Technology

Microsoft has said little so far about Office 15, the codename for the successor to the current Office 2010, but on Monday, all will likely be revealed. In the meantime, we can at least speculate on the features we'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft's productivity suite, drawing on some of the rumors and leaked details we've seen so far. Here are five things we'd like to see in Microsoft Office 15: Now that widescreen displays are the norm, Microsoft Office should make use of the extra space in the margins. Instead of cluttering the top

In my previous column, Understanding Content Conversion: Unfortunately, There’s No ‘Easy’ Button, I examined the various areas that trip up the eBook conversion process –special characters, tables, hyphenations, and so on.  This column follows on that theme, based on a question from a consultant with a major consulting firm:

    “…I am researching the time it takes on average to convert from PDF to EPUB, including the time it takes to edit the ‘rough’ EPUB file created by the automated conversion …

Data Conversion Laboratory, the company I founded, has been doing document conversion for thirty years and every once in a while I still get asked from someone I haven’t seen in a while “are you still doing that?” or “isn’t there software that does all that?”

The truth is that if it was easy, it would indeed be all automated. But when it comes to documents and books, creativity will not be bound by rules and style sheets

Qualcomm has been touting the usefulness of Mirasol display technology to the mobile device market for quite some time but has been very quiet on that front in terms of new developments for quite some time. Today, that all changes. In partnership with Kyobo Book Centre, Korea's largest book seller, Qualcomm announced the Kyobo-branded color eReader featuring the first commercial Mirasol display. In addition to that, the Kyobo eReader will also feature Snapdragon S2 processor clocked at 1GHz.

For those unaware of Qualcomm's Mirasol technology, it is a drastically different way of designing a display.

Qualcomm has been investing in a novel display technology called Mirasol since 2004.

The approach, called interferometric modulation, uses an electro-mechanical technology that winds up reflecting ambient light in a way often compared to the colors on butterfly wings.

Like the E-ink screen used in many e-readers, the Mirasol display is referred to in techie circles as “bistable.” Once it flips to bring up a new page of information, such a display essentially draws no power.

The year is 1603, and you are in Elizabethan London. When you receive an invitation from an old acquaintance, you expect nothing but an entertaining evening with good food and drink. Instead, you find yourself plunged into a conspiracy of black magic involving some of the most powerful and important men in London. Will you thwart this conspiracy before it brings down the entire city? That’s up to you in “The King of Shreds and Patches,” a new interactive fiction game for Kindle.

The Gold Ink Awards People's Choice Award winner will be broadcast live from the Gold Ink Awards banquet at Graph Expo in Chicago via Ustream on PIworld.com.

All of the Gold Ink "Gold" Award winners will be on display at this year's Gold Ink Awards and Hall of Fame Banquet on Monday night. That evening, one of the 46 Gold Ink "Gold" Award Winners on display will be awarded Gold Ink's People's Choice Award.

We now have new details about the vaunted Amazon tablet. Here are the key points:

    * Priced at $249;
    * 7 inch touchscreen;
    * New user interface based on Android with baked-in media stores;
    * Coming out this fall.

It's going to be a blockbuster.

Need a hero? There’s an app for that.

DC Comics will re-release 52 comic books for the first time ever on a digital platform, starting Wednesday.

The “New 52,” as DC calls the revamped comics, will have new storylines and new artwork. It will be a new beginning for the publishing company’s aged characters.

The controversial decision to release the new books on a digital platform was made amid declining book sales and an increasingly older generation of readers.

“It’s not about who makes them first, but who makes them better.” That’s how Sony’s Sir Howard Stringer announced his upcoming tablets. Zing.

Meet the S and P, everyone. Sony just took the wraps off its first generation Android tablets a few moments ago at its 2011 IFA press event. But, as with most non-Apple products these day, there isn’t much to report. Sony used teasers and planted leaks over the last few months to generate buzz, which in turn, makes today’s announce a tad anticlimactic.