Microsoft Corp. today announced the public availability of Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, the new Web-based extension of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others. Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is your online place to save, access, and share documents and files. Use it to group related information for work, school, or personal projects. No downloads are required – just sign up and go.

    Office Live Workspace was among the first entries in the new wave of online services in Microsoft's software plus services vision previewed last fall. Office Live Workspace is now available worldwide in English. People can sign up for free at http://workspace.officelive.com and will be granted immediate access to the service. Microsoft is also unveiling a number of new Office Live Workspace features, such as an activity panel, notifications, direct links and multifile upload.

    "Today's announcement moves us further down the path of bringing a software plus services experience to people at home, work and school," said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division. "By combining the rich client experience of Microsoft Office with flexible, intuitive service offerings, we're providing seamless computing experiences for our 500 million Office users worldwide."

    Office Live Workspace lets people organize documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer. People can save more than 1,000 Microsoft Office documents to one place online,* and access and share them via the Web. They can view and comment on documents in the browser as well as create simple Web lists and Web notes, and share documents in real time through integration with Microsoft SharedView. Since the unveiling of the private beta last October, hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for the beta, and thousands from the pre-registration have been invited to provide feedback on the service.

    Office Live Workspace also represents a critical collaboration component of the Microsoft Live@edu initiative. In addition to Office Live Workspace, the Live@edu program offers students and alumni 5 GB e-mail inboxes, 5 GB of password-protected online storage space, shared calendars, blogging tools, and access to these services on a mobile phone, all at no costs to the schools or students. Microsoft Office Live Workspace is being offered free of charge. Microsoft plans to offer the beta program later this year in various languages for international markets. The company expects to release the final public version of Office Live Workspace later in the year.

Microsoft has also added several new features to Office Live Workspace, based in part on feedback from early beta participants:
    - Activity panel. A new activity panel shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance.
    - Notifications. People can now receive e-mail notifications about changes made to their workspaces or documents.
    - Direct links. People can now bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window.
    - Multi-file upload. People can now upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop.
    - Improved sharing. New sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.