Ahead of Microsoft launching Office 14 - which is supposed to offer live collaboration - and despite the free hit-or-miss Office Live Workspace, a funded year-old start-up called DocVerse founded by a couple of ex-Microsoft SharePoint and SQL people says it's making Office 2007 documents shareable on the web.

Well, PowerPoint 2007 at any rate.

Via a 1MB plug-in.

It's promising to do the same for Excel, Word, Office 2003 and the rest of Office 2007.

The documents can also be edited like Google Docs - no check-in/check-out - and there are rollbacks to earlier edits.

The widgetry is currently in private beta and requires XP or Vista.

When it goes live it'll have free, pro and enterprise versions somewhere down the road.

The start-up says it's got an advisory team out of Google, Microsoft (hmmm) and EMC Documentum.

It's got $1.3 million from Baseline Ventures, VC Ron Conway and others. Evidently Microsoft's webification will center on Office 14, neglecting older versions and that's where DocVerse sees its opportunity.