Windows & Interoperability: Microsoft, Facebook Launch Docs for Facebook Beta

Microsoft, Facebook Launch Docs for Facebook Beta

by Nicholas Kolakowski

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Facebook and Microsoft launched the beta version of Docs for Facebook in conjunction with the start of Facebook's f8 conference in San Francisco.

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Docs offers users many of the typical Office tools to put together their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

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Docs users can share their work with Facebook friends, selecting which of those friends can see and/or edit a particular document.

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Docs users can view their PowerPoint documents in slideshow format.

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Docs presents a stripped-down user interface, reminiscent in many ways of other cloud-based productivity suites such as Google Apps and Microsoft's own Office 2010 Web Apps.

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Users can either create a new Word, Excel or PowerPoint document within Docs, or else upload a document from their PC.

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The rightmost portion of the screen offers Facebook-style updates about the document. Those users who want a more robust experience can open this online Word document, for example, in actual Word.

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The Docs dashboard allows users to view their Facebook friends' documents.

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Docs can also be used as a cloud repository for the user's own documents.

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It took four months for FUSE Labs to develop the beta, from concept to implementation.

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