As employees tote their own devices into the enterprise, Iongrid’s Nexus software promises to bring Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets to their iPads with what it calls “pixel perfect” fidelity, and in a way that won’t give the corporate compliance department a collective heart attack.

That’s no small feat. C-level execs loved Apple’s iPads from day one, almost immediately forcing their IT departments to support the devices whether they wanted to or not. That worked okay except for two things. First, PowerPoint slides et al. did not display well on iPads without a third-party reader. Second, the proliferation of  internal documents emailed or downloaded to iPads gives compliance officers fits.

Iongrid says the Nexus client-server application layers security atop existing Active Directory server-based policies to let authorized execs including salesmen who need to take presentations on the road, display their documents with great fidelity on their iPads.

Nexus, which debuts Tuesday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, securely streams documents to the iPad for viewing.  The user can then manipulate those documents using the usual iPad gestures. The initial release allows viewing only, although within weeks users will be able to annotate or lightly edit the documents as well, said Nick Triantos, CEO and founder of Iongrid and former chief software architect for NVIDIA.  

“We keep a proxy of the document in memory and a list of changes to that document. Then, when you reconnect, we apply those changes to the original,” Triantos said.

If IT policy allows, people will also be able to  take their documents off-line in which case the local copy on the device will be encrypted, he added.

The potential opportunity is big. The iPad leads the market in tablets, and is a particular favorite among the aforementioned high-level execs. And, many, many companies store their shared Microsoft Office applications in SharePoint repositories.

Typically what happens now when execs want to take their documents on the road, they email them to Gmail and then call them up on the iPad where the documents won’t render correctly without a special reader. Or they save the Office docs to Dropbox or some other cloud-based repository but the display problem remains the same. Sometimes an assistant would convert the required document to PDF and then download that — a “ridiculously labor intensive,” process — Triantos said.

Nexus’ server component enforces existing permissions and security levels set in Active Directory but can add more layers, said Michael Rothrock, Iongrid’s VP of product.

“Active Directory doesn’t know the user location, but we do, so if a user is off campus or abroad, we can enforce a new subset of security based on IP address and the iPad’s GPS information,” he said.

Pricing is $15 per user per month with volume discounts available.

Iongrid was founded in 2010 by Triantos, Rothrock and Ben de Waal, who is CTO.  It’s privately funded by angel investors including Simon Crosby and Nigel Stokes. Crosby is CTO of Bromium (and founder and former CTO of XenSource, now part of Citrix); Stokes is chairman of AppZero and former CEO of DataMirror (acquired by IBM  in 2007.)

Analyst Peter Christy, co-founder of the Internet Research Group, said Iongrid is attacking a meaty problem. Apple iPads were designed for 20-year olds who want to share everything. Business users have different needs, and since two to four percent of laptops or tablets are lost or stolen, these users need higher security standards.

“Oftentimes a thief can turn off the radio on a device before anyone from the home office can wipe it clean,” he said. Iongrid Nexus can alleviate those security concerns.

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Office 365 is not Microsoft’s first attempt at offering this kind of service; it has previously offered hosted Exchange and SharePoint services with BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). But by including Office Web Apps in Office 365, the company now has a much more rounded product that enables users to do their work anywhere, on any device, and to easily collaborate with others.

Office 365 vs. Google Apps for Business

One of Office 365′s main advantages over Google Apps is the huge existing installed user base of Office products. Office is entrenched in the majority of businesses worldwide, and Office 365 offers an easy pathway for those users to migrate to cloud collaboration while using familiar tools. Office 365 also has a greater range of features than Google Apps, incorporating office productivity (Office and Office Web Apps), collaboration and intranet tools (SharePoint Online), email and calendars (Exchange Online) and instant messaging and web conferencing (Lync Online).

Unlike some previous Microsoft releases, Office 365 works cross-platform, so it can be accessed equally via Mac and PC and on mobile devices — although there are reports that mobile access from some devices is limited. Office Web Apps, in particular, is an impressive suite of products, and while they aren’t complete cloud-based replacements for the desktop Office apps — they don’t offer the full range of functionality that desktop apps do — Microsoft obviously invested a lot of effort in making the user experience very similar. The interface is familiar, and documents look identical in Office Web Apps and in the desktop applications. By enabling seamless round-trip working between Office Web Apps and Office desktop applications, Office 365 can also work when users are offline, something that can’t be said of Google Apps.

