Microsoft’s answer to document sharing

Although Google have stolen a lead in document sharing with Google Docs, Microsoft also have an answer in the form of SharedView. If you are working on a team project, then it’s much easier to share and collaborate on projects by working in real time on the same document rather than sending them back and forth by e-mail. Microsoft SharedView allows you to do this in a fairly straightforward way.

Where it differs with Google Docs is that obviously it requires installtion but most importantly, it allows you to conduct conference calls with up to 15 people from anywhere in the world. In addition, if you’ve already got a Hotmail account or at least a MSN Live ID, then you can sign-in and get going immediately.

Once running, you can share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. Unfortunately, this beta release still does not support audio which renders the conference calling a bit useless although this is due to change in the next release. You can obviously still use SharedView to share documents but you’ll need to use a third party VoIP service such as Skype to do the conference calling at the moment.