Microsoft has released the Silverlight 2.0 lab so you can program this innovative technology while working in a safe, supportive environment. Some of the labs include: Basic Concepts, Concepts in building Connected Applications, Building Reusable Controls, Exploring the Integration between Silverlight and its browser host, and Dynamic Animation. All tutorials need Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Runtime, Visual Studio 2008 Tools and Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK installed.

You can also find out about new Silverlight Essential Training with how to add video, animations, and interactive features such as drag-and-drop functionality.

Ruby was first at bat on Day 3 of the Lang.NET in Redmond. Wayne Kelly and Jon Lam both presenting. Jon Lam’s IronRuby session was a status update on where the project stands, and how Lam’s Microsoft group intends to get to 1.0. He said his group has debugging and stack back-traces working. In his Day 3 report, blogger Ted Neward comments that the time is ripe for a Ruby spec to appear.

Miguel de Icaza talked about Moonlight, how it happened, where it is today, and where it can go, according to a blog post by none other than John Lam. (Moonlight is an implementation of Silverlight for Linux.)

Among interesting elements uncovered as informal stand-ups during the event was Cobra, which is described as an imperative, object-oriented general-purpose language that runs on .NET and Mono. In a single language, it seeks to combine clean syntax as found in Python and Ruby, as well as static and dynamic typing, while exhibiting run-time performance akin to C# and C++. No small task! A nod to Harry Pierson for his link to Cobra.

Microsoft’s Lang.NET Symposium 2008 got up and running yesterday. C# father Anders Hejlsberg talked about C# 3.0 features, IronPython guru Hugunin discussed the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and IronPython, and Pratap Lakshman from the JScript team talked about the new managed implementation of JScript, codenamed Managed JScript.

Hejlsberg, as reported by blogger extraordinaire Ted Neward, told the assembled language heads that the conventional divisions of language types (into categories) covering the functional, the object-oriented, and so on will break down in the years ahead.

IronPython high priest Jim Hugunin did a demo that mixed Microsoft Robotics Studio code with IronPython running on the DLR. Hugunin’s creation, IronPython, was recently updated as IronPython RC 1.1.1 on CodePlex.  Hugunin created Jython, a Java version of Python.

IronPython 1.0 was debuted in September 2006. The latest release candidate is described as a minor update focused on bug fixing. Hugunin’s team has fielded IronPython 2.0 Alpha 1, as well. This is the first release of IronPython built on the DLR, and targeting version 2.5 of Python.

For his part, Pratap Lakshman provided an overview of the managed Jscript implementation originally discussed at MIX07.  JavaScript on top of the DLR became a reality as part of Silverlight 2.0 (then known as Silverlight 1.1).

Surprise guests at the symposium were Java specialists John Rose and Charles Nutter, who discussed Java’s increasing support of new languages on the JVM.

Planned Day 2 discussions at Lang.NET 2008 include Eric Meijer on Volta, Paul Vick on Visual Basic and Karl Prosser ‘’Powershell Plus. ‘’

Posters make good conference swag, but they don’t always fit into the suitcase. Fortunately, many of Microsoft’s greatest hits — .NET Framework namespaces, Visual Studio 2008 and 2005 keyboard shortcuts, Silverlight 2.0 Developer References and so on — are available for download on MSDN.

Chris Bowen recently did the world a favor and compiled the most recent .NET reference posters in a single blog entry. As he admits, “I didn’t realize just how many until I searched for ‘poster’ on MSDN downloads.” (For the curious, 22 posters pop up in the search results.)

Bowen points to numerous useful .NET posters, including the aforementioned Namespaces and Silverlight references, keyboard shortcuts for C# 3.0, C++ 2008 and Visual Basic 2008, BizTalk Server 2006 charts and Microsoft Office 2007 features.

Meanwhile, one comment from Bowen’s entry points to the Developer Readiness Program, a South African .NET technology training company. DRP offers dozens of reference posters, with particular attention paid to SharePoint 2007, Team Foundation Server and the .NET 3.0 technologies. In addition, TFS posters are available in Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English.

Nearly all these .NET reference posters are rather large, so go find yourself a nice color printer if you intend to redecorate the walls of your cubicle.

On the face of it, Silverlight and sports Web sites complement each other nicely. In fact, Silverlight is a part of both MLB.com and NBA.com, the respective sites for North America’s major baseball and basketball leagues. There’s also WWE.com, the site for World Wrestling Entertainment. (Insert debate about professional wrestling as a sport here.)

The RIA framework gives these sites embedded video, real-time statistics and, for those purchasing tickets, 3D diagrams that show users where to find their seats and how close to the court or field they will be sitting — features without which few diehard fans could survive.

So Microsoft’s announcement that NBC Universal will use Silverlight 2.0 to power its 2008 Summer Olympics site is not a huge surprise.

Nonetheless, it is impressive, especially given the scale. The site will feature 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video coverage, Soma Somasegar indicates in the above blog entry. Each video will contain quite a bit of metadata, too, ranging from player bios to maps of the venues where the event is taking place.

One point of interest here, which Somasegar did not address, is performance. NBC Olympics can expect massive traffic as the Olympics go on. (Games run Aug. 6-24, with the opening ceremony beginning Aug. 8.) It will be interesting to see how Silverlight 2.0 handles what very well could be millions of requests from viewers across the globe.

Mind you, any Rich Internet Application would face that kind of scrutiny, but Silverlight is the proverbial new kid on the block — and you can bet Microsoft wants it to end up like Mark Wahlberg and not Jordan Knight.