MWNY: ThinkFree Office for Mac OS X debuts

ThinkFree Corp., a company that specializes in Web-based office productivity solutions, is debuting its preview version of ThinkFree Office for Mac OS X at this week’s Macworld New York. The company’s development of the X version demonstrates the company’s continued support for the Mac platform, said TJ Kang, president and CTO for ThinkFree.

Written from the ground up in Java, the ThinkFree Office takes advantage of Mac OS X’s Aqua user interface. 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.

The preview version of ThinkFree Office for Mac OS X will be available to users at the end of August for US$49.95 per user per year. To sign up, users can visit the ThinkFree Web site. The full version of the productivity suite will be available in the fourth quarter.