyed similar success, but discovered that Flash Fill doesn't make sense of all data -- for example, it doesn't recognize "yes" and "no" as values. So, there might well be times when Excel won't be able to survey your data set and pick up on the patterns within.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview (Excel)

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Suggestions for visuals

Fortunately, Excel includes some new features that prove to be a little more intelligent than Flash Fill. These include recommendations for so-called PivotTables as well as charts. Using the data we just talked about (employees, their departments and their health insurance status) the Recommended PivotTable feature (located under the Insert tab) came up with a few logical options: employee count by department, and a count of insured versus uninsured workers. Sounds right to us. Likewise, the Recommended Charts feature (also in the Insert section) offered up the same ideas, only represented in pretty bar graph form.
Timeline Slicer

A new addition to Office's collection of so-called Slicers, Timeline allows you to filter data by certain time periods (think: sales data for 2011).
Quick Analysis

Though the name would suggest otherwise, this feature isn't so much a shortcut for making sense of your data as it is a way to preview different visuals. As you can see in that screenshot above, once you click on the corresponding Quick Analysis icon you'll see various formatting options, and as you hover over them you'll see the document change accordingly, giving you a glimpse of what you'll see if you end up selecting that option.

PowerPoint

Presenter View

So no fancy new charts in Excel, but lots of ways to make sifting through your data a little more efficient. It's a similar story with PowerPoint: even more than animated transitions, Microsoft is focusing on behind-the-scenes features designed to take some of the anxiety out of presentations. For starters, when you plug in a projector, Windows will automatically extend your desktop onto that larger screen so that you don't have to fiddle with the setup in front of your audience.
Once you're plugged in and ready to start your talk, you'll have the option of using a new presenter view, visible only on the screen you're using (press Alt + F5 to bring it up). Not unlike the presenter screen in Apple's Keynote software, this shows you the time elapsed, as well as any notes you may have written yourself. You can also enlarge text, teleprompter-style and pinch the slider to see the full slide deck -- very similar to how you can pinch to get a bird's eye view of your Windows 8 Start screen. The idea, says Microsoft, is to be able to nimbly skip forward a few slides if someone in the audience asks a question about some topic you haven't gotten to yet. If you do rearrange the slide, it won't be visible to the audience on the big screen. None of the behind-the-scenes stuff will be.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview (PowerPoint)

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As ever, you can also scribble, or "ink," on slides using either a pen or your finger. (You'll have to tap an icon first to enable this.) You'll see this as an option under the Review tab when you're marking up slides, but you can also do it during your presentation, from the Presenter View screen.
Miscellaneous
The rest of the new PowerPoint features are a motley bunch. You can merge shapes to create custom ones. In addition to using an eyedropper to select colors, you can also match a color to an accompanying photo. Music playback has also been improved so that you can now play a track in the background across multiple slides or the whole presentation. Additionally, Microsoft has expanded its list of supported media file types to include .MP4 files, meaning you can export to .MP4 as well as play such files natively without having to install QuickTime.

Outlook

Look and feel
In its current incarnation, Outlook still looks like, well, Outlook, but you'll notice that many of the options aren't immediately visible. Much like there's no fixed Start button in Windows 8, the flags in Outlook only appear if you hover next to a message with your mouse. Also new with this version: a weather bar stretching across the top of your calendar. You can manually change the location, but by default, Office shows only one set of weather forecasts at a time. Another, more miscellaneous change: if you've begun to respond to an email, but saved it as a draft, the word "Draft" will appear in red in your inbox, next to the message (yes, just like Gmail).
Peeks

With this version, the company is also introducing fly-over menus called Peeks, which show things like calendar appointments, to-do items and information about your contacts. To find these, look for the icons stacked on top of each other in the lower left corner of the screen. Mouse over the calendar icon, for instance, and you'll see a live, pop-up window that allows you to glance at your agenda without having to toggle between tabs to check your schedule. If you're wide open, you'll see a message saying you have no appointments; if you are booked, it'll tell you when.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview (Outlook)

