Document file sharing

ThinkFree, the web-based document creation and management suite, has launched a Facebook application. Upload and share documents with your network on Facebook. These can come from either your own computer, or your ThinkFree account. ThinkFree’s compatibility with Microsoft Office means you won’t lose any formatting of your documents, and it makes for easy sharing of documents amongst friends, and could help those college students out there put their Facebook friends to good use, sharing class notes, or something. You can also search for documents that your friends have uploaded, or link directly from Facebook to share your document within your ThinkFree Docs account. ***

Microsoft released on Thursday the first major update for its SharePoint collaboration products. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and SharePoint Services includes support for saving and sharing files up to 2GB in size, new search features and an overhauled update process for applying patches. Launched several years ago as a tool for building corporate portals, SharePoint has since morphed into a collection of collaboration tools that allow employees to work together remotely on documents and other tasks. Integrated collaboration tools have been one of the main weapons IBM's Lotus division has relied on to compete against Microsoft. ***

Online storage company Xdrive is trying to do for video what Shutterfly and Ofoto have done for photos--letting people share the memories. Xdrive has added videos to the list of file formats supported by the company's services. People can now store video clips encoded in formats such as MPEG, Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime and AVI. The service then lets people e-mail outside contacts and invite them to view these files. The same holds true for Xdrive users who store other types of files, such as music, photos and documents. Xdrive charges $9.95 a month for 500MB of storage and progressively up to $49.95 a month for 5GB. Charging for storage has not always been the case for Xdrive. The company made its name during the mid-1990s as a free online storage company that made money by selling advertising. ***