Microsoft Opens Office Live Workspace Beta to All

Office Live Workspace, which Microsoft says provides Office app users anywhere access to documents and enables sharing functionality, is now available to anyone who wants to try the product.

It's Microsoft's answer to the popular Google Docs and Spreadsheets online applications, the difference being that the Microsoft service still relies heavily on its for-pay desktop based apps, while Google put it's (somewhat less functional but free) apps online as Web services. Both products provide ample space to store documents.

Microsoft has also added a few new tricks to the Live Workspace service, including a dashboard where you can see the status and changes to your uploaded or shared documents. A clear nod to the wave of interest in and development of online collaboration services.

Also:

? Notifications. People can now receive e-mail notifications about changes made to their workspaces or documents.

? Direct links. People can now bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window.

? Multi-file upload. People can now upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop.

? Improved sharing. New sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.

Read Microsoft's press release here.

See a boatload of screenshots here.

Read our initial hands-on review of Office Live Workspace beta from last December.

Stay tuned for a new hands-on testdrive of the new and improved Microsoft service, when we'll answer the question: Is Microsoft's service really a compelling enough answer to Zoho and Google to keep it in the Web 2.0 game?

Comments

cant print or edit online, useless until it gets better

richard324

March 04, 2008

5:10 PM PT