With Microsoft's initiatives in the area of HTML5 (the next major revision of the Web's core markup language), including its HTML5-enabled version of Bing search, and updates to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 Web browser, it wouldn't be surprising to hear that Microsoft is indeed working on an HTML5-enabled Hotmail Web application, too. But will Microsoft actually release it before Google does the same for Gmail? That could make things interesting.

In February 2010, Google announced it was shifting all its Google Gears-related efforts to HTML5. Gears, an internally built Web browser plugin, brought offline storage capabilities to a number of Google services, including Gmail, Docs, YouTube, Reader and others. In April 2010, Google announced it would discontinue offline access in Google Docs provided by Gears in favor of HTML5. The transition would be "temporary" Google said. In December, Google announced Docs would have finally HTML5-enabled offline storage once again in "early 2011."

It is now April 2011, and there is still no offline functionality in either Gmail or Docs. According to a post from a Google employee at the beginning of this month on an official Google support forum, the company says it mis-estimated the timeline for the change in Docs.

"Hi all,

We're sorry we mis-estimated the timeline for when we'd have offline functionality again. While we try to provide accurate information around when features will be released, in some instances we can be wrong in guessing how long it'll take to build something. Morever, it's more important for us to launch with as few bugs as possible, which can only happen after much testing and iteration.

Rest assured that our engineering team is working hard to bring offline back. Hope you'll stick around and be patient with us for a bit longer."

Small Advances in HTML5 via Mobile and More

That's not to say HTML5 developments have stalled at Google. It has rolled out HTML5-enabled mobile apps, select features and notifications for Gmail, plus HTML5-enabled cloud printing support for mobile users of Docs. It has just not launched offline storage yet.

Meanwhile, although Microsoft never offered any form of offline storage for Hotmail, it has been publicly touting its HTML5 advances recently, including an HTML5 version of Bing search, an HTML5-enabled smartphone experience and HTML5 support in IE9.

Of course, Microsoft's version of HTML5 support for IE may not be the same one the rest of the online community believes in, as ZDNet points out, referencing Firefox's Mike Beltzner's comment skewering Microsoft for Microsoft for describing HTML5 as a "native experience" that works best on Windows. (Oh Microsoft, will you never learn?)

That said, Microsoft at least seems to be making more noise about the HTML5 Web standard in its products these days, while Google is now on record saying it goofed on the timeline for bringing HTML5 to one of its Web services.

With that in mind, let's declare the race to bring us HTML5-enabled offline storage to webmail officially on. Anyone want to take bets on who gets there first?

The Google Honeycomb version of this popular office program takes advantage of native Android features, including contextual search, voice-to-text and text-to-voice as well as design interface elements, like fragments. But what might be the most amazing part about the launch of the Honeycomb edition of Quickoffice is how fast the app was built - in only 2 months.

Building the Honeycomb Version

To roll out its Honeycomb app this quickly, Quickoffice actually had to sent its developers straight to Google's headquarters where they worked on the new app during the months of January and February.

Today, I had a chance to see the Android tablet version called Quickoffice Pro HD in action, running on the Motorola Xoom tablet. The first thing you notice about the Honeycomb edition is how it takes advantage of the new Android 3.0 user interface design feature called "fragments." What this allows for is having different panes of content on the main screen of the app, where each panel can operate independently from one another. For example, the pane on the left side lets you scroll through your cloud-based storage account lists (Google Docs, Dropbox, Sugarsync, Huddle, Local storage etc.), while another pane lets you scroll through lists of files.

Using Honeycomb's Action Bar at the top of the top of the screen, you can perform actions within a file like searching a string of text you highlighted, having the document read back to you via a computerized voice or inputing text into the document using Android's voice recognition capabilities. As you perform different actions, the Action Bar updates accordingly, offering you specific functions based on what you're currently doing in the program.

Quickoffice will come pre-installed on Xoom tablets and will arrive in the Android Market for other Honeycomb tablet users to download sometime in the next couple of weeks.

A new version of its Android application for smartphones is also arriving now (either today or tomorrow). This update includes file editing capabilities, faster file loading, scrolling, zooming, contextual search, text-to-speech, insert images and creation of PowerPoint presentations.

