Live Documents is created by Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, before Microsoft bought it at 1998. Now, he formed a new company called InstaColl and compete with Zoho, ThinkFree, BuzzWord as an online document processing application.
If you read my blogs often, you sure know BuzzWord, a free flash-based word processor. Nowadays, most of the online application either use Flash/Flex or AJAX beside server-side programming language. Live Documents is similar with BuzzWord as both of them are built using Flash/Flex.
Bhatia claims that more and more people start using online application now and by 2010, people will not buying software. As you can see, there are more and more applications go online. The most significant is word processing software.
Live Documents are similar with Microsoft’s traditional application like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but they are built with Flash and Flex so that it is cross platform. For Microsoft Office user, they provide a plugin called Live Documents desktop client. By installing the plugin, you can modify the documents offline and it will automatically synchronize the next time when you connected.
Once you created a documents, you can share them with your friends. They can modify and add comments into it and these changes will be synchronized with you once you connected. You can also control your documents by creating Contacts, Groups, and Permission templates. Different users can have different permissions to that particular document.
You can click here to get an Invitation from Live Documents. I am currently waiting their invitation and will give further details once i get my account. For more information, please refer to their website.
great idea! but flash? no way
(its take a lifetime to load)
Document online, writely? most company will still prefer application, because sensitive data.
Flash ok what, one heavy load and can use it smoothly unlike static site.
@julia: Believe me, it won’t take too much time to load. If you are using broadband( even Malaysia’s slowest broadband), you are able to use it.
@kenngoh: I agree with you that most company will prefer desktop application compare to web-based application. But for users who like to share document or works like students, it help them a lot.
I don’t think it has anything related to Microsoft……
@kljs: Their got provide a plugin to Microsoft Office to let users synchronize document easily with their friends. And 1 things is i cant really see Live Documents interface because i still waiting their invitation……
This is new,good and I hope it can be a new version of ‘Office’!