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Social connectors

Continuing this theme of showing as much information in one place as possible (without you having to click to a different screen): if you're reading an email from someone, you can click an arrow at the bottom of the screen to pull up the People Pane. While this pane isn't new (you could previously see your meetings with that person and also your email history), you can now glance at that person's social networking goings-on. For now, Outlook natively integrates with Facebook and LinkedIn, but not Twitter, for whatever reason. (There is, however, an API that makes this possible.)
As we quickly learned, this feature is worthwhile mainly if you're on Facebook and also friends with the people you're conversing with. Obviously, you won't see updates from a business associate you aren't connected to on Facebook. At the same time, the LinkedIn integration is fairly useless unless someone is super active on that site; you'll only see recent activity, and even then, the tidbits tend to be uninteresting. After all, do you really need to know if someone just added someone else to their network? Really, Twitter integration would make this new feature so much more valuable: people are nosy enough to care about other people's tweets and fortunately, most of us don't bother to lock our accounts.
SharePoint integration
In news that will matter most to the IT guys reading this, Microsoft has improved the integration between Outlook and SharePoint so that SharePoint groups now have their own mailboxes. From here, you see documents stored on SharePoint without leaving Outlook. (To edit them, of course, you'll need to open the corresponding Office app.) We also appreciate that the reverse is also possible: you can drag and drop attachments into the docs folder for SharePoint and they'll upload to your team's site.

OneNote

The biggest news here is that OneNote, that receptacle for random thoughts and musings, will be available as a standalone, Metro-styled Windows 8 app. Though we caught a glimpse of it in an advance meeting with Microsoft, it wasn't available for testing during our preview period, so our impressions are more limited here. Rounding out the list, OneNote is also getting a full-screen view, auto-save, improved table tools, enhanced scribbling (nay, inking) functionality, integration with Outlook calendars, more efficient search and the ability to record audio alongside notes.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview (OneNote)

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Business apps

Since most of our readers aren't suit-wearing business travelers so much as exceptionally well-informed consumers, we're not going to delve into the new enterprise-grade features in nearly as much detail as Word, Outlook and other core apps. If corporate software rings your bell, though, we've got a quick rundown below of what's new:

• Lync: Microsoft's messaging and video chatting client can now show up to five video streams simultaneously (previously, it could only handle multiple voices at once). By default, the active speaker will be promoted to the top. If more than five people are speaking, you can set Lync to prioritize whose video stream is being shown (those not featured will have photo thumbnails instead of a video stream). If you like, of course, you can also cherry pick whose video you're seeing.
• Publisher: With Publisher, you can now import all your pictures to a single canvas, making it easy to experiment with possible images. Microsoft has also added text, shape and picture effects; a Mailings tab in the Ribbon; and the ability to use your own photos as page backgrounds. As with other apps we've talked about, you can share a URL with people where they can view your work in the browser. The new feature for easily adding photos from online sources applies here, too.
• Visio: Office's standalone diagram creator gets updated shapes, as well as easier workflows for creating organizational charts and tweaking diagrams. Microsoft has also revised the app so that if you change shapes, you won't affect the entire diagram layout you've been working on.

Versions and subscription plans

So far, Microsoft hasn't revealed any pricing information for Office 2013, though it has outlined the different forms Office will take. There will, of course, be the web-based service Office 365 along with the desktop Office 2013 suite. Additionally, Office will be available on ARM-based tablets running Windows RT -- albeit, with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote only. Finally, enterprises can purchase a server-specific version capable of hosting Exchange, SharePoint, Project and Lync. In cases such as those, businesses can choose cloud hosting, local servers or a combination of the two.
Oh, and if you're wondering about Office for Mac, that will be available too, but Microsoft isn't ready to give the public a preview just yet.
All told, here are the specific products Microsoft is previewing right now:

• Office 365 Home Premium: Can be installed on up to five devices; users get an extra 20GB of SkyDrive storage; Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher are included.
• Office 365 Small Business Preview: Can be issued to up to 10 users, with five installations each; adds "professional mail, shared documents and HD videoconferencing."
• Office 365 ProPlus Preview: Can be issued to up to 25 users, with five installations each; includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath and Lync.
• Office 365 Enterprise Preview: In addition to the above applications, this version includes SharePoint online and Lync Online.

