Live Documents To Take on Google Docs and Microsoft Office

it looks like this officelive thing is made by Microsoft….

Amit,
Thank you for covering Live Documents.
Just to clarify on a couple of points that you made – our desktop client is not just a mechanism to upload documents to the cloud – it actually converts Microsoft Office into a collaborative platform and synchronizes all changes made to a document – either on the browser or on the desktop within Microsoft Office – to ensure that the most up-to-date document is available on both platforms. So without having to import or export documents, you have access to all changes made to it by anybody with whom it is shared.
The client also facilitates offline access to your documents – any changes made in offline mode are synced back to the server the next time you go online- this is a big gap that neither Google or Zoho addresses since both solutions require internet connectivity to access your documents.
So, our approach on this is quite different from what Google or Zoho has done – while they offer a pure browser-based service, we give users the choice and flexibility to work on and share their documents on the browser or on the desktop…we would like to think of it as a hybrid model.
Thanks once again for writing about us.
Cheers,
Sumanth Raghavendra
For the Live Documents team

With competition from people with deep pocket MNC’s I don’t know a non revenue model would be how helpful to the guy.

Thanks for the update Sumanth – the original article has been updated based on your feedback.

I think Zoho also offers a link that provides offline access to documents stored in your Zoho account.

You can download an existing document from Zoho Office, edit it offline with Microsoft Word and then publish it to the cloud when your are online again.

But again, I am not sure if Zoho addin provides synchronization features as available inside Live Docs.

Good luck. Am still waiting for a beta invite.

Ha, Last time MS bought out his venture and I think this time Google will! Hail Sabeer Bhatia!

Amit: Thanks for the clarification regarding Zoho’s online/offline syncing capabilities!

Zoho Writer also has the Google Gears integration. We are coming out with offline editing/syncing capabilities very shortly and that will ensure that you don’t need the costly desktop software package for working offline.

MS already having their online and offline suite can easily bring a more tightly coupled sync patch and still pose a tough competition. Waiting for an invite to check what Live Documents has that the already famous and fanned Zoho or Google Office suite doesnt have. :)