I am at Mix08 in Las Vegas, and today was day one of the conference.  With that, came a number of really exciting announcements. 

The keynote session that kicked off the conference started with Chief Architect Ray Ozzie sharing his vision on how we can deliver seamless connected experiences across the continuum of web applications, rich clients, and mobile devices.

Joining Ray was Scott Guthrie, Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform.  Together, they highlighted our newest Web tools and technologies, including the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, Silverlight 2 Beta, Expression Studio 2 Betaand a preview of SQL Server Data Services (SSDS).

Additionally, demonstrating their support for Silverlight, customers and partners also took part in the keynote, including AOL, Aston Martin, Cirque du Soleil, DoubleClick, Hard Rock, Move Networks and NBCOlympics.com on MSN.

AOL showed off a fast webmail client based on Silverlight 2.  You can sign up to get access and test this new webmail client by visiting http://ria.mail.aol.com.

Also demonstrated was Hard Rock’s new Memorabilia site built on Silverlight 2 by Vertigo.  You can learn about the site and work behind the Vertigo project here.  You can also visit the actual site (Silverlight 2 download required) at http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/.