SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 15 — Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced that its award-winning office productivity software, StarOffice(TM) (http://www.sun.com/staroffice), is now available through the Google Pack software download service. StarOffice is Sun’s commercial implementation of the popular open source office suite OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org) and supports Open Document Format (ODF). StarOffice is also compatible with Microsoft Office documents and is supported and indemnified by Sun. Google Pack is a free collection of essential software to help users set up their computers, find things faster and stay safe online.

In addition, Sun also announced that it has added web search functionality to all StarOffice products, enabling online search capabilities directly from its productivity suite. This new functionality is now available through the Google Pack download.

“Using ODF within StarOffice allows for interoperability and choice among those seeking free and open standards-based office productivity applications,” said Rich Green, executive vice-president of Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “With OpenOffice.org adoption growing at nearly three million downloads a month, we are seeing overwhelming adoption and exciting new opportunities emerging. We are absolutely thrilled to offer a new version of StarOffice that includes Google’s web search capabilities.”

Google Pack offers users a safe and easy way to install all the essential software they need in a matter of minutes. The addition of Sun’s StarOffice gives Google Pack users free access to an enterprise-strength office application. Starting now, users can install StarOffice as part of the Google Pack installation process. For more information about Google Pack, please visit http://pack.google.com.

About StarOffice

StarOffice software is a powerful, affordable, and comprehensive office productivity suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, database, drawing program, web publishing application) that runs on Solaris(TM), Windows and Linux. Compatible with Microsoft Office, it includes a built-in PDF export tool and supports ODF, XML, Flash and HTML. Based on OpenOffice.org software, StarOffice software suite is indemnified and supported by Sun Microsystems.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision — “The Network is the Computer” — Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://www.sun.com.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION:
    Chhandomay Mandal
    Sun Microsystems
    (603) 589-0576
    chhandomay.mandal@sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, StarOffice and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Hacking into a Gmail account proves to be an easy thing. Robert Graham (Ceo of Errata Security) gave a demo of it at Black Hat 2007 yesterday using an unprotected Wifi hotspot. The tools he used — nothing but 2 coded scripts called Ferret and Hamster.

Basically, he used Ferret to capture the Wifi signal Session IDs and Cookies from the victim’s Web browser session and used Hamster to clone the Session IDs/Cookies. The cloned web identity was then used to gain full read/ write access of the Gmail account. The scary part of it all is that one doesn’t need to be a super programmer to hack into an email system i.e. just knowing how to use the scripts would be enough. The term script kiddies comes to mind.

Just shows how much you should be aware of potential exploits within email. George Ou from Znet, posted a good article on security steps to safeguard yourself when using email. You should know however, that there is never a case where it is 100% hacker proof — to think it is would be foolish.

Google’s AJAX Search team has just released their AJAX News Bar application. The application (widget) allows you easily add highly customizable real time news to your web pages or blog. It also added support for their ever popular book search feature too.

The provided wizard steps you through the orientation, the type of search news you want and the title. After that, it is as easy as just cutting and pasting the generated code to your site. However, if you want further customization, you may have to do some code tweaks according to their programming guide. Customizable features include the number of dynamic news lists, the size of the widget and the number of display results.

Once again, Google continues to impress and it didn’t take much considering I am a big AJAX fan. This is helpful for those who don’t want to constantly maintain sites and/ or offer dynamic news to parts of their site. While you are there, check out the community samples, a lists of application built by independent developers using the Google AJAX Search API. There is a little API for everyone.

Site [Google News Bar]
Site [Google AJAX Community Samples]

Breaking news, Google and Yahoo has joined forces once again. Well, not exactly… someone has actually come up with a tool that allows you to use both search engines at the same time. It is called GahooYoogle.

When you type in your related search words, GahooYoogle will give you the results from Google and Yahoo in a split screened frame. What this means, is that you can look at both search engine results at the same time to find out the best and most relevant search find. This is pretty interesting in the fact that you can more or less compare the different priorities of search results on both Google vs. Yahoo and based on your needs, you may be able to find the one you like the best. For example, I did a search on “Yahoo” and found that the Yahoo search engine displayed more of Yahoo’s products whereas Google’s results displayed more of Yahoo’s news on the front pages.

I like this tool, as I can have the best of both worlds and not depend on Google too much. Although Google is the best search engine out there, lets not forget Yahoo isn’t too shabby either. I believe it works best for people doing research as it gives you more variety based on two different search algorithms.

Not sure how it stands with the legal side of things (with Google and Yahoo) but I am sure they are fine with it, I don’t see any negatives or anything that would take away their brand image or functionality and I am always for tools that make people’s life easier. The developer(s) came up with a little poem on the front page to make us remember it more: “Write Yahoo then Google, Make the Y and G Toggle, Never forget GahooYoogle”.

So go ahead, try it out… GahooYoogle it!

Site [GahooYoogle]

Google Book Search was launched secretly launched in 2002 and has been pretty low key until the past couple of years, more so in the last year. It uses their search technology to look at text/ excerpts in books that may be of interests in you, giving search results of where to buy and if it is available to borrow in a library near you.

Integrated with their Google.com main site, you might have already been using it but have not noticed it. You can view books in three ways: Full, Limited and Snippet view. There are times where previews aren’t available as related to brand new or books that aren’t given online viewing permission from the authors or publishers.

Their main objective (which has met with a certain amount of controversy) is to eventually digitize all the books in the world and make them easier for people to find and buy.

So why has such a universally useful tool become so controversial?

Because some in the publishing community question whether any third party should be able to copy and index copyrighted works so that users can search through them, even if all a user sees is the bibliographic information and a few snippets of text, and even if the result is to make those books widely discoverable online and help the authors and publishers sell more of them. Some of our critics believe that somehow Google Book Search will become a substitute for the printed word.

The books come from Google’s exclusive Partner Program or their ambitious Google Books Library Project, a project that includes library collections from various library sources around the world.

What can I do once you’ve found a book you like?

* Browse: Click the forward-facing arrow to browse available pages. If you’re in one-page mode, simply scroll down to see all available pages. You can also choose to view the book in full-screen mode (filling your browser window).

* Search within the book: Click on additional search results to see other pages containing your original search term, or try a new search within the book.

* Buy the book: Click on one of the links to online booksellers to go to directly to a page where you can buy the book.

* Find it in a library: Many books have Library Links. Look for the “Find this book in a library” link to find a local library that has a copy. Learn more.

* Learn about the publisher: Click the publisher’s logo to go to the publisher’s website and find more books from that publisher.

Site [Google Books]