These not-so-famous web apps from Microsoft are free and useful.

Microsoft is not as famous as Google or Yahoo for their web apps. Of course, there are very few web apps from Microsoft that are useful but not as many or as famous as Google’s or Yahoo’s. Here are 5 free web apps from Microsoft that are known less to the public but are really useful indeed.

Live Mesh

These days we use many devices including your PC, Mac, Laptops, Mobile Phones etc. to get to the information we need. Often we find that these devices are not in-sync with each other and so we have to switch to a specific device to get to the information we need.

Live Mesh is a free service from Microsoft that allows you to sync, share and access your information across many devices. It can keep your files synchronized across your Windows or Mac based laptops, desktops and Windows Mobile based mobile phones.

Office Live

Office Live gives you free space of up to 5 GB for online storage that can be accessed from anywhere. It also allows you to share and collaborate on any Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Office Live also gives you a free website and tools to build a quality website for free.

Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync does pretty much what Live Mesh does but it can only keep the files in sync between your computers. It can keep the files you identify synchronized between your Windows based or Mac based computers. Also, you can use Live Sync’s Shared Folders to share any file with your friends or coworkers.

Microsoft My Phone

My Phone service from Microsoft allows the information on your mobile phone be backed up to a space hosted and managed by Microsoft. In case you lose your phone or you upgrade to a different phone you can use the My Phone service to retrieve the information that you’ve backed up.

My Phone also allows you to share photos, taken on your phone, on Facebook, My Space, Flickr and Windows Live.

Silverlight Streaming

Silverlight Streaming is a free service provided by Microsoft so that Silverlight developers and designers can host up to 10 GB of Silverlight media files for free. Silverlight Streaming service also allows you to stream directly from that hosted space so you don’t have to worry about your own bandwidth. It’s a convenient service if you happen to need to host Silverlight media files.

If you know of any other lesser-known web apps from Microsoft that you find it useful please share with us in comments.