Slashdot News Roundup

Been a little while since I've caught up on the interesting tidbits I see around the web, so I thought I'd take my lunchbreak today and consolidate the news from yesterday.

First up, we have the Google release of their online office suite (plus lots more).

Google Apps for Your Domain is Google's entrance into the office productivity world, but contrary to popular expectations, the company is not shipping word processor or spreadsheet for corporate use just yet. Google, Inc. bundled e-mail client (Gmail), shared calendaring environment (Google Calendar), instant messaging client (GTalk) and HTML page generator (Google Page Creator) to be used across specific domains. The service will be ad-supported, reports the Associated Press.

From that article:

The free edition of Apps for Your Domain is, like Google's main site, supported with ads. By the end of the year, the company also plans to launch a paid version that will offer more storage, some degree of support, and likely, no ads. A price for this edition hasn't been set. Providing e-mail and other applications for businesses moves Google closer into what has traditionally been turf occupied by Microsoft Corp. Earlier this year, Google released a program that builds simple Excel-type spreadsheets but lets users access them on the Web.

I gave it a try and signed up for the Beta, not sure exactly how I can incorporate it all into what we run at home, or how it might look, but it will be interesting to see.

Next up, something amusing to pass the day, as Apple has released new "Get a Mac" TV ads.

Klaidas writes "Apple has introduced 3 new "Get a Mac" TV ads: "Accident", "Angle/Devil" and "Trust Mac" " Normally, posting ads would be make me cry, but these are genuinely funny and well done.

From the woomp-there-it-was dept. comes a story that reminds me why I only buy retail from Dell, and prefer to build my own boxes for performance. Slashdot article entitled "New Alienware PC an Overpriced Underperformer".

Alienware has jumped on board the Core 2 bandwagon and rightfully so, but their new Area-51 7500 loses out to cheaper and faster solutions from other companies. From HEXUS.net's review 'No matter which way we dress up the Alienware's performance and feature-set, it's relatively poor in comparison to SKUs that we've reviewed recently. Value for money may not be the greatest concern in this sector of the pre-built market but when you can get substantially more for less, it becomes impossible to recommend this particular Area-51 7500.'

They've always looked cool, but if I want cool looks with performance I can easily build my own for less with more quality components. But, to each their own. (And yes, I do know that Dell bought Alienware.)

From the gaming front, we have "How Strategy Guides Affected Gaming".

2old2play has another great story up looking into how games have become more complicated due to strategy guides. From the article; "Strategy guides have affected gaming by making games harder for all of us. That's right, it's not a typo -- strategy guides have created more difficult games. Lend me your eyes and attention spans, and I'll explain. Admittedly, it may be a rambling explanation, but bear with me and we should get there eventually.

I've a tendency to use strategy guides, same as CmdrTaco, "because some puzzles are just ridiculous and I have no interest in trial & erroring for an hour when I'd rather kill monsters." There's also the question of just how much time you are able to invest in one sitting to a game. Sometimes you just want to get to the (perceptually) fun stuff.

And next we have news from the World of Warcraft front, as the official WoW Expansion Talent info from their upcoming "Burning Crusade" expansion nears release.

smartidiotaz writes "Blizzard has finally released more information about the talent trees after leaks broke out over the internet. " As typical, every class thinks every other class got a better deal, but the Pallies get to mean it.

Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth commence. (See, this is why I play multiple classes...)

Finally we have "17 Web Based Competitors to MS Office".

Red Herring magazine takes a look at 17 projects in the Web 2.0 space competing with Microsoft Office for the attention of the office workers worldwide. The table lists Thinkfree, Zoho Writer, Writeboard, Google Writely, Rallypoint and JotSpot Live as Microsoft Word competitors, JotSpot Tracker, Numsum, iRows, Zoho Street as Microsoft Excel alternatives, S5, Zoho Show as PowerPoint contenders, ThinkFree, gOffice and Zoho Virtual Office as suite offerings. Even Microsoft Project has its fair share of Web 2.0 competitors: Basecamp and JotSpot Project Manager made the list.

Have a nice day!