Ribbon Hero works with Excel, PowerPoint and Word 2007 and 2010 only. During the install process, you may be prompted to download and install Microsoft VSTO, so for most of us, there will be two downloads. After the install, pull up one of the office programs and you’ll notice a ribbon hero button over to the right on your ribbon. Simply click to open and get started. After you’ve achieved some points, you’ll be asked if you want to connect with Facebook in a friendly competition with other RH users. There’s also a Facebook fan page if you’d like to join.  It was nice to see that Ribbon Hero scores will be shared with your friends only if they are Ribbon Hero players as well.

Ribbon Hero is an interactive game where points can be achieved by simply doing your usual work, or you can ‘take the challenge’ and  choose from a wide variety of tasks to perform. Below you’ll see the interface for working in Excel. There are three ‘Challenge’ categories and then specific challenges/tasks to accomplish within these categories. Simply click on one of the challenge tasks, complete it and you’ll hear a congratulatory tone, a couple balloons will rise and you’ll be awarded points.

If you choose a task that you’re not familiar with, there are hints and articles right there to refer to. I did the conditional formatting challenge – something I’d never heard of  – and learned something new.

Most people will learn faster and retain longer using this hand-on, practical interface. The examples are down-to-earth and the student can easily apply these examples to real-world work and accomplish tasks faster.

I’m using RH on two computers – one with the beta Office 2010 and one with Office 2007. I wondered if the software would be smart enough to know I was using it on two computers and combine my score. When I did the Facebook connect, I was pleasantly surprised that it did recognize that and it asked if it would be OK to combine the two scores – very nice.

I know Ribbon Hero’s only been out a couple of weeks at this writing, (2-5-10), but here are a couple questions:

1.   I’m wondering if they will develop the game for other Office apps.
2.  Will the ‘challenge tasks’, be changed and refreshed? Right now, I’m seeing about 8 or so tasks to complete under each category. Realistically, that won’t take too long for someone to complete and then what? I’ll ask these questions on the Facebook page and see what I get.

Interactive training with immediate feedback and having the social aspects (with Facebook), is very progressive for Microsoft. I haven’t seen anything as innovative as this with Google, Open Office or Zimbra. If you or your company is thinking about upgrading to Office 2007, take advantage of this free and innovative training.

Microsoft has been refining and upgrading their ‘Live’ series of offerings the last few months. This article will focus on recently revamped ‘Microsoft Office Live – Small Business’. Just visit the Office Live site and you’ll be introduced to a cornucopia of options. You can set up a website, set up an e-commerce store, purchase a domain name and then set up various e-mail accounts using the new domain name. There is a contact manager, an e-mail marketing feature and newsletter creation and mailing (paid subscription for these).

We will focus on a free and very useful function I found while exploring this site—the ‘Share Documents’ feature. Looks like Microsoft is competing with Google here as they are offering a place to store, share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents. From the above menu of items, click on the ‘Share Documents’ and you’ll be taken to your Workspace site where you can upload documents for sharing, collaboration or storage. Check this out for full details on everything you can do with your workspace.

I liked the fact that I can upload multiple documents at once by clicking one file, holding the shift and selecting consecutive files. It does not upload folders, however. Once I’ve gotten my documents uploaded, I can create different workspaces to share with different groups (or just a single person). It’s easy to move my documents to new workspaces and flag documents for sharing. As you’re setting up to share, you decide if the recipient will be an owner, editor or viewer. I really like the choice I have to send my invitation to someone and they don’t have to sign in or create an account to view the documents. Don’t you just hate getting something from someone and in order to see it, you have to get your own account!

I like this interface much better than Google Docs. It seems to be more intuitive and just makes more sense, at least to me. Over on the right side of the document screen, you can check out the activity in your space. You can see who has made changes or uploaded any more documents – very handy. Click on the ‘Comment’ box and leave a note for a co-worker.

Microsoft has a collaboration feature they call ‘Shared View’. You can read more about this application, which you can download and use without using the Live Small Business site. Click on the ‘Share’ button and select the option to share your screen with someone. You’ll have to have the app installed on your computer—you’ll be prompted for what to do. After it’s installed, you can initiate a sharing session with anyone right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint – nice.

I’m saving the best for last! The coolest feature and a huge timesaver is that you can save a document directly to your on-line live workspace right from your local Microsoft Office application. This means when you’re working on a document in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, click the save button and you’ll have the option to save either to your local drive or your small business live workspace in the clouds. You do have to install this add-in to be able to do this. It works with Office 2003 & 2007. It’s really great – can’t do that with Google Docs!

I first set up a Windows Live Account before I set up the Small Business portion and I was pleased to discover that I can access either of these areas by going to http://home.live.com/ and signing in. I did notice once I get into the Small Business section and I’m in the documents section, I don’t find a way to navigate myself back to my top level, or home page. This is annoying. I wish they would have some menu items at the top to get me where I want to be!

Next week, we’ll look at the ‘Outlook Connector’ and what that can do.

I blogged way last summer about Microsoft Office type replacements (see May & June, 2007 posts). Back then we discussed ThinkFree and Google Apps. Now I have a reason to really look at OpenOffice.org. I just ordered the extremely small and sweet Asus EEE computer and it comes loaded with OpenOffice.org. I’m very happy to be ‘forced’ to use both Linux and OpenOffice software! Now Microsoft still has a place in my life – on my business laptop!

Version 2.4 was released just last week and offers many enhancements to make working in the OpenOffice.org environment more robust and well, more Microsoft-y! You can read the release notes here: Reading through them, it seems that if you are a pretty experienced Office user (as I am), then you may think to yourself, “well, that’s nice that they’ve added a page down feature from within the print preview menu, but I think I’d expect that”. I’m not trying to belittle the enhancements – I’m sure my perspective would be different without my Microsoft background.

Since OpenOffice.org has been around for about 20 years now, there is an extensive and comprehensive help section complete with forums and user manuals. If you’re a group, you can even talk to them about coming to train your people.

Thinking of some differences between Google and Openoffice:

• Google apps is on-line – Openoffice isn’t. Advantage OpenOffice! (footnote:Google just announced they will have a way for users to download and work on documents offline. Only for docs – not the other apps)
• There’s a lag time when opening docs on-line vs. on your hard drive. Advantage OpenOffice
• Google docs are great for uploading and sharing in real time with someone else – not OpenOffice. Advantage Google Apps
• Google docs are available to you anywhere you have an internet connection. Not so for OpenOffice (unless you have off-site storage)

Suite Features:
OpenOffice Google Apps

Writer Docs

Calc Spreadsheet

Impress Presenter

Draw (drawings, flowcharts, etc.)

Base (database program)

There are so many comparisons that could be made. It comes down to what it is YOU need. If you don’t collaborate, you probably don’t need Google Apps. If you have some old computers around and would like to be able to do some word processing or calculating, OpenOffice.org would be perfect for that. OpenOffice also has a couple more packages than Google. However, neither of them have calendaring/email built right in and all in the same place.

I’ll post more after I get my EEE computer!