Microsoft opened up the beta of its Office Live Workspace to all comers today. The service, which is a hosted version of Sharepoint, is designed to let you share Office documents and sync edits. It does provide a decent (if crippled) Web-based word processor, but for the most part it forces you to use Microsoft’s desktop software to create all of your documents. It also doesn’t work that great with a Mac. You can read my earlier review for more details.
Microsoft says that hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for the beta. Now they can check it out. The service is also adding these features:
• Activity panel. A new activity panel shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance.
• 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.
the google editing tools are painful, zoho also
tying desktop editing apps with online syncing and sharing could be a better approach, would love to see openoffice do this
If doesn’t work well with a mac I’m not going to even bother checking it out. I don’t find online office tools to be particularly helpful. But if I were to use them it would be Google Docs, just because of the integration with other google tools
I am sure techcrunch covered this early today, but pulled the article.
Anyway: this is just a sophisticated FTP site with sharing and an online viewer for Office files.
It doesn’t allow you to edit documents online: that’s is something I would pay for and want dearly (none of the alternatives support all the formulas and formatting that excel uses).: at the moment, it’s a wasted oportunity
Nice.
What blows me away is that a) there’s no search capability and b) you can’t classify your content in folders–everything needs to live in the same work area.
That said, I do think the software is pretty good given that it’s just in beta.
Is this a bad joke?
Can’t create a spreadsheet, can’t create a doc, just notes.
When I try to upload a .doc, it errors out.
Way to go Microsoft.
This thing is miserable. I keep getting script timeouts and when I installed the plugin for desktop office it just opens and saves from the local harddrive instead of the web folder!
So you can import a .doc and view it, but you must open the file in Word to edit? How weak.
If this were somewhat integrated into a social networking site like facebook I think if could be much more useful. Every time you save a document on your computer it become immediately accessible from your facebook account. You could easily send it to others too. I think these types of tools need to get pushed into a social networking.
yeah - businesses are going to start using Facebook for collaboration software. just make sure to wade through all the zombies and pokes and relationship updates and scrabulous games to get to your critical business documents.
What would be really cool is having the Sharepoint-like ability to:
1. Upload a document to an online site
2. While online, click on that document’s name or icon and have it open in Word/Excel/whatever
3. Edit the document and when hitting Save - have the document saved into that online location, not the PC from which I accessed it
I feel the huge need for such a product and if anyone could suggest a site/company offering this - please post it here.
Cheers.
MikeT,
Zecter is something that does exactly that. We are running a private beta of it right now. Check out the screencast and let me know if you want an invite.
Mmm. Not ready for primetime yet. Unresponsive, unfinished ‘resource’ pages, the basic web editing is, well, basic, layout and organisation is awful.
“Your e-mail is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience, please check back at a later time.”
Not quite sure where they are going with this but I hope it is some distance from where they are now.
The all round impression is ‘ouch’.
This is a great idea, the execution is 3rd rate at best. I just find that all these MS web services require far too many clicks, and the interface is just clunky, very web 1.0ish. Why can’t you sync all you files to this service? I have Office on pretty much all the computers that I use, so I am not put off by the requirement to have to use the actual app, but MS doesn’t do much to make this easy for you.
I have been watching Sharepoint for a while, and MS still has lots of work to do to get this idea off the ground.
All that said, I am gonna try this thing for a few weeks and see if I can make it work, or will I stick with Google Docs / Basecamp.
David Zhao, I would like an invite to Zecter, how can I get it? There is no contact address at your site.
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