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We have picked up a trio of screenshots of the forthcoming Office Live Workspace, which we're just thrilled beyond rational thought to share with you. Pre-registration for the beta version of Office Live Workspace opened at the beginning of October. Microsoft has positioned the service as an online complement to the desktop version of Microsoft Office.

The Office productivity suite represents a significant portion of Microsoft's annual revenue. No one in Redmond would willingly take a sharp blade to the throat of that golden cash cow, but Microsoft had to do something to appeal to people who have embraced software as a service concepts for, among other things, productivity applications.

Office Live Workspace represents a compromise. All the document sharing, none of the cannibalization. A Microsoft spokesperson said the service will be available at no charge later this year.

Each of the following screenshots are clickable; even I'm not mean enough to make you squint for details. The first one shows an event list date and calendar view, with the ability to create and manage schedules:

Here is a view of shared workspace projects and programs, with a listing of documents and files in the workspace and the status of each:

The last screenshot shows the ability to preview Microsoft Office files, in this case a PowerPoint slide, within the browser: