Webware

Those wanting to get their hands on the Web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will have to wait a little bit longer.

Business Division President Stephen Elop said in an October interview that a technology preview of the browser-based applications would come this year, followed by a beta in 2009. However, it turns out Microsoft is using a rather tortured interpretation of the term "technology preview."

It's currently being used by fewer than 1,000 Microsoft employees, as part of a test that started last month and is slated to go through February. Consumers won't be able to try a test version of the products until sometime next year. Microsoft isn't saying when, but I'd say you'll have plenty of time to try the Windows 7 beta before you have to worry about testing the Office Web apps.

Ultimately, Microsoft is planning the release of the Office Web Applications in conjunction with the next wave of Office product, code-named Office 14. Microsoft has not offered a release date for the desktop version of Office 14.

Microsoft is planning two ways of offering the browser-based Office programs--one for consumers and the other for businesses looking to offer Office Web apps to their workers. Consumers will be able to use them through Office Live. The company currently has a free product called Office Live Workspace that lets users view and share--but not edit--Office documents.

Meanwhile, rivals like Google and Zoho already offer editing abilities. Microsoft is staking its claim on being able to offer better compatibility and document fidelity with its products. The company has recently had some big customers consider abandoning Office and move to Google Apps, but has wooed some of them back by sharing their plan for the Office Web apps.

Procter & Gamble, for example, took a long look at moving to Google Apps, but decided to stick with Microsoft after some high-powered lobbying from Redmond. Elop said that Microsoft's pitch included details on its plans for the Web-based versions of the Office programs.

"This was part of the conversation, absolutely," Elop said. "We have been sharing with customers under varying circumstances to a greater or lesser extent."

Microsoft has not definitively said how it will price the products, but it has noted that Office Live has both subscription and free products, suggesting it may have both free and paid versions of the Web apps.

For businesses, the Office Web Applications will be offered as part of Microsoft's SharePoint server. In either case, the Office Web Apps will only work when a computer is connected to the Internet.

Energizer CIO Randy Benz told me last month that he expects the Office Web Applications to open doors for him. Benz said that a lower-cost Web-only option probably won't lower the overall cost of Office for his company, but it should mean that a new class of workers gets access to Office.

"Every PC has the full (Office) suite," Benz said. "But we limit the number of PCs."

Microsoft Vice President Chris Capossela said he sees things similarly. Right now there about 500 million users of Office, he said, but a lot of those copies haven't been paid for.

"We see a tremendous opportunity to sell more," he said.

Microsoft has announced a milestone with its Office Live Workspace product: It's scored its millionth user. And the company has announced the product will be out of beta this year.

Yay, Microsoft. Now go back and build the service we want, please.

There are people who say that Office Live is a Google Docs competitor. It certainly could be, someday, and I'd like to see that. But it's not right now. What it is right now is a way for people who have paid for the Microsoft Office suite to share files with other people who have the suite. It's useful, but it's no Google Docs, nor Zoho for that matter.

Those other productivity suites are a) free, and b) browser-based. They don't require that you pay for and then install software on your PC.

As ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley writes, Microsoft believes that users don't want to create big files and documents "on the Web." Maybe that's because they can't.

Offlice Live does have its own text editor, but it's rather weak and doesn't have Google Docs' killer feature: simultaneous editing. If someone edits a document you've got open and you then try to save it, you get a conflict error and have to decide whose edits you want to kill.

I believe Microsoft could make an honest Google Docs competitor without killing its Microsoft Office business. Eventually, Microsoft will have to. So it might be smart for Microsoft to encourage people to start thinking about the company as an expansive supplier of productivity solutions--desktop and Web-based--rather than just a company that makes desktop office products that, by the way, also have some add-on Web support.

Tidbit: Office Live Workspace works nicely in Internet Explorer and also in Firefox. But you get a blocking error page if you try to use it in Google Chrome.

I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.

Once I got used to what the service isn't--it isn't a way to actually work on the files in a browser--I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.

The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.

I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser's cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.

Uncheck options in the Windows Live installer to avoid downloading programs you don't want or need.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You're prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.

Adjust your workspace by mousing over its name in the left pane and choosing an option from the popup menu.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Of course, there's not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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Regular readers of this blog know that I don't believe that Google Apps is a viable alternative to Microsoft's Office.

While Microsoft is not releasing a completely online version of its Office on Tuesday, it is releasing Office Live Workspace, an online-collaboration tool for Office that works in cooperation with the desktop application suite.

Workspace enables users to view documents online, even if their computer doesn't have Office installed. However, if they want to make edits, they have to download it and make changes in the appropriate Office application.

For users who have Office installed on their PC, this is not as bad as you would think. It may be a little bit annoying, but the benefit is that they get to work on these documents and collaborate within the fully functional desktop application. The online application will track revisions and comments made on the document.

Microsoft has also made a plug-in available for Office that makes accessing a workspace a bit smoother. It also enables users to edit things such as notes, lists, calendars, tasks, and contacts in the Web application.

(Credit: Microsoft)

A lot of Web 2.0 purists are going to be very quick to dismiss the notion that Office Live Workspace is a legitimate Web application, simply because of its dependence on the desktop version of Office. I would have to disagree with those people.

While it may not be completely Web-based, Workspace offers a lot of value for collaboration on group projects, and it is not limited by online versions of the Office applications. People get to work in an environment that is familiar to them and do not sacrifice any functionality in exchange for collaboration.

Until someone can build a full-feature online-productivity suite, this is certainly a viable option.

Via LiveSide.

Microsoft is making a series of changes to its Office Live Small Business service, offering some previously paid-for services free, while adding a new charge for domain name registration after the first year.