On Friday, the company announced an update to the iPad app that includes integration with social sharing platforms, like SlideShare, Docstoc and Scribd, plus AirPrint support. This app is available for download from iTunes.

A few weeks after Google announced that its Google Docs service was mobile and iPad-compatible, the company has just noted, via blog post, that Docs' full (aka "desktop") website works on the iPad as well. And it's not just for viewing files, but for editing them, too.

Zuckerberg's response to the iPad question back in November was notable because the industry itself has had a hard time defining the iPad. It works anywhere, it connects to 3G, it runs apps, it can fit in a backpack or handbag - it's mobile, right? But it also has a full Web browser, a large screen, runs productivity programs like Apple's own iWork suite and (now) multitasks - so it's a computer?

Actually, the iPad is an in-between device. If you want to use it for lightweight tasks like updating Twitter or checking your email, the iPad has you covered. But when you're ready to delve in and do some real work, the iPad can handle that, too. Apple's own end-of-the-year "Top Apps of 2010" list confirms this: Pages, Numbers and Keynote, the individual components of Apple's office suite, all made the top 10.

As for Google, by announcing Docs' mobile and full desktop site compatibility, Google is essentially confirming the iPad's dual nature:

"The new mobile editor is fast and lightweight, but sometimes you want to make more style edits like changing a font, or center aligning a paragraph," the post reads. "If you're on an iPad, you can do that by visiting the Desktop version of the document editor."

You can also access the full version of Google Spreadsheets by clicking (err, tapping) "Go to spreadsheet view" at the top of the mobile view on iPad.

However, Google notes that the iPad tablet's browser isn't as powerful as its desktop counterpart, which is why the mobile-optimized view was made available in the first place. Not as powerful, they say? We say this: give it time.

What do you think? Is the iPad mobile or a computer? Or do you agree that it's really an in-between device that can go either way?

The file uploader isn't really a ground-breaking new feature - after all, plenty of sites today are offering drag-and-drop uploads - if anything, it's a long overdue upgrade for the Google Docs service. However, it comes at an important time for Google as it continues to compete with Microsoft Office, one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows to this day.

Microsoft arrived late to the Web Office game, introducing its own online suite in July. Microsoft is also deeply integrating its Office Web Apps into Facebook, we discovered last week, and it will also be integrated with Facebook's newly announced messaging platform. Facebook and Google, although seemingly dissimilar services, are actually two of the biggest rivals in the Internet industry today. Facebook has been poaching top Google engineers left-and-right and is attempting to "out-Google" Google by organizing the Internet through social relationships and "likes" instead of algorithms and analyzing links, as Google does. If successful, Facebook could not only cut deeply into Google's advertising business, but could become people's default search portal, too. Meanwhile, Facebook has partnered with Microsoft's Bing search engine, which is integrated with Facebook's search. (Microsoft's $240 million 2007 investment in Facebook doesn't look so crazy now, does it?)

Two days ago, Google unveiled a counterattack against Microsoft's stalwart suite. It launched a service called "Google Cloud Connect" that allows people still using Office to take advantage of Google Docs' Web-based collaboration features within Office. The product arose from Google's acquisition of DocVerse from earlier this year. With Cloud Connect, files created in Microsoft Office are synced to Google's "cloud" but can still be used in Office for editing purposes.

The goal, of course, is not to improve life for Office users, necessarily, but to make the transition from the desktop to the cloud easier and less cumbersome.

Drag-and-drop is just another example of this ongoing push to get people to leave Office behind.

Google also announced another minor feature today which allows you to hide the title bar above the document editor by choosing either View -> Compact controls or pressing Ctrl Shift F (Cmd Shift F on Macs).

Like its progenitor, Memeo Connect still offers drag-and-drop uploads, but in the latest release, the application's operating system integration has been dramatically improved. Most notably, your Google Docs folder now appears as a virtual drive that Memeo labels "GDrive", and, according to company representatives, the name is being used with Google's blessing.

