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Connectivity key to electronics in the "digital decade": Gates
2007-01-08
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is looking forward to a future in which home room decor changes with a person's mood and kitchens guide amateur cooks through recipes. He envisioned front doors that contact mobile telephones to show absent home-owners who is knocking and let them provide electronic signatures if packages or flowers are being delivered. Bus stop shelters will recognize travellers by their mobile devices and provide schedules as well as recommendations of restaurants or other nearby places suited to their tastes. These features already exist at the House of the Future at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash., Gates told a ballroom packed with more than 4,000 people on the eve of world's largest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The key, Gates said Sunday, was merging hardware advances such as those on display at the 40th annual Consumer Electronics Show with connectivity. "They are delivering on the promise of the digital decade," Gates said of device makers. "The key missing is the connections. Delivering the connected experience requires more than just great hardware. People want to do things across multiple devices." Devices commanded by speech and computers with built-in cameras will be among the trend setting developments in the coming five years, Gates predicted. Gates used his platform as a technology industry superstar to spotlight the social design of Microsoft products, especially the consumer version of Microsoft's Vista operating system due on the market on January 30. "Vista was the biggest investment ever put into a piece of softwarer," Gates said. Gates introduced Microsoft employees that demonstrated Vista features including virtually traveling through three-dimensional maps of real cities, moving picture desktop background, and live feeds of sporting events. Toshiba, Sony and Hewlett-Packard were listed among partners that have tailored computers with special features for Vista for its launch at the end of the month. Gates also unveiled a Windows Home Server that acts as a central storage space for data from all the computers, Xbox 360 video game consoles and MP3 players under one roof. Content from music and pictures to video and work files could be accessed remotely. US computer maker Dell was making an enhanced version of the device branded Smart Home Server and other partners such as Advanced Micro Devices were developing versions, Gates said. "We think it is a category that could explode in importance," Gates said. By summer, Vista will link to Microsoft's Xbox 360 and let people using PCs play video games online with those using the gaming consoles, according to devices division president Robbie Bach. Bach also revealed that Xbox 360 would deliver television and movies via the Internet by the end of the year. "Our goal is to make entertainment more personal, more interactive and more social," Bach said at the news conference. The IPTV (Internet protocol television) capability would enable users to watch television or films while playing video games or chatting on the Internet via Xbox consoles. Gates was joined by Ford president for the Americas Mark Fields to describe an exclusive deal in which the US auto giant would use Microsoft software to install cars with voice-activated telephone and music operations. The "Sync" platform technology will be available in 12 Ford vehicles this year. Using English, Spanish or French, drivers will be able to call out contacts to ring from their cellphone's address book, or tell the car which song they want to play from their Apple iPod or Microsoft Zune player. The system will read out incoming text messages, and can translate commonly used messaging expressions such as "LOL" (laugh out loud) audibly, according to the companies. "My vision is to give you connected experiences 24 hours a day," Gates told the gathering. "I have to admit that regarding while you are sleeping, we haven't really figured out what we are going to do there yet."
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