CES 2012: Microsoft Event

In CES we've had a few shows so far, and one of them would be the Microsoft event. Ryan Seacrest appeared at the event, with Seve Ballmer of course. In the event, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone. This part was boring, as most geeks already know Windows Phone, especially the brave user of WP7, Jon Rettinger. They also showed the HTC Titan 2, which is an amazing Windows Phone. Next in the event, they showed Windows 8. Steve Ballmer said that they've "re-imagined" the OS.  It looked like their point was simplicity, and also including the tablet experience. It also seemed that Windows 8 would be geared toward netbooks/laptops. There was  a "picture passcode" where you touch/click certain parts of the picture. The actual design of the OS is WP7 reminiscent. The OS was demoed on a Tegra 3 tablet. They next unveiled the "Windows Store". Basically it was a marketplace for apps, in obvious categories. The app showed was Cut the Rope, which will be ale to be purchased for $1.49. You can launch the app from the Metro UI. The Windows Store will be available in February. There was an "expose-like" feature, where you can pinch/zoom to see all of your Metro UI screens. Microsoft sowed that the tablets can use keyboards, and showed how you can quickly search for items between the Metro UI, and third party apps. They showed how you can search from the homescreen, and that can give you a result from a recipe application. From there, you can easily share the recipe or file, without leaving the actual app. The demo heavily endorsed "cross-communication" between different applications, such as Microsoft Word and OpenTable. The browser looked a bit like webOS. They showed an HTML5 video, and the window of the video was kind of small. After that, they showed some new ultraportable devices that will have Windows 8, which there were quite a few at the display. Steve Ballmer then went over some statistics of Windows. He stated by the time the keynote was over, there would have been 25,000 more Windows 7 activations. To make things a bit more interesting, the "Tweet Choir" came on stage. They sung, and I was clueless, but oh well. I then figured out that the "tweet choir" interestingly read tweets about the event. Now they deserve a retweet! After that intervention, the event got to some Xbox news. Again, going over stats aout Xbox Live, quite boringly. He said the console was an entertainment hub, and how it has changed. Steve Ballmer also spoke about how the Kinect and Bing integration has changed the TV. Craig Davidson came on stage to demo some Kinect things. hey explained the "new" Xbox experience. Craig showed the Kinect voice actions, which weren't very new. They did show the new Xbox dashboard, and showed how with only voice commands you could get to a movie, and play it. The BCS Championship even played for a second. Alabama is still up 12 to 0, and just had to punt. :D Craig announced that there would be a new partnership with News Corporation, bringing  IGN, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal. Now Ainslee and a little girl came on stage to demo some type of TV interaction. They showed how in Sesame Street, you can throw a coconut to the TV. Digitally of course. When she didn't throw coconuts, the show became different. That was Sesame Street for Kinect. Steve said that these technologies and interactions will revolutionize education, healthcare (not sure how), and other industries.  Something really cool was that Kinect will be coming to PC on February 1st, probably due to the vast amount of Kinect hacks. Steve Ballmer talked about other Microsoft products, such as Sync for Ford automobile, and the purchase of Skype. Bing has 30% of the market combined with Yahoo! Wow! hehe... To wrap up the event, he restated that Metro was "next" in Microsoft technologies. He said, "Metro will drive the new magic across all of our user experiences. Metro means that 1+1 really does equal 3." That wrapped up the Microsoft CES event!