Astoria is briefly described here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/data/bb419139.aspx and the CTP download (including some useful whitepapers) can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyID=1b6f85bc-8933-4d0e-a639-934ef85adce1&DisplayLang=en.
Windows Live Data is described here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447720.aspx
Are they the same If not, how are they different
Hi, Michael, excellent question!
Windows Live Data and Astoria are different, but potentially complementary projects.
Both projects are similar in their goal to expose data as a service that can be consumed by Web or smart clients and on their use of a REST-like model that employs standard Internet protocols such as HTTP and XML to access, operate on, and encode data. However, Astoria is a toolkit to allow applications to expose structured data from relational databases or from Astoria¡¯s online storage service while Windows Live Data is a service and permission mechanism that exposes information from Windows Live services such as Windows Live Contacts.
Astoria and Windows Live Data are complementary projects. Windows Live Data offers today an implementation and 'proof of concept' of the principles Astoria advocates. In the future, the Astoria toolkit could help developers create applications that consume Windows Live Data more easily.
Sounds like the usual story of 2 MS product groups not talking and/or competing in the same space. :-)
I hoped Ozzie was going to fix this sort of thing at Microsoft.
Actually we did know about each other. Pablo and I have exchanged a few e-mails in the past. But since we were both heading toward Alphas we decided that speed was more important that coordination at this point. Now that MIX is done we will have to start coordinating since we will want our Betas to be in synch.
Yaron said it all, just wanted to reinforce it from my side. We have been touch since the very early stages of both projects. We participate in each other's email discussion groups, and we see design decisions coming and going from both sides.
Like any other incubation project, at the first stages you want to give freedon to the projects to explore the space. Once you get to a point where the technology seems promising (e.g. you decide you don't just kill the project) you start working on taking it to the next stage and look around to leverage as much of existing infrastructure as possible.
Even as we were leaving Las Vegas on the way back to Seattle I ran into Paul and we arranged to start looking into differences in more detail shortly.
Pablo Castro
Technical Lead
Microsoft Corporation
Michael:
I understand your point, but I don't think it applies in this case:
Yaron Y. Goland wrote:
Actually we did know about each other. Pablo and I have exchanged a few e-mails in the past. But since we were both heading toward Alphas we decided that speed was more important that coordination at this point. Now that MIX is done we will have to start coordinating since we will want our Betas to be in synch.
Wow. Up till now I've been getting excited (I almost said super-excited but I didn't cos I dont work for MSFT 
) about Live data and Atroia cmopletely seperately but to hear that they'll probably dovetail together at some point is fantastic.
I'll look out on blogs for news of this. I already subscribe to Pablo's. Yaron, do you have a blog Federico, do you
Thanks
Jamie
I'll look out on blogs for news of this. I already subscribe to Pablo's. Yaron, do you have a blog
Forget it. i think Ive found it! 
Jamie:
My new blog is at http://webreloaded.spaces.live.com/. I had a blog on MSDN but I have not unpdated it since I moved to the Windows Live Developer Platform team. I'll be post the status and ideas around Windows Live Data on my new blog on Spaces.
Is there any more news on synergy between these two technologies Yaron talks about betas being in sync but the EDM team put out a beta last week which i assume included Astoria but I don't see any co-ordinated beta coming out of Live Data.
Do you have any juicy news for us guys
-Jamie
Still waiting for your first blog post Federico
-Jamie
Jamie:
I know I should be updating my blog, but maybe because I'm lazy or is just my personality, I prefer this forum to get feedback and engage with other developers. I like the two way, conversational, nature of the forums much more than the soliloquial characteristic of blogs.
Anyway, I think you are right and I should pay attention to the blog too.
No problem Federico. My tongue was firmly implanted in my cheek when I said that!
-Jamie