Wrap-up

Sometimes it's the little things, like saving documents to SkyDrive, that charm us most. Even more than any actual feature in Office 2013, what left us most enchanted during our testing period was the moment we powered down our Series 7 tablet, turned it back on, launched Word and found the cursor exactly where we left it. The best thing about Office is not what it does better than Office 2010, but how much more nimble it is in following you from device to device, from shut-down to start-up again. Beyond that, no one single feature of Office 2013 is dazzling, per se, but it doesn't matter: everything here, from YouTube embeds to the chart generator in Excel, works as promised and is intuitive to use. At the same time, the interface doesn't mark a radical departure from previous versions, so even casual users with no use for PivotTables should be able to find their way around.
The one caveat we feel compelled to offer is that although Office 2013 has been updated to keep pace with Windows 8, this is not some sort of magic bullet that will suddenly make Office a pleasure to use on tablet devices: while reading mode is fantastic and touch mode is a step in the right direction, we still wouldn't want to work with spreadsheets without the help of a mouse. That disclaimer aside, we've found very few faults with Office 2013 -- it's fast, polished and painless to use.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/16/microsoft-office-15-preview/

Windows 8 RTM Theme

Here is a flat Windows 8 RTM theme. It has flat colors and no transparency. There are several options and customizations from the author. Below is a link where you can get it. Enjoy.

And moving the toolbar to the top and adding Object Dock for a Linux/Apple look...

You can get the Windows 8 RTM theme here:
http://mare-m.deviantart.com/art/Windows-8-RTM-Theme-for-Windows-7-318932206

The standard Windows 8 wallpaper can be found here:
http://wallpaperswide.com/windows_8_default-wallpapers.html

The Best Twitter Apps for Windows

Want to know which is the best desktop app for Twitter. Read this detailed review and comparison of the most popular Twitter apps for Windows desktop with screenshot images. Covers both Adobe AIR clients and native Windows apps.

Twitter’s popularity has spurred the development of countless high-quality apps that let you use Twitter from the web, desktop or even your mobile phone.

Twitter Desktop Apps for Windows

Here are some of the best programs that will help you use Twitter from your Windows desktop* – you can download any of them for free and they’re all under active development. These are dedicated desktop apps for Twitter and therefore you won’t find any widgets or browser add-ons for Twitter here.
[*] Some of the Twitter clients mentioned here are based on Adobe AIR so you may use them on Linux and Mac as well. Let’s dive in.

TweetDeck – The powerhouse

One of the most popular Twitter apps, TweetDeck is great for managing all your favorite social services including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace from one place. Its multicolumn interface not only allows you to keep up with all your social accounts but also with Twitter lists and any custom searches that you may have saved inside Twitter.





With TweetDeck, you can see a very detailed profile of any Twitter user, you can follow (or unfollow) users and even put them in any of your Twitter lists. TweetDeck supports inline translation so you can easily read foreign language tweets that may appear in your Timeline or search results.
If you work across multiple computers, you can setup an account at TweetDeck and that will save you from the hassle of having to configure Tweetdeck on every single computer. And if you are no big fan of Twitter’s retweet function, you can opt for the classic version of “retweet” (RT).

Seesmic for Windows App

Launched during Microsoft PDC ’09, Seesmic for Windows is a beautiful desktop client for Twitter with a slightly translucent and tabbed interface.





Like TweetDeck, Seesmic for Windows can handle multiple Twitter accounts – you can get a combined timeline or look at your @replies, direct messages and sent messages for individual accounts separately. You can post the same update /link /photo to one or more Twitter account simultaneously.
The current version is only a preview version but you can expect to see more features as its development progresses. This is a native Windows application and doesn’t require Adobe AIR.

 

Seesmic Desktop for AIR

Seesmic Desktop is the original Adobe AIR powered Seesmic app, and it works with Twitter as well as Facebook (including Facebook Pages).





With Seesmic Desktop, you can mark individual tweets as spam, follow new people and unfollow (or even block) other people from your timeline. When sharing images on Twitter, you can either upload images from the desktop or capture a picture right from your webcam.
Although Seesmic Desktop will run on any operating system, it uses a Mac OS style UI which doesn’t look that good on a Windows desktop. The best part about Seesmic Desktop is its support for Facebook Pages – you can post new messages or even moderate comments on pages that you own.

