Microsoft Offers Free Web-Based Office Extension - Software as a Service

I just have one word to describe this service....Awesome....worth checking out....so far the cloud is working well.....and I am still learning more as I go....why spend time emailing documents when you can share...something we have all done for quite a while, but why load up a co-workers email and your own for that matter when there are better ways to share documents! A couple weeks ago I also moved my website and domain over to Office Live Small Business and thus far have only had one issue with One Note Shared files, which I understand there is a fix in the works....and this is how it looks.

From here I can go to my Shared Workspace...and it looks like this...you can see the 2 shared documents in file....I chose to share one document with myself at another email address...

Now I am sharing another document with my other email address:

I can view the document online....

I am notified in Outlook that I have shared this document....

Here's the sharing email send to me at my other email address:

And here it is to view when I go to "click here to view"...I can also stop sharing at any time....

I have also downloaded the Office Live Add In so I can use my desktop version of Office to view the document...since many are still using Office 2003, I specifically used the 2003 version for this demo and it works much the same in Office 2007...

I sign in and it goes to Office On Line for me to locate the document.....

And here's the Word document, opened from Office Live Workspaces, using my Desktop Version of Microsoft Office....

Being this document is shared without any restrictions on permissions, I simply saved it to my desktop...nice....if the author had not left the options open and this was a "read only" file, that would not have been possible...I could also save it on the workspace as well!

There are templated workspaces you can add as well....

I think I am going to like working with both Office Live and Office Live Workspace....I can also share this document live, but I'll leave that for another post.....BD

Microsoft took another step Monday toward its goal of being a "Software plus Services" company, as it opened its beta version of a Web-extended Office suite. First previewed in the fall, Office Live Workspace beta is being made available free as a Web-based extension of the dominant Office productivity suite. It had previously been available as a private beta, and the final release is expected later this year. The software giant said this version will allow people to "access their documents online and share their work with others."

Michael Silver, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner, pointed out that Office Live Workspace does not provide the full Office capabilities online, but is an "add-on for collaboration and small business management" to provide storage, version control and other online features. It is not, he said, what Google Docs is.