To Internet early adopters, the name "GDrive" rings more than a few bells. It's referring to the long-rumored cloud storage service that Google has yet to launch. In its imagined state, Google's GDrive would have been a lot like Microsoft's SkyDrive: several gigabytes of free storage available on the Web for all your files. On the theoretical GDrive, however, files could be in any format, of any size and there would be easy ways to sync them or move them back and forth between your computer and the cloud. Office files would open with Google's Docs service, an online counterpart to desktop programs like Microsoft Office, and some even imagined that GDrive would further integrate with other Google properties, like Picasa for photos or YouTube for videos.

Google never fully realized everyone's GDrive dreams, but its Google Docs service is functional enough for most. It allows for the upload of any file type while multiple third-party services offer decent options for keeping files in sync between your computers and cloud. These include Memeo competitors like Box.net, Dropbox, Syncplicity, SugarSync, OfficeSync, Gladinet and more.

There are few programs that actually offer the full virtual drive functionality that Memeo now does, though. The company worked closely with Google to build this latest version of its Connect software and when Google engineers found out Memeo was calling the virtual folder it creates "GDrive," they had a good laugh.

Sorry, Internet, Google isn't designing its own GDrive service anytime soon, but it's well aware of the rumors.

Google actually prefers that, when it comes to GDrive-type offerings, third parties do it for them. The closest thing we'll see to a Google-branded tool of any sort is a desktop uploader application now being built, sources tell us. But it's no GDrive, based on what we've heard.

Version 2.0: More OS Integration Blurs Line Between Desktop and Cloud

In Memeo's case, version 2.0 of its software continues to offer drag-and-drop uploads (even folders!) and automatic synchronization. But it goes further with a combination of features that make using its so-called GDrive a more viable option. For example, you can save files from your desktop-based applications like Microsoft Office directly to Google Docs via GDrive, and you can open GDrive-hosted files with its associated native desktop program. In other words, it blurs the line between the cloud and the desktop, just as Google's mythical GDrive would have supposedly done. And for that reason, we don't at all begrudge Memeo the name "theft."

Memeo Connect's other new features include the ability to select multiple files at once for deletion (from the cloud), filter files by type or category, download all Google Docs with a click, view folders shared with you via Google Docs and more.

And let's not forget one of the most exciting new features: full text search for documents, another benefit of the in-depth collaboration between Memeo and Google when building this new version of Connect. To truly transition to cloud-hosted files, this feature is considered a must-have for many users.

For Business Users Only?

Memeo Connect is more business-focused than it is a consumer tool. It's not available as a "freemium" offering, as some would expect. Surprisingly, that's not Memeo's decision, but rather Google's. Google restricts its API usage for these types of synchronization services so that they only work with those who have business-level accounts.

As far as pricing goes, for Google Premier users, it's $9 a year per user and for non-Premier users, it's $59 a year per user, which includes a new Google Apps Premier Account in addition to the sync service.

Memeo Connect 2.0 is available for free evaluation from here. Both Mac and PC versions are available.

With the updated version of Dropbox installed, iPad users can access all their stored files and folders without having to sync files via iTunes first, as is necessary with Apple's own iWork suite of office applications. Those files can then be viewed in Dropbox itself or opened using third-party software programs .

Dropbox: Your Files, Available Everywhere

For those not experienced with Dropbox, it's an online file storage service which functions like a hard drive in the "cloud," meaning your files and folders are available from any computer with an Internet connection. Ideal for mobile devices with limited storage, Dropbox has become increasingly popular over the years as it eliminates the need to actually carry all your files with you on the physical media in your smartphone, netbook or other mobile Internet device.

In addition, Dropbox's file synchronization capabilities mean that you can manage your files from any Dropbox desktop client application, where files are stored locally and synced to the cloud, or from its Web and mobile interfaces. No matter where you make a change, that change is duplicated everywhere else. The service also lets you access prior revisions of documents and provides sharing features.

