Adding yet another branch to Microsoft's tangled online strategy, Office Online, the Web site associated with the Office family of products, will offer hosted online services for Office users, including a way to post Outlook calendars to a publicly accessible Web page.

Online, Not "Live"

Office Online received a significant overhaul in late 2006 in preparation for the launch of the Office 2007 family of products. In addition to the product information, online help, and templates that have appeared on Office Online in the past, the site also includes several Web-based services. To post information through these services, users must have the associated Office 2007 applications and must sign up for My Office Online, which requires an e-mail address that's been registered as a Windows Live ID (previously known as Passport), as well as some basic personal information.

Once registered, users have access to the following services:

Outlook Calendar Sharing Service. Outlook 2007 users can post their calendars in the Internet-standard iCalendar format to a Web site hosted on Office Online, making it accessible to any user with a Web browser and an Internet connection; a Windows Live ID is also required if the owner has restricted access to the calendar. When a user shares his calendar, Outlook automatically creates an e-mail message with the URL of the calendar, which the calendar owner can use to guide others to the shared calendar. Calendar owners can restrict access to recipients of this e-mail message, as long as recipients associate Windows Live IDs with their addresses.

Outlook 2007 Mobile Service. This service allows users to send data from Outlook 2007, including e-mails, tasks, appointment reminders, contacts, and even calendar entries, to any phone capable of receiving Simple Messaging Service (SMS) text messages.

Shared Templates. Users can post Office 2007 templates that they have created for other My Office Online members to download.

Microsoft says that other Office Online services might be added later in 2007.

With the inclusion of these online services, Office Online seems to overlap with the mission of Windows Live: for example, Hotmail already offers Web-based calendar sharing and mobile access to e-mail. Moreover, the services could easily be confused with Office Live, a set of small business offerings.

However, Microsoft says that Office Online is specifically intended to extend Office applications with online services that are closely tied to those applications. In contrast, Windows Live services are meant to be cross-platform and require no client software other than a browser (although this goal is unevenly realized, because many Windows Live services require Windows and Internet Explorer), and Office Live is a small business offering that has no particular ties to the Office suite of applications. While this distinction may be clear to Microsoft, it will be difficult to explain to end users and potential partners.

My Office Online is accessible at office.microsoft.com/en-us/myoo/FX101170081033.aspx; free registration is required.