The Hindu : National : Give online life to desktop documents

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Sunday, Nov 25, 2007
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National

Give online life to desktop documents

Special Correspondent

Indian engineers have created a suite of online productivity tools

— Photo: Special Arrangement

Live inventors: Sabeer Bhatia (left) with the Instacoll team.

Bangalore: You have a desktop or laptop PC, with a connection to the Internet. You still use earlier versions of Microsoft’s Office tools such as the word processor Word, the presentation tool Powerpoint and the spread sheet Excel. You have not upgraded to the latest — 2007 — versions of MS Office. May be you could no longer afford to do so.

Thirty Indian engineers based in Bangalore have created a suite of online productivity tools that enables such users to enjoy the look, feel and much of the functionality of the newest edition of the three main Microsoft Office tools by downloading for free, a 5-megabyte chunk of software. What’s more, they can work on their files, from any machine anywhere by accessing them from a 100 megabyte storage space that is provided to them on the Web; they can switch seamlessly from desktop to Web and back; they can share their files from chosen friends or colleagues; they can collaborate on a single document, deciding who can share what, and exchanging comments live through text pop-pops... all this on any platform, Windows, Linux, Unix or whatever.

The application is called Live Documents. It was unveiled a few days ago to a lot of global interest and critical scrutiny. It is the work of the Bangalore-based InstaColl, a wholly Indian Internet-driven company whose Chairman and inspiration is Sabeer Bhatia, the man who co-developed Hotmail, the world’s first Web-based e-mail service, which he subsequently sold to Microsoft.

The ability to use Live Documents is free for individual users (You can apply for an invitation to join at www.live-documents.com but due to the huge number of requests in the last few days, the company is having to beef up its infrastructure and it might take 3-4 weeks to receive your authorisation.)

Early access

The Hindu received an early access to Live Documents and was able to put it through its paces. In appearance and feel the Powerpoint and Excel screens are identical to Microsoft’s Office 2007, while the Word screen is a halfway house between the 2003 and 2007 versions. Instacoll’s chief executive Sumanth Raghavendra, who led the Live Documents development says this was done deliberately since so many users are very familiar and comfortable with the earlier version. For the same reason the creators chose to work with the look of the ‘Trishul’ of Microsoft’s Office tools because PC users were used to them.

While the Live Documents application might resemble a few other browser-based office tools such as Google Docs, it goes further by completely blurring the boundary between online and offline, between PC and Web.

“We are very excited to be offering Live Documents. We think this is the way to the future,” said Mr. Bhatia, in a special telephonic briefing for The Hindu, “the ability to collaborate on a document, synchronise it and track it via live chat is something that has not been possible with Office suites before. This is an Office tool for Internet Age.”

While free to lay users, Live Documents is being offered as a Web-desktop collaboration tool for corporates, at a small price per user. This also explains the name of the parent company, InstaColl — an abbreviation of Instant Collaboration.

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