On the iPad

With the latest update to the Apple mobile application, Dropbox users now have access to an app that is, in our opinion, an improvement over Apple's own idea of how files should transfer between devices. The beauty of the iPad is that everything you need is available from the slate computer itself: the iTunes Store, the iTunes App Store and, of course, the Web. App updates are available over-the-air too, so there's very little that actually requires you to plug in your iPad to your Mac or PC and sync it like the giant iPod Touch that it is.

One major exception to the iPad's untethered beauty is its document synchronization process. With Apple's iWork - an app The Wall St. Journal's Walt Mossberg dubbed "a serious content creation app that should help the iPad compete with laptops" - the only way to move files from computer to iPad is via an iTunes sync. Alternately, users are forced to deal with workarounds like emailing files to themselves, for example, or uploading them to a website for later download.

Dropbox eliminates those cumbersome solutions and in their place delivers a high-resolution, elegant app worthy of the iPad itself.

You can view files right in Dropbox whether those are word processing documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, photos, videos, music, PDFs or other files. And your favorite files can even be synced for offline viewing.

If you want to open a file in an external application, Dropbox supports a growing list of compatible partner applications like QuickOffice, Documents to Go, Fuze Meeting, Air Sharing HD and others.

The basic Drobox service offers 2 GB of free storage. Power users can upgrade to Pro 50 or Pro 100, which provides 50 or 100 GBs, respectively, for a monthly fee.

You can download Dropbox for iPad here.

In the plugin's place, there will be a "new and improved" HTML5-based offline option which will replace the former solution, but its exact launch date is still unknown.

However, it's the introduction of HTML5 offline mode that may be the biggest and most important change of them all.

From Plugins to Web Standards

To understand why, you have to first look at how Google handles offline access now, a feature also found in Gmail and Google Calendar in addition to Docs. At the moment, these web apps go offline if and only if you've installed the Google Gears browser plugin. Unfortunately, not all browsers can properly run this plugin. For example, Mac's Snow Leopard OS and Safari 4 web browser introduced some features which were incompatible with Gears on newer Mac computers. Internet Explorer users could never view spreadsheets offline and users of "alternative" browsers, like the Mozilla-based Flock for example, had to jump through hoops to make it work. And Google Gears on the iPhone? Forget about it.

A better solution is HTML5, the next revision to the markup language used to code the web. The benefit to making this switch is obvious: HTML5 is a web standard, not a browser plugin. That means it will be supported across web browsers and operating systems, assuming users have updated to a modern browser instead of continuing to run IE6 (who are you people, anyway?!) It also means that Apple can't kick it off the iPhone and iPad the way they did with Adobe's Flash plugin. In fact, it means that Google doesn't have to worry about Apple's restrictions at all, the way iPhone and iPad application developers do. Google just has to build a mobile-friendly website using standards-based technology. The end result will be an Internet-based document creation tool and editor that can work anywhere, anytime, even when the Internet doesn't.

And that, in a nutshell, is the future of the web. Mobilized applications that behave like desktop apps, available with or without an Internet connection and that work on any device. Even the iPad. We can't wait to try it out.

No word yet on how long, exactly, we'll have to go without offline access in Docs before the HTML5 solution is ready, but Google's hosting a webinar next week to share more. Hopefully, further details will arrive then.

Previously, the OfficSync plugin integrated into Microsoft Office's toolbar, appearing as a new menu or tab in its ribbon interface. From here, you could choose to open, save, search or share a Microsoft Office file in any of the suite's flagship programs (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).

However, when it came to the "collaboration" aspect - the standout feature of Google Docs, OfficSync only provided the tools that gave others' access to files hosted on Google Docs. It didn't provide the real-time editing capabilities, such as those found in Google's spreadsheets program (or, as of yesterday, in Google's documents program, too).

But now, OfficSync users can use the software of their choice - Office or Docs - and their changes are sent to the other collaborators in real-time. The changes don't magically occur, keystroke by keystroke, but are pushed to others when the "Save" button is clicked in Microsoft Office or when changes to the Google Docs online version are saved. Office users will see a pop-up message informing them the file was changed and they can then preview the changes, ignore them or update the file. That message is sent in real-time to all users.

You can see the co-authoring feature in action here on YouTube. 

