Gates: Wake up to the digital decade

Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates opened Comdex in Las Vegas today by predicting 10 years of revolution in the way people and businesses interact, including smart alarm clocks that tell you how late you are going to be for work.

"During the course of the digital decade we'll think about personal computing in a different way," he said.

"The magic of the chip and the magic of software are now spreading out to all different devices, and those devices are connecting up in very flexible ways."

Widespread adoption of affordable wireless technology, and the formation of an industry-wide web services interoperability group, were major plusses in what has been a difficult 12 months, explained Gates.

"This past year had a lot of highs and a lot of lows," he said. "A tumultuous year, a tough year, a year to test the people with the long-term commitment.

"A year to test which innovations really meet the demands and requirements of customers in this kind of environment."

Looking forward, Gates unveiled several new Microsoft products for the consumer and business markets, ranging from the next version of Office to a smart alarm clock.

The next version of Office, due out next summer, will feature applications to improve knowledge management and collaboration, he said.

Office users will be able to access XML information in back-end systems using XDocs.

Microsoft OneNote will allow users to organise meeting notes written in virtual ink or text, and manage audio files and HTML using a drag and drop interface that links with Outlook. It aims to eliminate people from the workflow.

Also demonstrated at Comdex were new smart displays, such as a portable slate-like intelligent monitor, which will allow users to surf the internet and send email while away from their PC. These will be available in Europe through hardware partners in the first quarter of next year.

A prototype web service was also announced that will be available in the US in mid-2003.

In a tie-up with US copy chain Kinko's, the service will allow people to deliver a hard copy of a document to someone by sending it over the internet automatically to the closest Kinko store, which will print and deliver it.

Windows .Net Server 2003 release candidate 2 will be available in the next few weeks, and Gates said that the full release is scheduled for April next year.

The new version has an eight-node cluster, 64-way processor systems, support for 512Gb memory and hyper-threading.

A new version of the Visual Studio.Net development tools will also ship in April.

The most bizarre announcement was saved for last, which Gates described as the culmination of an idea that began three years ago.

He informed the audience that Microsoft's Smart Personal Object Technology group has been looking at embedding intelligence into small, everyday devices.

Gates showed off a range of fridge magnets, key chains and wristwatches that are automatically updated with the time, current weather and the latest news. More information was promised at next January's Consumer Electronic Show.

Gates said that the company hopes to ship a smart alarm clock based on the technology next year.

It always tells the right time, gives a default wake up time based on user patterns, and checks the weather, traffic and news to calculate the user's journey time to work.