February 22, 2006 Review: Office Live Beta Puts SOHOs Online Microsoft's new online service for small businesses helps Web novices build sites and share data with very little trouble. By Rick Scott Courtesy of Page 1 of 4 On February 15, 2006, for small businesses (defined as those with up to 10 employees). Don’t be confused by the name Office Live has little to do with the Microsoft Office suite. It's directed to the small business wishing to build a site and/or share data with co-workers, customers, and partners. Office Live Basics is all about developing a Web presence without HTML experience. The service comes in three flavors. Office Live Basics is the best bargain of the bunch. It includes Web building, e-mail, and hosting (all for free, including domain registration). Collaboration includes the ability to build intranets (to share information with co-workers) and extranets (to share information with the outside world, such as customers, vendors, or partners), but it includes no Web-site tools. The Essentials version combines Basics and Collaboration. As of this writing, the betas of all three are available for free; once they are out of beta, both Collaboration and Essentials will begin at $29.95/month. , the company is making its money by selling advertising on some of the member pages however, it says, the ads will not appear on users' sites. Getting Down to Basics Office Live Basics is all about developing a Web presence without HTML experience. You can build a multi-page Web site by choosing a domain name (which Microsoft registers for you), and picking a design (arranged by business types, such as “real estate” and “pet supplies”). Select a graphic theme and color scheme, and the program builds a sample site, pre-populated with text and graphics that you then can replace. There are 13 pre-defined page templates, including, for example, About Us, Company Calendar, FAQ, Press Releases, and Site Map. Each template has some skeleton text filled in that you can replace, and components that are suitable for that type of page. However, you can build any kind of text-and-image page you want. An Office Live Web page is divided into three sections, called zones, and you can select from a variety of pre-defined zone arrangements. You fill each zone with one or more Web Parts -- think of these as components that make up a Web page, such as text blocks, images, tables, or even a live weather report for a city of your choice. When you create a Web page, you can add both text and images within each Zone. (A Zone is a user-definable area on the page.) Click image to enlarge. Text editing is primitive. Five fonts and seven text sizes are available, and you can apply bold, italic, and underscore, use bullets and numbered lists, and insert links, horizontal lines, tables, or graphics -- but little else. The interface is designed for entering (or pasting) simple text or placing graphics rather than doing any HTML coding, and it’s enough to get those chores done. In fact, by keeping HTML completely inaccessible, it protects less talented or experienced site owners from lousing up their page. E-mail This Story Print This Story Page 2: Creating A Business Site Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Pump Up the Online Jam Linux Web Conferencing: Share And Share Alike? Analysis: AOL Teams With WebEx For Enterprise IM Office 2007 To Feature New Workflow, Collaboration Tools Yahoo Adds Features To Firefox Toolbar Gordano Updates Messaging Suite With SNMP Links     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.