Other Features

In addition to the standout real-time collaboration feature, OfficSync also now includes a few other features worth mentioning too, such as:

• Support for any file type: OfficSync now supports Docs' ability to store files of any type. What this means for Office users is that you can chose to store your Office documents in their native format without "converting" them to Google Docs format. This is ideal for preserving some of the advanced formatting that Docs doesn't support.
• Improved Google Sites Support: OfficSync automatically detects all the Google Sites you have access to and lets you edit those files. You can even create new Google Sites from within Office.
• OfficSync Task Pane: A sidebar panel for Office that shows collaborators, recent documents, documents starred in Google Docs, recently shared documents and more.
• Improved Integrated Search: The new version includes improved integrated Google Search/Google Image Search functionality, available from the toolbar.
• Beta support for Office 2010, the next release of Microsoft Office software, itself still in beta, too.

To download the newly updated OfficSync plugin, visit offisync.com/download (available at approximately 12:30 PM EST today).

Some may argue that's by design - Google likes to keep things simple. However, it appears that may not be the case, after all. As spotted by the Google Operating System blog, a new server-side clipboard looks like it may be close to launch.

Considering Google's continuing advances in the enterprise space, it's not surprising that the company is interested in implementing a cloud-based clipboard to rival the one in Office. Although this may not be the sort of feature that everyday consumers and users of the free version of Docs care much about, it's a perfect example of the sort of feature that a business user needs. When crafting long documents, the ability to store a collection of text, images and other media for re-use throughout a particular file is a time-saving feature that many cannot live without. It's arguably even one of the top reasons why some feel they can't make a complete switch from their desktop office software, be that Microsoft Office or Open Office or something else, to an online service like Google Docs.

Beyond Docs: A Clipboard for YouTube, Picasa and More?

According to the blog post that uncovered this feature (still in testing it appears), the Google Docs clipboard looks like an implementation of a service called Google Cloudboard, revealed back in fall of last year via an accidentally publicized internal feedback form. Cloudboard was described as a "server-side clipboard for Google Apps." Like Cloudboard, the new clipboard works within Google Docs and other Google services including Gmail and Calendar - at least that's what has been spotted so far. However, when the Cloudboard feature was discovered, it was described as working with services outside of Google Apps, too. For example, copying from Picasa, YouTube, Maps and even Google Image Search were cited as use cases for the Cloudboard.

The Cloudboard/clipboard Google has in mind could be handy for heavy Gmail users, especially if it became a feature of the Gmail service itself. It also somewhat brings to mind the Windows Live Mail Quick Add feature which integrates Bing searches, images and video into the online webmail program via a sidebar panel. Google's clipboard could easily do the same and more.

30-Day Retention Policy: This Clipboard Stays with You

In Google's case, clipboard content wouldn't just remain in the program while your Docs/Apps session was active - it would actually remain on Google's Servers for an entire month. According to a now-public Google Help Article:

Content you copy to the server clipboard is stored on Google's servers and remains there until 30 days have passed since you last took action on (for example, copied) a given content selection. Even if a document is deleted, anything you copied from that document to the server clipboard will still exist on Google's servers for that 30-day period. You can delete all items stored on the server clipboard by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting Clear all items.

The article also reveals how the Clipboard content is tied to your Google Account as opposed to one particular computer. "That means you can copy more than one selection and then choose which one to paste later, the page reads. "It also means you can copy something on one computer and then paste it on another."

Although the Google Docs blog hasn't formally announced this feature (as of the time of writing), we're confident that it's more than a rumor at this point. Usually when Google gets around to creating Help documentation, the feature is near launch...sometimes even hours away. We hope that's the case here, too.

We took a look at the options Google suggested and have summarized the features, drawbacks and pricing information below. In addition, we also reviewed one other application not specifically mentioned in the Google blog post that may be of use to those moving to the cloud-based service.

Memeo Connect is a desktop application available for both Mac and PC (XP and higher) which lets you view files on both your desktop and within Google Docs. In the software program, files and folders already online are downloaded to your computer. Local files not yet online can then be moved to the appropriate Google Docs folder via drag-and-drop. The service is relatively simple to use as it presents your documents in an easy-to-navigate window while also incorporating Google's online features like starred files and shared folders.

