The only One negative I found when using Windows 8 was that I had to make 1 more click to use Windows 8 on a desktop in the same way I use Windows 7; that 1 click is to press the desktop Live Tile once the PC has started up. The other, perhaps more significant negative I found with using a mouse and keyboard on a desktop PC was how fiddly it now is to shut down or put to the sleep the PC. Rather than just pressing the Windows button (or indeed the Start orb) and then clicking “shut down” the user has to move the mouse to the very bottom left corner of the screen and then click the settings charm, then click the power button and then select “shut down”. I guess on ARM devices users wont have to shut down or put to sleep their device as often as a desktop users so no need to make it so accessible, however for desktop users its not an easy task. I can’t imagine this would require much a tweak to make it easier for desktop users to shut down their PC quicker.

What people who use Windows 7 need to think about is how they use Windows now. For me I have most commonly used applications and websites pinned to the taskbar and then I have some lesser used applications pinned to the Start Menu. In Windows 8, once users are in the traditional desktop UI, users can pin applications and websites to the taskbar in exactly the same way as in Windows 7, so for most scenarios Windows 8 will act just like Windows 7. However, if I did need to access Paint (one of the applications pinned to the Start Menu) I can just press the physical Windows button and then click the Paint tile which I have pinned to the left of the Start Screen and voila Paint opens in the desktop UI.

When using Windows I hardly ever needed to ever go into the Metro UI. I don’t see how using Windows 8 on a desktop is any different from using Windows 7 on a desktop.

But for arguments sake lets explore another scenario; if I hadn’t pinned an application to the Start screen or at least not on the very left then I would have to search for that application. In Windows 7 searching the computer is done by hitting the Windows button and then typing the name of the application you want to find, users are then shown a list of all applications matching that name. In Windows 8 it works in exactly the same way, the only difference is that the search results take up all of your screen rather than a small box in the bottom left.

What’s the point in a big screen if you don’t use it all?

I find the search to be much more useful in Windows 8 than in Windows 7 as I can quickly and easily select what kind of results I want to see, the options being apps, settings and files. It’s even possible to use apps to search rather than the OS, this could be within apps or online. Again the results take up the whole screen and therefore show me many more results than the Start Menu ever could.

Who wouldn’t want more results shown when searching for something?

But of course Windows 8 does more than just bring a Metro version of the Start Menu such as offering drastically faster boot times and some of its new features even benefit the mouse and keyboard, desktop PC user. I really like the new copy experience, its much more intuitive and useful than the previous incarnations. Equally if you use a multi-monitor setup then Windows 8 brings new features to enable you to make the most of both the monitors you have. There’s even some gimmicky things like the auto-colourisation of Aero depending on the desktop wallpaper a user has which I think is a very nice effect.

So all in all Windows 8 acts just like Windows 7 for desktop use where only a mouse and keyboard however it just requires 1 click before a user can actually get to the Windows 7-like desktop. I had no problems using Windows 8 on a desktop PC with mouse and keyboard only, I now want to try Windows 8 on a touch screen device where I don’t use a mouse or a keyboard, from what I can tell the Windows 8 experience will be just as good on a tablet device as it is on a mouse/keyboard only device.

Can someone remind me why businesses wont like Windows 8?

Thanks to @robertmclaws for the split screen multi-monitor screenshot.

Updated to include info about shutting down the PC.

I know most people aren’t interested in Windows 8 for its tweaked Aero UI but some people out there might like it.

In my previous article I wrote about how iterating fast has been a proven way of increasing market share and getting more consumers to use a product or service. Microsoft on the whole seem to get this; apart from the Windows team. Windows itself makes sense to have a long iteration cycle of 2 – 3 years but Microsoft have been touting Windows Live as the part that makes Windows “shine”. It was promised that Windows Live Essentials (WLE) would be updated regularly but there has only been one major release of WLE over the past 2 years, that’s not regular. Windows Live also has online companion services which have been updated more frequently, but not by much.

I could understand why Microsoft were slow to iterate with WLE if it was a development platform but its really focused solely at the consumer; there are a few opportunities for developers to write plugins but sadly there aren’t many devs. With WLE being so consumer focused it really should be updated more often. If it was it would have a larger mindshare and people would be likely to use Windows Live products (both Essentials and online) more often; currently Windows Live gets overlooked by many people. Don’t get me wrong Windows Live is great, I don’t know where I’d be without Windows Live Mesh but it could benefit hugely from being updated more often.

So do I think this will change at any point in the future? Yes and no.

Looking ahead with relation to Windows can only mean 1 thing, Windows 8. This poses quite the conundrum between the business and consumer strategies.

Windows traditionally gets a lot of money from businesses, Windows Live will get most users who are consumers. But Windows 8 wont be a typical version of Windows if the rumours and speculation are to be believed. Windows 8 will power nearly every kind of consumer electronics device from tablets to set top boxes, from phones to high end desktops. The difference then for Windows 8 is that a lot of owners of Windows wont be businesses, but instead consumers. The consumer will want new features far faster than businesses will want them, faster than the current 2-3 year Windows release cycle. Yes Microsoft does offer service packs on a more frequent basis but the new features in the services packs often aren’t consumer focused but are future proofing and behind-the-scenes tweaks.

