In the new Office and SharePoint, we are introducing a new cloud app model that enables developers to build apps that are scalable and flexible using web standards, such as HTML5 and CSS3. We are also introducing a new Office Store for developers to publish their apps, and for people to find and try apps with confidence.

The primary purpose of Outlook Web App (OWA) is to give Exchange users access to their mailboxes from anywhere through the same Outlook UI and functionality they already know and love. In this release, OWA has evolved to reach not only laptop or desktop computers, but also tablets and phones. As we did with desktop browsers, we’ll continue investing in wider and richer support for tablet and phone platforms in the future. You can try our latest release by signing up for the Office 365 Customer Preview Small Business Premium or Enterprise plans.

Hi everyone! By now folks have also been able to see that we’ve changed the default save location in Office to SkyDrive. We're excited to talk about the change, and why it offers the best experience for storing, sharing and collaborating Office documents.

We’re wrapping up another outstanding week of the Office Preview release. We are getting a lot of great feedback, and hope to get much more. Please continue to help us by sending us your smiles and frowns, and forums feedback on Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN coming.

This week many teams across the division have begun blogging about their specific investments. There is a ton of great information out there for you to read and share. I wanted to highlight some of those early posts here.

Tristan Davis, Senior Program Manager Lead, Word

Nearly two-thirds of user sessions in Word contain no editing at all – the only things that happen once the document is opened are scrolling and zooming changes as the user reads and processes the content. The Word engineering team wanted to focus on creating a refreshed, modern reading experience for the new Word; one that optimized for the times when the user is focused on consuming, not creating, content. The goal was to create a clean and distraction-free environment that went beyond presenting an electronic equivalent of paper to create an experience that felt at home on all types of devices – from tablets to laptops to smartphones.The result is a new reading experience in Word centered on a feature called Read Mode, which essentially turns your Word documents into an interactive digital magazine. You can try it out by participating in the Office Customer Preview, and in this post, I will provide a quick tour of the changes we’ve made.

Social is rewiring the way we communicate and collaborate. Facebook and Twitter have completely transformed how we connect in our personal lives. And new social tools are making it easier to get things done at work.

We believe that the social enterprise needs to be a natural part of the way people get things done, creating a connected experience that extends and enhances familiar tools. And we recognize that companies often need to secure and manage social interactions, just as they do other forms of communication. Our social investments in this release are designed to accomplish both goals.

I’m Beth Petry, I lead Customer Programs for the Office division. Throughout the cycle I’ve had the chance to work with many people evaluating Office. It is an exciting time for us to share it with the world. We’re very excited to have your feedback. Office Preview is off and running!

Many thanks to those of you who have downloaded the preview release. We’re getting a lot of great feedback. Please keep it coming! If you haven’t had a chance to get it yet, you can find the preview release of Office on http://office.com/preview.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of joining members of the media from around the world and several customers to unveil the new Office. Watching people’s first reactions to our new products and services is one of the best parts of my job. The Customer Preview is critical for us to deliver a fantastic final product. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do! With Office 2010, we received more than two million smiles and frowns – in addition to all the other feedback – and this was very important in shaping the final release. I’m hoping to see even more feedback on the new Office.

I’m excited to talk about updates to the Office Web Apps, which are now available live on SkyDrive and the Office 365 Preview. You can try out the new Office Web Apps on SkyDrive by signing in using this special link or you can participate in the Office 365 Preview. Either way, you will get the same new Office Web Apps when you create or click on a Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote document.

On Monday in San Francisco we took the wraps off of the new Office's touch experience designed for Windows 8. We showed the new touch-optimized Windows 8-style app for OneNote, and we showed how we've touch-enabled Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other apps on the desktop. The new Office is designed for a great experience whether you're sitting on a couch with a tablet, or at a desk with a mouse and keyboard. It makes common tasks fast, fluid, and intuitive, while still enabling the rich capabilities required to create high-quality documents.  In this post I'll walk you through the thinking, engineering process and design framework we used to reimagine these experiences for touch.