Microsoft has released the technical preview of the pre-release version of Microsoft Office 2010 at Microsoft Connect to a select group of testers (including myself). Office 2010 is designed to give you the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser.

Many of the features in Office 2010 can be found consistently across multiple applications.

Here are some of the key new features in Office 2010:

Edit Pictures Right Within Select Microsoft Office Applications - You can apply artistic effects such as marker, line drawing, blur, glass and pastels to pictures without using additional photo editing programs.

Embed, Edit and Manage Video Within PowerPoint 2010 - Audio and video formatting makes it easy to work with video files inside Powerpoint.

Analyze Data and Create Compelling Visualizations Using Excel 2010 - New options in Excel 2010 let you quickly visualize and comprehend data using Sparklines, Slicer, Search Filters and improved PivotCharts, conditional formatting and Sharepoint Excel services.

MailTips, Quick Steps, and Conversation View in Outlook 2010.

Paste Preview for Office 2010 - Paste Preview allows you to see what your additions will look like before you apply them.

Search Navigation and Info Capturing for OneNote 2010.

In Office 2010, every application now has the Ribbon, including favorites such as Outlook 2010, OneNote 2010, SharePoint Workspace 2010, InfoPath 2010, and the new Office Web Apps.

Microsoft Office Backstage View.

64-Bit Scalability for Microsoft Office 2010.

Co-authoring in Office 2010 - Co-authoring in Word 2010 connects multiple team members on a single project in real time. Each person on your team can work on their section of your Word 2010 document, online simultaneously. Edits are highlighted so you can easily see what’s been changed.

Broadcast Slide Show in PowerPoint 2010.

Instantly Share Your Document using Office Communicator 2007 R2 and Backstage View.

Office Web Apps - The Office Web Apps give you a familiar Microsoft Office experience through a web browser.

Office Mobile 2010 - New features of Office Mobile 2010 for Windows smartphones will be covered in a new post.