Microsoft announces new Betas; builds a Ballmer robot?

Bill Gates was on hand for TechEd down in Orlando where he let loose some interesting surprises. Announcing beta releases of IE8 and Silverlight 2, Gates says IE8 will come in August (meeting their forecast) and Silverlight 2 beta will show up at weeks end (early!). As Gates is somewhat prone to do as of late, he credited developers as Microsoft’s savior.

In a more bizarre step, Microsoft thought it would be funny to build a robot with Steve Ballmer’s face (as if we didn’t have our doubts about the real one). The Steve-Bot 3000 (my name, not theirs) rolled out to showcase Microsofts advancements in robotics. Apparently an egg was thrown.

It is good to hear a real investment being made on IE, it has been a bit since we’ve seen some real advancements to the browser and Silverlight is touted by many as a real credible cross browser interesting.

Read [The Register]