MS unveils Office 2010 beta

Microsoft has unveiled the first beta of Office 2010, which it says millions of people will be able to download, states Computing.co.uk.

Microsoft's beta or trial versions of software are made available so people can report bugs and other problems to Microsoft.

The company also released the public beta at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Jacob Jaffe, Microsoft's information worker business group leader, says the company had been planning the package before they released Office 2007.

Mozilla has released a third beta of Firefox 3.6, adding stability and performance features, and says it hopes to lock down the code soon for its first release candidate, reports CNET News.

The new beta, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, includes a component directory lockdown that makes it harder for other software to meddle with the open-source browser's state by preventing that software from sidling into the same folder as the browser's own components.

The result should be fewer crashes, says Mozilla's Johnathan Nightingale in a blog post, and Firefox still is open to third-party extensions via its official add-on mechanism.

AT&T, which in May joined Verizon Communications as telecom companies in the cloud storage business, is branching out its online service menu with the help of VMware and Sun Microsystems, says eWeek.

The telecoms giant introduced a new cloud subscription-based service that gives businesses on-demand access to computing resources via a new online portal called Synaptic Compute as a Service. Online time windows can be purchased through credit card payment, and services can be used immediately.

VMware is handling all the data centre virtualisation, and Sun will take care of networking software with Java and storage hardware with its StorageTek systems.