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We recently had the opportunity to test the new Microsoft Office plugin from OffiSync, which integrates Google Docs and Office. We can sum up our findings with one word: WOW. Although still in beta format, the plugin worked extremely well, providing that one missing aspect to the Microsoft Office software suite - an online component for storage, sharing, and collaboration.

According to a post on the Google Enterprise Blog this morning, there's a new tool for Google Apps users that lets businesses sync the user account information in Google Apps with the business's LDAP user directory system. If you're in I.T., you probably already know what that means, but if not let me spell it out for you: Google now syncs with Microsoft's Active Directory.

Is Google finally going to do something with their bookmarking tool, Google Bookmarks? It's possible. In the latest builds of the Chromium project, the open source implementation of the Google Chrome web browser which is the testing ground for new features, a new and improved bookmark manager has been spotted which allows you to import your bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks service.

For anyone who uses multiple calendars, you know that one of the big issues that's being addressed by numerous applications is getting your calendars to sync up with each other. We've covered some solutions to this problem before, but we had not seen a truly integrated offering that allowed you to sync up a work calendar in desktop software with an onlne calendar without need of a third-party app of some sort...that is, until yesterday. It seems that Microsoft has finally given the people what they want and have provided a calendar sync tool that actually makes all of Microsoft's calendaring programs work together.

According to Andrew Fogg from kusiri, Google will start rolling out offline support for both Gmail and Google Calendar through Google Gears within the next six weeks. Google enabled offline access to Google Docs earlier this year, after they had already been using if for Google Reader for over a year. Fogg also found out that Google will start supporting SyncML for synchronizing contacts in Gmail around the same time.

Offline/online synchronization is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to taking web apps offline. Adobe, whose AIR platform brings us some of our favorite apps as of late, like Twhirl and Snackr (our coverage), offers a way for developers to create web-based applications that run even when there is no internet connection. Offline, users can make changes that get synced back to a central server when the internet connection returns. However, in the past, this is no easy easy feat. To help address some of the issues with offline sync, Adobe released LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.6 (LCDS) last month, which aims to make the process easier.

The new Live Mesh service that just launched as an invite only "technology preview" is Microsoft's attempt to tie all of our data together. Live Mesh synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud. It can sync data across devices used by a single users, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users. On the surface, Mesh is a lot like competing file sync services such as Dropbox, SugarSync (which we covered in January), and even Microsoft's own FolderShare product. But what sets Live Mesh apart is its platform approach.

Today Sharpcast is launching an invite-only private beta of it's much-anticipated Project Hummingbird product, with full public launch to follow this Spring. The product has been re-named SugarSync and with it you will be able to sync and backup your files and media across all of your computers, the web and mobile phone. Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas described this to me in an interview as "the holy grail".

ReadWriteWeb was given exclusive early access to the beta of SugarSync. As well as the first look, we have 1,500 beta invites for our readers (details at the end of this post).