Gadgetory

Microsoft Office is fighting back against Google I'm Bridget Carey this is your scene that update Microsoft released a brand new version of its office software and the big change is collaboration now it's been three years since Microsoft came out with a major update to office and this office 2016 incorporates a few social features some that made Google Docs popular to people can work on a word document at the same time and you can see what the other person is typing in real time but unlike Google you can only do this in Word not an Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations Microsoft also puts Skype inside of the program so you can chat with teammates by text or video while working on a project it also folded in Bing search so you can look up terms inside of the program but the most useful feature may just be the new approach to searching for help type the word of what you want to do and it'll instantly pull up the menu for that option it won't give you some long list of instructions on where to find the option it just puts the drop-down menu right in front of you to select now it's not easy for Microsoft to convince people to pay for office when Google Docs are free but with office you are getting more advanced tools of course one copy of office 2016 for one computer is a hundred and fifty dollars but if you pay for an annual subscription to office it starts at 70 dollars a year and they sweeten the deal with a few perks by for example including a terabyte of cloud storage in Microsoft onedrive you can create and edit documents for free on office comm but that's a bit limited like you can't get all types of charts in Excel for example as Microsoft strengthens office another tech company is feeling a slump QWERTY the company behind winks smart home gadgets is filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy and it's selling the wink platform to the highest bidder in the meantime wink products will still be sold they'll still work and customers can get tech support the wink hub is the control center for various web connected gadgets you can think of it as the brains to a smart home with an app that controls the various devices in your home earlier this year the company faced an embarrassing headache when a botched software update to the wink hub crashed the box and required customers to tinker with a manual fix the box and for a replacement but there's much more than the hub quirky collaborated with General Electric with some popular items like smart lightbulbs and a smart window air conditioner there have even been some weird ones like a smart egg tray and smart piggy banks but the smart home industry is going through an awkward adolescence consumers can be apprehensive to invest in multiple products when these gadgets are expensive or complicated to set up that's it for this tech news update you can dive into more at cnet.com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey