Although not until the launch of Office 2013
Professional networking site LinkedIn are to provide better integration with Outlook once Office 2013 is launched, which will allow users to access LinkedIn data from directly within Office, without the need for a further download.
The ‘Outlook Social Connector’ will sync with LinkedIn automatically; sign in to Outlook with your LinkedIn details and you will have access to everything your connections are up to. Further to this, anyone who emails you with a LinkedIn profile (if they have a person card) will immediately give you access to their photograph, updates, profile information and so on.
“We know many of you spend a lot of your professional hours working in email and we believe the integrated Outlook Social Connector for the new Office will help you be even more efficient and productive,” said David Breger on the LinkedIn official blog.
The news will come as good for those who are intending to upgrade to the new Office package from Microsoft, as many people spend a lot of their time in Outlook and the new function will allow for less ‘clicking around’.
Everything on LinkedIn is synced automatically with Outlook so you don’t have to waste valuable time messing about on the site, as you will be able to be do it all in Office. This is an extension of the many new social functions that Microsoft are adding to their packages, including SharePoint, which will make collaboration and document sharing easier than before.
According to LinkedIn, they have also been working on a new LinkedIn app for Outlook which gives even more functionality than ever before, more information on the new app will become available over the next few weeks so remember to check back often and we will bring you the updates as they are announced.
Microsoft Office 2013 will also have features that allow users to connect to Facebook as well.
Having downloaded the preview version, unfortunately I can’t give you too much information on the new Office just now as everything I open seems to have a tendency to crash quite quickly.
However, to be fair, this is a beta version and at a quick glance I can see that it includes apps that you can enhance the package with, something which those rushing out to buy Surface will find something of a relief.
Windows 8 though isn’t receiving such good press and it seems that enterprises aren’t going to want the tablet device after all. This is due for the main part to the costs involved with training staff to use Microsoft’s new tablet device, which may not be as successful as first thought.
However, the proof’s in the pudding, as it were, and come autumn we will soon find out whether Surface will be able to compete with Apple’s iPad, which is the market leader at the moment by some way.
The success of Surface and Office 2013 will be down to ease of use (something that many tech experts are already bemoaning that Windows 8 doesn’t have), as well as whether Microsoft can develop an app ecosystem to rival those of Android and Apple. This appears to be a contributing factor to the disappearing profits of both RIM and Nokia, who are both struggling financially at the moment, although RIM’s demise seems the most likely.
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