First off my brother and I entered the gallery and were taken past some very large Microsoft branded boards into a large, atmospheric room with free food and drink and two large Windows Phone 7 screens. Obviously I was drawn to the screens and we were promptly given a demo by the marketer of what Windows Phone 7 will be able to do. My brother was very impressed saying that the OS Q”is like other smart phones but featuring the very best bits” and even “feels more personal than other phones”. He is an iPhone user and I asked him if he would consider a Windows Phone 7 device as his next phone, he said yes.

Next up we were given a guided tour of the various rooms Microsoft had set up to showcase their products, the first room was for Windows, Windows Live and Office. The room was full of new all-in-one PCs and notebooks, all looked stunning. I wasn’t too interested in the new version of Office after having used it for months now but my brother was impressed with some of the new image editing features and the Office Web Apps. After that we had a look at Windows 7 and its media playback capabilities with Sky Player and MSN Video Player both built into Windows Media Center. Following Windows 7 was a demo of Windows Live, specifically Messenger and Photo Gallery in which the new social features with Facebook were demoed in Messenger and Photo Fuse were demoed in Photo Gallery.

Following the previous day’s announcement by Microsoft that Windows Phone 7 will automatically upload photos to SkyDrive I thought I should ask if Windows Live Sync will feature on Windows Phone 7. It won’t. The reason for Windows Phone 7 to not feature Windows Live Sync at the current time is because people use Sync to keep whole folders updated across PCs, its unlikely all the content of these folders is required on a mobile device and will in fact be too large for the device and would be too much of a demand on the networks. However, its obviously possible to access photos from social networks, Office documents from the cloud, etc from the respective hubs on the mobile OS. The representative who I was speaking too said that perhaps in the future Windows Live Sync would feature on Windows Phone 7 but at this point in time there will be unbranded mechanisms for uploading content to SkyDrive. This I find encouraging that Microsoft know how Sync is likely to be used from things such as Live Mesh and so perhaps will have an excellent implementation of Sync for mobile devices in the future that is kind on storage and networks.

In the same room as all the Windows PCs and the various pieces of software being demoed was a sushi-like bar with various accessories from Microsoft Hardware rotating around it. There was much of real interesting on the table, however I did find the Microsoft Arc keyboard to be smaller than I expected and looked very nice.

The next room my brother and I went into was a gaming room, we were shown a demo of Fable III and were able later to play on it. Not owning an Xbox myself (but I really want one) or ever having played Fable II I am sure a lot of what I was told went straight over my head, but I enjoyed the little piece of the game I was able to play. At the other end of the room was a big area dedicated to a game you might have heard of, Halo Reach. Unfortunately there was very little to do other than watch a video of the game, it does look good.

Out of this game room we went and into the room I had been waiting for, the Kinect room. We were shown how to play the various games on Kinect with the first being bowling. I scored very poorly on Bowling, that might have more to do with me being poor at it in the physical world as opposed to any problems with Kinect though, and I didn’t appear to be much better at the mine cart, dodging game on Kinect Adventures. However, my fortunes improved when playing Kinect Joy Ride where I came a more respectable 5th (out of 8). From there I went on to beat my brother in the hurdles game coming 1st, I was very surprised at that, he is much more athletic than I am.

I was already sold on the idea of Kinect and its top of my Christmas list, but there is something really quite magical (eww, sounds very Apple-y) abut controlling actions on a screen with no physical contact of any kind with something. I am really looking forward to having this at home and if you get a chance to play with Kinect then do, you wont regret it.

Here’s my brother playing Joy Ride.

A few people I spoke to at the event about their experience with Kinect said they thought there were some serious problems with latency. I, however, didn’t find there to be much of a problem with latency, what I did find though was that it was easy for Kinect to get confused if there was someone in the periphery of its detection area. Oddly, it could easily handle two people standing in front of it just not if there was someone half in its field of view, I just hope everyone has large enough living rooms for this accessory.

After playing with Kinect my brother and I returned to some of the other rooms to check out a few more things and have a few more plays on Kinect; Joy Ride is a great game. After this we grabbed some food and shortly after left, as we did we were presented with a gift from Microsoft. The gift was Christmas stocking, fitting for the title of the event, with a Christmas cracker, small Christmas cake, Santa Claus hat and a memory stick with information about all the products. Its a great gift for the Microsoft fan that I am and I will be sure to use the stocking on December 24th.

It was a great day and I came away feeling that very confident that Microsoft are looking to have a very good Christmas period indeed.

