Rebecca Loew from the PowerPoint team just updated the PowerPoint blog with a post about editing in the PowerPoint Web App. Here it is: PowerPoint on the Web: Editing Enjoy! Nick Simons Program Manager, Office Web Apps

About a month ago I wrote about the Technical Preview on Windows Live. Since then we’ve seen a lot of interest in Office Web Apps and received numerous requests from people wanting to try them out. To make this possible, we are opening up the Technical Preview and inviting more people to try out the Office Web Apps. For a limited time, you can sign-up for a Technical Preview account here (if you are already a part of the technical preview, this link will generate an error): http://skydrive...

If you’re at the SharePoint Conference in Vegas this week, come see us. Mike Morton, the Group Program Manager of the Office Web Apps team is speaking at 1:15 pm on Tuesday, October 20. The session is called “Understanding the Office Web apps and Office 2010.” If you are looking for more technical information, Franklin Williams will be talking about “Office Web apps: Deployment and Manageability” at 4:30 pm that same day. We are also running a discussion group on Wednesday...

Last Friday three members of the Office Web Apps team paid a visit to a class at the University of Washington here in Seattle. My role was to give a PowerPoint presentation and demo. All I took with me was a netbook. It didn’t have Office installed on it. The purpose of our visit was to launch a field trial where about 30 students will be using the web apps for several weeks and then telling us what they think. The opportunity to engage face-to-face with these students is enormously valuable...

As an engineer, I find myself frustrated with product blogs that spend all their time discussing the end-user experience while ignoring specific implementation details. For me, the most interesting classes in college were always the ones where guest lecturers would discuss specific challenges in developing their application, how difficulties were overcome, and why specific design decisions were made. With that in mind, I decided to talk a little about developing the Find feature in the Word Web App...

Chris Bryant from Office spends 20 minutes showing Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App and Word Web App in action. The demos focus on the experience in Windows Live but Chris also talks about the other ways that we are delivering Office Web Apps to customers. Enjoy! Nick Simons Program Manager, Office Web Apps

Today is an exciting day for us! We are making available Excel, Word and PowerPoint Web Apps for a select group of Windows Live users as part of the Office Web Apps Technical Preview. While the initial functionality is modest it will expand over time. As we get closer to the release of Office 2010 we will make the Office Web Apps available to more Windows Live users. This early peek at the Office Web Apps will include high-fidelity viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in the browser. Invitees...

Terry Crowley is featured in “ The Making of the Office Web Applications. ” Terry talks about shipping a new version of Office for about the first minute. After that, he focuses on the Office Web Apps. Five minutes well spent! Nick Simons Program Manager, Office Web Apps

One of the interesting things about working on the Office Web Apps team is that we experience a recurring tension between the requirements of the past, present and future. For example, our mission demands that we interoperate with existing desktop apps, leverage present browser technology, and prepare for the future of the web platform--all in one product. Each of these could be a complete project in its own right, and so attempting to tackle all of them in a unified way is daunting to say the least...

On my last vacation I went back home to visit family. As anyone who works in technology can appreciate, I quickly became the designated tech support person. So I spent part of my vacation patching, installing software and fixing computers, while learning how each of my family’s computer setups differ. My mom runs Vista with IE 7, my brothers both use Macs and Safari (and wisely didn’t let me touch them), my dad runs Windows XP, and my in-laws run Vista with Firefox. This experience made...