Microsoft has just released a new beta of its MSN Toolbar. Wait, wasn’t it the Windows Live Toolbar in the last release? It’s starting to look like Microsoft might have an identity crisis…

The new MSN Toolbar beta is now powered by Silverlight, Microsoft’s own cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering interactive applications on the Web, which has just recently reached version 1.0.

The Toolbar itself is what you’ve come to expect from Toolbars: a search pane with lots of extra links to content and sites run by the Toolbar’s publisher. The MSN Toolbar uses Windows Live Search and includes customizable at-your-fingertips MSN content.

We wish we could tell you that downloading and installing the Toolbar was a snap. Well, it wasn’t. Continuing Microsoft’s maddening tradition of making its software nigh impossible to download, with the requisite WGA checks, and Live ID passports, etc…downloading the MSN Toolbar was anything but simple.

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Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta, previously available to a select few, is now open for public consumption.

One word comes to mind when looking at Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs and the other up-and-coming online office suites (hint: it’s not the word that Microsoft continues to splay across their advertisements).

Lame.

To spare Microsoft more misery, we’ve come up with a “what might have happened” story that will hopefully allow us to better understand why their new online workspace is so underwhelming.

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Update: Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is available for downloading now. And please let us know what you think of Microsoft’s latest web browser.

Microsoft has posted two new web pages related to Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. The first page outlines some of the new features you’ll be able to find in the next generation web browser, while the other page offers download links. Unfortunately the download links don’t seem to be live yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they start working later today as the MIX08 conference gets underway.

In the meantime, here are some of those new features:

• Automatic crash recovery works much like the crash recovery feature in Firefox. If IE8 crashes, the next time you load your browser it will attempt to restore your tabs and other data
• Activities feature which makes it easy to send a link, web page, image, or snippet of text to Digg, Windows Live Maps, Facebook, Dictionary.com or other online services without copying and pasting. Users can install and manage their activities.
• WebSlices allow users to subscribe to just a portion of a web site. Web publishers can add WebSlices to their web page and IE8 can automatically discover WebSlices and add them to your favorites bar. You can view them in a drop-down window like the one you see in the image to the right.

Internet Explorer 8 also has a redesigned favorites bar and improved phishing filtering.

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