Some of you may have noticed some new Passport logos 
last night. Hopefully that means Microsoft Passport Network 3.0 will be launching shortly. Passport will loose the .NET name and focus on being used for mainly Microsoft sites. eBay and others have already removed Passport support from their sites. Although Passport was initially developed as a single sign-in service for the revolutionary web services market, Microsoft soon scaled it back as the Hailstorm initiative failed. Although this doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't committed to web services.
The new Microsoft Passport Network will be much more user friendly, making it easier to manage the information stored in a user's account. MSN Account Services site will be focused on providing an easy gateway to all that information, including marketing preferences, your children's accounts, account credentials, privacy and security.
The upgrade appears to be in progress now, but here's a little sneak peak of the new features and UI [sorry, you have to scroll down when opening the image].
Update [2005/04/27 16:58 -6]: Mess.be has also reported on the new Passport, although they're mistaken on a number of points.
>View "Create a security key" (for strong-credential sign-in).
Security key was discontinued back in the beginning of March and is expected to be redesigned. However, the security key may have been removed for security reasons as Passport 2.5 is upgraded to 3.0. That is to say, that upgrading secure information could in itself be a security risk and the information was deleted to prevent that - part of Microsoft's increase security awareness. Security key is used as additional protection against extremely private information, such as bank statements stored in MSN Money, so most people will not need to set up this service.
>View "Add or change your Mobile credentials" (probably linked to MSN Messenger 7's Offline/Mobile Messaging feature).
Mobile credentials is nothing new and will not be tied with Mobile Messaging, which will still need to be done at the MSN Mobile site. Adding a phone number and PIN to your Passport allows you to easily sign in to Passport on mobile devices. You can also sign in to Passport on a computer with this phone number and PIN if you add @passport.com to the end of the phone number.
And finally the unoffiical MSN Messenger enthusiasts site Messenger Blog is giving a link to one test bed although I would highly recommend that you don't go playing around with it. It's possible to harvest any information in a number of test beds since security is generally not enabled when debugging. Soon enough we'll all be able to play with it.
/update
@Matthew
Today MSN Messenger 7.0 was finalized and released to the web [RTW] for public consumption. Jeff Wilkes and others have reported being able to get it from the official site, but I just tried and got 6.2, so try the Neowin download link.
Also, MSN Spaces has removed beta from it's name, increased storage from 10 MB to 30, added more themes, announced 4.5M Spaces created, and launched What's Your Story?. However, there will be many more exciting things from the Spaces team later on and eventually more storage as a universal platform is completed.
Press releases:
More press:
@Matthew
PS--Thanks to Paul for most of this stuff.