Techcrunch have posted an overview of Microsoft Office 2010 which is due to be announced later today and as you would expect from TechCrunch it talks a lot about the new Office Web Applications which is basically Excel/Word/Powerpoint hosted in a browser. Their interest is warranted, Office Web Apps is by far the most intriguing part of Office 2010.

One particular quote from the article grabbed my attention:

Office Web applications will be available ... through Windows Live, where consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost

Wow, if that's true then its a great leap forward. Many people (including myself) have complained about Microsoft's various web applications saying that they are too disconnected, that they don't integrate together. One of the popular examples put forward to support that point of view has been the fact that the current Office Live Workspaces service didn't allow you to save documents in Windows Live SkyDrive. I suspect that will change with the advent of Office Web Applications.

Time to look into my rather murky crystal ball and speculate as to what other goodies await us in the consumer market:

Admittedly this is a mix of predictions and a wishlist and is all pure speculation. I have no access to information other than what is available in the public domain so take this with the pinch of salt that it deserves.

 

UPDATE: This video from Robert Scoble with Office GPM Chris Bryant :

Powerpoint broadcast
 

explains how we will be able to broadcast Powerpoint presentations from our desktop to the web via Windows Live! Cool!.

Quote from Chris: “the web applications will have a Technical preview later this summer on top of Windows Live”. Even more intriguing!

Update 2: Another Windows Live nugget from Chris Bryant. In the following video he says: “this [Excel spreadsheet] is publishable to Excel Services running on top of Sharepoint or eventually on top of Windows Live” (fast forward to about 5m10s):

Office Web Apps
 

 

Update 3:

“Office Web applications will be available … through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost” - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-13Office2010WPCPR.mspx

Update 4:

My suspicion about SkyDrive from the top of this blog post has been confirmed:

“This iteration of Office brings great collaboration tools and a web client that you'll be able to use simply by keeping your docs up on Skydrive.”
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/A-Look-At-Office-2010-with-Chris-Capossela/

Update 5:

A good juncture to link back to a related blog post from January of this year:

Some thoughts about the convergence of Windows Live, Office Live and Mesh
(http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!9146.entry)


@Jamiet