Aussie Online Office Suite Challenges Google

By Greg McNevin

April 6, 2007: An Australian company has released a new kind of online office suite, challenging the likes of Thinkfree, Zoho and Google in the emerging web 2.0 world.

Called Peepel, the suite bills itself as "the only competitor offering a true multiple windows system in an online desktop." Built with Ajax, Peepel uses a browser window in a similar way to a traditional operating system desktop. This enables any number of applications and files to be launch as needed in resizable windows.

These multiple windows do not, however, act as popups and can moved around or stacked on the browser desktop. Outside of the desktop tool, the suite currently consists of WebWriter and WebSheet as its Word and Excel equivalents. The company says a map component is on the way.

Peepel seems to be an interesting entry into the emerging online office field, particularly as it claims to be adding an offline work mode in the near future. However, compared to similar offerings at the moment it use is limited by the fact files cannot currently be imported, nor can they be shared with other users.

Currently Peepel limits file sizes to two megabytes, and storage space is also limited, although the limit itself is unspecified.

Comment on this story