Zoho emailed today to say that they had launched three new features for Writer and Sheet. I had just finished a post I was pleased with about them, when IE6 crashed and the lack of an autosave in the host-your-own version of Wordpress meant that I lost it. Since I can’t be bothered to write the whole thing out again, here’s an [edited] extract from the Zoho blog post, with some analysis (the interesting bit!) below that.

Today, we announce three different additions to Zoho.

1. Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office

We are very excited about the plugin for Microsoft Office as this extends the Office functionality online offering mobility etc….or should I say ‘This is what Office Live is supposed to be’ .

2. Zoho APIs

Zoho APIs is our first major step towards opening up our applications to be integrated into other services. With these well defined APIs, other web apps can now integrate closely with Zoho applications.

3. Desktopize for Zoho (Download)

Desktopize, our partner customized their offering for Zoho making our applications behave more like a desktop application. If you like desktop shortcuts, quick tray access, Drag-n-drop documents into Zoho apps, I recommend installing this application.

Two significant things which come out of this. One concerns the ‘ideology’ of Online Office (OO) and the other Zoho specifically. Firstly, the plugin for MS Office and the Desktopize for Zoho releases are a clear attempt to blur the line between desktop and web apps, in what I see as a very sensible move. At the moment when I start to write a document I have to take a decision; do I sacrifice all the advanced features and fantastic UI of Office 2007 for the better revision control and superb collaboration features available with OO, or do I spurn the revision control and collaboration for the UI and features? With the office plugin release, Zoho is hoping that people will chose to store all their documents with them, and then when they don’t need collaboration they can use their desktop suite, and when they do they can switch into online mode.

The Zoho-specific point is that I guess this is the end of Zoho Drive. When Peter and I interviewed Raju Vegesna in July, he talked of an imminent launch of Zoho Drive, which would be a central location in which to store all your documents, which you could then chose to either open locally or on the web. It looks like they are taking an individual product approach, which I think is a shame. The API means that they are obviously hoping that online storage providers will build that functionality for them.

[Definitely not via TechCrunch, but Arrington's new editor did get the scoop (I'm not bitter!)]

Update: Raju confirms in the comments that Drive will not now be released. I have mixed feelings on this. In some ways it helps them maintain the focus, and maybe Zoho/Adventnet isn’t the right company to do it. However, I liked the premise of it, and it is radically different from what the storage companies are interested in at the present. There is a massive niche there, and the first to market with an online storage solution built around an online office suite has the potential to make a lot of money. It’s a shame I can’t code!