OpenOffice 3 Beta has been released. Some of the new features that caught my eye include: support for new features in the ODF file format, support for opening (but not saving) Microsoft’s new Office file formats, charting enhancements, a cool-looking start center, improved notes in writer, and better picture cropping. Mac users will be glad to hear that OpenOffice now has a native UI on the Mac.

The final version should be out in September, in time for Ubuntu 8.10.

You can try out the Beta in Ubuntu 8.04 with disturbing your existing version of OpenOffice. There are a lot of packages to install, so the easiest way is using the terminal. Here are the instructions: