SkyDrive and Office Web Apps

Wow. It's been awhile since I have blogged. - That's what a holiday vacation will do for you. I hope your holidays were fun.

We went and visited my family in Boston and of course we got to experience the Blizzard of 2010 which is always fun. Unlike New York, the area we were in was plowed and passable within a day though so that of course gave my daughter lots of time to shop. Because we just love the snow and cold so much we drove an extra 5 hours and spent a few days at Smugglers Notch in Vermont skiing. If you have kids, this is absolutely the best place - every year it is awarded all the prizes for Best Family Resort.  This year my daughter and I tried snowboarding. My muscles still ache and I now have a much greater respect for snowboarders than I had. I think that I will remain a skier though.

I did so some work related stuff while on vacation and that included some reading. I just finished a book called Using the Microsoft Office Web Apps and thought I would share some information about it for those of you who have not heard of the Web Apps or SkyDrive.

 SkyDrive is a free online storage platform that is available from Microsoft. It allows you to upload and then share files- PDF, video, Office documents, photos etc.

 

This should be of particular interest to small firms or sole proprietorships that can’t afford a lot of IT expense.
This is also great if you travel – you no longer have to panic if you can’t find your flash drive with your presentation on it or you need to suddenly access or share a file while on the road!

 

With Skydrive:

•  You get 25 GB free online storage
• You can create folders
• You an upload existing Office documents and in many cases create new office documents online using Office WebApps which are basically stripped down versions of Office applications.
• You can password protect your folders and then allow access to individuals or groups.

 To find out more about it, go to http://explore.live.com/windows-live-skydrive-get-started. You access everything through Windows Live so if you already have a Live email or a Hotmail email you can use that otherwise you have to create one. It has a lot of potential. It is a little work to set it up but you can access it from anywhere and share it with anyone. How cool is that.

 

Have a great weekend.