Today’s launch is something Corel’s software teams have been looking forward to for many months. Windows 7 and Windows Touch are the most exciting things we’ve seen in computing for a long time.

To coincide with the launch of Windows 7, Corel has released two all-new products that re-invent the typical menu-driven user experience, offering consumers more expressive and interactive creative environments. Engaging and dramatically different UI designs let users get the most out of Windows 7 by providing a more natural way of interacting with your PC. It’s all about removing barriers to creativity. Nothing gets between you and your inspiration.

Windows Touch has given our software teams the opportunity to push the limits of user experience. Sometimes computing can feel a bit detached – you sit at your computer, input info with your keyboard and mouse, and see the results displayed on screen. But with our new interface designs and Windows Touch, the computing experience gets an entirely new personal dimension, solidifying the PC’s place as the creative hub of the home.

Watch the video called “A new kind of software” at www.corel.com/windows7 to see Corel’s user experience designer, Jennifer Fraser, explain how Windows 7 and Windows Touch impacted our software design. Jennifer discusses how this amazing new OS offered Corel’s development team the opportunity to offer new experiences that foster creativity and build stronger connections between users and their content, whether it’s a painting, family snapshot or home movie. Jennifer explains our overall approach to designing consumer creative products and gives a quick glimpse at two of our new Windows Touch-enabled products, Corel Digital Studio 2010 and Corel Paint it! Touch, which was announced today.

With our long history of working closely with Microsoft, particularly around the introductions of new operating systems, we speak from experience when we say that they’ve really got it right with Windows 7. This new platform offers unprecedented power and stability, enabling Corel to deliver products that help customers create, connect and interact with their home PC in ways never before possible.

Joe Roberts
Executive Vice President – Products

MIX09 kicks off today in Las Vegas and brings together web developers and designers to discuss how they can deliver a better experience through software and the Web. And we are making several announcements this week at MIX09 that will help web developers and designers easily create the best experiences with their websites and applications.

Today at MIX09 we introduced the next version of Silverlight – Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 offers web developers more than 60 controls to take advantage of – making it easy for them to create cutting-edge Web applications. Silverlight 3 expands on high-quality and high-definition video experiences with true high-definition video in full-screen mode including stutter-free live and on-demand video. Silverlight 3 supports more video formats, including H.264, and hardware-based media acceleration. And Silverlight 3 also adds support for Windows Touch on Windows 7 (click here to view my blog post on enabling Windows Touch on supported PCs with the Windows 7 Beta)!

Download: Silverlight 3 Beta for Developers

The final release of Silverlight 3 is expected to ship later this year. For more information on Silverlight 3, check out the Silverlight Team’s brand new blog: The Silverlight Blog.

NBC Universal has announced that they have chosen Silverlight to deliver the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games on its official Web site NBCOlympics.com. They used Silverlight for the Beijing Games with great success.

For a perfect example of the power of Silverlight web applications – check out the brand new web client for the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. You can browse the galaxy directly within your web browser! A comparison of features between the web client and desktop PC client of the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope software is available here.

Here on The Windows Blog, we utilize Silverlight for delivering video content to our readers. Our video content is hosted on Microsoft Videos and with their Silverlight Video Player we embed the video into our blog posts. We’re working with the folks at Microsoft Videos in doing something real neat with our video content (and it’s all in Silverlight) so stay tuned!

For the full press release of today’s announcements from Day 1 at MIX09 – click here. On top of the Silverlight 3 announcement, we also announced several new components of the Microsoft Web Platform which includes the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta. And we also announced new capabilities for Windows Azure as well.

Tim Sneath is “live blogging” MIX09 so if you’re wanting to stay on top of all the latest MIX09 happenings, read his posts.

Also announced today is the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. Web developers can use the toolkit to make it possible for people who use Windows Live Messenger to communicate and express themselves directly within their website. Essentially, a web developer can give you a pretty slick web IM experience using Windows Live Messenger on a website you are visiting.

Why would a web developer want to embed Windows Live Messenger IM functionality within their website? Visitors of a website with Windows Live Messenger functionality built in can IM with their contacts or even other visitors on the website. This creates a new level of engagement for visitors on that website.

For more information on the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, click here. UPDATE: Angus Logan blogs about the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here and worth checking out.

We are looking at deploying the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here on The Windows Blog for our readers.