MS Office Goes Online... Sorta

With free solutions for productivity coming from the likes of Open Office and Google Docs, Microsoft seems to be feeling the heat, and thus have now come up with Office Live Workspace. This new tool, being apart of Windows Live, will allow users to access online tools to view, but not edit, files such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

It makes sense, since there will probably be no chance in hell that Microsoft will give up its favorite hoe for free while it can make the easy money pimping (forgive the lame reference). However, keeping it free has its price. While a beta is only going to start later this year, Microsoft has supposedly designed the program to support ads.

Whether this read-only tactic will actually work is still debatable. Microsoft has a firm grasp on the offline office productivity side, but will they have enough time to grab it online as well? Stay tuned to Devicing for updates.

Update: NBC Hooks Up with Amazon

Shortly after hearing the news that NBC and Apple parted ways in the video distribution market, now we have news of NBC's new partner: Amazon.com! They are supposedly going to use the Amazon Unbox service, their paid service to rent or buy downloaded video content, to distribute the NBC shows we know and love online.

But why Amazon? Rumors has it that while no official pricing was announced, Amazon is willing to accept the price increase demanded by NBC, as well as putting strict control on the content, both of which Apple had an objection to. Some good news for the end-users is that there may be a discount for those that buy multiple episodes, or the entire season of a show.

Stay tuned to Devicing for more details.

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