If you use Microsoft’s Office 2004 for Mac, you’ll want to download an update (11.2.3) made available by Microsoft this week. As the update is some 57 megabytes in size, you’ll need a broadband internet connection. The Office update brings security and stability enhancements to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. Entourage (the Mac version of Window’s Outlook) also gains the ability to be searched by Apple’s Spotlight technology.

Entourage can also synchronize its contacts with Address Book and .Mac, synchronize its events with iCal and .Mac, and synchronize its Notes with .Mac. There’ll be a whole lotta synchronizing going on. The update also includes all of the improvements released in all previous Office 2004 updates.

You’ll remember that Microsoft has removed Internet Explorer for Mac from their web site, and will do no further development. If you are still using it you can certainly continue. However, there are a couple of alternatives that you’ll find faster, more stable, and more feature-filled. We’ll get into them in detail at a later date.

What you may not know is that Microsoft has also stopped development of Windows Media Player (WMP) for Mac (although it’s still available for free download). WMP for Mac plays Windows Media Audio (.wma) and Video (.wmv) files just fine, and even includes browser plug-ins for Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Safari (to allow playback of files within browser windows).

To the rescue comes Flip4Mac. And, it’s free! Simply install it, and Flip4Mac provides Windows Media playback via the QuickTime player. It also lets you view Windows Media content on the internet using your web browser.

It works really well. With Microsoft’s WMP, you couldn’t “scrub” (or move quickly) through .wma or .wmv files. Instead, you moved the cursor to a point later in the file and waited for WMP to catch up. With Flip4Mac, Windows Media files behave like QuickTime files. You can scrub through them, cut, paste, edit and save them (assuming you have QuickTime Pro), and view them in applications like iView MediaPro and others that use the QuickTime format.

Again, the basic Flip4Mac player is free. If you upgrade to Flip4Mac Pro ($29), you can import Windows Media files directly into iMovie, and convert files into other QuickTime formats.

Like Windows Media Player 9 for Mac, you cannot view Windows Media files that are protected with Windows Media DRM (Digital Rights Management).
You can download the free player at www.mactopia.com or www.flip4mac.com.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski