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VIRTUALISATION Can Hotmail co-founder take Office online?
VIRTUALISATION Can Hotmail co-founder take Office online? | Can Hotmail co-founder take Office online? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Sunday, 25 November 2007 | |
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Whether the name and logos will raise the ire of Microsoft’s lawyers is, at this point, still unknown, although we can be pretty sure that if Microsoft doesn’t like it, we’ll hear about it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, despite sounding quite impressive, the service isn’t actually live as yet, offering only an invitation program to sign up to a pre-release beta service, after which you’ll receive the message: “Thank you for signing up! We will contact you with an account activation mail once your account has been provisioned for”. That said, general availability is promised ‘soon’. So, what does Live Documents offer? According to their website, Live Documents is “how all Office applications will look like one day - a platform that marries the strengths of the desktop and the web into a synchronized solution that leverages the best of both worlds”. The document types to be supported at first are the triumvirate of a Word, Excel and PowerPoint clone. Live Documents promises to let you access your documents on the web or on the desktop, and view and edit your documents from anywhere at any time in your browser in a rich user interface that provides the functionality and responsiveness that you expect in your familiar desktop applications. It also promises to let you use “your existing desktop Office application (Microsoft Office currently and Open Office promised soon) as a smart client that permits offline access to your document - the next time you go online, Live Documents automatically synchronizes all changes to ensure that there is a single version of the truth”. Bhatia is hoping to repeat his success with Hotmail a decade later, and says that: “Live Documents offers a unique perspective on Office productivity and collaboration that merges the best of two worlds - the richness and familiarity of desktop software with the collaborative capabilities of the web. It provides a reliable bridge between the online and offline worlds that consumers and businesses can count on”. So, can Bhatia's creation break the Microsoft Office hegemony and become the next online hit? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion... |
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