Nothing in tech is certain, of course, and the whole partnership could end in disaster. But I’m really excited about this. Nokia makes stunning hardware, and Windows Phone 7 is a really nice mobile OS.

I’ve been using Word on the Mac for a long time, but since Office 2008 I’ve encountered an extremely annoying problem: documents get corrupted. It doesn’t happen very often, and it appears to be connected to the Send File button: when I send a file by email, Word does something to the document that means it can’t be opened: it’s not a valid file any more. It won’t work in Word for the Mac, Word on PC, any Office clones or anything else. It’s a dead file.

It’s annoying, but it’s not the end of the world: I can retrieve the emailed copy from my Sent email folder and resurrect it.

Still, it’s annoying enough that I was ready to buy the New! Improved! Microsoft Office for Mac to stop it happening again.

Unfortunately the problem hasn’t gone away in the new version; it’s got worse. Yesterday I was working across eight Word documents. Nothing fancy, just plain text. Several thousand words in all. And Word corrupted six of them beyond repair (I don’t have Time Machine running at the moment so I couldn’t roll back time, unfortunately). The files couldn’t be moved, or copied, or emailed, or anything. They were completely and utterly screwed.

It’s a known problem, it seems, and it *may* have something to do with unusual characters in filenames or folder paths. However, my documents didn’t have unusual characters in filenames or folder paths, and no other program on my Mac does this. Just Word.

I like Word, but I can’t have the electronic equivalent of a family dog that mauls the kids. So it’s off to Pages I go.

It’s real and it works. Astonishing. More here.

Back in the good old days, Microsoft did desktops, Google stuck to search and Apple made toys for people in polo necks. No more.

The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They’re fighting on the desktop, they’re fighting on mobile phones, they’re fighting in the browser and they’re fighting in your front room.

Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker?

]]> http://www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/archives/2739/feed 0 http://www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/archives/2650 http://www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/archives/2650#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:55:00 +0000 Gary http://www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/?p=2650 It’s the best Windows yet, we’re told, but the reviewers said the same thing about Vista. Can we trust them? What’s different about Windows 7?

…unfair or not, people did criticise Microsoft – again and again and again and again, until the man on the street believed that Vista was as desirable as a six-month submarine trip with Fred “Farty” Finnegan and a kitchen stocked only with Guinness and sprouts.

So are the experts right this time? Will Windows 7 fare better? We think it will.

The “it’s just Vista done right” slur isn’t a slur to these eyes, because it’s largely true

Until third party developers really start to take advantage of the new APIs it’s evolution rather than revolution, but it does keep your phone current without forcing you to shell out any more cash.

When Opera promised to “reinvent the web” this morning, we were cynical – and when it started talking about inventing “Web 5.0″ we set our word-guns to maximum mockery.

Then it showed us Unite. We’re not sure about Web 5.0, but we’re convinced that Unite really is worth getting excited about.

How do you install a browser when you don’t have a browser? The news that Windows 7 won’t include Internet Explorer in Europe has caused an outbreak of head-scratching – especially among those of us whose routers need a browser window to configure our connections in the first place.

The new Google Quick Search Box (QSB) for Mac is designed to make things easier.

Summon it with a quick key combination and you can use it to find and launch applications, track down elusive files, dig up contacts or search the web.

It sounds very familiar, with good reason: apps such as Quicksilver have been doing much the same for years. So is QSB a Quicksilver killer? The short answer is probably – but not quite yet.

Sadly the “bionic arms race” owes much to a very real arms race. In 2005, the US military announced a multi-million dollar investment in prosthetic technology after a surge in the number of US soldiers losing limbs in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Improvements in body armour technology mean that attacks that just a few years ago would be fatal are now survivable – but the armour doesn’t protect limbs.

Inevitably the military isn’t just interested in rehabilitating injured soldiers. It’s rather keen on enhancing soldiers’ effectiveness in battle, too, which is why it’s testing exoskeletons.

And Google Chrome 2 is out of beta. Time for another car comparison.

Firefox is a gadget-stuffed MPV, Chrome is a stripped-down sports car and IE8 is a Honda Legend: it’s built well enough, but it’s hopelessly outgunned by smarter and more stylish rivals.

We’re so used to the idea that everything online should be free that we don’t even think about it.

Of course the iPlayer should give us HD video for free. Of course Spotify should stream music for free. Websites? Free. News? Free. Video? Free. Software? Free.

There’s only one problem. Free costs money, and there isn’t enough of it.