Of course, Google believes that its product is superior. On Monday, in a post titled “365 reasons to consider Google Apps” on the official Google Enterprise blog, Google Apps Product Manager Shan Sinha aimed a few barbs at Office 365, saying that it is designed for usage by individuals, not by teams; that its pricing is complex; and that Office 365 doesn’t have proven cloud reliability, while Google Apps has a record of 99.9 percent uptime. Some of Sinha’s points are debatable: Office 365 does enable co-editing and collaboration, for example, and Microsoft has plenty of experience in offering cloud-based services, even if Office 365 itself is new.

Easy migration to cloud productivity for existing Office users

With its higher price point, Office 365 might not tempt existing corporate users of Google Apps for Business away, particularly as migrating between the two services is unlikely to be straightforward. However, that’s probably not the market that Microsoft is aiming at. Rather, it wants to keep hold of the huge numbers of business customers with existing investments in the Office product line. For them, Office 365 is a well-designed product that offers an easy migration route to cloud-based office productivity at a reasonable price point with products that will feel very familiar to their users. I think that will make Office 365 a compelling proposition for many business customers, in particular smaller businesses that would like to offer their employees the ability to work and collaborate remotely using familiar Microsoft tools but don’t want to have to make an upfront investment in, and then maintain, their own SharePoint and Exchange servers.

Office 365 is available on a number of different plans, starting at around $6 per user per month for small businesses with less than 25 users; enterprise customers have access to plans including dedicated support. For comparison, Google Apps for Business costs around $4 per month.

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The KnowledgeTree service lets organizations manage and collaborate on documents, and specializes in collaboration within Microsoft Office. It offers features that documents anywhere; manage, co-author and share documents; make documents secure; and manage document lifecycles. The company says that it is interested in competing with the enterprise-oriented document management system offered by Box.net. The app also has have some similarities to cloud file sync provider Dropbox, and to document security service WatchDox, although security is not its primary focus.

The new Android app is part of a new release called KnowledgeTree Cloud 2.0. The app lets users:

• View, manage and securely access documents
• Sync documents between the cloud and the desktop
• Manage document workflow and versioning

The interface of the pre-release version of the Android app that the company sent me to try out is pretty bare-bones. You can search documents through the app’s search function, and view and edit documents using whatever tools are installed on your device; the app does not include a viewer.

Setup and security are not as friendly as I would like. The service seems to have separate passwords for the app itself, the KnowledgeTree account, and the cloud-based vault. Unfortunately, the app’s screens provide no explanation of what the differences are. It’s too easy to go back too many screens, and be forced to log in again. While I can appreciate the need for security, busy mobile workers will probably not appreciate multiple logins. Also, it does not appear to be possible to create a KnowledgeTree account from within the app; that must be done from the company’s website.

If your company is already using KnowledgeTree, of course, mobile access via the new Android app will be useful. If you are not a KnowledgeTree user, you can try it at no charge for 14 days. KnowledgeTree has several plans, beginning at $86 per month for 20GB of shared storage and unlimited users.

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Microsoft Office and a Little More

On the surface, Central Desktop for Office doesn’t seem to change your average Microsoft Office installation very much. It adds a new toolbar, but otherwise, the software looks the same. However, when you install Central Desktop for Office, you’re actually making some big changes. That new toolbar allows you to collaborate with your team and interact with files stored in the cloud without  needing to open a web browser.

The underlying software, based on the OffiSync technology that Simon’s written about before, does the heavy lifting. It integrates online collaboration with the normal functions of Microsoft Office. Central Desktop for Office is compatible with all versions of Microsoft Office, including the 2010 version. Once you install it, you simply use Office as usual and take advantage of a few additional tools. In addition to co-authoring (being able to work on files simultaneously with a collaborator), you can add comments to your files that your teammates can see and respond to. You can also track the versions of your documents so you can return to older versions if need be.

An Alternative to SharePoint?

Central Desktop for Office has positioned itself as an alternative to SharePoint for small- and medium-sized businesses. The full, premium edition costs $30 per year per user. A limited version (which doesn’t include the co-authoring or commenting features) is free for all Central Desktop users.

The pricing is in line with many collaboration tools, but may actually be more cost-effective when you look at how integrated Microsoft Office has become for many offices. When a team is working in different locations, it may rely on hacks or cutting and pasting to make sure that files remain in sync on some collaboration platforms; Microsoft Office usually doesn’t take kindly to two people editing the same file at the same time. Because Central Desktop for Office is integrated into one of the most widely used pieces of software, you can save time on both coordination and training. After all, you won’t have to move your team from Microsoft Office to another platform.

When you add in the fact that Central Desktop’s technology platform offers a variety of tools for collaboration and management — on top of the new software for Microsoft Office — it seems to be a particularly easy-to-adopt collaboration tool.

Have you tried Central Desktop for Office? Let us know what you think if it in the comments.

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With Google and Zoho adding new features and winning customers from the venerable Microsoft Office suite, putting Office on the web is a move that is long overdue. It has the potential to offer users a better way to collaborate with their employers, clients and project teams.

Office Web Apps for Businesses and Consumers

It is important to understand how Microsoft is rolling out Office 2010 Web Apps, since it is actually serving two masters with this launch.

• Office Web Apps for Businesses. This version of Office Web Apps is accessible via the SharePoint 2010 beta. It is feature complete with no expectations of major changes between the beta and Office 2010 RTM version next year. Businesses will get this version as part of the SharePoint licensing.
• Office Web Apps for Consumers. The consumer version of Office Web Apps runs on SkyDrive, with the Microsoft Office team following the Windows Live services model and development schedule. There will be no beta for the consumer version until Office 2010 goes production in the first half of 2010. The Excel Web App and PowerPoint Web App on Windows Live are feature complete.   The Word Web App and OneNote Web Apps won’t be feature complete until the Office 2010 launch in the first half of next year. Consumers will be access this version through their Windows Live account.

While the application features of both versions are the same, the back ends differ. As the business version runs on SharePoint 2010 beta, organizations will have more control over compliance and security. The consumer version doesn’t have such controls.

I was disappointed to find out that you’ll have to wait until it goes online in the first half of next year on Windows Live, unless you have an employer or client running SharePoint 2010. I was fortunate enough to get early access to an instance of Office Web Apps running in a SharePoint 2010 beta environment.

OneNote Web App. My first stop was the OneNote Web App. I was eager to see it after having a positive experience with the OneNote 2010 Technical Preview. The OneNote Web App will be familiar if you’ve used the desktop app with notebooks, sections and pages. The integration of a “History” tab, where you can browse previous versions of a notebook and a list of users who’ve accessed it is a nice touch, and a necessity for project teams who want to collaborate via OneNote 2010 and the OneNote Web App.

Word Web App. The Word Web App includes a base set of formatting tools, including table support. This level of features is probably fine for 80 percent of users. Power users who need the full set of formatting and other tools will still need the functionality provided by the desktop suite.

PowerPoint Web App. Online presentations are a hot commodity this year, with lots of choices available, including SlideRocket and Zoho Show. The PowerPoint Web App comes complete with base-level features including text editing and slide management tools. As I generally like my presentation tools a bit more feature-rich, I think that the PowerPoint Web App will fill a role for more novice users and content reviewers, rather than being suitable for those users tasked to put together a full-blown PowerPoint presentation.

Excel Web App. . The Excel Web App includes a base set of formatting and computational tools, which I see as fine for more general users, but, again, power users who need features like Pivot Tables will need the functionality provided by the desktop suite.

Microsoft Office in a Web World

While my dive into the Office Web Apps beta was largely positive, I still only see Office Web Apps as a complementary offering to the desktop Office suite — it isn’t a complete replacement.

I am sitting back and reserving judgment as to how (or whether) Microsoft can adjust to the iterative development and release cycle popular with other web applications. The release cycles of Google Docs, Zoho Business, and Acrobat.com have delivered features into the hands of users at a pace that desktop applications could never hope to touch.

Have you tried out the Office Web Apps beta? Tell us about your experience below.

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We covered the release of the Office 2010 Technical Preview and the Office Web Apps Technical Preview. This beta smooths out some rough edges in the Technical Preview releases and adds some new features:

Changes across all Office applications. Once upon a time in the pre-Internet dark days, Microsoft Office was just four applications, with little integration between them and no consideration of the role the web would play in document authoring, collaboration, and management. In fact, it wasn’t until Office 2003’s integration with SharePoint that Microsoft Office become a full-blown communications and collaboration tool. Now with Office 2010, Microsoft has opened up the suite even further for more sharing of content across applications and there is further integration with SkyDrive.

OneNote 2010. With every Microsoft Office release, I’ve noticed the Office development team pay special attention to one or two Office applications — OneNote has gotten a lot attention this time around. Besides joining the full Office suite (instead of being a separate purchase), there are many new improvements to the application (see my post about the OneNote 2010 Technical Preview for more detail).The biggest improvement is Microsoft offering up OneNote as a collaboration platform with its new coauthoring feature. With coauthoring, a project team can share and collaborate on OneNote pages and notebooks. As a longtime OneNote user, I can definitely see myself making use of the coauthoring and collaboration tools when I work on a team standardized on Office 2010.

PowerPoint 2010. PowerPoint 2010 enables you to edit video directly in the application, without the need for a third-party tool. While I am the last to call myself a “video person”, my limited testing of the feature showed it to be fine for video novices but those of you more video literate may find the feature to be a little lightweight. I was also happy to see the capability to put presentations online via SkyDrive or SharePoint 2010.

Outlook 2010. The Outlook beta offers improved conversation management tools, including the capability to ignore redundant email. A noteworthy addition to Outlook 2010 is the Outlook Social Connector (OSC), which appears to be a tool that ties into SharePoint 2010 and aggregates information on any user’s emails, phone conversations, and IM sessions with you, With OSC and its upcoming API development kit, Outlook could finally link directly into major social networks without the need for third-party add-ins (see my previous post entitled “Make Microsoft Outlook More Social”). While I wasn’t able to test out OSC fully, I do plan to keep it on my scope and test it further.

Word 2010. Outside of the suite-wide changes, Word 2010 is still pretty much the same feature-wise as it was in the technical preview.

Excel 2010. I like to leave the heavy spreadsheet work to my accounting-minded friends and colleagues but outside of the suite-wide changes, Excel 2010 is still pretty much the same feature  wise as it was in the technical preview.

Have you tried out the Office 2010 Beta? Share your experience below.

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As a technical writer by trade, I have fairly strong opinions as to how a web office suite can fit into the workflow of a team publishing moderately complex documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. I do believe that a web office suite and Microsoft Office don’t have to be “natural enemies in the wild” and can coexist to offer web workers, their employers, and their clients the best possible document authoring, publishing and collaborative working solution.

This post is going to dive into some things web workers should consider in a mixed Microsoft Office/web office environment, and in environments where multiple web office suites are used.

Complementary Technologies: The 80/20 Rule
In my recent post, commenter Ray Stahl brought up the 80/20 rule, which says that 80 percent of an organization’s employees will have their needs met by a web office suite, while 20 percent of the employees (the “power users”) need full Microsoft Office licenses. Microsoft itself believes that this hybrid approach is likely to work in the future, with the desktop Office suite and its own Office Web Apps coexisting quite happily (although as Tom Reestman points out over on our subscription research site GigaOM Pro, its approach may actually be good for its web office competitors).

While each company’s needs will vary, the 80/20 rule seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Microsoft Office licenses can be expensive, so only providing full Microsoft Office licenses to power users like technical writers and the accounting staff makes sense.

Web workers need to be aware with the 80/20 rule as it’s important that recipients can open documents without much fuss.

Here are some considerations:

• Is the recipient using Microsoft Office? If, so what version?
• Does the final deliverable require the advanced features of Microsoft Office? For example, does a spreadsheet rely on pivot tables or complex formulas?
• Only use document templates that don’t lose formatting or have issues when opened in a web office suite. Ask where does the power user sit in the document publishing process? If they are the final publisher then you may also want them to take on the bulk of the template, table of contents generation, and other tasks that require advanced features only available in Microsoft Word.

Web Office Applications Coopetion

The web office productivity world is very competitive, but there is also the opportunity for coopetion when different vendors integrate their services with each other.

Take, for example, the recent update to Zoho Projects (Zoho Projects 2.0 was covered by Doriano last summer) that now includes integration with Google Apps. This latest update includes single sign-on, enabling users to login with their Google credentials; the ability to upload documents from Google Docs to Zoho Projects; view project milestones in Google Calendar including project milestones, tasks and meetings from your Zoho Projects; and an embeddable Zoho Projects gadget you can insert in iGoogle, Gmail and Google Sites.

Perhaps coopetion could even better serve web workers better than all-out competition between the web office suites and Microsoft Office, as companies could build robust online and desktop Office ecosystems, offering web workers more opportunities to have collaborative and publishing solutions that best serve their employers and clients.

Do you use multiple web office productivity tools in your organization?

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While many may consider SharePoint to be not exactly “Mac friendly” just yet, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The Mac user must first be set up with access to the SharePoint site or Office Live Workspace by the local admin or site owner. They must also be running the latest updates to Microsoft Office 2008. Now, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel all include the “Open from Document Connection” feature, accessible from the File menu.

Access from Microsoft Office for the First Time

From the File menu, choose “Open from Document Connection.” The “Document Connection” dialog box appears for the first time. The following illustration shows no document connections have been setup.

From here, you can set up your document connections. For this post, I am going to connect to an Office Live Workspace,  but the steps to connect to a SharePoint site are nearly identical. Choose “Add Location,” and then “Sign in to an Office Live Workspace.”  An authentication dialog box appears:

Once you log in, the Office Live Work Space or SharePoint site file library appears:

Once you’ve opened the document connection, you have the following options:

• Add Location. You can access multiple locations from an open connection. Accessible locations for you then appear on the left side of the dialog.
• Add File. With the Add File option, you can upload additional files from your Mac’s local hard drive or other accessible file location.
• Edit. The Edit option opens the selected file in its native application.
• Read. The Read option enables you to read the selected file in its native application.

If you are logged into a SharePoint site, you’ll have options to Upload, Check Out, Check In, and Discard files.

Working On the Mac in a Microsoft Windows World

The addition of the Open Document Connection feature may not satisfy every Mac-using web worker who has to access files from an Office Live Workspace or SharePoint site, but at least now, Mac-using web workers aren’t quite as shut out as they once might have been.

Have you tried accessing SharePoint or Office Live Workspaces using Office 2008 Mac? Share your experiences below.

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The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview shows that Outlook 2010 will include a number of productivity-boosting enhancements that should appeal to a wide cross-section of users, from the novice to the seasoned pro. Here are my top five productivity enhancements in Outlook 2010.

Backstage View. Personally, I think the addition of the Backstage View in Office 2010 applications sets a new level of application accessibility and usability, especially in Outlook 2010. Clicking on the Office button gives you access to Outlook settings and account information, including account settings, automatic replies to email, mailbox cleanup, and rules. Bringing all this information into one interface should be a boon to productivity, since users will no longer have to hunt around for management features in various Outlook menus.

Schedule View. Although there were different “views” of Outlook data in previous releases, the implementation meant that they weren’t that useful. However, Outlook 2010 includes better control over views, and I recommend anybody test driving it to spend some time using them. A case in point is the new Schedule view, which provides better insight into your daily schedule, as recorded in your Outlook calendar. Moreover, as with the other views, you have the option to set different time scales to provide a granular look as to what is going in your day. The new Time Scale feature enables you to scale your schedule view from 5-minute to 60-minute increments.

Task Notes. Office 2010 includes OneNote 2010 integration with the main Office applications, including Outlook. From the Outlook Tasks List, click “Task Notes” and the “Select Location in OneNote” dialog box appears. From this dialog box, you have the option of selecting a section or page for your task notes. Even if you are currently a big OneNote user, the introduction of Task Notes in Outlook 2010 may cause you to reconsider your existing OneNote organizational schema.  I see the integration of OneNote with Outlook and other Office 2010 applications as one of the highlights in this upcoming Office release.

Publish Online. The new Publish Online feature gives the promise of a geographically-dispersed project team being able to publish their personal and team calendar data online, and make it accessible to the team.  With Publish Online, you can publish your Outlook calendar to Office Online, or a WebDAV server. I like the options here because it won’t tie you to an expensive online collaboration solution.

Customize Common Tasks. There have been few (if any) changes to how you perform common Outlook tasks in quite some time. With the launch of Outlook 2010, you have the option to customize how you perform common tasks like sending meeting invites to your team, sending emails to your whole team, and forwarding emails. You also have the option to create your own “quick steps” from scratch. These options are available from “Quick Steps” in the Home ribbon or from the “Quick Steps” dialog box. The best part is that these options are dialog box-driven, with no knowledge of macros required.

Outlook 2010 and Your Productivity

While I lamented in a previous post that Outlook 2010 needs to be more social, the productivity enhancements present in Outlook 2010 offer a lot for everyone from novice to power users. My history as a writer and computer book technical reviewer on Office topics goes back to Office 2000; the Office 2010 Technical Preview — especially Outlook 2010 — show a lot more promise at this stage than previous releases, so I’m looking forward to checking out the final version.

What productivity features are you looking for in Outlook 2010?

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It’s important to note that this first release is a Technical Preview (only the Excel Web App and PowerPoint Web Apps have close to full functionality). However, what I have seen shows a lot of potential for Office Web Apps, even with the present limitations. This post looks at how this beta stacks up against the Office 2010 Technical Preview (the desktop suite), Google Apps and Zoho Business.

Office 2010 Technical Preview vs. Office Web Apps Technical Preview

The quality time I’ve spent thus far covering the Office 2010 Technical Preview and OneNote 2010 has shown me that Microsoft is applying lessons it’s learned from previous Microsoft Office versions and is on the verge of delivering a greatly-improved Office suite with a number of productivity features.

Currently, the Office Web Apps Technical Preview isn’t as powerful as its desktop cousin is, but it may not have to be in order to be effective. I think that the reality in many organizations is that web office suites like Office Web Apps, Google Apps and Zoho Business can complement desktop apps, like Microsoft Office. You can still serve large sectors of your user community just fine with the web apps, with only a smaller number of power users needing access to both desktop and web apps.

The Excel Web App and PowerPoint Web App in the Technical Preview aren’t as feature-rich as the desktop applications. As Simon noted yesterday, you can do things like add and remove columns in Excel, but you can’t create new charts. You can use PowerPoint Web App to create new presentations, including inserting new slides based on handy templates, and working with text and images, but it certainly isn’t as powerful or flexible and PowerPoint on the desktop. However, if you just need to use the Web Apps for editing existing documents, or creating only basic new documents, they will probably be good enough.

One thing I look forward to testing in Office Web Apps when it launches is round-tripping Microsoft Office documents from Office 2010 on the desktop to Office Web Apps, with little to no loss in document formatting. As much as I am a proponent of web office suites, I do a lot of client work as a technical writer and look forward to the day when I can work on the same Microsoft Office document on the desktop or from a web office application and encounter a minimal amount of formatting issues in a complex document like a user guide.

Google Apps vs. Office Web Apps Technical Preview

I’ve been using Google Apps for a while now, using Google Docs for light word processing and spreadsheet jockeying. While I like Google Apps, I find it to be a bit on the minimalist side when it comes to the user interface and functionality. However, for the tasks I use it for, it does a fine job because I don’t need power user features.

The Excel Web App and the PowerPoint Web App remind me of early iterations of Google Spreadsheets and Google Presentations. The Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps do a good job of maintaining the look and feel of your document — you won’t get a different-looking document when you’re editing it online. With the Word Web App only able to view documents at this time, I can’t size it up against Google Docs as far as word processing goes.

Zoho Business and Office Web Apps Technical Preview

I’ve written about Zoho in the past, including a post about the latest updates to Zoho Notebook, a Web-based competitor to OneNote on the desktop and, eventually, the OneNote Web App (which, unfortunately, is not yet available for testing in the Technical Preview). While Google Apps and the Office Web Apps Technical Preview take a more minimalist approach to web office productivity applications, Zoho delivers a more feature-rich web office application that can nearly rival a desktop application.

While some pundits predict the end of Zoho with the launch of Office Web Apps, I think they are targeting different user groups. Zoho Business can satisfy the needs of users seeking an online replacement for Microsoft Office, while Office Web Apps is aimed at users seeking to complement the desktop suite.

Office Web Apps in a Multi-Platform World

During the writing of this post, I tried to access the Office Web Apps Technical Preview with different browsers (except Microsoft Internet Explorer, which I’m going to assume will work okay). For much of my testing, I was using a Windows XP machine running Firefox 3.5.3, but I did also access Office Web Apps on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. I am pleased to report that I had a consistent user experience across the browsers.

Final Thoughts on the Technical Preview

It’s important to temper expectations; the current Technical Preview is just that, a preview. There is still a lot more work ahead to get the Office Web Apps ready for launch. While I still want to see a lot more in Office Web Apps, I think the Technical Preview is a solid start, and plan to follow Office Web Apps until its launch and afterwards to see if Microsoft can keep the pace of new feature releases that Google Apps, Zoho Business and other web productivity applications enjoy.

What are your expectations for Office Web Apps?

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I saw a demo of the new apps yesterday, and have to say that they look quite impressive. Office Web Apps will be available for free through Windows Live Skydrive (which also offers 25GB of free cloud storage), and will consist of web app equivalents of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Unlike the more stripped-down Google Apps and Zoho, the documents in Office Web Apps look virtually identical to those in the desktop version of Office. So, for example, charts will appear in Excel worksheets just as they appear on your local machine, and formatting is retained in Word documents (margins, fonts, watermarks, tables, images, etc.). This means that you should be able to create much richer, print-ready documents using Office Web Apps than you can with Zoho or Google Apps. Much of the interface is also borrowed from the desktop apps, which should help transition users to the web apps.

