Microsoft Talk

Office Live Workspace

Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live SkyDrive offers. Just create folders on the site and upload files to it. You can share any of your folders with colleagues, as well. The site’s design is simple and straightforward.

Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync Web site and tell it which folders on which PCs should stay in sync.

You can synchronize your personal folders as well as your shared ones. Whenever any of your PCs are connected to the Internet, they will automatically sync the specified folders with one another. In addition, you can connect to any synced computer from any other computer to browse through the remote system’s entire hard disk and to download files.

Live Mesh

Here’s a free Microsoft service for people who do want to keep their files in the cloud. Though Live Mesh is more powerful than Windows Live Sync, it’s also a bit more complicated.

create folders in Live Mesh and then have all of your PCs synchronize with those folders. With this arrangement, you can access the files and folders from any Internet-connected computer. You have an exceptional amount of control over the synchronization, too–for example, you can choose to synchronize only the files modified in the last 30 days, or those under 500MB. Live Mesh supports remote control of any PC in your mesh, as well. So far, Microsoft has announced no plans to charge for storage–or to limit the amount of data you can store.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Office Live Workspace will help anyone with a small business or in a workgroup who needs a simple way to collaborate on projects. With this service you can create and share documents, schedules, to-do lists, and more.

You start by creating a shared “workspace.” You can choose from 11 prebuilt ones–such as a Project Workspace, a Meeting Workspace, or a Travel Workspace–or you can create your own from scratch. Each workspace has templates already created for it, including PowerPoint presentations, Excel worksheets, and Word documents. Group members can work on the documents and save them for colleagues to see and edit. To edit the Office documents, you’ll need to install a free Office add-in, although anyone can view them without the add-in or Office.

Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D

Okay, this one isn’t a Web service, strictly speaking–it’s a desktop app that works with a Web service. But it’s a good one: Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

Microsoft’s general downloads site.

Microsoft says that the software will work with a 1GHz processor and 256MB of RAM, but recommends a 2.8GHz or faster CPU and 1GB of RAM. Go with the recommended specs or better, or else you’ll find the app very slow going.