1. Outlook  Social Connector. Most of us spend the majority of our working day with e-mail. But we also love the connection to family, friends and colleagues that social networking sites provide. What if you could merge your inbox with your social networks?  With Outlook Social Connector, you can get a people-centric view of e-mail and see the most recent status updates, wall posts, photos, attachments and appointments for the people you care about the most. Whether you like Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn or MySpace, the Outlook Social Connector gives you an aggregated view into your social networking life. 
2. Linked Notes in OneNote. OneNote is the digital notebook darling that many Office users just can’t live without. Some call it the ‘hidden gem’ within Office, because it changes the way people work by capturing text, video, audio and other content types in one single location. OneNote 2010 gets even better, with Linked note-taking – which lets you ‘dock’ OneNote to the side of your computer screen, take notes on a presentation, and map those notes in the presentation you’ve just seen. Whether you’re at school, remodelling a home or simply capturing notes from a client call, OneNote is a great application with unlimited potential to help you get things done.
3. Sparklines in Excel. Excel fans love the application not for the data organization, but for what the data tells them. Charts can be great for telling a story, but the newest feature in Excel – Sparklines – can make your numbers and figures even more exciting. Sparklines are charts that fit into a single cell to show a trend at-a-glance. Eighty-three percent of Office 2010 beta users agree Sparklines make it easier to visualize and gain insight from data.
4. Photo editing in Word. Did you know one in three people include pictures in their Word documents? Office 2010 now has built-in photo editing features, which make it easier than ever to import snapshots from the Web, edit them, and add visual effects in your document.
5. Video and broadcast capabilities in PowerPoint.  People are using multimedia more than ever to communicate ideas. PowerPoint 2010 gives video a first class seat, with the option to embed video directly in presentations and add stylistic effects.  PowerPoint also has a great new broadcast feature, where you can present a slideshow with dynamic transitions and animations to an audience of one or 100, clear across the other side of the world – even if your audience doesn’t have PowerPoint.
6. Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps help you work on your documents from virtually anywhere, using Windows Live SkyDrive. Get things done when you’re away from your “workspace” by creating documents in Office 2010, save them to SkyDrive, and view and edit with Web Apps anywhere you have Internet access. Web Apps make it easy to collaborate with friends, colleagues and family.
7. A Ribbon you can personalise. The improved Ribbon in Office 2010 not only appears in all of the apps, but lets you access your favourite commands quickly, and customize or create tabs to match your individual work style.

If you find all that above a little text heavy Microsoft have been kind enough to provide several videos demoing what can be done with the new Office 2010 suite of applications. Office UK has a YouTube Channel which currently only has the below video but if more are posted I will let you know.

Below is another video from Microsoft showing off the Web Apps

There are three versions of Office for sale in the UK:

You can find out all about the new Office 2010 applications, Web Apps, Office Mobile and how to trial and buy the software at office.com, the website has a very nice design.

Don’t forget this if you are on Twitter you can add the Office 2010 Twibbon to your picture.

Microsoft will be offering two versions of each Office version at retail, a boxed edition with disc and license key and a Key Card which is used for downloaded or previously installed versions of Office and only has the license code on.

*Microsoft have yet to announce to UK pricing for Office Professional Academic

Info via IT PRO

Microsoft look to be aiming to increase the number of people who use their Windows Live set of services by incorporating Office Web Apps within Windows Live, this could prove to be a great move to get people to stop defecting to various competitors’ services.

For Office 2010 Microsoft will provide both a boxed edition and a Product Key Card that will require the software to be preinstalled or downloaded before it can be used. In the information below about the various versions and prices I have added to price in pounds which are probably not the values we will see when it comes to retail in the UK.

Office Home and Student
Boxed Version $149 ~ £93
Product Key Card $119 ~ £74

Office Home and Business
Boxed Version $279 ~ £174
Product Key Card $199 ~ £124

Office Professional
Boxed Version $499 ~ £311
Product Key Card $349 ~ £218

Office Professional Academic
Boxed Version $99 # £61
Product Key Card N/A

A more detailed document on what each version contains can be found here.

2010: The Year Of Touch

We all know that Microsoft added Windows Touch to Windows 7 to bring touch computing mainstream and it will be this year that we start to see the benefits of Microsoft having added support for touch interface. Increasingly there will be more all-in-one-desktops, notebooks, netbooks and monitors that are touch enabled and because of this more developers will look to add innovative ways to use touch which will increase sales and complete the cycle.