As you might expect, the web apps have a more limited feature set than the desktop apps. For example, while you can do reasonably complex things like add and remove columns in Excel and see charts update as a result of changes you make, you can’t create new charts. For that, you’ll need to use the desktop app — there’s a handy button that you can use to switch to editing the document on the desktop, though. On the other hand, the Web Apps have some nice cloud-enabled features; the Excel and OneNote Web Apps allow simultaneous editing by multiple users, for example. (Concurrent multi-user editing is not available in Word or PowerPoint, as Microsoft says that people find it distracting.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given Microsoft’s track record, Office Web Apps should be reasonably cross-browser compatible. Officially supported browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (although others, like Chrome and Opera, are not blocked and will probably also work), and while the Powerpoint and Word Web Apps will use Silverlight if it’s available, it’s not a requirement.

It’s important to realize that this is only a beta, so some functionality is not yet included and there are still some problems to iron out; there is no editing in Word yet, for example. Microsoft also notes that you should periodically back up any documents that you edit with Office Web Apps.

Let us know your thoughts on Office Web Apps in the comments.

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Recently, Balesio introduced FILEminimizer Office, a shareware Outlook add-in promising a staggering — and, frankly, hard to believe — “up to 98 percent” file compression solution, including embedded objects and pictures, with no need for unzipping software or proprietary tools. While many web workers may still use the venerable WinZip to compress files before emailing them, or use web apps like YouSendIt and DropBox to host their files, FILEmininimizer Office might offer an easy to use, integrated solution. But does it achieve that lofty claim of 98 percent compression?

Put simply, no it doesn’t. In my first test, I tried to compress an 8.46 MB Word 2003 file; I was not able to enjoy the supposed 98 percent file compression. In fact, I was not able to compress this file at all. When I tried using WinZip, I was able to shrink the file down to 6.43 MB. In my next test, I tried to compress a 4.95 MB Word 2003 file. FILEMinimizer Office only compressed the file down to 4.47 MB. While my testing is hardly scientific, I think the claims of “up to 98 percent compression” probably only apply to very specific — and probably not real world — use cases.

While I was disappointed with my testing, FILEminimizer Office does have some strengths worthy of note, including a well-developed user interface. It also maintains the Microsoft Office file integrity, so recipients can open up a compressed file just as they would any other Office file, without needing to download any other software.

As a long-time WinZip user, I find myself compressing files less and less as time goes on, for a variety of reasons including the emergence of mature graphic formats like .png and .jpg which keep my document file sizes down; more client projects revolving around SharePoint as a collaboration platform; and a massive increase in available bandwidth. Lastly, at least in my market, large technical documents don’t seem to be as common as they once were, though I am sure, the emailing of large Microsoft Office documents (10 MB+) is still alive and well in many organizations.

FILEminimizer Office is available for download from the Balesio web site. It allows you twelve free compressions before you have to purchase a license. I recommend testing it out to see if your compression testing fares better than my own. It costs $49.95 for a single license, with multiple user licenses available.

Are you still working with large Microsoft Office documents? How do you send them to your co-workers?

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Backstage View

Office 2010 replaces the old File menu in all of the applications with something called “Backstage View.” This contains familiar tasks like Save, Print and Publish. However, it also makes a lot of document-specific information including Document Mode, Permissions, Prepare for Distribution, and Versions readily available.

Backstage View didn’t stand out to me when I was looking over the list of new features. However, I was quickly sold on it while testing Word 2010, because it put all of my important document management information into a single view.

Ribbon Menu Enhancements

While Office 2010 keeps the ribbon menu that was introduced in Office 2007, it now extends across the entire Microsoft Office 2010 suite. While the ribbon has just as many detractors as it does lovers, Microsoft has made many improvements over the version found in Office 2007. In particular, it lets you customize it to your particular working style in each application. The ribbon received a lot of criticism in the 2007 release, but these enhancements should build greater acceptance of perhaps the most drastic Office interface change so far.

Support for Co-authoring

Word 2010, OneNote 2010, and PowerPoint 2010 now include a co-authoring feature, enabling multiple authors to work on the same document at the same time. This is a welcome change from having to use SharePoint, where only one author at a time can check a document out for editing. The addition of co-authoring is really ratcheting Office 2010’s collaboration options.

Improved Conversation View in Outlook 2010

Email management can be a challenge to even the most experienced web worker. To help tame your inbox, Outlook 2010 includes an improved Conversation View, which includes:

• Show Messages from All Folders
• Reverse Sort
• Add Columns
• Expand/Collapse

I am pleased with the new, more granular Conversation View. The controls are very accessible and usable, showing a definite improvement over Outlook 2007.