Domain name registration will continue to be free for the first year. But each subsequent year Microsoft will charge $14.95, though it will add the ability for so-called private registration, where customers can keep their personal information out of the public Whois database. Microsoft said that those who have already signed up for Office Live will continue to have their domain name registered for free "in perpetuity."

The company has about 600,000 subscribers for Office Live, which offers, among other things, free e-mail accounts and Web site creation and hosting. The service is tailored to the smallest of businesses that have neither an IT staff nor an outside technology consultant. Microsoft first announced plans for Office Live in November 2005 as part of its Live services push. The service launched in test form in February 2006 and dropped the beta tag in November 2006.

As part of the changes, Microsoft is consolidating its three separate service plans into one, while making all of the paid services an a la carte option.

Two services that had been paid--contact management and Intranet portal creation--will now be free.

Microsoft is also bulking up the ability to use Office Live sites to sell stuff, adding paid options for creating a storefront, selling items on eBay, and e-mail marketing.

"What we have been providing so far is a lot of basic IT services," said Baris Cetinok, director of product management and marketing for Office Live. "Now we are also making a bigger investment into digital marketing tools."

Microsoft recently renamed the service Office Live Small Business as it looks to use the Office Live brand for other products, including its Office Live Workspaces, an online document-sharing service.

With the new release, Microsoft is adding support for Firefox, specifically version 2.0, on both Macs and PCs.

The move comes as Yahoo made several changes to its small-business offering, including adding unlimited storage and transfer for its Web site hosting service. Of course, those products could become one at some point if Microsoft gets its way.

Microsoft is stepping closer to providing anywhere access to Office files. The free Office Live Workspace (more here), which lets people share work in Word, Excel and PowerPoint online, is expanding today to invite more beta testers.

You can sign up to try the work in progress at OfficeLive.com, although access may not be immediate. A final version is set for next spring.

When Office 2007 debuted nearly a year ago, it seemed curious that Microsoft offered no easy, one-click option for accessing work from the Web. Meanwhile, Zoho built an add-in for Office 2007, as Google Docs & Spreadsheets and other tools allowed people to share as well as compose work within a browser.

The free, ad-supported Office Live Workspace is a bridge to Office software, not a browser-based replica. Workspace synchronizes changes made to files stored both on a desktop and at Office Live's servers, including Outlook contacts and events. It works with Windows XP SP2, 2003 Server, or Vista with Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 2 or higher (required for users of Mac OS 10.2 and up).

With the Office Live Add-In installed, you can reach your online Workspaces within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

(Credit: CNET)

The online tools preview Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well as PDFs, PNGs, and JPGs. Workspace is meant to work in tandem with Word, Excel and PowerPoint XP, 2003, or 2007 running locally on a PC. You can preview, not edit, documents from a browser. Web Notes, on the other hand, do enable the creation and formatting of small text documents online.

Office Live Workspace emphasizes collaboration rather than composition. To share documents with other people, you can send them a secure URL without requiring them to sign in with a Windows Live ID. Everyone with access to the workspace can make and view each others' comments.

Those invited for editing can make changes to the work, as long as they have Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on their hard drive. Office Live Workspace handily preserves the Track Changes feature from Office apps while also keeping five histories of a file. And the Share View screen allows control of another user's PC.

Another desktop component of this service is the Office Live Add-In for Microsoft Office. This is a quick download, although you'll have to restart the system afterward. Once it's installed, a Save to Office Live option will appear under the Office button within Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, with the subsequent dialog box showing your available workspaces.

Workspaces are collections of documents. Ten templates are built to manage a classroom, sports team, travels, job search, household, and so forth. For example, a travel workspace will include an expense report spreadsheet with Word files for an itinerary, packing list, and personal data. You can store a maximum of 500 workspaces containing 500 documents each for a total of 500 MB per account and 25 MB per file.

Office users who learn about these tools are likely to come to depend upon them to stash their work online with a few, quick clicks. Workplaces that use Microsoft's staple software will probably find Workspace a fine collaboration tool that makes it easy to take work away from the office.

This is a well-designed service, but I'd still like something not only to store work, but to let me make edits without opening local applications. What if you only want to correct a misspelled byline in a 20 MB report? You'll have to open Word, since Office Live Workspace doesn't even allow light, text only edits within a browser. I'll continue to lean on Google Docs for that.

Office Live Workspace, by the way, is not to be confused with Office Live Small Business, which offers a free domain name and Web design templates.

Please see more images after the jump.

Office Live Workspace stores and lets people share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

(Credit: CNET)

Microsoft's Tahiti project (not to be confused with the forthcoming Fiji update for Vista), has been given a new name this morning. Now known as SharedView, the 3MB download is available to anyone who wants it, assuming they've got a Windows Live ID, a Windows PC, and collaborators willing to install it.

It's a little early for a hands-on with SharedView, but it feels polished for a work in progress. Here are my impressions so far:

• Sending invites to join SharedView is fairly simple, although Microsoft assumes you're using their services, including Windows Live Hotmail and Live Messenger. If not, SharedView provides you with an 8-digit code that can be passed to anyone else who wants to join. I'd like to see a more open-source approach here, perhaps a built-in e-mail tool instead of it jettisoning you out to Hotmail.

• Group size is pretty generous for a free tool. Groups can have up to 15 participants in a session, and share related meeting files, which Microsoft calls "handouts." The total storage for these shared files is capped at 100MB. Microsoft is also a little lenient on individual file sizes, as I was able to upload an 80MB video file without a problem.

• Swapping between windows and screens you want to share is intuitive. You can also see a preview of what other people are seeing in a tiny window. Very cool.
  
  

  More as this application develops. I like what I see already, although the lack of text or voice chat keeps it from competing with some of the more serious players, including Microsoft's own Office Live Meeting.

  Previous SharedView coverage here.

  [via Download Squad via Digital Inspiration]