Direct from Las Vegas I will try to keep you posted on what is going on. I’m aware that not all of the post will be well written, let me get back with longer posts later on.

The Key notes with Steve Ballmer ended an hour ago. One of the most interesting things he reviled and what we have been waiting for is. When will the public beta be available. The answer is: November!

The key notes also included some overview demos on the new User Interface that, in case anyone have missed it will be using Ribbons like in Office 2007. This is including Live Preview with spell checks and Contextual Edit among many things.
One cool thing that they showed was the integration with WiKies that is all over the place. Whenever you use those Brackets [[ you will be able to from a drop down menu link to a document or page.

There were also a short introduction to the Business Connectivity Services that basically replacing the BDC.  And they also went in to SharePoint Designer, made a connection to an external source which then made it possible to have a read and write relationship towards the database. In this case they connected to a contact list, This made it possible for the end user to update the information from Outlook. Truly amazing!

Last think to highlight for the Key Notes for now was the demo of two brilliant and new web parts. The first one was the media web part that utilizes Silverlight and makes it possible to use SharePoint as media store and to show your media content directly in the browser. Jump to different pieces within the movie with no delays, maximize the window, well you got it all.

The other web part was the Chart control that makes it possible to easily show graphics using Excel Services.

Below is a couple of pictures from the Key notes with Steve Ballmer, Tom Rizzo and Jeff Teper.

  

I will now follow the Administration sessions with Shane Young and Todd Klindt. I summarize that in a new post.