 

Twhirl from Seesmic

Twhirl is a quick and easy-to-use Twitter client with a minimal yet beautiful UI. You can even choose your own color schemes and font styles for the UI.
Unlike heavy-weights like Seesmic or TweetDeck, Twhirl doesn’t offer loads of features but if all you need is a way to quickly post status updates on your Twitter timeline, this could be a good choice.
Twirl also offers integration with other less-common networks such as identi.ca and FriendFeed, and lets you cross-post updates to other social networks via Ping.fm. Twhirl is from Seesmic, the same company the develops previously mentioned Seesmic Desktop for AIR and Seemsmic for Windows.

 

Destroy Twitter

DestroyTwitter, an Adobe AIR powered Twitter desktop client, is again very popular for its minimalistic but innovative interface.





The unique thing about Destroy Twitter is its support for themes – you can either download ready-made themes or use the online theme-builder to create one that matches your taste.
DestroyTwitter uses impressive transitions when switching from one screen to another and it’s probably the only desktop client that lets you edit your own Twitter profile. Then there’s support for Twitter trends so that you can know what’s hot on Twitter without having to visit the Twitter site.
Destroy Twitter is lightweight and extremely fast. You can also configure the application so that it always stays on top of other applications.

 

Sobees for Windows

Sobees offers a fresh interface and allows you to choose your own layout for different social services. Sobees includes an anti-spam feature that will let you block certain words from appearing in your Twitter stream.




You can run Sobees on any Windows computer as long as it has .NET installed. Go here to check whether or not you have the required software on your computer.

 

Blu (Native Windows Twitter Client)

Blu for Windows in one word is beautiful. Powered by WPF, Blu showcases your Twitter timeline inside an animated and colorful interface.
With Blu, you can reply to your Tweets inline so you don’t lose then current view. Then you can scroll unlimitedly so you can easily see older tweets without having to click anything (just like image search in Bing).
But the best part is this – if you see a message in your Twitter stream that is in reply to another tweet, you can click this message to see the original tweet that started the whole conversation.
Blu doesn’t support multiple Twitter accounts, you cannot follow your lists in Blu, there’s no option to search tweets yet it’s impressive.

 

 

Mixero for AIR

AIR powered Mixero is aimed at reducing noise and making it easier for you to keep track of updates that could be more important to you.




It offers advanced filtering so you can hide spammers from your Twitter stream (based on usernames or even stop-words), and lets you arrange those you follow into groups that are integrated with Twitter lists. You can preview images from Twitpic, Flickr, YouTube video frames, etc. directly in your timeline.
A very unique feature in Mixero is “Conversations” – you can click the bubble (speech) icon next to any tweet to find all other previous tweets that may part of that conversation. You can detach windows from the Mixero app and arrange them anywhere on the desktop as shown in the screenshot above.

 

SharedMinds Desktop

The interface of SharedMinds Desktop for Windows is inspired by Outlook 2007 – you can even change themes from Sliver to Blue as in Microsoft Office. The similarity doesn’t end here – you navigate tweets just like you move across records in an Access database.





Related: More Outlook Add-ins for Social Networking
What’s unique about SharedMinds Desktop is the integrated browser – if there’s a link inside a tweet, you can read the corresponding web page directly inside the Twitter client without having to launch a separate tab in your browser. However, you cannot share pictures and other files with this app.

 

 

Open Source Twitter Clients

Spaz, DigiTweet and Witty are some of the well know Twitter desktop apps that are open source as well. Spaz requires Adobe AIR which Witty and digiTweet are native Windows’ Apps.
Finally, which is best desktop app for Twitter?
Well, it depends. If you are looking for a simple app that can help you send and receive tweets from the desktop without any bells-and-whistles, check out DestroyTwitter or Twhirl. If you are looking for something simple yet stylish, Blue is a good choice.
Seesmic for Windows sports an impressive interface but it is missing important features (like support for saved searches) so you should wait for their next release. If you want to manage both your Facebook pages and Twitter accounts from the desktop, Seesmic Desktop is an ideal client for you. For everyone else, TweetDeck is a perfect choice.

 

Quick Comparison of Twitter Desktop Apps

This table shows the main features of each of the Twitter apps covered above.
Please note that most of the native Windows Twitter apps mentioned here require .NET 3.5 or newer, so they will only run on Windows XP or newer. Adobe Air based Twitter apps will run on Windows 2000 and newer, as well as Mac OS X 10.4 and newer and modern Linux distros.

