Now the liveblogging is over, let’s take a look at what was announced today.

Silverlight

A whole lot was said about Microsoft Silverlight, going through some features of Silverlight 3 but most of all of Silverlight 4! Yes, today at the PDC in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 beta, just four months after bringing Silverlight 3 to market.

More information about Silverlight 4  is available at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

Office 2010

Also announced today is the Office 2010 Beta (Professional Plus) availability. You can learn more about all the 2010 productivity apps at www.microsoft.com/2010 or go directly to the site for Office 2010 and download from there after filling in a little questionnaire (it’s meant for business customers, but hey 😉 ). Included apps are Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Communicator.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 beta is available now too, you can download it through the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

IE 9

Besides these announcements, Steve Sinofsky gave some details on the development of the next version of Microsoft’s Web browser, Internet Explorer 9. IE9 will support DirectX and other standards, including CSS3 and HTML5. For some videos head on over to Channel 9.

Some more read of interest:
Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web
Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone and Browser
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Extends Collaboration and Productivity
Digital Inspiration – What’s New Inside Microsoft Office 2010
Announcing the Outlook Social Connector