Microsoft on Tuesday took the lid off its highly anticipated line of online services, called Windows Live and Office Live. The company has been quick to say that the new products are not meant to replace traditional desktop software, but instead are intended to enhance the Windows experience.
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Member since:2005-06-29
Basically, they'll make MSN brand for content and the new Windows Live brand for web services. So, Hotmail will morph to the Windows Live brand as a new ajax client (aka "Kahuna" as internal project name), MSN Messenger will also morphed into Windows Live Messenger it's next version (and maybe it'll be based in WebMessenger client or a mix of WebMessenger and the current MSN Messenger 7.5)... Also, they're adding a lot of services like online favorites/bookmarks, "gadgets" (custom XML/AJAX data sources/programs that'll display things like weather, photo-album stream, RRS/Atom-based information, and related things... like the other Web 2.0 services we're starting to see), and other online services...
All this data will probably be used in your desktop too (Windows Vista/XP... and may others too...).
The idea is to offer a lot of services behind a new brand and some kind of "ajax"-framework (the compact/portable new Windows Presentation Foundation?).
Well... Microsoft is trying to reinvent itself... as company, as a service-provider, with new products... (we love competition! ;] )
Member since:
2005-06-29
Basically, this is a rebranding of the MSN offerings (search, e-mail, instant messaging). It uses some Javascript magic which currently appears to be incompatible with anything besides Internet Explorer (although support for Firefox is coming "soon"). In an even odder move, all navigation is done with AJAX. So rather than clicking on a link to view a page, you click on a link which changes the text of your current page to some other text using AJAX. It doesn't bookmark, and it requires JavaScript to even view the FAQ, but it's an... interesting... approach. It also appears to support something like the upcoming Windows Gadgets (ie: Dashboard widgets, Karamba widgets, Konfabulator widgets, gDesklets widgets, etc) over the internet. My money is on that staying an IE-only feature, since if Windows Gadgets are anything like Dashboard Widgets, they aren't actually XHTML and JavaScript, but specialized XML/ECMAScript dialects.
Overall, the site reminds me of Google's Personalized home, A9.com, and every other portal-ish, JavaScript heavy webpages.
I can't speak on Office Live because the site isn't online yet. It appears (to me) to be a business-oriented version of Windows Live. Same features, different marketspeak.
Personally, I'll stick to the Google versions (Google Personalized Home, Google (search), Gmail, Google Talk, etc). Or, *gasp*, actually use desktop software rather than things written in JavaScript and sent to me over a (compared to that between my RAM and my monitor) minescule pipe.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Yahoo. I'm sure that Yahoo uses some of those ideas, too. 
Edited 2005-11-01 23:12
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Maybe Microsoft does get it????
Looking more and more like we are going to have spreadsheets and writing programs over the web with online storage in the not too distant future.
In fact I would say it is a certainty because it is just a function of the pipe and the pipes are getting bigger every year.
Google and Sun hinted around about it a couple of weeks ago. The other night there was an amazing responce to an article by a guy who wanted light weight individual writing and spreadsheet programs and not monster office suites.
Seems like the time has come.
Member since:2005-09-11
Maybe Microsoft does get it????
Looking more and more like we are going to have spreadsheets and writing programs over the web with online storage in the not too distant future.
Office Live is NOT an online office suite. If you want an online office suite, you should check out ThinkFree Online. It can do documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can get all this along with 30 MB of online storage for free (as in beer).
Here is a screenshot of me using ThinkFree Online with Firefox on Linux:
http://plan9linux.com/i/thinkfreeresumescreenshot.png
BTW, it is compatible with MS Office and you can even export your documents to PDF format
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Member since:2005-07-17
Time ago I've bought the previous version of ThinkFree office for my iBook (640MB/1.2Ghz), it was rather slow, and I was using it so much. Now I'm using NeoOffice/J (found about it much later).
Probably the best would be to buy Microsoft OfficeX for the Mac, but it's just way too much money (about 10 times more expensive than ThinkFree Office).
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Exactly. The fact that we still have (bloated) email clients at all is probably the only reason it's popular. Why in the world do I need an entire application to send emails, which can be done using a simple document-oriented dailog in the filemanager, and receive, which can be done with a daemon that downloads the email to a folder.
-bytecoder
Member since:
2005-07-06
" A secure online workspace for organizing and managing customer and business information
• A complete set of tools for managing time, tasks, projects, and company data that integrates with your existing Microsoft Office programs"
Why would any sane company store their data @ an MS Repository?
Member since:2005-07-06
Why would any sane company store their data @ an MS Repository?
Because they want the types of benefits many large enterprises have, but don't want to maintain their own IT shop, and/or because the service would be a cheaper/easier option. The initial offering will be targeted at small businesses with 10 or fewer employees. There are plans for expansion later in the future.
In any case, where the company chooses to store their data is up to them. It doesn't have to reside on MS servers.
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