One major drawback to Memeo Connect is that there's no automatic synchronization option. That means you can't monitor a local folder or folders for new files or changes and then have those documents seamlessly synced to Google's online service. This feature should arrive in a future update, however, so don't let its lack of inclusion be a deal breaker for you if the service fulfills all your other needs.

For personal users of Google Docs, the biggest drawback to Memeo is that the service is only available to users of Google Apps Premier edition, a business-level version of the service which also offers calendaring, groups, Web site creation tools, and video sharing to corporate users for $50 per user per year. Memeo Connect itself costs an additional $9/year.

2. Syncplicity

Syncplicity allows a Google Docs user the ability to access, manage, sync, share, and backup their files online. The downloadable software program seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer for file management purposes. (The Mac software beta program was discontinued in July of last year but the company tells us they're working on an entirely new version right now.) The Explorer integration is a decidedly helpful feature for those who don't want to change the way they already work.

In addition, unlike Memeo Connect, automatic synchronization is possible. And that synchronization isn't only with Google Docs - the software can also sync files to its own website as well as other computers running the Syncplicity software. That means your files are not only available on other machines, they're backed up in multiple places online too. Another benefit to Syncplicity's service is its "restore" feature which lets you undelete files using their Web application. Those accidentally deleted files are immediately restored to your PC's hard drive with a click of a button.

Syncplicity is available in multiple versions for anyone using Google Docs. A free personal edition provides 2 GB of online storage for up to 2 computers while a $15/month personal edition offers 50 GB of storage for up to 5 computers. Businesses can sign up for a separate plan which starts at $45/month for 3 users and goes up from there.

3. Offisync

Offisync is a Microsoft Office plugin which integrates Google Docs directly within your Office software. (See our earlier review here). This is useful for those who only want to upload specific files to Google Docs instead of automatically syncing entire folders. Once installed, the plugin adds an additional menu to Office's software (either Office 2003 or 2007) where you are provided with buttons which allow you to open, save, search, collaborate, and email your Google Docs files.

The software works on Windows PCs and is available for personal users of Google Docs or Google Apps. An Enterprise version provides the same functionality to business users by providing integration with Google's website building software, Google Sites, a service which provides a simplified alternative to SharePoint.

With any one of the three tools above, you can easily transition from a desktop-based computing environment to one where your Office documents are created, managed, and maintained in the cloud. However, it's important to note that Google Docs isn't the only online office suite available. Companies like Zoho, Adobe, ThinkFree, and others also provide online alternatives to Microsoft Office. In addition, Microsoft itself recently launched its own Office Web Applications into beta.

If you're a user of any of the programs mentioned here, let us know about your experiences. Would you recommend one program over another? Are there features you would like to see added? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

In the presentation, written by our Marketing Manager Elyssa Pallai, I spoke about the unique nature of ReadWriteWeb's virtual business model and culture. Watch the video of my entire presentation below, for details of how our company is run and the Internet tools we use.

Presentation, video-taped by Spring TV and available on Viddler:

Slides, via Slideshare:

Also new are 35 user-requested features, including file searching capabilities and integrations with web services like Flickr and Google Image Search. However, one of the most exciting pieces to the upgraded service is the newly launched mobile component. With Acrobat.com's smartphone application, users won't just have access to their files on the go - they can also scan in new documents with their phone's camera.

The one major new feature in this release of Acrobat.com is the file organizer. Before, files could live in three different places on the service. Now all files are accessible through one main interface.

The file organizer itself includes some handy features, too. Instead of using a traditional folder structure like you have on your computer's hard drive, the service introduces something called "collections." These are more like iTunes playlists than file folders (or even labels in Gmail) because files can be assigned to multiple collections instead of having to sit in just one folder.

Another key component to the organizer is a file search tool. Believe it or not, the online service had no way of helping you find your files until now. Although the current search capabilities don't yet offer full text search of your documents, Adobe says that may come further down the road.

