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As part of a carefully timed preview of the forthcoming Windows on ARM (WOA) operating system, which borrows the new "Metro-style" usage model from Windows 8, Microsoft released a video showing WOA running what were described as technical previews of four "Office 15" applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. But the key question for which Desktop application developers have been seeking an answer may have been obscured: As Microsoft adopts a new usage model with elements gleaned from the "Metro" style, will Office be moving away from the ribbon? The first clips of the new Office in action deliberately obfuscate the answer.

In the 20th century, corporations recruited talented professionals but then nurtured them and integrated them into their organizations. Talent was part of their business foundations. In the more intricate economy of the 21st, talent is something perceived to be possessed by individuals. Corporations recruit these people, and then undertake what's called compensation management in an effort to retain them as long as possible, and to let go of talent that doesn't perform up to scale.

The value of a single, global database for evaluating the dollar value of individual talent on a real-time scale was affirmed today in a very big way, with the announcement of Oracle's intention to acquire cloud-based talent management system Taleo.

Last week, my colleague David Strom reported on the latest annual "State of the Internet" report from content delivery network Akamai. The report showed that while Americans are finally experiencing faster average broadband speeds on a quarter-by-quarter basis, those speeds only began eclipsing those of Sweden in the second half of 2010, and still have about 40% of gap to close if it hopes to achieve par with Japan - which, at this rate, it might do in about a decade.

If Web connection speeds are, as Google has said so often in touting the performance of its Chrome Web browser, essentially a product of end user perception, then perhaps any technology that applies itself solely to improving that perception will be at least as worthy of investment, if not more so, than investing in the Internet backbone itself. That's the conclusion Akamai itself has reached in its buyout of two-year-old Web front-end optimization service Blaze.

We've written earlier about Grovo, an online video e-learning site that conducts a lot of celebrity interviews. Some of them are more interesting than others. Today they have a new series with Zach Ciperski, the Director of SEO for EliteSEM and also serves as Vice President of CoffeeForLess.com. He has built sites for some major retailers and teaches SEO at New York University, among other places. His series is on How To SEO, and is worth watching if you are still struggling with the basics, or need some help before you go forth and try to hire an SEO specialist. Here is one five-minute segment on making small tweaks to your site.

When a corporation stakes its reputation on the competitive value of its patent portfolio, it can't afford to watch that portfolio go down in flames. Although the novelty of most any patented technological concept perhaps warrants some re-examination, three patents assigned to memory maker Rambus were recently invalidated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in a dispute with graphics device maker Nvidia over whether the act of rendering functionality on a single chip is a novel idea or just an obvious improvement.

This morning, both companies announced they've settled all disputes over the remaining, still-valid Rambus patents, with Nvidia being granted a five-year license to the formerly disputed technology. But this Nvidia win will have implications throughout the industry, as the competitive value of nearly all technologies integrated into a single circuit, may have just decreased.

In 2008, a UK-based Adobe Acrobat engineer remarked, "I believe in striving to minimize the use of paper, but I do believe that we will probably never reach a position where paper is eliminated from our workplaces." This morning, his predictions were clearly confirmed by a study published by the information professionals organization AIIM.

The study shows that while the exchange of PDF files as e-mail attachments has reduced the volume of paperwork traded between IT professionals, that reduction is not only minimal, but quite possibly made up for. Over three-quarters of IT professionals surveyed say one of the first things they do with a PDF-based invoice... is print it out.

One of the things that I'm often asked by developers at conferences is "how do I get coverage for my project?" I had that conversation with several people at Monktoberfest, and thought it might make for a good talk at Monki Gras.

Specifically, the talk was for individual developers, small groups working on open source projects or startups (to a point). It's not meant for people looking to grab press coverage for a business, but for developers largely interested in finding more users and developers for their project.

While most of us know the results of yesterday's Big Game, the results of the online ad campaigns from the dozens of companies spending multiple millions are less clear. Fortunately, monitoring firm Yottaa is here to lead the way and let us know who scored and who missed serving up online content to complement their TV spots.

If you didn't make it to London for Monki Gras, the follow on conference to Monktoberfest, you missed out on quite a lot of great content and beer.

The conference is organized by RedMonk, an unusual analyst firm. Their conferences, reflecting the analysts at RedMonk, are unusual as well. The Portland, Maine event was primarily organized by RedMonk co-founder Stephen O'Grady, who resides in Maine. This time around, the event was primarily organized by RedMonk co-founder James Governor.

Some weeks ago, I happened to drive by an evangelistic church whose outdoor marquis speaks about as well of the present times as any I've come across. "And there followed hail and fire mixed with blood," it read, "and they were cast upon the Earth. Like us on Facebook!"

The initial public offering of Facebook stock, now likely to come in May, is as much a test of faith as any corporation has ever given its prospective shareholders. To Facebook's credit, its prospectus, as given in its Form S-1 filing yesterday, makes its plea completely and carefully. Many companies provide a perfunctory paragraph to investors under the "Risk Factors" heading. Facebook's entry reads like a self-indictment.