Microsoft has launched the beta version of its answer to Google's online office suite in the form of Office 365. The suite comprises of Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online and is aimed at small to large business enterprises that want the remove or reduce the burden of installation, administration and maintenance of their office infrastructure.

The beta version (of which there are limited places) is currently available in 13 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, France, Japan, Mexico and Germany and will go on sale next year. There are two versions of Office 365 available:

Office 365 Beta for small businesses: Designed specifically for smaller businesses and professionals who are looking for cloud-based productivity tools without IT hassles.

Office 365 Beta for enterprises: For organizations that are looking to move their productivity tools to the cloud but maintain control of their IT services.

Both versions comprise of the same 4 components:

Office Professional Plus: The familiar Office desktop apps plus a new Office Web Apps connected to the cloud and with a pay-as-you-go, per-user licensing system.

Exchange Online: Microsoft Exchange email, calendar, and contacts with built-in virus and spam checker. This allows users to access their mail anywhere including on mobile devices.

SharePoint Online: Sharing and collaboration tool which allows users to share and sync documents without the need to set up their own datacenter with SharePoint installed.

Lync Online: Communication suite allowing instant messaging (IM), video conferencing and screen sharing.

Although Microsoft dominate the desktop market with Microsoft Office, they've been left behind by Google Docs for Business in the online or cloud computing department. For small businesses, Office 365 will be available for $6 per user per month. For larger organizations, the service will cost between $2-$20 per user per month which includes online support.

Whether Office 365 is a success or not will largely depend on how much businesses and organizations trust Microsoft with the confidentiality of their information and how satisfied they are with the service and maintenance provided. For example, it's easy to foresee situations with the Office 365 small business version where businesses will feel helpless to resolve IT issues because they've relinquished control of all maintenance of their office system to Microsoft.

Many organizations live with Windows and Office as a necessary evil. Do they really want to remove large parts of their IT maintenance departments by trusting Microsoft to maintain their Office infrastructures competently?

HP has today announced its vision of the next generation of mobile devices - the Palm Pre 2, which will be the first handset to run the new web OS 2.0. The device itself doesn't appear radically different from the original Palm Pre, but the new operating system has been significantly tweaked to improve the user experience.

Among the new features of web OS 2.0 are improved multitasking, an enhanced Universal Search, HP Synergy support, and the inclusion of Flash Player 10 Beta. For a fuller run-down, check out the post I wrote last month when the web OS 2.0 SDK was announced.

Ahead of the big "Back to the Mac" event being held by Apple tomorrow, the rumor mill has gone into overdrive and a few details are claimed to have leaked as to what users can expect to see in OS X 10.7 "Lion". Most notable of all is the introduction of iOS scrolling to OS X according to Macstories who claim to have inside information. According to them, the interface of OS X will remain Aqua based but will include iOS features such as iOS scroll bars and scrolling behavior.

Macstories report:

That means you’ll have to say goodbye to the current Aqua scroll bars and get ready for a more minimal look. Also, the “rubber band” elastic scrolling iOS is famous for is making its first appearance on the desktop, and we’re told it “works really well and feels natural”. Basically, it works like the current inertial scrolling, but when you hit the top or bottom of a scroll view it “rubber bands” down like iOS devices do. Stuff like “pull to refresh” will be possible (and most of all, it’ll feel native) on OS X. We don’t know whether this would be an option or if Apple will turn on the new scrolling by default.

The site also claims that OS X 10.7 will also feature a newly designed Quick Look. Quick Look's UI will change from the current translucent black to all white. Apple have also implemented a Quick Look popover so that when you highlight a file in Spotlight, a popover with detailed information about it will appear for a few seconds.

It should be noted that these are still rumors but the introduction of iOS scrolling would be a logical move for Apple if as is thought, they eventually plan to move towards touchscreen Macs.

This weekend the Wall Street Journal made a worrying discovery: all of the top ten Facebook apps have been transmitting user IDs to internet advertising and tracking companies, breaking Facebook's privacy rules. While there is lots of anonymous data tracking on the internet, in this case some companies have been linking internet activity with specific Facebook user IDs.

The main culprit seem to be a data gathering firm Rapleaf, while apps by developer LOLapps were taken down over the weekend, although they are available again now. It's not clear whether the linking of Facebook user ID and internet databases was intentional - Rapleaf says not - but it exposes a problem of trust with the Facebook model.

While it's had it's fair share of privacy controversy, I think Facebook itself is trustworthy. You can't be such a big company and try and cheat people if you want to succeed. Like Google, mistakes will be made, but it is in their interests to act above board and maintain consumer trust.