Also new is the organizer's "import and edit" feature which lets you open external files directly into the appropriate program so you can begin to work on them online. In the past, you had to first launch the program, then import the file. This time-saving step is more akin to what rival Google Docs offers via their upload feature except that in Acrobat.com, you don't have to click a link to open the uploaded file - it happens automatically.

Other New Features

The various online office programs themselves have seen improvements as well in this new release. Buzzword is leaving beta and now it, along with Presentations, lets you import images from online services like Flickr and Google Images in addition to the images found on your computer. One drawback to this feature, though, is that the online image searches don't offer filtering by license type, so a user could easily get into trouble by adding a copyrighted or otherwise licensed photo into their document if they neglect to check permissions first.

The Tables app, still in beta, now has the ability to do more data sorting and filtering. It also adds new views including a print layout view that shows what the document will look like on the printed page.

Acrobat.com Comes to iPhone, Blackberry

One of the more exciting developments is the new Acrobat.com mobile application which will be made available to Blackberry and iPhone users shortly. Built in conjunction with a company called scanR, the mobile application lets users take advantage of their mobile phone's camera to add new files to the service. After taking the photo, the app uses OCR technology to convert the image to text. How well this works is unknown at this time because the app has not yet arrived in the respective app stores.

The app also lets users view their files in a read-only mode, convert them to PDFs, and share them with others via fax or email. There will be two versions of the app made available - a free version and a premium offering which will allow for more PDF conversions and faxes.

According to Adobe, the Acrobat.com service is faring well. They already have 6 million users and add around 100,000 more each week. While a lot of users are students and SMB owners looking for a free alternative to more expensive Microsoft Office software, the company says they're also seeing the service picked up and used in small workgroups at larger companies. However, Adobe admits that they're not an enterprise play yet and they also won't reveal how many people use the premium version of the service - only that they're "happy" with the number thus far.

If you want to try the upgraded online suite, you can do so at www.acrobat.com as of tomorrow (Saturday, November 21st) at 6 AM EST.

Although still limited to users in the U.S. and Japan, participants in the Technical Preview are able to access the web versions of the Office programs through Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft's online cloud storage service and a part of their Windows Live suite of tools and services.

SkyDrive, which provides each user with 25 GB of online storage, is used to host the documents created using the Office Web Applications. For now, the service is entirely free. However, during our earlier interview with Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Product Management Group, we questioned him about future monetization plans for the online suite. He wouldn't confirm any details, only saying that Microsoft was "experimenting" with several options. To date, nothing has changed on that front.

At the moment, the Technical Preview is not offering full access to all the Office programs - only Word, Excel and PowerPoint are currently available. There is a placeholder for OneNote, but it displays a message reading "Still to come..." when clicked. We're told that OneNote support is due later this fall. That should be relatively soon, considering that it's already October.

The web version of Microsoft Word is also incomplete at this time, allowing you to view files but not create or edit them. Only Excel and PowerPoint allow for both read and write access at the moment.

According to Microsoft, the Technical Preview program is designed solely for the purpose of collecting user feedback prior to the broader beta release of the service. No date has been given for the beta launch as of yet but the online suite is due to ship next year alongside Office 2010, the next version of the company's desktop software suite.

How to Join

If you're interested in signing up for the Technical Preview, you'll need to establish a Windows Live ID if you have yet to do so. Hotmail and Windows Live Mail users should already have one - it's your @hotmail.com or @live.com email address. You can then sign up for the Technical Preview program via this link. As noted above, you will need to select either the United States or Japan during signup, as those are the only two countries supported at this time. After completing the sign up process and accepting the license agreement, your Windows Live ID will have access to the Web Applications by way of SkyDrive.

While the in-home kick-off concept is an interesting launch tactic, we have difficulty believing that the people in the campaign's imagery are actually huddled around the computer enthralled by the Windows 7 experience. Are you sure this isn't a YouTube party? Balloons, shrimp cocktail AND models? If it's going to be this kind of a party, let's just hope no one does any keg stands over your keyboard. To register as a party host visit the house party page.

