TAG | web service
Most people may not think of Microsoft when referring to Web application and service, though Microsoft has made a series of Web applications and services, some of which can be on a par with or even better than the products of the network tycoons like Google and Yahoo.
Then, which are Microsoft’s top Web services? Here I would like to introduce the top 5 after I tried numerous Microsoft’s Web services and all the 5 ones are free.
You will find most of the services below are with “Live” brand and you may be confused with the “Live” product line of Microsoft, especially after Microsoft pushed out Live Essentials applications. In fact, Windows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft with most of these services being web application, while Live Essentials containing Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Instant Messenger, is one of the ways to offer Windows Live services.
Windows Live SkyDrive is a store service like its name – the hard disk in the “cloud” which provides 25G web store space. With Windows Live SkyDrive, you can upload and download your private files whenever and wherever possible and let others add or upgrade files in the shared folder.
However, SkyDrive is not perfect. You can not use it as a virtual drive – it won’t show up in My Computer, so you can not directly save a file to the SkyDrive, but this is just a small flaw. You have no reason to require a free store service with 25 GB space to be perfect, especially considering Google has just launched such service named GDrive as a part of Google Docs recently and Yahoo’s Briefcase closed in March 2009 supplied only 25M space. Therefore, it is reasonable to classify SkyDrive to the list of the best online store services
Windows Live Sync is the software for remote sharing, which lets you synchronize or share your files on Internet simply and conveniently. To use the complete service, you need to install a client program and an activex control. After installing the client program, you need to log in the site of Windows Live Sync to fill in the information you want to be synchronized in your personal computer.
You can use it to create images of important folders (such as Favorite, Picture and Documents) so that they can keep synchronizing all the time. Besides, you can access your files at anytime when being out by connecting the synchronic computer through remote system. Finally, it makes sharing files so easy. You can share files with your friends, colleagues and family by just adding or upgrading files in the shared files with the file size Sync can handle up to 4GB.
Different from some commercial synchronic services, Windows Live Sync doesn’t store your file copies in the cloud. It is just a channel to connect all of your computers. However, it is because Sync isn’t involved in any online store that it has no limit to the synchronic data volume.
Live Mesh was a great attempt that Microsoft tried to link all of our data together and it succeed. It can not only synchronize the data in different devices of a single user but also supply the shared space for multiple users.
Superficially, Live Mesh is quite similar to the other synchronic services such as Dropbox, SugarSync and even FolderShare which also belongs to Microsoft. Actually, what makes Live Mesh special is the platformization ambition. It can synchronize data from various devices including the Windows PC, the Mac and the mobile phone or even other hardware devices in the future.
Different from the synchronization of files and folders between one PC and another PC, you can create folders in Live Mesh and make all of your personal devices keep synchronic with these folders. In addition, you can access theses files and folders anytime and anywhere by any machine on Internet. Meanwhile, you have considerable control rights with the synchronization. You can choose files smaller than 500MB or files revised in the past 30 days to be synchronized. Also, Live Mesh supports remote control. So far, Microsoft has never indicated to charge for this service or limit the data volume you can store.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace
Microsoft Office Live Workspace is an online collaboration product to let people access and share Microsoft Office files. Its main target users are individual, small-scale business users and education circles not the large enterprises who expect to access files anywhere.
To begin to use it, you need to have a shared workspace first by choosing the one right for you from the 11 preset workspaces such as Project Workspace, Conference Workspace and Travel Workspace. Of course, you can also create a workspace for yourself. Every workspace will have a built template including PowerPoint presentation file, Excel worksheet and Word file. The members in the workgroup can edit and save the file and remote share and collaborate with the others. To edit the Office files, you need to install a free Office plugin but to browse the file doesn’t need this plugin even no need to have Office installed.
Compared with Google Docs or Zoho, the advantage of Office Live Workspace is the seamless integration with Microsoft Office. You can save files in the workspace and can also use Office programs to edit the files in the workspace. The most important is that it’s better to create files and workspace in the way of template driving.
