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).

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).

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.

We got a chance to talk to Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Product Management Group, last week. He gave us more information about the Office Web applications. The web-based applications were designed to work on any browser and should even work on most mobile browsers. While some functions will only be available when Microsoft's Silverlight is available on a machine, Silverlight is not a requirement to run most features of the web applications. Numoto stressed that the apps will run on Firefox, Safari, and, obviously, IE, though Google's Chrome is suspiciously absent from this list (Stephen Elop, the head of the Office division explains why at the end of this interview).

The web applications will be tied in closely with the desktop clients, and the online storage will be managed through SkyDrive. For consumers, the web apps will be hosted on Windows Live and will be available for free, although Numoto remained tight-lipped about possible plans to monetize the apps through advertising. We could only get him to acknowledge that Microsoft was indeed 'experimenting' with various options, which we can only assume includes advertising.

Real-Time Collaboration

Another important aspect, which also ties in with a feature that Microsoft is stressing in the desktop applications of the Office suite, is the ability to collaborate on any document with various users simultaneously - including those using the web applications. While we haven't seen this in action, having a rich-text editor at hand for real-time collaboration on Word and PowerPoint documents is going to be a very exciting feature for a lot of users (however some third-party service providers who currently offer similar services will probably not be happy about this).

Enterprise: Office Web Behind the Firewall

For enterprises, Microsoft will offer two solutions. One will be hosted as part of Microsoft's Online Services. Another version, however, will be available for companies to host on their own servers on top of SharePoint. For enterprises, especially those that have long felt that cloud computing wasn't for them, this self-hosted version of the browser-based Office suite is going to be a very attractive solution, especially considering that all of Microsoft's 90 million Office annuity customers will get access to this version as a regular part of the updates that come with these volume licenses.

As Numoto told us, Microsoft believes that this will allow the company to differentiate itself from other companies that offer office solutions in the cloud. While Takeshi was careful not to mention any competitors by name, it is obvious that this is aimed at Google (and perhaps less so, startups like Zoho and ThinkFree).

Clearly, this release will be a major deal for consumers and enterprises. A free version of the browser-based Office application that easily syncs with the desktop version and allows collaboration between users on both systems is going to be a big deal.

What About the Desktop?

The desktop apps obviously also got a make-over. But compared to the shift to Office 2007, the current release features only minor cosmetic updates from what we have seen so far. The integration of the web apps looks like the most exciting addition, as well as the ribbon interface becoming standard across all the applications. Also, Microsoft is putting a lot of emphasis on real-time collaboration, and different users can now edit documents simultaneously. Alhough Numote emphasized that all edits can be reversed.

Numoto also stressed the Office team focused on improving some of the most often used features. As an example, he told us that cut and paste is obviously one of the most popular features in Office, but that Microsoft found that after pasting something into a document, the key that was used the most often afterward was 'delete.' In order to improve the cut and paste process, Office will now feature a 'cut and paste preview,' similar to the feature that Office 2007 already offers for changing styles and fonts, for example.

Outlook aficionados will also be happy to hear that the email client will now feature an option to 'ignore' unwanted threads.

While the Technical Preview, which was announced today, will only be available for a limited number of users, the beta program will be open to everybody. Microsoft expects to ship the final version of Office 2010 in the first half of 2010.

So far, we haven't had a chance to actually test-drive the desktop or web apps ourselves, but you can expect an in-depth review from us once we get access to the beta.

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.

When adding the gadgets to iGoogle or Gmail, you won't have to enter in your Zoho account information in order to access your Zoho data. That's thanks to the oAuth support built in. In order to add a custom gadget to Gmail, you must first turn on a particular setting in labs which allows for this (Enable "Add any gadget by URL" in Labs).

Note: To learn more about custom Gmail gadgets, go here.

In social networks like Facebook and Orkut, the gadgets function more like applications. Once you click the link on the Gadgets page to add them to your profile, you'll be taken to a page where you'll need to enter in your account information before they will appear in your Applications list.

Finally, for OpenSocial compatible networks and applications, a link to an XML file is provided and for anywhere else you need a gadget, there's a generic embed code that can be used.

For anyone thinking of making the switch from Google Docs or Gmail over to the Zoho Suite, gadgets like these can make the transition easier as you'll be able to keep up with what's new even when you're still in your Google applications. And for those of us who spend entirely too much time in social networks, having these gadgets on hand means we won't miss out on the important information that matters most.

