Microsoft Office Web Apps is a free online version of Microsoft Office that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the OneNote Web App.

Using Office Web Apps, you can view as well as edit Office documents on any computer and since these apps work inside the browser, you can even edit Office files on a Mac without requiring the Office software.

Sign-up for Office Web Apps

If you are not signed-up with Office Web Apps yet, here’s another opportunity:

Step 1: Create a Windows Live ID if you don’t have one already or if your existing Live ID uses a country other than US.

Step 2: While signing up, make sure you select 'United States' for the Country field else the program won’t let you in. You may use NY for the State field and 10001 for the Zip Code.

Step 3. Once your Live ID is setup, just click this link, accept the license agreement and the Office Web Apps Technical Preview will be activated for your Live ID.

If you face any issues while executing Step 3, here’s an alternate approach -- go to skydrive.live.com, upload any dummy Word file to the Documents folder and you should then see an invite to join the Office Web Apps programs. That’s it. Thanks Sean.

If you have a huge bundle of Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint Presentations on your hard drive that you would like to convert into PDF at once without investing in commercial software like Adobe Acrobat, try Google Docs.

While it has always been possible to convert Office documents into PDF using Google Docs, the new export feature makes it even easier for you to batch convert Microsoft Office and OpenOffice file formats into PDF (or HTML) in three easy steps.

Batch Conversion to PDF with Google Docs

Step #1 – Create a new “input” folder in Google Docs where you’ll upload all your documents and presentations that are to converted into PDF.

Step #2 – Now select the Upload Document option in Google Docs, set the destination folder to the one that you created in Step #1 and upload* all your documents.

Google Docs officially supports the following file formats though you may also upload images:

• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps).


• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), OpenDocument (.odt) and StarOffice (.sxw).


• Microsoft Excel (csv, .xls, .xlsx) files and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods).

[*] You may also use the email option to upload documents onto Google Docs but that would put everything on the main folder and managing documents can therefore become a issue especially when you have too many files.

Step #3 - Once all files are uploaded onto Google Docs, open the dashboard again and select the “input” folder from the right sidebar. Select all the files in this folder and choose “Export” under “More Options”.

Here’s select “PDF” (or HTML) as the output format and all your Word Documents, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. will be instantly converted into PDF.

And if you are converting a large batch of documents into PDF, you don’t have to wait in the browser for the conversion to finish as Google Docs will automatically send you an email once the processing is over. The email will have a link from where you can directly download all the PDF files in one large ZIP.

Thanks to Amit...

This morning Google Blogoscoped posted a special snippit of code that you can copy and paste into your browser to enable the new minimalist design. But that version falls short of greatness: it includes the Google Search and I'm Feeling Lucky buttons. For those looking for the ultimate in austere, these buttons are little more than ugly blemishes marring an otherwise perfect design.

To set the cookie, do the following:

1. Head to google.com

2. Paste the following code into the address bar of your browser:

javascript:void(document.cookie='PREF=ID=2602f2ce49362929:U=7b6893b1882d5a94:TM=1239881060:LM=1254195610:L=0qXJlAA:GM=1:S=CwDGQD20E8U14zDg;path=/;

domain=.google.com');

3. Hit enter or �go� to run it (you have to be on google.com at the time). It will not give you any feedback, it will just run and set the cookie.

4. Refresh the page.

Thanks to Don MacAskill over at SmugMug for the tip.

This image may not make sense to the human eye but if you were to show it to a barcode scanning machine, it would immediately recognize the text hidden in that image as "Google".

How to create a 2d Barcode Image

If you are excited about Google�s barcode logo and would like to generate a similar Barcode image for your own name or brand, go to morovia.com, choose "Code 128" as the Barcode format and uncheck the setting that says "Show human readable text".

For instance, here�s a barcode representation of "digital inspiration".

How to decode a Barcode Image

Now the reverse case. Say you come across a barcode image on the Internet and would like to read the text that�s hidden inside that graphic. You can either get a barcode scanning machine, or a more easy option would be that you upload the image to ZXing.org and it will try to decode that image for you online.

You can either upload the barcode image from the desktop or simply pass on the web address of the image and ZXing will decode it for you as in this example.

Related: What are QR Codes

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

A young second generation Indian in the US was asked by his mother to explain the significance of "Diwali" to his younger brother, this is how he went about it... "

So, like this dude had, like, a big cool kingdom and people liked him. But, like, his step-mom, or something, was kind of a bitch, and she forced her husband to, like, send this cool-dude, he was Ram, to some national forest or something.... Since he was going, for like, something like more than 10 years or so.... he decided to get his wife and his bro along.... you know....so that they could all chill out together. But Dude, the forest was reeeeal scary shit... really man...they had monkeys and devil s and shit like that. But this dude, Ram, kicked with darts and bows and arrows... so it was fine.

But then some bad gangsta boys, some jerk called Ravan, picks up his babe (Sita) and lures her away to his hood. And boy, was our man, and also his bro, Laxman, pissed... all the gods were with him... So anyways, you don't mess with gods. So, Ram, and his bro get an army of monkeys...Dude, don't ask me how they trained the damn monkeys... just go along with me, ok...

So, Ram, Lax and their monkeys whip this gangsta's ass in his own hood.... Anyways, by this time, their time's up in the forest... and anyways... it gets kinda boring, you know... no TV or malls or shit like that. So,they deci ded to hitch a ride back home... and when the people realize that our dude, his bro! and the wife are back home.... they thought, well, you know, at least they deserve something nice... and they didn't have any bars or clubs in those days... so they couldn't take them out for a drink, so they, like, decided to smoke and stuff ... and since they also had some lamps, they lit the lamps also...so it was pretty cooool... you know with all those fireworks.... Really, they even had some local band play along with the fireworks... and you know, what, dude, that was the very first, no kidding.., that was the very first music-synchronized fireworks..... you know, like the 4th of July stuff, but just, more cooler and stuff, you know.. And, so dude, that was how, like, this festival started."

The mother fainted...

HAPPY DIWALI ...

While the majority of international communication happens in English, a lot of these people, who communicate in English on a daily basis, aren’t very comfortable in English as it is not their native language.

They therefore sometimes struggle to express themselves correctly in English, only to be dismayed that native English speakers can immediately notice the flaws in their writing.

When English is a Foreign Language for you

Microsoft Research has created a useful online proofing tool to help people who use English as a foreign language.

This tool, called ESL Assistant, is a web service that analyzes text for common mistakes that non-native English speakers, especially those from Southeast Asia, often make in their writing such as the choice of determiners and prepositions.

Type some English sentences into the text box and the tool will look for possible problems in your writing and indicate them with wavy green underlines.

Once it identifies possible mistakes in your writing, the tool will generate suggestions to correct the problems. What’s even more interesting is that the tool will find real-world examples of both the incorrect and correct usage from other web pages on the Internet using Bing.

You can just hover your mouse over the suggested phrase and the search results in the two Bing windows will change automatically.

Check Errors in your Outlook Emails with ESL

Anyone can use the ESL (English as Second Language) Tool to check their emails and other writings for errors online though the site does require the Silverlight plugin.

Another way to use it it to download the ESL addon for Microsoft Outlook and integrate the web service into your email program.

There’s a bit of a privacy issue here because when you click the ESL Assistant button in Outlook to check your message for errors, the program will send the entire text of your email to the ESL website where you can review it for problems. Also, if you correct errors online, you will have to copy the text back into Outlook manually.

Although ESL Assistant will not catch or correct all errors, it often finds problems that are overlooked by normal spelling and grammar checking tools. This makes it a great tool to expand your options and make sure that your English sounds as correct as possible.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.