In saying that, you may think we're overlooking Office Live Workspace, Microsoft's own web-based service for storing and sharing documents with family, friends, or colleagues. After all, it does come with its own plugin for the Microsoft Office software which allows you to both open and save documents to and from your online workspace.

However, while both Google Docs and Office Live provide online storage and easy ways to share files, Google Docs has Office Live beat when it comes to collaboration, a key reason for the service's popularity. Where Office Live uses SharedView for screen sharing a document with another user in real-time, Google Docs allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time without the need for desktop software. Google's service can even alert you via email notifications when changes have been made. Microsoft's soon-to-arrive "Office Web Applications" may end up giving Google Docs a run for their money (especially considering it will work on the iPhone), but at the moment, Google Docs is the better choice for real-time collaboration.

Why OffiSync?

The only problem with Google Docs is that, in some people's opinion, it's just not as good as Microsoft Office software. Of course, that's an entirely subjective statement - you may or may not agree (In fact, it's likely you don't, given that you're reading a blog about web apps and web technology). Still, there's a large user base of folks who launch Office every day instead of a browser, and it's for those people that OffiSync was designed.

Test Drive

Through a simple Office plugin, you're provided with a new menu seamlessly integrated into either your Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 software.

From the menu, you can open, save, search, email, and more, as you can see from the image above. In this case, "open" and "save" refers to opening and saving to and from Google Docs, not your PC.

Saving Files

Our one complaint involves the "Save" and "Save As" options. When we opened an Office document that was saved only on our PC, and went to upload it (save it) to Google Docs, neither "Save" nor "Save As" defaulted the title of the doc to what it was already named. Instead, it displayed "untitled." This is obviously only a minor issue, but one that becomes an annoyance if you use OffiSync to upload a lot of previously local-only files to the Google Docs service.

Browsing & Interacting with Google Docs

Using either the Save or Open menu options, you'll be presented with a dialog box which has tabs for both browsing and searching your Google Docs. There's even a drop-down box that lets you switch between multiple Google accounts if necessary.

We were surprised that you could even interact with the Google Docs service from within this dialog box. For example, a right-click on any folder gave us options to create a new folder, delete the folder, or refresh. This was especially handy as we began to upload and organize our local stash of files. You can also drag-and-drop files from one folder to another.

Searching

The search feature also worked really well, searching not only document titles, but also within the documents themselves. However, if you're looking for a document title using partial text, you'll need to use an asterisk (*) in order for the search feature to locate your file.

Collaborating

With the plugin, you can invite collaborators or modify their permissions. In a dialog box, you simply enter their email address, assign read or write permissions, then click "Save." You can then choose to write a short message and configure your notification options. It's just as easy as using the Google Docs service itself.

At the moment, in order to see real-time edits, you still have to use the Google Docs service in the browser. However, OffiSync creator, Oudi Antebi, is working on a feature that will let users see updates in real-time as two or more people open the file in Office.

Conclusion

The OffiSync software is shaping up to become a must-have add-on for anyone who can't part with their Office installation but wants to enjoy the features of Google's cloud-based service. It may even provide some competition for the upcoming Office Web Applications...if OffiSync ever expands beyond Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that is.

Antebi plans to keep OffiSync free for consumers but charge for the enterprise version, which will be available later this year. It's hard to say if that's the right strategy - after all, we're consumers and we'd be willing to pay for this plugin - it's that good. But given Microsoft's plans to debut their own Office web apps later this year, Antebi may have no other choice but to keep it free for consumers in order to stay competitive.

We just hope that OffiSync doesn't end up with the same fate as that other Google Docs/local docs sync service DocSyncer - they didn't make it. But, we think there's a chance that OffiSync will be able to thrive where that service did not thanks to Antebi's plans to integrate even more Google Services (like Google Maps) into the software in the future. That alone, could give it a unique selling point that no one else provides. He also plans on making the search feature more robust, giving users smart filters to find the files based on metadata (names of collaborators, file type, size, location, etc.). That, too, will be a useful feature - especially as more and more of our documents are transitioned to Google's web-based service.

If you want to try OffiSync for yourself, you can. The download is now available for everyone from the OffiSync web site.