CES: Notes from Steve Ballmer’s live keynote

Wow, that Steve Ballmer is a public speaker extraordinaire. No, really. No sarcasm intended at all - I’m jealous!

- Microsoft works hard at the convergence of three ’screens’: PC, TV, and phone
- Smartphones will make up over 50% of the mobile market soon
- Evolving UIs to be more intuitive and more natural
- Some weird looking laptop with… wood panelling?
- Sexy touchscreen, widescreen, HD computer monitors (oooooh)
- HTC Touch HD, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, Samsung Omnia, HTC Touch Pro made an appearance on the big screen - that’s right Steve, show those babies off!
- Three things that made PC successful: Enabled the best applications and allowed them to work together, more choice in hardware, Windows experience helped it all work together seamlessly.
- Windows 7 “on track to deliver the best version of windows ever” with three ingredients: simplicity, reliability, and speed. It will “boot quicker, longer battery life, fewer alerts.” And soon, touchscreen PC capability.
- Windows 7 Beta is available right now!
- Partnership with Facebook and Windows Live
- Partnership with Dell to sell pre-installed with Windows Live Essentials on all of their consumer PCs
- Partnership with Verizon to offer Live Search on all of their Windows Mobile devices
- Two new Halo titles will come out in 2009 - Halo Wars and Halo 3 ODST
- Spring 2009: XBOX LIVE Primetime - Live game shows!

XBOX LIVE Primetime: Coming Spring 2009

- Netflix cue will be controllable via app on Windows Mobile - available later this week on Windows Mobile Total Access
- KODU game creator for XBOX LIVE - teaching kids how to program their own games