The word for the day is "ribbons." Moving from the floating Formatting Palette, Microsoft has now joined the Mac version of Office to the PC version, and we have ribbons! Also part of this transition is bringing the email client Outlook to the Mac and eliminating Entourage. Sometimes ribbons work and sometimes they do not; it depends on the application and how they are implemented. They are not the best thing in software applications and are certainly not the worst. Meanwhile I'm finding Outlook to be a major step backwards. Like any big release, there are some excellent new features and some improvements on older features. Similarly, there are some new features that one has to be wondering what they thought they were doing. Nonetheless, the new Office for Mac 2011 has been released and it's time to explore what we have.

On Monday afternoon, Apple released the Mac OS X v10.6.7 Update, largely a bugfix along with the usual slate of security patches and a few feature enhancements. The Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The iPad 2 received a 4 out of 10 repairability score, mainly for the extreme difficulty of accessing anything inside. But if you do manage to get in, you'll find that all screws are of the Phillips variety, and the LCD can be easily taken out once you separate it from the front panel glass (but separating it from the glass is difficult, of course) — it's nearly impossible to open the iPad 2 without shattering the glass

Revised Design is Thinner, Lighter & Faster with A5 CPU, Plus FaceTime, Smart Covers & 10 Hour Battery

Apple today updated its MacBook Pro family with next generation dual-core and quad-core Intel Core "i" "Sandy Bridge" processors and HD integrated graphics, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology (aka "Light Peak") and a new FaceTime HD camera

These two DVDs, available from Photoshop Café, both have great, insightful information for the beginner or advanced photographer. Both videos (by Tim Cooper) are presented with bullets, text and many sample images. Tim is excellent in that he talks to you as a friend, explaining the nuances of photography. His voice is direct and calm, and it sounds like he wants to help you become a better photographer, not show off what he knows. All in all, these are informative and a pleasure to work with.

On Wednesday Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, unveiled The Daily - the industry s first national daily news publication created from the ground up for iPad

Logitech's Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 is powered by light - indoors or out; has great looks, nice action, no Bluetooth pairing tedium, and is thinner than Apple's wireless keyboard

Tim Cook is a proven steady hand at the Apple helm, having stood in for Jobs during the latter's previous medical leave for liver transplant surgery in early 2009, but expect a market reaction

MacDraft, at version v6, is still vibrant after 25 years providing the same level of powerful 2D CAD work for users around the world. New to version 6 are some user enhancements such as a Customizable Toolbar, New Layer's palette, and some image enhancement features when bringing a standard rasterized image into your CAD drawing. But perhaps my favorite improvement is customizable scaling: now, you can create any scale to set the image size to the size of your output.

The Mac App Store is now open for business with more than 1,000 free and paid apps. The Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes account, download and install them in just one step. The Mac App Store is available for Snow Leopard users through Software Update as part of Mac OS X v10.6.6

Photomatix 4 continues its domination of the HDR Photography landscape with its new release of version 4. The big news is that hdrsoft has now provided an excellent mechanism to deal with objects that have moved during your multiple-image capture. In addition, Photomatix now displays a sample strip of thumbnails to let you quickly see and click to display your image in a variety of presets prvoided by Photomatix (you can also create your own). These presets let you easily view an image with either Image Fusion or Tone Mapping to help you determine which approach might give you a better look for your image.