Bill Gates launched Tech-ed Developers in Orlando, Florida today by announcing this was his last public speech as a full time employee (FTE) in his role of Microsoft Chairman. He will now transition to a part time employee and full time at his foundation.
Gates's focus was on a change in interaction. Over the years there has been no change in interaction as users use a keyboard and mouse. Microsoft research has been working on software advances and hardware power to interact with applications. Gates described this as natural user interface and detailed the small glimpse last week of Windows 7 inbuilt touch support. Natural interface has a dramatic impact and Microsoft is excited that this decade this will go mainstream and that the company is there providing built-in support in the Windows platform.
Gates then switched focus onto IE8. IE8 beta 2 will be ready in August and 20 more languages will be available a month after that.
Silverlight version 2 beta 2 is in the final stages and will be released soon.
Next up the latest and greatest robot invention named "ballmer bot" was demonstrated and it could even throw eggs!
27 Comments - Add comment