Gates Addresses CES

Not much happens on a Sunday usually, but yesterday was an exception. In Las Vegas, Bill Gates packed them in at CES for what will probably be his final keynote speech as the head of Microsoft. According to an Information Week story, Gates was in ebullient form, not only having fun with future job prospects by interactions with John Stewart, Barck Obama and Bono, but more importantly laying out a vision for his company and computers in general. And what will that be? The next tech decade, according to Gates, will be the three-pronged. Two areas hold no surprises – greater connectivity and HD – but the third, with greater visual and gesture recognition, promises a small revolution. "This is just the beginning," he said. "The trend here is clear. All media and entertainment will be software driven. The second digital decade will be more focused on connecting people. It will be more focused on being user-centric." He demonstrated what he meant by recognition with a phone that told him that another Microsoft employee on stage owed him $20, then allowed him to buy show tickets by simply pointing the device at a theatre before offering 3-D directions to a restaurant. The software, of course, has been developed by Microsoft, and is a taste of things to come. In other Microsoft CES news, the company announced a radical expansion of Xbox Live. It’s going to becoming a major entertainment hub, functioning as a set-top box and a rental platform for movie and TV content.

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