Microsoft's Office team pushes ahead with 'active reading' products, services
Summary: A new Microsoft job posting indicates the Office team is working on some kind of reading/publishing app/service which may be related to its Barnes & Noble partnership.
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble officials have said next-to-nothing about what's going on between the two companies since they announced their patent settlement and NewCo joint partnership in late April.
That hasn't stopped us Microsoft watchers from looking for clues. The latest I've found isn't huge, but it does indicate reading -- specifically "active reading" -- is of keen interest to the Redmondians.
A job posting for an Office unit program manager, dated August 22, calls for someone to work on "V1 (version 1) team" that is working on developing products and services for "active reading."
From that posting:
"Microsoft Office Division has big plans in this area and our team is creating innovative V1 products and services that delight active readers. The recent partnership we announced with Barnes & Noble is a strong indication of our commitment to the reading space."
Among the qualifications for this role are "a broad understanding of the digital content ecosystem for books and documents"; HTML/JavaScript proficiency; and ability to work with "partners," like the Windows 8 team.
(Microsoft researchers have been investigating the implications of active reading for several years. But it appears research has given way to planned commoditization.)
It's worth noting this isn't the first time there've been hints of some kind of souped-up authoring experience coming from Microsoft. Earlier this spring, William Lynch, the B&N CEO, mentioned something along these lines in a Q&A with Fortune:
Lynch: If you look at the content sort of flow from authoring tools, obviously, Microsoft is one of the leaders, if not the leader in authoring tools with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, their Office franchise, all the way through the transaction buying merchandising, sale or cloud management of the content. You can see us working across that.
So again we haven't announced anything specifically, but imagine an integration where an information worker, student, author, consumer, creates something in Office and has it immediately published for sale through the Nook book store. It starts to open a lot of exciting possibilities.
So what is this planned "active reading" app/service? Is it a self-publishing tool for those looking to participate in the digital-publishing space? An add-on for Nook e-readers/tablets, or the crux of a Wook (Windows- or Windows Phone-based Nook reader/tablet)?
Or maybe it's a modified take on "Moorea" -- the Microsoft-developed Courier-like note-taking app? Last I speculated, I thought Microsoft might have integrated Moorea into OneNote 2013. But one of my sources said Microsoft has delayed Moorea until post-Office 2013, looking to make it an authoring/curating experience for collections of digital "things" including Office documents. So maybe this "active reading" app/service will be a Metro-fied/modern-style Windows 8/9 app?
As the Wall Street Journal noted recently, Microsoft's NewCo deal with B&N is expected to close in late October or early November.
Any other guesses, educated or not, about what this new active-reading app/service from the Office team might be?
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
Wook
Enhanced authoring into ebook markets?
Reading Mode?
New reading mode in Word 2013
Theory
Perhaps this is a prelude to something bigger?
Barnes and Noble is in the same dangerous space that other physical book retailers were in and could easily be gone in a few years. Amazon is already beating them up with the Kindle Fire and their website. Apple, Google and many others are all heading into their e-space.
B&N has a lot of great locations with plenty of space.
B&N has plenty of experience in the book trade.
B&N needs something to set itself apart from the competition and remain relevant.
Microsoft is getting into the book trade.
Microsoft is opening up a large number of microsoft stores.
Microsoft became a minority holder without fighting take-over rumors driving stock prices up.
Is there potential for MS-B&N stores sharing space or a takeover by Microsoft?
Make EPUB a native Word format
Right now, the three critical items in my toolkit after I've gotten as far as I can in Word are the following:
Atlantis Word Processor: Very similar to Word 2003 but with a tiny install file, very low resource requirements, and it outputs directly to EPUB. For $35 it's worth buying just to get from Word to EPUB effortlessly.
Sigil: an open source project that is the closest thing out there to a native EPUB editor. Not what you'd want to use for your primary writing tool but fantastic for making adjustment and shaping up details in an EPUB file.
Calibre: Until recently it had some serious bugs that made it unusable for professional purposes but today it is a better tool for creating Kindle MOBI files than Amazon's own KindleGen.
If Microsoft added more native support for EPUB it would be a big attraction to upgrading to the latest Office. Being able to do almost everything in Word and other Office apps would be very helpful.
How I would love to see documents advance
Documents could also contain embedded services such as a dictionary service, which could lead to rich encyclopedia experiences in its connected state. Distributors of electronic publications (e.g. books, magazines and other periodicals) could make base paid and advertising revenue from publications in their disconnected states, but also additional revenue by supporting these publications' connected state. I believe the above would make documents come alive, and restructure publishing in the digital age, to make decent money.