Twitter Software	Supported Services	Does the App requires Adobe AIR?	Support for Multiple Twitter accounts?	Support for Twitter Lists	Supported media sharing sites*
TweetDeck	Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace	Yes	Yes	Yes	TweetPhoto, TwitPic, YFrog, TweetShrink
Seesmic Desktop	Twitter, Facebook	Yes	Yes	Yes	Posterous, TwitPic, Twitgoo, yfrog
Seesmic for Windows	Twitter	No	Yes	Yes	Twitpic, YFrog
twhirl	Twitter, identi.ca, Friendfeed	Yes	Yes	No	YFrog
DestroyTwitter	Twitter	Yes	No	No	TweetPhoto, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Posterous, yFrog, TwitDoc, TweetShrink
Sobees lite	Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn	No	Yes	Yes	TweetShrink, TwitPic
Blu	Twitter	No	No	No	TwitPic
Mixero	Twitter, Facebook	Yes	Yes	Yes	TwitPic, YFrog, Posterous, TweetShrink
SharedMinds Desktop	Twitter	No	Yes	No	None

[*] Here are some popular file hosting sites that are integrated with most of these Twitter Desktop Apps:

1. TwitDoc lets you share files and document on Twitter. Supports PDF, Office documents, video clips and graphic images.
2. TweetShrink is for shaving off those few extra letters off a tweet that has exceeded the 140 character maximum. For instance, “I am fine. How are you doing?” becomes “i’m fine. How R U doing?” thus saving you space for 5 more letters.
3. Twitgoo, yfrog, TwitPic, TweetPhoto are some popular hosting services for sharing photographs (and in some cases, videos) via Twitter.
Related: Do Interesting Things With Twitter

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/twitter-apps-for-windows-desktop/11668/



The Best Twitter Clients for Windows from AOL.

by Sebastian Anthony on March 3, 2011 at 03:00 PM

With more than 190 million users, and less than half of those using Twitter.com to post updates, the installed Twitter client market is massive. There are literally hundreds of Twitter clients spanning every desktop and mobile platform, and even a few cross-platform Web apps thrown into the mix.

Even if you narrow down the search to just one platform -- Windows -- there's still a dizzying amount of choices to pick from. There isn't even an official Twitter for Windows that scared newbies can pick up.

Well, good news: We've whittled down the choices so that you only have to choose from the best of the rest. From the typographically beautiful and slimline MetroTwit, to the heavy-hitting tour de force of Seesmic, and a handful in between, we have a Twitter client for you.

TweetDeck

One of the oldest and most popular clients (at the end of 2009, anyway) is TweetDeck. It's not merely a Twitter client, either: it can bond with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare, and even Google's groundbreaking Buzz.

TweetDeck, being an Adobe AIR app, is completely cross-platform; it looks identical, whether you're using it on Windows, Mac or Linux. It also uses an (optional) registration system, where you can sync your social network accounts with a TweetDeck account. You can then use your TweetDeck account to sign in on other computers, or with the TweetDeck Web app, which is really a thing of beauty.

The only real downfall of TweetDeck for the desktop is that there's only an AIR version available, which makes it quite a lot slower than its native brethren that utilize .NET. Its memory footprint can get a little chunky, too.

MetroTwit

The newest Twitter client in this line-up is MetroTwit, which gets its name from Windows Phone 7's typographical Metro UI. MetroTwit is almost the exact opposite of TweetDeck: it's a lot lighter in terms of features; it's snappier thanks to its native Windows nature; and it only interfaces with Twitter.

With that said, MetroTwit still has some very cool features, such as infinite scrolling through tweets,nice themes, and autocompletion of @names and hashtags. Its notification system, though a bit noisy by default, is neat too.

The main thing to remember is that MetroTwit is very young and very fresh. Tons of new features will undoubtedly be added over the next few months -- just a couple of weeks ago, for example, Proxlet and TwitLonger support were added.

Seesmic

Seesmic, like TweetDeck, supports just about every social network imaginable -- but instead of Adobe AIR, Seesmic uses Silverlight -- and apparently it works equally well on Windows and Mac!

