After quite some time Google launched its Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Microsoft finally unveiled its web-based office application called Microsoft Office Live Workspace today. Basically, it a web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access their Office documents online and share their the documents with others.

I would say Microsoft Office Live Workspace is almost identical to Google Docs & Spreadsheets but with a number of limitations. There is only 250 megabytes of storage allocated for each account, or space to keep over 1,000 Office documents. The system requirement for Microsoft Office Live Workspace is as the following :-

• Internet Explorer 6.0 or later on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista
• Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista
• Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later

No information on how it will run in a Unix system though.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is an extended piece of Microsoft Office, so users can easily connect to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on their PC via the Internet.

If you want to be one of the beta testers, just sign up the pre-registration list then Microsoft will invite you in later.

Anyways, to me there are more companies converting desktop applications to Internet based as the online community is growing rapidly. It’s a phenomenon that I’m glad to see. All hail the power of Internet!