congratulations to the Office for Windows team

It's a big day for my colleagues on the Office for Windows team: at PDC 2009, we announced that Office 2010 is now in public beta.

For your reading pleasure, here's some links with additional details:

• The official press release has an interview with Kurt DelBene, the SVP of the Office Business Productivity Group: Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone, and Browser.
• The Office 2010 Engineering blog: Announcing Office 2010 Beta Availability has plenty of details about the new version of Office.
• The Outlook team blog: Announcing Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, which gives some details about new features found in Outlook 2010. (Including support for multiple Exchange account, which Entourage users will know we've had for ages. ;)
• The PowerPoint team blog: Announcing PowerPoint 2010 Beta Availability has a nice bulleted list (of course!) with information about new features.
• On Twitter, you can follow @office, and there's an #officebeta hashtag too.
• And, of course, Office is on Facebook, too, complete with a quiz to determine which Office app you are. (I'm Excel, in case you're curious. I'm wearing a green shirt today, so I suppose that's fitting.)

Before anyone asks ... the as-yet-unnamed next version of Office:Mac will hit store shelves in time for your holiday buying pleasure next year. I don't yet have beta plans to share, nor can I share specific features or screenshots yet. The second that I get the go-ahead to talk more about it, I'll do so.