Facebook's problem is that it has become such a big platform that the huge number of companies that use it to offer apps may not always be trustworthy. The activity discovered by the Wall Street Journal looks like a mix of error and intention, but shows that Facebook needs to find a better way of policing the companies that use its platform.

This also highlights how users have to responsibly manage their Facebook privacy settings, and watch out for apps that require a high level of access to their accounts. My main issue with many Facebook apps is that they can only be used if you grant them an unreasonable level of access. Here's an example I picked at random, Zynga's Frontier Ville:

When you consider this is just a casual social game, you might ask yourself, 'why does it require access to all my profile information?' The answer has to be advertising. Under Facebook's terms, that's fine as long as the information is gathered anonymously, but you have to trust the developer will do that. In the light of the WSJ's findings, that looks difficult.

These apps - which I admit I am not a fan of - are free to play, but with a high cost in terms of sharing personal data. Whether or not that's too high a cost for you is down to choice, but I suspect most users play without being truly aware of what they have signed up for.

Opera 10 is a really impressive browser (in my opinion). It may not be to everyone's tastes, but it's full of useful tools and is very fast. A common criticism of Opera is the lack of browser extensions, like the ones that make Firefox such a customizable beast.

Well, that's going to change with Opera 11. According to the official Opera blog, extensions are coming, and they will look very much like the add-ons we're already used to.  They are trying to make it easy for developers to port extensions from 'certain browsers' - which I hope means Firefox! Otherwise, Opera extensions will have quite a mountain to climb to catch up with the rest.

The Opera 11 Alpha release is 'coming soon', and we'll be sure to give you our impressions as soon as we get our hands on it.

After a short time in beta, free voice, video and chat app Skype 5.0 has arrived. This is the kind of update you'll want all your friends to get, as if they all have this new version, you can test group video calls.

The other big development is the introduction of Facebook integration. This is pretty big thing, as not only does it give you your news feed in app - anyone can do that - but adds call and sms buttons to any of your friends who share their contact numbers. If you've paid for Skype minutes, you can call your Facebook friends, and if they're also signed in to Skype you can call them for free. My favorite new feature is the automatic call recovery - drop a call and it's put in pause. Restarting it is now really easy.

Skype 5.0 is a big improvement, so head over to our review and download it now!

The net is currently buzzing with breaking news that Apple may announce the release of OS X 10.7 "Lion" on October 20th. Apple have today sent invitations to media inviting them to an event on October 20th. The invite simply reads "Back to the Mac" and shows the image of a lion behind a metallic Apple logo.

Speculation is rife over the cryptic invite but Electronista suggests that a "revolutionary" new OS X 10.7 could be the big news. It points out that in July, Apple announced that:

We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever.

Although it doesn't seem long enough since July to develop a revolutionary OS X, most people are betting that OS X 10.7 is the big event. More news will surely emerge over the next few days, so watch this space...

Good news for Mac users that own a Zune and plan to get their hands on a Windows 7 phone. Microsoft have confirmed that not only are they finally releasing Zune software for Macs later this year, and that it will sync Macs with Windows 7 phones. Engadget were the first to get hold of a statement from Microsoft which simply read:

Later in 2010 Microsoft will make a public beta available of a tool that allows Windows Phone 7 to sync select content with Mac computers.

The news is certainly a surprise for Mac users since they're usually bottom of the pile when it comes to support for Microsoft products. Maybe it's a sign that Microsoft are finally taking the ever increasing numbers of people switching from Windows to Macs seriously.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Zune software for Macs will be as comprehensive as it is for Windows. It also poses the question - are there actually any Mac users out there that have a Zune or plan to get a Windows 7 phone?

Despite the odd name, Kindle Singles is not a new dating service on Amazon's ebook reader. It's a new format released by the popular online store, which has been especially created for shorter ebooks.

Kindle Singles is aimed at books between 10,000 and 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages, or a few chapters of a standard book). It's perfect for those stories that were too long to be published as a featured article on a newspaper, but also maybe too short to be worth the costs of a typical book marketing and distribution campaign.

According to Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content:

Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format. With Kindle Singles, we're reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we're excited to see what they create.

This new ebook format will have its own section in the Kindle Store on Amazon, and will also benefit from the "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" feature that characterizes all Kindle content. Once you buy your Kindle Singles, they'll be available for download on your Kindle, as well as any other device where you have installed the Kindle application. They'll be also automatically synced across all your devices, and archived online for future download. One difference though is that they'll be much cheaper than regular books.

Only 11 months after its official presentation, rumor has it that the first final version of Chromium OS (also known as Chrome OS) will be launched next month. The news was unveiled by TechCrunch, after spotting references to the project reaching the Release Candidate development stage - usually the final debugging and beta-testing phase, right before the official final release.

