It seems like Microsoft is finally getting a handle on meeting their own timelines, or in this case even beating the previously announced "late April to early May" timeframe for the release of Beta 1 of the next version of Visual Studio. As of now only the Virtual PC version is available, meaning that you can download a whole VPC image that has the Orcas Beta 1 installed on Windows XP for easy testing without having to install the components on your own development machine. Within the next couple of days they will most likely also release the installation package...

...Microsoft for the official product name for a sub-set of WPF technology previously known under the code name WPF/E: Silverlight. Sure, it's a catchier name than WPF/E (for non-geeks), but I seriously wonder if it will help to turn it into the Flash killer it wants to be. You can read more on Soma's Blog about the announcement they made at the NAB conference in Las Vegas, and you can also check out my previous post on the early preview versions of WPF/E. Other tech blogs will have similar announcements over the next couple of days, but Brad Abrams from the Microsoft...