Microsoft has just released the Release Candidate 1 for Internet Explorer 8 that you can install from here.

Some of the new features include:

· Mapping a location: Highlight a street address in your Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or other web mail account, right-click on the blue button that appears, and hover over “Map with Live Search.”  Presto!  You’ll see the map with the location right there—no more copying and pasting street addresses from web mail to a mapping site.  Plus, you can choose what mapping service you want to use.

· Instant Search Box: Go to the search box in the top right, and type a search item—see how the enhanced Instant Search Box is more helpful, providing real-time search suggestions, including images, from your chosen search provider.

· InPrivate Browsing: Click on a new tab, and see the options that are presented there, including “InPrivate Browsing.”  Click InPrivate Browsing and watch what happens—you are now in a browser session that is leaving no trail behind, so research gift suggestions for your significant other to your heart’s content without worrying about who might pick up the crumbs after you. 

Also, IE8 is supposed to be faster, easier to use, safer and more reliable. It is worth to check it out!

The CLR team has a column inside the MSDN magazine called 'CLR Inside Out'.

This month’s article is about Best Practices For Managed And Native Code Interoperability. It was written by Jesse Kaplan, the PM for Managed/Native Interoperability on the CLR team. The article provides high-level architectural guidance and discusses the three techniques available in the .NET framework for managed-native interoperability: P/Invoke, COM Interop and C++/CLI.

To see a list of all articles already published on the 'CLR Inside Out' column, go here.

Just a quick note to announce that the CLR team has created a blog to post about interesting subjects about - of course - CLR! In the coming weeks, the posts should be starting pouring over there. Be sure to add to your favorites or RSS readers.

Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/clrteam/.