The new Zoho Chat 2.0 is no dumbed-down client. It offers most of the features that you have come to expect from your IM desktop applications. You can send files, record your chat history, customize your theme, and more - just like regular IM apps allow. It does a few cool tricks, too. For example, you can type in a new event in the chat bar at the bottom of Zoho Calendar to create a new appointment on the fly. In Zoho Meeting, you can launch desktop sharing with others from within the IM application. (Windows only for now.)

The chat tool is also able to send you notifications from activities that take place within Zoho itself, including document sharing notifications, unread chat messages and more - definitely a handy feature. Future releases for chat include plans to introduce even more IM networks, most notably Skype.

This release represents a major upgrade of the chat application in Zoho. Current Zoho users can try Chat 2.0 here as of today: chat.zoho.com.

The word processor itself is rather rudimentary. There are some basic options for formatting your text, aligning it, highlighting it, etc. You can also choose to insert photos and links from the "Insert" menu or create bulleted and numbered lists. Beyond that, the tool doesn't do much in terms of word processing. Also, at the moment, the files you create can only be saved in .HTML format. Other formats like .TXT, .ODT, and .DOC will arrive in later, says the company.

If basic word processing was all that Shutterborg did, it probably wouldn't be worth a mention just yet. However, the "Open from Web" option that is presented to you upon launch is a pretty clever invention. Here, you can enter in any URL on the internet to open an exact replica of that web page, with the CSS and images intact. You can then edit it as you desire which could obviously lead to some humorous creations.

That feature alone makes Shutterborg worth a look simply because it's so easy to use. Although the resulting HTML file won't look like much if opened outside of the Shutterborg processor, it's easy enough to grab a screenshot of your mocked up creation while you have Shutterborg open. The potential for creating hilarious edits to well-known sites will certainly appeal to the creative types out there. We can't wait to see what they come up with. 

Shutterborg is a creation of developIT, a small business in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada whose focus is on developing web sites and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for businesses of all sizes.

• In 2004 Ludicorp, creators of Flickr, was named Best LittleCo and Feedburner Most Promising. Both of course have since been acquired (by Yahoo! and Google respectively).
• In 2005 37Signals was Best LittleCo and Memeorandum (now Techmeme) and Digg were joint Most Promising.
• In 2006 YouTube was Best LittleCo and Sharpcast Most Promising.
• In 2007 Twitter got Best BigCo and (in a bit of a break from tradition) we named "the open source movement" as most promising - a loose-knit group that aims to make a huge impact by tying all Web companies together. Last year we thought there was no single Web company that was more promising, and we have probably been proven right as our Best Web Platforms 2008 post showed (OpenSocial, Android, Mozilla Weave, Fire Eagle, ...).

Now let's find out who is ReadWriteWeb's Best LittleCo of 2008...

Best LittleCo of 2008: Zoho

We felt that Web Office vendor Zoho best represented the 'LittleCo' ethos this year, due to its David vs Goliath effort in competing head on with products from several very large companies: Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Salesforce.com's core CRM platform.

Zoho not only competed with these bigcos, they were innovative and scrappy about it. And in a year that will be remembered for the economic downturn, Zoho is a reminder to us all that we can work ourselves out of a down economy.

Zoho made two of our year-end Top 10 Products list - in the International category and in the Enterprise catagory. It is an Indian startup that offers a number of office tools, project management software and CRM solutions. It made serious advances with its office productivity suite during 2008, reaching a milestone of 1 million users in August this year.

Some of the specific highlights this year include: updating Writer at the beginning of 2008 to include support for the DocX file format, along with several other features; adding support for Visual Basic compatible macros to Zoho Sheet in April, then macro record and playback four months later; releasing a marketplace in September; Zoho Mail emerging from private beta in October, while offering offline support via Google Gears.

Our one note of caution with Zoho is that, as you can see from the above screenshot, it has so many products that it potentially spreads itself too thin. Some of its products show a lack of depth as a result - we focused on some of those issues in a post in September. So we're not claiming Zoho has the Web Office market cracked, just as Twitter had some issues last year when we chose it as our Best LittleCo. But overall, we applaud Zoho for its continued innovation and for competing effectively against the big guns!

After the jump, ReadWriteWeb's pick for Most Promising for 2009!

Most Promising Company of 2008: Brightkite

Again this was a tough choice. We were impressed with the potential of many apps this year. Open source music app SongBird, micro-lending service Kiva, online finance service Mint, health social network PatientsLikeMe - to name just some. However we ultimately came back to a type of application that made a breakthrough this year: Mobile Web. We named Apple Best BigCo of 2008 due to its iPhone platform, but we think there's still a lot of untapped potential in mobile. In particular no one company has yet broken through with a mobile-native social network. We think mobile social network Brightkite may become that app.

