Ref Tech Rob

Just a heads-up to let everyone know that Microsoft and Adobe are entering the web office/applications fray. Microsoft announced the imminent release of their Live Office Workspace. Pre-registration is open now . Adobe announced the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity's Buzzword, a flash based online word processor. You can try it here --if you have Flash version 9 (which we don't at my place of work).

Yesterday, Google added presentation software to their web based office suite. After an initial review, it seems that the focus of the software is web collaboration, as you can see in this short example . I'm not sure what happens if the presentation is left online with no moderation, though. The format is very basic so far, with limited export options and no ability to integrate sound. The most surprising thing to me was that I didn't see any evidence of the ability to integrate the presentations with other Google products, namely Picasa. The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds of presentation changes is a definite plus, however All in all, It's an interesting start and I am sure that they will add more features soon.