February 22, 2006 Review: Office Live Beta Puts SOHOs Online Shared Sites Stumbles By Rick Scott Courtesy of Page 4 of 4 Shared Sites Stumbles Besides sharing data among your co-workers, Office Live includes a tool called Shared Sites that lets you share key information with customers or partners (in the same way that an extranet does). A Shared Site can let you view a document library and limited business information such as project status; the portal-like view makes organization and navigation easy. Shared Sites lets you share key information with customers, partners, or employees, such as calendars and projects. Click image to enlarge. Building a Shared Site is confusing at first. That’s because while you can add a Project Web Part to a Shared Site, these aren’t the same Web Parts as from the Business Application’s Project application. Shared Sites use completely separate databases. Also, if you use a Shared Site to create a document library and include the same Word file in two such Sites, the file counts double toward your 50MB space limit. Worse, every customer or vendor you share a site with counts toward your 10-user initial allotment. Shared Sites are fine for document libraries, but the feature's lack of integration with the Business Applications means double-data entry, and that precludes their usefulness. Step Lively Office Live lives up to many of its promises. The Basics and Essentials versions let small business owners build a no-frills, no-cost Web site that looks good and doesn’t take a geek, Web consultant, or relative to get up and running. The Essentials and Collaboration versions make it possible to share key customer and company information among your co-workers using a decent set of productivity applications that don’t try to do too much, and a rudimentary tool (Shared Sites) for providing data online for select customers, vendors, or partners You can , but you’ll need to wait in line for an invitation. Microsoft says they're rolling out the applications out in a controlled fashion in order to make sure the system capacity isn’t overtaxed. That makes sense to me. You’ll be asked to provide your credit card; according to Microsoft, this is "in order to validate that every customer is a legitimate entity." However, the company goes on to assure users that, when the beta test period is over, they will be asked for explicit permission to begin charging. Office Live offers everything that a novice Web builder needs in one place, with a simple interface, no technical details to master, and relatively good performance, so that you can get good results for very little effort and a very small learning curve. It cannot, of course, be judged against more sophisticated Web packages, and isn't appropriate for those who are looking to build complex sites; for example, it doesn't have forms or any type of e-commerce features (according to Microsoft, e-commerce support is planned for a release later in the year, but no details were available.) However, if you’re a small business owner looking for a way to build your Web presence and help your team share information, but don’t have the time and energy to find a non-techie solution, Office Live’s all-in-one approach can get you up and running in no time at all. Microsoft Corp. Price: Free Summary: Microsoft's new online applications can help a small business create a simple but effective Web presence. E-mail This Story Print This Story 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.