Yesterday the second, and probably the last, part of Windows Longhorn BETA invitations was sent out. It’s expected that Beta 1 is going to be released to official testers on July 27th, the next Wednesday. Beta 1 of the WinFX SDK should be released on the same day, too, so the two betas’ release dates match perfectly. Testers will be able to code and test Avalon applications as soon as they get the Longhorn build.

Anyway, the beta program of MSN Messenger 7.5 (a sub-version to 7) was started today. The new version presents an updated Sign-In window, where you can see your display picture, as well as the well-known ‘always sign in as…’ options and so on. When you sign in you can see a little toolbar on top of the contacts list with only one button - ‘Add a Contact’, I don’t see big use of it, but anyway. An addition to build 160, which is the newly released one, is the ‘Voice Clip’ button in every conversation window - you can record a short audio clip and send it over to your buddy.

There are new ‘Dynamic Backgrounds’, which are Macromedia Flash-enabled files w/ animations which you may put instead of the still background. Of course, you can get some free backgrounds from BlueMountain’s web-site. If the user chooses to, he or she can disable the hyperlinks in their conversations in order to prevent clicking them.

The third beta is the Windows OneCare Live one. Windows OneCare is the anti-virus solution from Microsoft. It includes the already-released code of AntiSpyware, as well as anti-trojan and virus techniques to prevent execution of malicious code on Windows-based systems. Unfortunately, so far testers *must* be from the US in order to apply for the beta.

Well, I think that is what I had to say about those 3 betas for now. I’ll keep tracking their evolution in future, though.