We'd be lying if we said Seesmic was 'snappy' -- it's about on par with TweetDeck -- and it doesn't really have any features that set it apart from TweetDeck, either. We'll never know how a simple program like Seesmic can still feel sluggish with a 4GHz CPU and state-of-the-art graphics card under the hood.

There are mobile clients for every smartphone platform, which is cool -- but TweetDeck, with its registration system, and Android, iOS and Web apps, has that covered too.

Seesmic does have one advantage over TweetDeck, however: it's developing a native Windows application! Development seems slow, however -- it's only at version 0.6 after first appearing 18 months ago -- and at the time of publishing, the program wouldn't even let us log into our Twitter account. Still, if you want to give it a go, download the installer.

blu

We're throwing Blu into the mix primarily because of its striking looks -- it really is quite beautiful. We originally reviewed it more than two years ago, back when it was called Chirp, and when Lee actually thought 100MB was a lot of RAM -- and, believe it or not, its memory footprint is now even larger!

Everything about Blu is smooth. Scrolling is a dream, and everything stretches and recoils like warm, blubbery rubber. There are dropshadows everywhere, and more transparent widgets than you thought possible. Buttons glow when you mouse-over them!

Functionality-wise, it has nothing that TweetDeck or MetroTwit doesn't already provide -- but that isn't to say that Blu lacks features in any way: it's still a very capable Twitter client in its own right.

With that said, if you like your programs pretty, Blu is definitely for you -- but if you're a serious Twitter user, you might want to use a client with a UI that isn't quite so distracting.

tweetc

Finally, a Twitter client that isn't AIR- or Silverlight-based! Tweetc is, believe it or not, a command line Windows Twitter client.

Or, at least, it would be a command line client if it worked. We can't get it to work under 32- or 64-bit Windows 7, and it hasn't been updated since October 2009. It might work under Windows XP, though!

The same developer, incidentally, has a Windows 7 gadget Twitter client called Tweetz. It might be worth checking out if you have a secondary display to put widgets on.

Sobees

Last year, Erez asked Download Squad readers if they knew of any light-weight desktop Facebook clients, and one commenter mentioned Sobees Lite. Fast forward a year, and it looks like the 'Lite' moniker has been stripped from the name and become Sobees Desktop -- and it now supports Twitter, too.

Like Seesmic and TweetDeck, Sobees is a jack of all trades -- but unlike its competition, it's a native Windows program, which means it's fast. The interface is exciting, too, with lots of weird multi-column and multi-row layouts to choose from. There's a few dropshadows, animations and transparencies thrown in for good measure, too.

There aren't many configuration options, however -- and because Sobees hasn't been designed specifically for Twitter, it's missing the ability to choose your own URL shortener, or add on functionality from services like TwitLonger. Still, it's well worth checking out if you want a native Windows client for its speed and smaller memory footprint.

Incidentally, there's a Silverlight Sobees Web app, which is identical to the installed version, and should work on Mac OS X.

* * *
Have we missed your favorite Windows Twitter client? If so, be sure to leave a comment (and explain why it's better than the rest!)

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/03/the-best-windows-twitter-clients-from-tweetdeck-to-tweetc/

How to Install Windows Virtual PC

How to Install Windows Virtual PC on Your Windows 7 Computer

Microsoft is hoping to take away everyone's reasons for not upgrading to Windows 7 by making sure that you'll be able to run just about any program or operating system you want with your Windows 7 computer using Windows Virtual PC. You can use Windows Virtual PC with Windows 7 to create virtual machines that allow you to run older legacy software that is not compatible with Windows 7. You can also use Windows Virtual PC to enable you to run another Microsoft tool called Windows XP Mode, which allows you to install Windows XP-compatible software and run it seamlessly in Windows 7.


Windows Virtual PC has many improvements over the original Virtual PC 2007, including the ability to access USB devices, to run multiple virtual machines concurrently, to access your virtual machines through Windows Explorer, and to launch and run Windows XP Mode programs directly from Windows 7.


Windows Virtual PC has specific system requirements. Your PC must have a 1GHz processor and a CPU that supports virtualization. You'll also want at least 15 GB of hard drive space for each virtual machine you set up. You can use Windows Virtual PC with any version of Windows 7 other than the Starter Edition.

