I'm beginning to wonder if there really is a beta of Microsoft Office Live Workspace. I certainly wasn't the first to register to test the product but I definitely wasn't a late comer to the party.
When the announcement of the beta came out last week (I received my email on Dec. 13), I thought; "Great! Just in time. I have a music project I'm working on with my buddy Ike which we really could use Live Workspace to share our documents." Nah-da, not so fast quick draw. Here's what the email said:
We wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten about your pre-registration for Microsoft® Office Live Workspace beta. We've had an extraordinary number of pre-registrations and are working hard to get the service ready.
Currently, more than 1,000 people inside and outside of Microsoft are beta-testing workspace and soon we will invite pre-registrants in groups to the beta. We want to gather feedback from these early users and fine-tune the user experience before opening the service up to the world. We'll send you an e-mail as soon as your workspace is ready.
A thousand people, really? I've not yet run across anyone participating, and it's not like I've been living under a rock or something. In the software betas I've run (certainly not the size of a Microsoft beta) you are pretty fortunate to have heavy involvement of around 5-10% of the beta population. Most try it out and move on if it's not functionally ready to use. That' would be 50 to 100 users, not a very big beta by Microsoft's standards. Even if participation is much higher (50%?), that's only 500 users. Tiny for an online service.
So I wonder how the beta is going? Hopefully I'll get to try Live Workspace out soon. Until then I'm left to collaborating on documents via Google.
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Mitchell Ashley is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC where he provides product, technology and social media consulting to emerging technology companies. A successful CTO and product innovator, Mitchell has created many successful, award winning products in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular StillSecure After All These Years podcast.
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I to received that lame
I to received that lame email from MS...I was excited at first, but was disappointed when I read the rest of the email.
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