Free document sharing

Box.net, file hosting service and creator of the file-sharing widget, is launching a Pro service for businesses. The box.net Pro service offers all of the same features as their regular service, which gained traction as a storage solution for photos and videos that can be displayed on all your social networks, as well as their MySpace widget. You can store documents, images and media content for your own purposes or to be shared with your coworkers and/or clients. Box.net is especially promoting their widget as a business solution, offering a way for businesses to keep storage prices low, and keep customers from having to redirect off their site to view media on another hosting service. ***

Microsoft released on Monday a new version of Business Portal, its package of software for creating portal sites that simplify access to corporate data. Major changes in Business Portal 2.0 include integration with Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft's free add-on to the Windows Server 2003 operating system that provides collaboration functions such as remote access to business documents. Integration with SharePoint will allow Business Portal users to augment corporate portals with features such as interactive calendars and announcements, document sharing and editing, and access to meeting notes, Microsoft said in a statement. "In release 2. ***

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. ***