Scoble says so:
Chris Jones, VP who runs the build team for Windows Vista, among others, was great yesterday (we interviewed him for Channel 9). Anyway, we’re trying to get that video up this afternoon sometime. On campus there’s a big party thanks to shipping Beta 1. He said they would sign off on the beta at a meeting this morning and that it would be on MSDN Universal soon.
Wonder when it will be available for download by beta testers? The new Microsoft Connect Web site, which is coordinating the beta, says the status of my application is still “Pending.”
Ed Bott 
Mine says Pending as well. I saw elsewhere that the actual download would be available by August 3rd, so perhaps the sign-off doesn’t correlate directly with availability for testers?
Well, it seems like there was a bunch of work done to Connect earlier this week. This morning I signed on and a few things changed. Perhaps it was all in preparation for today’s release…