Blockbuster is teaming up with Microsoft to eventually "give customers instant access to any movie on any device with an Internet connection and a screen," a Blockbuster exec told The Dallas Morning News. The movie rental giant is one of the first big names to announce plans for Microsoft's "Live Mesh" technology, a part of the company's broader online services platform for developers.

LOS ANGELES -- After two days of talking about new products, Microsoft is highlighting its longer-term future today. Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, opened the company's Professional Developers Conference with a review of the role his organization plays in pushing the state of the art in computer science.

LOS ANGELES -- Windows 7 will run on the new category of low-cost, lightweight laptops called "netbooks."

That's important because this fast-growing class of PCs may have cut into sales of Windows Vista in Microsoft's most recent quarter. Some of the leading "net books," such as the Asus Eee PC, can be purchased with a pre-installed Linux-based operating system.

(Note: Updates posted after the jump)

LOS ANGELES -- It's Day 2 of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference and the next version of the company's flagship operating system software, Windows 7, is on tap.

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live engineering, is set to take the stage here to explain the new features of Windows 7 and his approach to building the product, which already appears markedly different than the process the company followed during development of Windows Vista.

(Update, 9:45 a.m.: Microsoft is announcing an online version of four of its most important Office applications, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Also, check this post for more updates from Sinofsky's keynote, during which he confirmed that Windows 7 will run on low-cost "net book" computers.)

LOS ANGELES -- Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, shared his expectations of the impact Microsoft's new services platform will have on company profit margins, where he sees opportunities for collaboration with Amazon.com -- the company's biggest cloud competitor not named Google -- and more in an interview earlier today.

Check out these edited excerpts of our conversation. I've put the particularly interesting bits in bold for easier scanning.

LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft exec David Thompson, giving a demo of Microsoft Online, noted that the project heads-up screen he was showing is in "Microsoft's new favorite color: Azure blue."

So what of the name Azure, as in Windows Azure, Microsoft's new cloud computing platform? It seems to have caught the Microsoft chattering classes a bit by surprise. (It was not one of the code names I had heard recently.)

LOS ANGELES -- Ray Ozzie, the man who replaced Bill Gates as chief software architect at Microsoft, is on stage at one of Microsoft's most important conferences in years. This Professional Developers Conference marks a "turning point" for Microsoft, Ozzie said.

It's the first time the company is able to talk "end to end" about the software plus services platform it has been working on since Ozzie took over three years ago.

Today, the focus is on the back end systems that run everything from enterprises to Web sites to global Internet services.

Ozzie said a team at Microsoft has been working for a few years on a platform for computing in the cloud. The company unveiled a major product of those efforts: "Windows Azure."

Note: I've posted several updates after the jump.

LOS ANGELES -- Good morning from Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference. While the big headline for the show this week will likely be Windows 7, the company's strategy for cloud computing is a close second. The cloud strategy will get most of the attention today, with a keynote speech from Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, set to begin in about 90 minutes.

For background, check out this story from today's paper, which notes the competition Microsoft faces to attract software developers -- the primary audience at this show -- to its emerging cloud computing platform. Formidable competitors in the form of Amazon, Google and other smaller players are also vying for developer attention.