Then, of course, there is the ever present rumour of the Apple tablet, or iSlate, which will bring touch interface to the very front of the consumers’ attention. It seems that some companies are planning to combat the rumour of the iSlate before anything is confirmed with rumours of a Google/HTC partnership for a Chrome OS tablet. It remains to be seen if there will be anything new to touch control added by Apple or if it will just be a large iPhone.

Talking of phones there will be an increasing number of touch only smart phones coming from the likes of HTC and Sony. There will probably be some interesting apps appearing for Android and I hope for Windows Mobile. Although no one seems interested in writing apps for Windows Mobile 6.X maybe 7 will inspire developers to create some, much needed, useful apps for the platform.

Microsoft may have another trick up its sleeve with the Courier concept that I hope will come in to fruition sometime this year and then there is the plan to bring the Microsoft Surface to our homes, not something I expect to see soon but maybe some aspects of the interface will work its way into new platforms.

However by the end of the year we may have already gone beyond touch and have entered the realm of touch-less control when Microsoft release their Project Natal which, to begin with, will only be for Xbox but I would hope an expansion of the technologies involved.

2010: The Year Of The Cloud

I know one of the most popular buzzwords for 2009 was the Cloud but I think 2010 will be the year it really comes to the masses. Microsoft will be launching its Windows Azure platform properly in February followed by Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps which will see Microsoft embrace the Cloud like it has never done before. I am also expecting Windows Live Wave 4 to contain much more Cloud based content with new services, improved storage and ways to access programs online. It is also possible that Windows Mobile 7 will be more cloud orientated, we know there plans to be a high level of social networking incorporated with the mobile OS.

Apple will be looking to take more services to the Cloud or face being left behind as Google forces all tech companies to focus more on the internet. With regards to Google we will see the first browser OS which really can’t be any more Cloud focussed and I expect many more Cloud services and greater integration of those services with its Mobile OS.

2010: The Year Of The Ribbon

Windows 7 uses it in its standard applications, we know that Office 2010 will be featuring it in all the applications and from the leaked screenshots it appears that Windows Live Wave 4 will use the Ribbon interface.

It seems to me that Microsoft are finally beginning to agree to use a more coherent design approach to their applications where the Ribbon interface is used in content creation applications such as Paint, Word and Movie Marker. Those three suits of applications will be the most used from Microsoft and it will be great to have the Ribbon mainstream but I would hope that work on the next versions of Visual Studio and Expression Studio.

Another type of application Microsoft is content browsers such as the Zune Software which seems to be the inspiration for the unreleased version of Windows Live Messenger which could also be described as a content browser. Microsoft seem very keen on the linear interface for their entertainment devices, Zune HD and Xbox, and I would expect that any new entertainment devices would follow a similar approach.

Lets hope Microsoft can continue the good design and interfaces of 2009 in their new products of 2010 and that other software developers will use the Ribbon interface and create new and exciting interfaces.

I have many questions and hopes about what we will see this year and I am looking forward to playing with the new applications and devices that will come out over the year, maybe some of which we will see as early as next week at CES.

Windows Live Wave 4: The Grand Scheme

This post relies heavily on some of my previous predictions and thoughts on what could be coming in Wave 4 so you might want to have a look at them before reading this:

Windows Live Wave 4: Video | SP1 (Additional predictions and reasons)

Windows Live Wave 4: Skydrive

Windows Live Wave 4: Windows Phones (Doesn’t look like I was right about much of this)

Windows Live Wave 4: Sooner Than We Think? (Or not)

Windows Live Wave 4: The Tide Is Coming In

Windows Live Wave 4: Within The Week?

I don’t want to linger on Google Chrome OS but I do love the idea of being able to sign in a netbook and have all the things I want and need there without needing to do much and I think that in the future this will be how we use computer. At the same time though I enjoy being able to use my netbook without requiring the be on the internet.

Amongst the many complaints I have read about Chrome OS there was one that stood out for and that is how users will navigate round the system, URLs are not exactly the nicest or easiest way to navigate. I know the OS will do away with a lot of the normal desktop experience but I think should be some kind of online desktop. By looking at what Microsoft have been up to for past 18 months or so I am starting to think they could well be designing a Cloud Desktop which would be perfect for a system like Chrome OS and a variety of devices.

What is known

First the Office Web Apps were meant to beta about a year ago but there were delays upon delays until September when a tech preview of two apps was released. I am no developer but that seems a rather large delay for something that was almost ready a year ago.

There have been no really updates to Live Mesh for months now, there have only been fixes for the client when they have been really necessary. Another aspect of Live Mesh is that it will support applications running in the Live Desktop to bring true collaboration and sharing for various services which acts just like a limited PC desktop experience. Unfortunately the Live Framework, which Live Mesh is built upon, has been unavailable since September (right about the time Office Web Apps TP was released) where it says the framework will be released with Windows Live Wave 4 (WLW4).

