Software makes Word open source

Developers have completed the first phase of a Microsoft-sponsored open source project to create software that can convert Microsoft Word documents between Open XML and OpenDocument Format (ODF) for Office Applications file formats, reports TechTree.

The Open XML Translator software, which is available as a free download in version 1.0, allows Microsoft Word documents based on Open XML to be translated into ODF and vice versa. Once downloaded, it can be used as a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2007, the documents of which are based on Open XML.

The Translator may also be plugged into competing word processing programs that use ODF as the default format to open and save documents in Open XML.

Romania's president, Traian Băsescu, says piracy rocks - and he recently thanked Bill Gates for it during a conference. Gates was in the country celebrating Microsoft's new global technical support centre in the nation's capital, Bucharest, reports APC.

Thanks in a large part to rampant piracy, employees at the new facility were able to familiarise themselves with the software giant's wares.

"Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania," flaunted the president.

A virtual army of tech workers is using satellite and software technology to scan images of the California coastline to try to locate missing computer scientist Jim Gray, of Microsoft, reports MercuryNews. Gray, 63, has been missing for over a week since sailing from San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes near the Farallon Islands.

Employees at Amazon.com, along with scientists at Google, Microsoft and Nasa, collaborated to come up with a way to scan thousands of satellite images of the vast California coast.

Amazon.com engineers used imaging software to split photos from a DigitalGlobe satellite into smaller segments, then loaded them onto Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" Web site where volunteers and other "Friends of Jim'' can scan them from their own computers and then join the search.