According to these references, included in bug comments on the Google Code site, Chromium's most recent build is 0.9.78.1, so we can expect the first final version of Google's operating system as soon as that version hits "1".

There are several possible dates for this release. Some blogs bet on November 11th, mainly due to a Google employee mentioning this date in a thread over at Google Code site. 'We will push this after November 11', he replies to a request about a certain feature. Another possible release date, on the other hand, would be November 19th - the first anniversary of their presentation event last year.

Whatever the final launch date is, Google Chromium OS will be one of the most important software events of the year, and I'm sure the hype will keep on growing until we can finally lay our hands on it.

With an alleged 400 million dollar marketing budget, Microsoft has jumped back into the smartphone business aggressively with Windows Phone 7. While you might think Apple and Google have everything sewn up, Microsoft's mobile operating system is an interesting proposal, backed by a massive company. Just because Windows Mobile has been eclipsed over the past couple of years doesn't mean Windows Phone 7's fate is sealed.

Windows Phone 7 is being marketed as something different, and it certainly looks it. It's moved away from the icon-apps that Apple have seemingly standardized for smart phones, giving Windows Phone a sleek and unique appearance made of customizable dynamic tiles. It has all the features you'd expect, like internet browsing, email, gaming and media playback, but presents them differently. Games are integrated into Xbox Live, which gives it good brand recognition, the media player is Zune (they won't give up on it!), documents are handled by Office, and so on.

Steve Balmer presented 9 devices that will be available at launch, from HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell and others. This variety looks like a strength, but we'll have to wait until after the New Year to see whether they pull enough customers from iOS and Android devices. Balmer said he wanted the customers to feel the phones were 'wonderfully yours', and that it was customization and flexibility that would achieve that. Can it create the kind of obsessive fans the iPhone did?

Spotify have announced that as of today, users can finally listen to John Lennon albums on the service. The music service has published a selection of remastered albums including classic releases such as Double Fantasy Stripped Down, Milk And Honey, Plastic Ono Band and Sometime In New York City.

All the albums were remastered and reissued in honor of what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday a few days ago on October 9th. Previously on Spotify, the only tracks available to Lennon fans were cover versions of his tracks and an interview album.

Although the majority of Lennon's back catalog is still missing from Spotify, you can also listen to his greatest hits on a remastered version of Power To The People - The Hits.

The move marks a significant softening by Yoko Ono who is notoriously guarded over publishing rights to her late husband's work. Beatles fans will hope that this move might pave they way for Beatles music to be added to Spotify which remains one of the service's gaping absences.

Premiering a Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer tonight looks like someone trying to steal Medal Of Honor's release thunder tomorrow, but all's fair in love and war. Here's a teaser trailer for the trailer! You can watch the full trailer during the Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Jets football game tonight on ESPN. If 16 brief seconds of action leaves you wanting more, head over to the Call of Duty: Black Ops homepage, where you can watch a ton of preview videos.

My first impression is that it's pretty much carrying on in the Modern Warfare tradition; bombastic, over the top hollywood action. That means there's a clear line in the sand between this and Medal of Honor, which looks like it's taking a much grittier approach.

According to Engadget, Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile is less than happy with Microsoft. For a while, apparently until the developer complained, Microsoft was using the Angry Birds icon in their Windows Phone 7 marketing campaign. Rovio Mobile responded angrily:

They later added that developing a Windows Phone version is not out of the question, but that it's not currently planned. Whether or not this was mistaken or cynical on Microsoft's behalf, it highlights how important it thinks apps will be to the success of its platform.

What do you get if you mix the one of the world's most important intellectuals with one of the net's most popular virtual worlds? Noam Chomsky on Second Life is the answer.

Despite his 81 years, Professor Chomsky has always been one to try and embrace both new technologies and youth culture in his long history of political dissent and has taken the rather unusual step of appearing on Second Life. Chomsky has been invited by Metanomics, a weekly show which aims to look at the serious side of virtual worlds. Chomsky will be in conversation with host Robert Bloomfield and will take questions from other Second Life users. The event will take place Tuesday October 12th at 12:00 p.m. PST.

Jenn Forager of Metanomics told Chomsky Watch the event provides Second Life users with a rare chance to interact with a great mind within the virtual world:

One element of Second Life that never stops impressing me is the opportunity to not only hear but interact and pose questions to such thought leaders. We may be using the internet and an avatar to extend ourselves over the distance, but participating in such discussions is thrilling and allows the rare experience of speaking with remarkable people.

If you're not a Second Life user but want to join in, the Metanomics site gives you details of how to get involved. Alternatively, you can watch a live broadcast of the event.