Auri's Blog

Things to take away from this keynote:

• Windows 7 Beta "Officially" Available – He didn’t address whether the beta’s availability on torrents was coincidence, but hey, now we have the slick new OS to play with for ourselves. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can get it now. The public can download it FRIDAY, January 9. Cool – ready? I know I am.
• Windows Live Essentials Available – Windows Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Live Mail are now available. I’m guessing he means the new versions, which are pretty cool. Their interface has changed a little – a bit flatter. I was surprised he didn’t discuss Live Mesh and Live Sync and so forth. With all the talk about connectivity, that was pretty strange. Get it here. You should really get Live Writer, too – it’s awesome. I’m using it for this post! Oh, and Live Movie Maker appears to still be in beta… I hope they finish it soon, unless that’s just a site update issue.
  • I saw this link, too, so it may be related: http://home.mobile.live.com/home.mvc/ShowServicesIntroduction/Spaces
  • And another link: http://windowslive.com
• Windows Live Spaces Integrates with FaceBook – Now you’ll have an option for all Facebook updates to sync to your Live Space (http://spaces.live.com). He didn’t say it goes both ways. I wonder if they’ll buy Facebook.
• Windows Mobile Live Update – Not what we’ve been hoping for yet, such as Live Mesh and all, but hey, it’s a start. Get it here. BTW, this link wasn’t super easy to find.
• Windows Live Will Ship on All Dells – All new laptops and desktops will get Windows Live Essentials, which will help PC manufacturers compete with Apple’s iLife suite and give much more functionality out of the box. Also, all Dells will use Live Search by default. Cool for Microsoft.
• Long Term Partnership with Verizon – With over 11 new SmartPhones running Windows Mobile in the past year and selling over 1M units each, Microsoft is "committed to innovation" (paraphrased, yes) in the mobile space. No major announcements, though. For example, nothing again about Live Mesh for Mobile being available. Boy, I want that Mesh software for Mobile so I can auto-upload my photos and sync my docs across all my devices, just like the demos I’ve seen throughout 2H08! Let’s get out of the private beta, please!
• Bodu (sp?) Game Creator for XBox 360 – They showed the really cool XBox 360 programming tool for kids @ PDC. Microsoft’s taken it one step further and released a Game Creator based on the same Bodu system. We should all applaud Microsoft for this – there’s been practically zero innovation in teaching programming to kids and young adults, and this is absolutely a stunning breakthrough, and a wonderful gift to a society that needs more engineers.
• Yes, there was a demo of Windows 7. Yes, it’s cool. No, there wasn’t anything I haven’t already seen 😛
• Tip for better presentations in the future: Give links in your slides. If something’s available NOW, give the bloggers something to post right away!

>> Watch the keynote and get more info here.

Videos are coming…