Windows Azure will go 100% Live in February 2010, right about the time when WLW4 is rumoured to be released and therefore we can expect the Live Framework, built on Azure, to be released; it makes sense that Azure and WLW4 will be released at the same time.

What is expected

It expected that Live Mesh will become part of Windows Live set of services and will create new Windows Live services Documents and Devices. I also think there will be a better Web Instant Messenger service than the current one in Hotmail

Connecting it all up

With the lack of new updates for Live Mesh it does seem like the service is being incorporated into something else and Windows Live is defiantly the best for the service to be. Add in the fact that Office 2010 will use Windows Live to keep files in the cloud it makes even more sense to have Microsoft syncing technologies as part of the same service. With Live Mesh there would be new services such as Documents and Devices, as seen in screenshots, but I also think there would be another service, Windows Live Desktop.

This desktop would allow easy access to folders that are synced across all your PCs but also be a place to launch web applications, which could very well include the Office Web Apps. There needs to be an easier way to access to the Web Apps than only by editing documents already uploaded into SkyDrive and Live Mesh was designed to allow easy sharing and synching of files and of components within Mesh Applications, in much the same way Office 2010 Web Apps save to the cloud and allow collaboration of documents.

In theory several of the Windows Live services, such as a Web IM App, could be made into Web Apps or at least users could access them through links on the Windows Live Desktop making a much easier way to access the service users are likely to want.

The merging of Live Mesh and Windows Live SkyDrive with Web Apps.

So why the delay

I reckon the reason for the delay of any kind of news from the Windows Live team is because they have been waiting for all the components to come together. The Office Web Apps Beta delay could be down to finalising how the Live Framework would act and be scripted which, in turn, could have be down to the Azure team. There it has taken quite some time to get everything ready for the launch of Windows Live as it has been relying on when Azure and Office 2010 release, the desktop wouldn’t be all that good without Office Web Apps.

With things increasingly going to the cloud Microsoft wont want to miss out on anything so if they can create a platform for applications in the cloud and an easy, simple way for users to access the applications then they could be on to a winner. Obviously the more the platform acts like a Windows PC the better it will be for consumers as they wont need to learn a whole new system but it might just limit real innovation, not that this theory isn’t showing innovative ideas. It would also be possible for this “Cloud Desktop” to be accessed on a variety of devices bring the cloud experience all of Microsoft’s device and its competitors ensuring a dominant position within the cloud.

As with most of my prediction articles this could all be circumstantial and we might just have a new set of Windows Live services that don’t fundamentally change the use services in the cloud but here’s to hoping.

Saving (uploading) to the cloud

Within each of the Office 2010 applications there is now the option to save the file directly to the cloud, using the Windows Live SkyDrive service, so users can edit the document online, using the Web Apps, or on another machine by downloading the file. The images below shows how to save your document to the cloud.

As you can see the application lets you choose which folder to save the document too, if its your first time of saving to SkyDrive you will need to sign in in the application first.

After hitting the Save As button the follow dialogue pops up and after clicking Save the file is save to the cloud. Once the file is saved to the cloud by just clicking the save button will update the uploaded file.

The window looks a bit sparse to me, I expect there will be a populated navigation bar on the left when Office 2010 is released.

The document now in the cloud straight from Word 2010.

Editing (downloading) from the cloud

You may think that to edit this document, that I haven’t saved on my PC, I would have to download the document from SkyDrive, thankfully though this isn’t the case.

By accessing the Word Jump List you can view all of your recent documents, including those that haven’t been saved on your PC.

When trying to open a document that has only been saved in the cloud Word will ask you for your username and password, obviously it will only ask for it once if you check the box.

Word will then start downloading your document and then open it just like it was on your PC.

I was expecting the normal Save icon to appear in the Quick Access Toolbar but it seems to only be this new resyncing icon, there is no one else with access to this document. I guess that this is because this is a cloud document.

One thing I have noticed that doesn’t seem to be working correctly is that when clicking Open File Location Word comes back saying it can’t. Not sure if this is a bug or because the Office suite, Web Apps and SkyDrive aren’t yet final. Now I am looking forward to being able to edit my Word documents in the cloud with the release of the Web Apps, when ever that will be.

I am not sure how well used this feature will be as I reckon that Live Mesh will become part of Windows Live Sync and SkyDrive and so people wont need to manually upload their documents to the cloud.