Advocate's Studio

Yup. You heard that right. Microsoft is getting into the act too with its own social network called So.cl (pronounced So-shull). Do we really need another social network? Well, maybe, if it can bring something new to the table. So.cl’s angle is the ability to share your searching, presumably via Bing, with others in order to elicit commentary and maybe help someone else who might be looking for the same thing. Hence the “Find what you need and Share what you know” tagline. The status update box is actually titled “what are you searching for?” You can toggle the box to a more traditional style update as well. When you enter text in the box, the text hits your feed with related search results, also presumably via Bing.

You can add tags to save the search terms to a list, much like a favorites or bookmark tool. Items in the news feed can also be commented on or tagged by others. Another slightly different twist is the Video Party function – you can watch YouTube (and only YouTube at this time) videos with friends and chat about what you are watching. It also has a question feature, not quite so robust as Quora, and the ability to find and follow people with similar interests or topics of interest.

The interface is clean and you can make rich posts with montages of images and links from Bing when you search. Very sharp looking. People can comment on your posts – very social indeed.

The idea of saving your search results in a visually-appealing way sure sounds a lot like Pinterest, but it isn’t quite the same as a visual bookmarking service. The idea appears to be the creation of micro-resource posts for your friends and for yourself.

So.cl is being designed with educational institutions in mind, but it is currently open to the public for testing – it’s a product of Microsoft’s Fusion Labs. Who knows how long it will last or whether it will hit the prime time. But, I think it might have a chance. The social search angle hasn’t been fully developed yet and it seems an easy way to share knowledge and expertise. Why not head on over and try it out. Then head back here and post your feedback and your best guess as to whether this newcomer can survive in the dog-eat-dog world that is social networking.

We use Sharepoint at my company. And, we’re not alone. Better than 78% of corporate America uses Sharepoint, the web application platform developed by Microsoft that handles web content management, document management, collaboration, document management and report creation. It feels a bit like an internal enterprise social network, with not so much of the social elements, but heavy on the information sharing.

When more  than three-quarters of corporate America uses Sharepoint and about 94 percent of the Fortune 500 are either testing or deploying the iPad in business, it makes some sense to marry the two. Harmon.ie has done just that – the app makes Sharepoint accessible on the iPad via HTML5, making it possible for users to enjoy the same SharePoint experience on the  iPad as on a desktop.

View the Sharepoint site on your iPad, get real-time updates, access and share information with colleagues while on the go, and access Microsoft Office Online.

There are three pricing tiers: Free, Premium and Enterprise. The biggest difference between Free and Premium is the ability to upload and edit documents and manage email. Check out the comparison chart here. Premium costs $19.99; Harmon.ie Enterprise edition for the iPad is coming soon.

It is a great, business and iPad-friendly addition to your mobile Microsoft experience. Check out the screenshots below for more details on what you can expect from Harmon.ie mobile.

Microsoft Word is a necessary evil. I still miss WordPerfect but have been forced by my corporate overlords to adopt Word. Just because I have to use it, though, doesn’t mean I have to like it.

As MS has updated Word, and the Office suite generally, they have added more and more geegaws to the interface, making it look more and more like a victim of Orange County Choppers. TUAW to the rescue here with a bunch of great tweaks for stripping it back down to its elements. I already employ many of these tweaks, such as turning off tool bars and using full screen mode. But did you know you could disable the status bar, set your default folder for new files to DropBox, and even set your visual preference to return your view to the old DOS blue-screen-white-text? Now there’s a throwback for you!

Thanks TUAW for the great Word Improvement tips!

Want to expand your virtual real estate on your mobile phone? If you haven’t already gotten your free Windows Live account, now is the time to do it. Sneaking under my radar during the holiday crazies was this announcement from the fine folks at Windows Live – you can now access SkyDrive’s 25GB of storage via apps on your iPhone or Windows Phone. Pretty darn cool. Dropbox is nice, but it can’t hold a candle to the size of SkyDrive.

Of course, Microsoft has baked SkyDrive fairly deeply into Windows Phone 7.5. With the Windows Phone app, you can store documents, notes, photos, videos and access them from your phone. Share photos stored on SkyDrive by email, text, or IM, use Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with SkyDrive files, and keep your phone’s camera roll up-to-date on SkyDrive automatically. SkyDrive is integrated directly into the apps as well as core phone functions. Of particular use on mobile, you can browse your entire SkyDrive. share files and manage your storage.

The “extra extra” though is an iPhone app! In addition to their OneNote notebooks, iPhone users can access their files in SkyDrive, create folders, delete files, and share links to folders and files directly using the Mail app. Much of the functionality is the same between the Windows Phone and iPhone apps – tailored to the particular phone’s user experience. This is very very cool indeed – kudos to Microsoft for not leaving us iPhone users hanging!

Read more about these apps and SkyDrive and check out some vids over at the Windows Live site. And get an extra 25GB of useful storage on your mobile device. Thanks Microsoft.

Who rightfully should wear the crown of Emperor in the Tech world? It’s always fun to measure tech giants and an Apple / Microsoft duel at 50 paces is hard to resist. Check out the stock values and key events in the history of both companies with this (very) long infographic. And remember back to the good old days when the Apple I was built in a garage and Bill Gates was writing Tic Tac Toe programs in BASIC.

Hat tip to BGR.