Brightkite was named in our Top 10 Mobile Web Apps of 2008, in which Sarah Perez explained that Brightkite includes an iPhone app, but it's much more than a toy for the exclusive club of iPhone owners. The service - a device agnostic, SMS-based application - lets you "check in" at various locations out in the real world and then see who else is there, has been there, and who is nearby. You can check in via text, web,or iPhone, but text is easiest if you're using a traditional cell phone.

While Brightkite hasn't been hugely successful yet in terms of numbers, we think it has a lot of potential. There's still some debate as to whether consumers really want new and separate social networks for the mobile phone. As we noted back in October, no other social network, including those specialized for mobile devices, had even reached 15% adoption. That means Brightkite and others like it still have a way to go before they become a solid part of the new mobile web.

However, if any of these apps have a chance for success, it's Brightkite. With the service's Twitter integration and live event niche, it offers something unique.

So there you have it: Zoho is our Best LittleCo of 2008 and Brightkite is our Most Promising for 2009. Agree? Or feel like arguing about it? We invite you to let your feelings known in the comments.

Why electronic fax instead of faxing using a good old 'All-in-one' fax/printer/scanner machine? Well for one, it's more convenient for many people to send and receive faxes by email, which is what electronic faxing enables. Also, electronic faxing allows you to get an international fax number. And electronic faxing doesn't tie up your phone line. Bottom line: so many of the basic tasks any business has to deal with these days can be more efficiently done over the Internet; and faxing is no exception.

I asked the friends of RWW on Twitter today which solutions they recommend.

Several people suggested efax.com - and that's the one I signed up for, given that it has a 30-day free trial. It's $12.95 per month from then on, which is a bit of a premium on the other services mentioned in this post. But efax.com appears to be the market leader in this niche.

efax.com is a nice, simple web solution for faxing. There are no real 'web 2.0 frills' to it - no collaborating with other fax users, no rating faxes, no commenting on faxes, etc. It actually sounds a bit silly to suggest those features in this context. Because let's be honest, electronic faxing doesn't need any of the trendy 2.0 features - faxing over the Web is a simple and direct service that people will actually pay for.

$12.95 per month is about half the price of a basic Basecamp project management account. Although you could buy a fax machine for a one-off price of $100, so in reality you are paying a premium for the convenience of faxing over the Web.

What other electronic fax solutions are out there?

salimmitha tweeted that "the best one which i have used for ages is Maxemail - and you can easily get a US fax number - love it"

Dan And Jennifer said that "we've been using RingCentral for a few years, it's inexpensive and it just works; actually it's fax AND voicemail w / call forwarding."

Bill Mitchell suggested Faxzero.

Other options include send2fax.com, FaxMicro, smartFax, Data On Call, TrustFax and FaxItNice.

The pricing of all these services starts at around $10-15. There are a couple of free providers, but they put ads on your faxes - not a good look if you're running a business and using the service to send signed contracts. $10 per month seems reasonable for an electronic fax service and there's definitely still a business need for it.

Do you electronic fax and if so which service do you use?

UPDATE, 19 March 2009: We have updated our post to use the term 'electronic fax', rather than the term that was previously used, due to a legal letter we received.

The online versions will share the same names as their desktop counterparts (Word, Excel, etc), although unfortunately they don't fully escape the awkward and confusing branding that Microsoft gives to most of its Internet apps. The collective name for these apps is "Office Web Applications". To remind you, there is also an Office Online (a separate Microsoft site where users can download templates) and an Office Live Workspace (for sharing office files between desktop and Web - our coverage).

The "Office Web applications" will be available to consumers through Office Live, a service which has both ad-funded and subscription options. Business users will be offered Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing "volume licensing agreements". There will be a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year.

Last month we ran a poll asking which word processing tool you primarily use. We got over 2,600 separate votes and a resounding 49% of people still use Microsoft Word as their main word processing tool. Its open source desktop equivalent OpenOffice got 16%. Google Docs was the best placed Web Office app, with 15%.

The results showed that there is still a big place for desktop Office apps. Nevertheless, with the announcement yesterday of Microsoft Azure - a so-called cloud computing OS - Microsoft is clearly serving a growing demand for browser-based office software. We expect these apps to become more full featured over time.