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3/17/2010

Exploring the Impact of Social Networking in the Enterprise

No one can deny the growth of social networking in our society. The social media bug has bitten almost everyone and, to match this demand, Microsoft has been offering our customers technologies to harness the power of social networking. Bringing the power of social media right to the workplace is the goal of new experiences such as the Outlook Social Connector, the enhanced blog, wiki, profile, and... (read more)

Posted at 11:54 AM by Ashok (Office Labs) | Category: Office Labs; OfficeTalk | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

2/19/2010

Getting ‘hands-on’ with Microsoft’s vision

Today the countdown begins…
Alright, that sounds a bit dramatic but nonetheless I am excited. We’ve been working towards some really cool stuff here in Office Labs and today was the first time we showed a glimpse of some of those efforts to an external audience.
About a year ago we released a video dubbed ‘Microsoft 2019’ by the blogosphere. The release of this video represented a start to a conversation…... (read more)

Posted at 8:16 AM by Ian Sands (MS) | Category: Envisioning; Office Labs; Productivity Future Vision | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

2/15/2010

Ribbon Hero update!

Ribbon Hero has been available for a few weeks, and in that time we’ve seen over 32,000 downloads, 25,000 challenges played, over 650 Facebook fans, and lots of general excitement about using games to motivate learning.

We’ve had a few customers with early access to the Office 2010 RC build ask us to release a version of Ribbon Hero that works with Office RC, so we’ve released a new build of Ribbon... (read more)

Posted at 9:14 AM by Jen (Office Labs) | Category: Ribbon Hero | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

1/29/2010

Community Clips has Ended!

Community Clips was a concept test – or experiment – to explore whether it was possible to create a community around how-to videos about Office. When we started this project, we knew that videos could be a great instructional tool, and we believed that Microsoft customers would prefer watching videos to reading help articles. We had a feeling that letting other Office users create the videos themselves... (read more)

Posted at 1:37 PM by Jen (Office Labs) | Category: Community Clips | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

1/19/2010

Play Ribbon Hero and hone your Microsoft Office skills

Hi! I’m Jennifer Michelstein, a Program Manager and casual games enthusiast in Office Labs. My current project is Ribbon Hero, which works on Vista and Windows 7, and in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 and 2010.
I think that Office has a lot of powerful features that can save users a lot of time and help them do some really cool things. When I meet Office users, I often hear them say things like, “I... (read more)

Posted at 9:54 AM by Jen (Office Labs) | Category: Office Labs; Ribbon Hero | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (44)

11/12/2009

Working with Microsoft Research

Here in Office Labs we love to partner with whomever we can in order to do our work. One of our favorite organizations to partner with is Microsoft Research.

In case you’ve never worked with an organization like Microsoft Research, it’s like having a whole building full of world class experts who are happy to meet with you and advise you on your projects. No matter what topic you’re working on, you... (read more)

Posted at 3:01 PM by JJ (Office Labs) | Category: Email Prioritizer; Productivity Future Vision; Office Labs | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

11/6/2009

The Office Labs Giving Campaign Auction

Every year during the month of October Microsoft runs its annual Giving Campaign, where employees worldwide donate to their favourite non-profits. Different teams around the company come up with all sorts of entertaining ways to encourage donations, and I had the pleasure of participating in two of those activities this year:

the Photographers@Microsoft book, where I was on the selection committee and... (read more)

Posted at 10:31 AM by Neil (Office Labs) | Category: Happenings; Office Labs | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/19/2009

Exciting Times

It’s exciting times here in Office Labs. We’ve been operating for a little over two years now. We’ve worked on almost 30 projects during that time. Many projects don’t get past the design or prototype phase – we do a lot of concept testing and tuning of ideas to find the ones that work. When they get halfway interesting we put some of them on this web site to get your thoughts as well as data about... (read more)

Posted at 9:46 AM by Chris Pratley (MS) | Category: Office Labs | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/2/2009

Chris Pratley on Channel 9

We have gotten a lot of feedback that you would like to hear more about what is happening behind the scenes of Office Labs.

Over the past months we have been busy at work on additional projects, some of which we hope to share with you in the next several months. In the mean time, we thought you might enjoy this Channel 9 interview with the head of Office Labs, Chris Pratley. Channel 9 is a site that... (read more)

Posted at 3:18 PM by Natasha (Office Labs) | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

9/3/2009

Embedding Office Labs Videos

We have moved all our videos to Microsoft Showcase.

If you are interested in embedding our videos, you can get the embed link from Showcase. Just search for Office Labs to find our videos and then copy and paste the embed link as highlighted in the image below.

Here is what the new player looks like.

Enjoy!
(read more)

Posted at 10:35 AM by Natasha (Office Labs) | Category: Office Labs | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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