Not sure whether your machine supports virtualization? Download Microsoft's virtualization testing tool. Just double click the downloaded file and it will examine your PC and tell you whether your PC can handle Windows Virtual PC and whether the technology is enabled in your BIOS.

1. Open Internet Explorer and go to the Windows Virtual PC download page. Click Continue.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Microsoft needs to run Windows Genuine Advantage to ensure that you have a legitimate copy of Windows 7.
   
   
   If you plan to run Windows XP Mode, you can go directly the Virtual PC Web site to download both files at the same time. However, Windows XP Mode is only compatible with Windows 7 Professional and beyond.
   
   
2. Click the Download Files Below link and click Download for the file that matches your system's architecture.
   
   
   The Windows6.1-KB958559-x64.msu file is for the 32-bit system and Windows6.1-KB958559-x86.msu is for the 64-bit system.
   
   
   Before you install the Windows Virtual PC program, your PC's virtualization technology needs to be enabled in your system BIOS. Each manufacturer uses a different process for this, so check your owner's manual or go to the Configure BIOS page of the Windows Virtual PC web site for manufacturer-specific directions.
   
   
3. Locate and double-click the downloaded file on your PC.
   You might need to click Continue if prompted by User Account Control.
   
   
4. When the installer finishes loading, click Yes to begin the installation.
   Microsoft shows you the licensing terms for Windows Virtual PC.
   
   
5. Click I Accept. Then click Restart Now.
   
   
   When Windows 7 restarts, you can access Windows Virtual PC by typing "virtual" at the Start menu's search box.
   
   
   Source: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-install-windows-virtual-pc-on-your-windows-.navId-397925.html?cid=dn_article

How to add Twitter and Facebook IM support to Pidgin for Windows

 

by Lee Mathews on January 18, 2009 at 05:00 PM

Pidgin is a great multi-protocol IM client. Out of the box it provides support for 15 different protocols, including most of the important ones: MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, and XMPP to name a few. Two glaring omissions include Facebook IM and Twitter - both of which are built-in to Digsby by default.

Thanks to the developers of two plugins, a couple quick downloads and some simple instructions can remedy the situation with minimal effort. To top it off, the finished product only uses about 20mb of memory - under half what Digsby consumed on my machine.

If you want to see the actual screens, skip to the gallery now.

Clarification: Ping.fm does not do this. Yes, it will update multiple statuses for you via IM, but it won't let you chat with Facebook friends or send you Twitter updates for people you follow.

Let's start with Twitter.

If you don't have a Gmail account, go sign up for one so you can add a gtalk buddy later on. You'll also need to go to Twitter and follow twitter@twitter.com.


Step 1: Download the pidgin-twitter plugin from the developers. It's about half way down the page, but if you have a hard time finding the link for the files you'll need this one. There's another plugin that is easier to install, called microblog-purple, but I prefer the way pidgin-twitter works.

Step 2: If you're on XP or newer, just double click the archive to open it - or extract the contents using your favorite application.

Step 3: Drop the .dll into your plugins folder - probably c:\program files\pidgin\plugins.

Step 4: Right click the Pidgin system tray icon and choose plugins. Scroll down to Pidgin-twitter and place a check next to it.

Step 5: Press the configure plugin button.

Step 6: Enter your twitter login information and check the box marked "enable get/post status updates via API."

Step 7: Add twitter@twitter.com as a new buddy to Pidgin using gtalk as the protocol.

Step 8: Click the buddies menu, choose show and click offline buddies if there isn't already a check next to it. If everything worked, you'll see Twitter in your buddy list.

Step 9: Double click Twitter to open a conversation window. You should see a pile of updates almost instantly.

That's it! To post a status update, just type it like you would any other Pidgin message. @username works just fine, too.

Facebook is a little easier to add. Just grab the .exe from the pidgin-facebookchat project page and run it. Click next, I Agree, and Finish. Unlike twitter-pidgin, you'll need to close and relaunch Pidgin (assuming you had it running) to activate the Facebook plugin.

Right click the Pidgin tray icon and choose accounts, then click the add button. Select Facebook from the menu, input your account details, and you're done!

Enjoy your new Pidgin functionality!

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/01/18/how-to-add-twitter-and-facebook-support-to-pidgin-for-windows/