This week brought a number of developments worth noting:
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| Subscribing to a Web Slice in IE8 (courtesy of JonUdell.net) |
- Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of Microsoft's browser, went into beta release this week. The big news was its under-the-covers support for Web standards. But Microsoft also is delivering some nifty innovations, including Activities, which help to bring together all the things you do on the Web; and Web Slices, which let users "subscribe" to portions of Web pages, sort of mini-RSS feeds.
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- Microsoft Office Live Workspaces went into beta yesterday. The service lets Microsoft Office users extend their desktop onto the Web. Users can save their documents to the Web and collaborate on them with other users. Google Apps get a lot of attention, including here, but I like this no nonsense recommendation of the new Office Live Workspaces from one blogger:
Yesterday Microsoft unveiled the public beta of Office Live Workspace. Reaction has been mixed, with some positive pieces and some critical pieces comparing Microsoft’s offering to Google Docs and concluding that it’s wanting.
The naysayers are idiots.
Google, by their own admission, will tell you that Google Docs is a pale shadow of Office’s functionality. The attraction of Docs is that your documents are online and always accessible. Oh, and the price is right… free or very inexpensive for small work groups.
Check out this feature-by-feature comparison of Google Apps versus Microsoft Office Live Workspaces here.
