They both are the winners of a Microsoft-sponsored, online contest to select two bloggers to write from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, B.C. Johnson and Derryberry will go to the Games and blog daily using Microsoft Office 2010.

Amber Borowski Johnson, mother of two and an avid blogger, says that when the Winter Games came to her home town of Calgary, Alberta, “our entire community and school got involved — I took luge lessons in gym class.”

Johnson and Derryberry were two of 10 contest semifinalists chosen by a panel of judges, including five-time Olympic gold medalist Bonnie Blair and online video stars Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld from CollegeHumor.com. The public then voted for their favorite semifinalists online, and Johnson and Derryberry were selected based on the number of votes they received.

Each will take a 10-day trip to Vancouver and work alongside Team USA to blog about the team using top-of-the-line technology including Microsoft Office 2010 Professional and an Acer Aspire 4810 laptop.

Johnson, mother of two and an avid blogger, has a background in travel writing and journalism and is no stranger to the Winter Games, having been raised in Calgary, Alberta.

“The Winter Olympics are king in Calgary and are my favorite,” she says. “When the Olympics came to Calgary in 1988 I was 16, and our entire community and school got involved. Even my high school’s curriculum adapted to the Olympics — I took luge lessons in gym class.”

Microsoft Office will give Johnson and Derryberry the reporting, editing and communication tools they’ll need across the PC, mobile phone and browser at the Winter Games. Because blogs and online reporting are an increasingly popular way for sports fans to consume news about their favorite events, Microsoft will equip the two bloggers with Microsoft Office 2010 Professional to help them report with ease right from the sidelines.

Johnson will blog from the Games at http://www.crazybloggincanuck.com; Derryberry will blog from the Games at http://cmc-glenwood-dylan.blogspot.com.

The information sourced from http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2010/jan10/01-26OlympicBlogWinners.mspx

The online versions of the Office suite will not duplicate the desktop versions. The Office Web version of PowerPoint won’t have the desktop version’s robust video editing tools, for example. However, it will have Web-related tools, such as the ability to embed tags into documents and post them on blogs, that the desktop version will not have.

Office Web comes at a crucial time for Microsoft. While the company commands a dominant 90-percent-plus share over the software market for on-premise-based productivity applications — apps that users install on their individual computers — Google, Zoho and a raft of others have been convincing consumers and businesses alike that SAAS (software as a service) apps hosted by the software providers is the key to the future of office computing.

Office Web ups the ante even further because it allows for three distribution options, according to Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office. First, Microsoft is offering the suite free through its Windows Live service, which boasts 400 million users.

Microsoft will also host one Internet business version of Office at its own data centers, charging companies a yet-to- be-announced fee. Companies with premium service contracts will have the choice of running a second Web-based version from their own data centers at no extra cost.

Microsoft will release the web offerings when it starts selling Office 2010, it next major release of the product, sometime in the first half of next year. Its current version came out in January 2007.