MWSF: ThinkFree Office showcased

ThinkFree Corp., a company that specializes in Web-based office productivity solutions, is showcasing ThinkFree Office — a Microsoft Office compatible suite of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation graphics applications at this week’s Macworld San Francisco.

ThinkFree Office, which uses Java technology to support a wide variety of operating systems and device platforms, first debuted at Macworld New York last July. Written from the ground up in Java, the ThinkFree Office takes advantage of Mac OS X’s Aqua user interface, according to TJ Kang, president and CTO for ThinkFree.

You can access the suite from any Internet-connected computer. File sharing capabilities are provided via a public folder that users can make available to friends and colleagues.

Kang said that with ThinkFree office, you could access your applications and files from any computer with a browser, anywhere you are. Upgrades are delivered automatically over the Internet. There is also Web-based file storage. Just drop files into your ThinkFree Cyberdrive, travel to a different location, log in and you can access your documents and work on them. Each ThinkFree Cyberdrive is safeguarded by password protection, a secure physical location and the latest security technologies, including encryption and authentication, Kang said. The ThinkFree Office family of applications for the Mac includes:

Write, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) Microsoft Word compatible word processor/HTML editor;

Calc, a Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheet;

Show, a Microsoft PowerPoint compatible presentation graphics program;

Webtop, a file manager like Microsoft Windows Explorer for navigating and managing documents in local folders or in the secure ThinkFree Cyberdrive.

ThinkFree Office for Mac OS X costs US$49.95 per user per year. To sign up, visit the ThinkFree Web site.