Microsoft is testing a new Silverlight version of its product download center, likely in an attempt to gauge customer reaction to installing the Silverlight runtime in order to download software. When some visitors head to the existing product download center, they are prompted to participate in a limited test of the new site. Clicking accept on the dialog brings them to a page prompting them to install Silverlight.

Once that step is complete, users are sent to the new product download center.

The new product download center does not appear to contain any substantial benefit over the current version. There are some mouseover effects on the downloads which provide users with a bit more information, but clicking on any of the links takes you to the same HTML page as with the existing site.

The new Microsoft Download Center powered by Silverlight is available online at preview.microsoft.com/downloads.

Last week Adobe released a beta of the next version of Acrobat Connect, which they've named Brio. Similar to the existing version of Connect, BRIO allows you to create your own personal meeting rooms and collaborate with others in real time. You can upload documents to present or share your own computer screen. Other pods allow you to broadcast yourself from a webcam, talk to attendees via your microphone or chat with them using a text based chat pod.

Check out this room that I made for RIAPedia users if you'd like to see what its like without signing up for your own account. If you're interested in using the real Acrobat Connect right now, you can sign up for an account online.

Mozilla released Firefox 3 Beta 1 yesterday, the first release of the Firefox browser to support offline applications natively. The release notes specify the new features under the heading "Improved Platform for Developers". The other item in the release notes that I thought was interesting was allowing web applications to handle certain protocols. Here's the longer description: "Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox)."

Scrybe, a personal organizing application built with Flash that has yet to be released, tops the list of most anticipated betas, based on the number of people who have bookmarked it on del.icio.us.

They have a preview video of the application on their website, and the application itself has been covered before by Ryan Stewart and TechCrunch.