Windows Live Documents Is Live!!

This past Monday, Windows Live documents was finally opened up to public use, and after spending about 1 hr using it, I'm thinking the big M should have spent some more time developing it. It's not that its a bad suite web app, its just looks and feels ancient, like its from 2008!


Signing up was easy and can be done with any email address which is great since I really dislike hotmail (even the name bothers me). The opening documents home screen is rather plain (see slideshow below) and documents can't be sorted but they can be shared and there is the option to edit them in the browser or desktop program. Also, your given a hefty 25 GB of space.
 





The first web app that I opened was Word which had basic editing features, but did not have features found in Google Docs or Zoho such as Find and Replace, Thesaurus, Equations, and so on. Also only images stored on the hard drive could be inserted and drawings could not be produced. Next on the list was the Excel Web App which again had basic features such as sorting and number formatting, but graphs can't be produced which is surprising since this is one of the basic needs of a spreadsheet user. Finally, I gave the PowerPoint web app a quick whirl. It had a decent selection of themes, again the formatting was limited and there was no option to created embedding code. Like the Word web app, only images stored on the computer could be inserted and there was no drawings feature although there is a Smartart feature that wasn't working. Windows Live documents also has a OneNote app, it seemed OK. 


The Windows Live documents suite is definitely meant for light editing, anything more serious requires a desktop program or another web office suite such as Zoho or Google Docs. The big M has a lot of catching up to do. 

Interview With Google Docs Product Manager Dave Girouard

I just came across this great article over at cnet. Google Docs Product Manager Dave Girouard was interviewed and he basically tells consumers not to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010, instead use an old version of Office and complement it with Google Docs. Below is a preview of the article (I love Daves' comparison of desktop vs. online apps):

"What is really the goal with Google Docs? I imagine it is not to take the existing types of tools and bring those exact same features online and stop there?


Girouard: We're really creating a platform (where) everybody really can contribute to the Web, whether that means in the confines of a company or as a consumer to their family. I think that pretty core to all of our apps-related services is (allowing) everybody to contribute and work together to create content. The essence of our platform, and I think of cloud computing in general, is about people working together as opposed to an individual being productive on their own.I think that's what the PC era was about, a single person on a single computer doing things you couldn't do before, like creating a fancy brochure, you would have otherwise had to go to a printer before. That was really compelling in the 80s and 90s. I think this era of computing is about how people get things done together. The Web is that platform to enable that."

Microsoft and Facebook Partner Up With Docs.com

At the f8 conference about 2 weeks ago, facebook announced a way of sharing Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files named Docs.com (not very original). It is very similar to Google Docs; documents can be created, edited, and shared (through facebook) online, but so far there is no simultaneous editing in Docs.com, which is a very powerful feature of Google Docs (and Zoho Docs). Check out the video below for more details.

$Google$ Keeps Spending The Casholla: Today's Acquisition is DocVerse

DocVerse, the company that brought collaborative editing to Microsoft Office through a plug-in has been officially acquired by Google. This is an interesting acquisition since Google is in the cloud, Microsoft wants to be in the cloud, and DocVerse sort of brings Microsoft Office into the cloud  (editing occurs on the desktop, viewing in the cloud). It defifinely heats up the battle with Microsoft and raises some interesting questions:

• Will DocVerse continue to be a plug-in or will it move totally to the cloud?
• If it does exist as a plugin, will Microsoft "challenge" it with compatibility issues?
• The GDocs team are suspending signups until "until we’re ready to share what's next", what could this be?
• Will users still have to pay for DocVerse?
• Is Google realizing that some people still want to store their data on their computers and not the cloud?
• When will the Google spending-spree stop?

2010 is turning out to be an exciting year in the world of Web 2.0 office apps. 

Is Microsoft Feeling Threated by Google Apps?

I came across these videos by the Microsoft team promoting their Office suite vs. Google Apps. They compare the desktop version of Office with the web-only Google Docs (we'll have to wait and see what the web-version of Office will be like). They make the expected points that Google Docs has limited options and that formatting is lost when converted to Office documents. Interesting enough, Microsoft shows the limited copy and paste option in Google Docs , this has already been updated and vastly improved by the Docs team. Another interesting point, these pro-Microsoft-anti-Google videos are hosted on Google's service, YouTube. 


I think that Microsoft is really worried about the Google Apps suite and they should be; there are currently 2 million businesses worldwide that have gone Google along with 7 million students, faculty, and staff. Most of my work is done in the cloud (like this blog posting) and although the formatting is limited compared with desktop applications, the advantages of collaboration, access from anywhere, and ease of publishing to the web are very strong. I love the cloud!!


Uncool Microsoft Videos








Cool Google Apps Video