The way people interact with computers is going to dramatically change in the next five years, Microsoft chief Bill Gates has told BBC News.

He predicted that the keyboard and mouse would gradually give way to more intuitive and natural technologies.

In particular, he said, touch, vision and speech interfaces would become increasingly important.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hails age of digital senses

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Tags: Microsoft, Bill Gates, YeahOnAMac

Microsoft admits to having some trouble over the holidays with Xbox Live, the online service it offers for users of its Xbox 360 video game console. To make amends the company will offer Xbox Live users a free game from Xbox Live Arcade.

In a statement posted to the service, Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten said that the problems with Xbox Live downtime were caused by an influx of new users who had gotten an Xbox 360 over the holidays. It’s been a record-setting season for Xbox Live.

PC World - Microsoft Offers Free Game for Xbox Live Holiday problems

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Tags: Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox Live

The honeymoon between Microsoft and the partners and customers who’ve been gleefully awaiting the arrival of Windows Home Server may be over, thanks to a serious data corruption glitch in the software.

Using certain applications to save digital files to Windows Home Server could cause files to become corrupted, according to Microsoft, which last week said the issue had affected “a few people” on its community forums, and posted a Knowledge Base article outlining the issue.

Microsoft didn’t offer a timetable for a fix, but recommended that users not use the following applications to save data to Windows Home Server: Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007, and SyncToy 2.0 Beta.

File Corruption Bug Bites Windows Home Server - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

I thought people knew better than to use the first version of a Microsoft Product?

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Tags: Microsoft, Windows, NoSurprise, Software, Bugs

Yesterday’s Coding4Fun on MSDN was Introduction to Programming Lego Mindstorms, with .NET none the less.

Today Microsoft is showing off their new Robotics Studio at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006.

PITTSBURGH— June 20, 2006 — Today at RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006, Microsoft Corp. showcased the community technology preview (CTP) of a new Windows®-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotic applications for a wide variety of computing platforms. In addition, early adopter companies, universities and research institutes offered demos and provided support for the new Microsoft® Robotics Studio development platform. The community technology preview of the Microsoft Robotics Studio is available for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics.

Read the full announcement…

What’s really fascinating with this technology is they allow you to simulate a robot and to run code without having to invest in hardware.

The creator of Lotus Notes and former CEO of Iris Associates is about to replace Bill Gates as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect. Before joining Microsoft, Ozzie created a new groupware package called Groove. Microsoft aquired Groove in March 2005.

On June 15, Gates announced that he would step down from day-to-day operations and Microsoft. He will still remain part-time Chairman and technical advisor.

External Links:
Ray Ozzie Weblog
Profile

Microsoft has launched Windows One Care Live Security beta, an anti-virus and anti-spyware service for consumers only.

The service offers anti-virus, firewall, backup and recovery, as well as personal computer maintenance. Initially free, it will eventually be available for a subscription fee.

The service is part of the company’s Windows Live strategy announced last month, which sees Microsoft compete more directly with the likes of Google, Yahoo and Salesforce.com by using the web to deliver new products and services to customers.

Windows Live is a web-based service whereby users can sign up for a ‘live’ home page that pulls in constantly updating content from a range of information sources including web searches, email, syndicated headlines from other sites and photos and audio from across the web.

Yeah, like I would pay Microsoft extra to protect me against their own security problems.

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