D uring the three-day Most Valued Professionals Summit at Microsoft headquarters, Bill Gates expressed his opinion that Microsoft is the "most optimistic company" about innovating new technologies. The summit is a closed to the public event where Microsoft invites 1,300 Microsoft resellers, consultants, and other business partners to participate. Within the Windows world, the event is considered prestigious.
In Mr. Gatesis speech, he covered many things, including his take on what the future holds, referring to the near future as the Digital Decade. From ZDNetis coverage of the event, we put together a bullet point list of the main points of his vision:
- "Note taking and reading, things related to bill paying, certainly everything to do with photos, everything to do with music, everything to do with organizing schedules," will all be important for the future.
- Microsoftis Trustworthy Computing will be key to this future.
- Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition are key steps, and will be expanded in the future. From Mr. Gates: "and being able to play [media recorded digitally] back, replicating media out to handheld devices or, say, to storage in your car. Your car pulls in the garage; itis within the range of the (wireless) network so that your tunes and shows and things that youire interested in are automatically just sent out there. And so then itis connecting with all the different devices: the TVs, the PDAs, multiple PCs working together in a different way."
- XML, as implemented in Microsoftis .Net platform.
- New ways to interact with your computer, including "ink as a data type."
- Smart Personal Object Technology being used in watches and refrigerator magnets (no, really). From Mr. Gates: "Itis our view thereis a form factor even one step smaller than (PCs or handhelds) and thatis glanceable information, where you look at an alarm clock or you look at a wristwatch or you look at a little magnet on a refrigerator, and you see information that you care about. And thatis what weive created here with the SPOT type concept."
You can get additional information on the event in the full article at ZDNetis Web site.