OneNote 2010

While it has been part of the Office family since 2003, OneNote 2010 is now included as part of every Office 2010 edition. This is a well-deserved “bump up” for OneNote, and I hope to that it takes the application further into the corporate mainstream now that it isn’t a separate purchase. The latest release of the popular note-taking app sports version tracking, highlighting and Linked Notes.

As a longtime OneNote user, these features are very handy.  I can’t wait until OneNote is available on the web so that I can see how it stacks up against EverNote.

Final Thoughts about Office 2010 Technical Preview

My tests of Microsoft Office 2010 show enough productivity tweaks to make it an attractive upgrade. If the upcoming Office Web components live up to their potential, then Office 2010 is going to break from the tradition of Office releases having to compete against previous versions of itself and make a strong first impression on the web office suite market.

Have you tried Office 2010 Technical Preview?

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This is especially good news for web workers who have been longing for an access-anywhere version of the Office suite, many of whom have been struggling with hybrid Office/Google Docs solutions.

However, the bad news is that Office 2010 and Office Web won’t be available until the first half of next year, so unless you have access to the Technical Preview you’re going to have to wait a long time to try it out. Microsoft has hinted that a wider beta test of Office Web could be made available later this year, but that still seems like a painfully long wait in today’s “release early, iterate often” world of web apps. In the meantime, I think it’s quite likely that we’ll see some considerable improvements to Google Apps.

What do you think of this announcement? Can you wait until early next year for Office Web?

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Even as a devoted Apple user, no matter how much I want to, I can’t quite make the psychological break from Microsoft Office. I’ve nothing against the software giant’s office suite — even the 2008 Mac edition I use is a great collection of software, although it is perhaps a little over-featured,  lacking the intuitive web collaboration of Google Docs and not quite as elegantly Mac-native as I’d like.

Apple’s iWork ’09 fares no better on web collaboration than Microsoft’s offering, but it’s certainly more Mac-native and tantalizingly low-priced, though it’s not as full-featured and lacks tutorials for new users switching from Office.

As expected, the book steps through the application’s regular features but puts a surprising emphasis on design and aesthetics. The title’s broadly divided into three sections — focusing on Pages, Numbers and Keynote, respectively — with each section roughly breaking down into creating and editing, layout, themes and templates, and sharing. It’s a  well put together tour of the suite, providing an overview of basics, with some hints and tips and coverage of more advanced functionality. There are few other books around that provide an objective (i.e., non-Apple) coverage of iWork, and in that regard, it’s a good overview.

However, even after an afternoon spent with iWork ’09 and Clark’s book, I’m still drawn to Microsoft Office. As elegant and as powerful as iWork is, the near ubiquity of Microsoft’s suite means that I feel my time is better spent understanding the ins and outs of a product where my investment in skilling up is more likely to yield more portable and transferable skills.

“iWork ’09: The Missing Manual” is a great title for acclimatizing yourself with Apple’s lovely working environment, but I can’t help but think iWork will remain a niche application suite in the face of Microsoft’s de facto standard.

Let us know what you think of the iWork office suite in the comments.

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Om provided a great overview and perhaps the most pertinent release for web workers was the beta launch of iWork.com, Apple’s foray into web-based office productivity applications.

For many Web Workers, applications such as Google Docs and Zoho are invaluable collaboration and productivity tools, with Google setting the standard in online office suites. iWork isn’t a straight web-based office replacement for Apple’s desktop software, but an enhanced suite of desktop applications that uses a handful of web-based features specifically for collaboration.

Experimenting with Pages ’09 this afternoon, the application now includes a Share menu, enabling users to share a document by email. Collaborators are invited by email notifications that link to an online view of the document. Sadly, neither collaborators or document owners can edit the document online, but simply annotate it with brief notes.

The online web view is cross-platform, but strangely iWork insists on using Apple’s own Mail client to send invitations to collaborators – irritating if you’re using a web-based service such as Gmail – but perhaps a subtle mechanism for keeping users in Apple’s constellation of services.

I suspect most web workers may not find iWork’s collaboration and sharing features useful at all. There’s some value in vertically integrating desktop applications and with online features, but I have a feeling Apple would have better served users by building hooks to existing online suites. How about a ‘Send to Google Docs’ or ‘Send to Zoho’ feature alongside ‘Send to iWork.com’?

Despite Eric Schmidt’s seat on Apple’s board, there’s little in the way of deep integration between Google’s ever evolving web-applications world and Apple’s elegant desktop. With Microsoft’s Office 14 for Web due in coming months, it’s hard to see where Apple can compete with Microsoft, Google and Zoho.

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