Bearing all this in mind I think Microsoft will continue removing applications from Windows as they did with Windows 7 and moving the products into Windows Live. There will be an integrated Windows Marketplace which, I suspect, will suggests the Windows Live Essentials applications when people first start up their Windows 8 machine. The Windows Live applications will be updated on a more regular basis (months between updates) so that despite Windows not being updated often consumers will still have new features to play with on a regular basis. But this isn’t really all that different from how Windows Live works now but could explain the future rebranding of Zune into something like Windows Live Player (I, and many others, think Windows Media Player will be replaced by Zune or its descendant in the next version of Windows.

Another major rumour for Windows 8 is that it will come with alternative UIs for at least the tablet version of Windows. I imagine the traditional Windows desktop will be completely feature complete but the other UIs will be less so. The thing is though that these UIs will probably need to be tweaked as Microsoft gets feedback from users, but users wont wait for the next version of Windows for those tweaks. Both Google and Apple have iterated frequently on the UI on their mobile OSes and I highly doubt Microsoft will get everything right first time with the alternative UIs. Therefore I think that Microsoft will need to tweak the UI regularly to add new features and tweak things as users request and think that either the service packs will be used to do this or Windows Update.

I think, well hope, that Windows 8 brings a more consumer focused approach to elements of Windows. I imagine that the base OS will be treated as it always has done allowing businesses and developers plenty of time to decide on using the OS before a new version is available. However I would hope that the consumer elements of Windows 8, the apps, UIs and consumer focused features are treated with a much shorter update cycle. I reckon that there would be major and minor updates for the consumer elements of Windows 8, perhaps the major updates would be yearly (service packs) and the minor ones would be as and when they are ready.

If Microsoft are serious about using Windows 8 for a broad range of consumer products then they need to ensure that they are prepared to update things quickly but at the same time businesses wont like Windows 8 if they are required to change things or buy a new version too frequently. I think there will be a greater distinction between the basic Windows (for businesses) and consumer specific elements of the OS going forward, mainly minor tweaks so as not to cause fragmentation but enough to keep consumers interested in Windows 8 as a consumer product.

The Windows team did a good job with keeping people interested in and talking about IE9 so I am confident that the Windows team does know how to keep people interested in a consumer product.

I would imagine that there will be only 1 more major update to Windows Live before Windows 8, probably some time this summer and a demo of future Windows Live features and products at PDC in September when its thought Windows 8 is thought to be first publically released as a beta.

I am really looking forward to June when it is thought Microsoft will demo its tablet UI for Windows 8 and hopefully elaborate on its plans for the consumer parts of Windows 8.

The app makes it very easy to add and categorise things to do with a shortcut that allows user to access it whatever app they are in. To categorise the task and set a day it needs to be done the user just needs to type, its very easy. “in:” categorises the task and “by:” sets the deadline. If a category doesn’t exist then a new one will be created and its possible to change the name and colours of the categories.

At the bottom of the window is a timeline to show how busy you are with the various tasks colour coordinated and if completed then they get crosshatched. This app also works well with Windows 7 making use of Windows Touch and integrating well with the taskbar.

For some of my readers this app is about to get even better as the source code for the application is available and it can be opened in Visual Studio for you to play with.

You can download Tasks.Show from MSDN or read more about it at the Windows Team Blog. I often make notes of things I need to do and it looks like I will now be able to make them in a Metro app.

By the way I would encourage you to download the best looking Metro inspired Twitter app available, MetroTwit as they have made some excellent progress with it over the last few weeks.

Write blog post about Tasks.Show; tick.

The first one shows how one’s entertainment whether it be music, gaming, films, etc. can be accessed everywhere and I have to say it does a great job of showing this fact. The products in this video are Bing, Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows 7 (using an Asus Slate).

The second video from Microsoft is the making of a flash mob in Seattle and shows how people can contact each other and share content easily across the Microsoft ecosystem. The products shown in this video are Windows 7 (Dell Duo at one point), Windows Live (specifically Mesh and Messenger), Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, Kinect and IE9.

This is the best demonstration of the “Microsoft Life” I have yet seen and aside from the Xbox and Kinect its how my life looks (well I don’t go skiing or creating flash mobs). How many of you also live the “Microsoft Life?” If you don’t do these videos make you want to?

First off Ballmer spoke about the Xbox and announced that in the Spring an update will be released for the Xbox 360 that brings Kinect controls to Netflix and also a Kinect controlled Hulu Plus will be coming to the console. It is thought that the media controls of these two services will be the same as the Zune hands free controls.

Ballmer then went on to talk about a new Kinect service, Avatar Kinect, which will allow people to chat to their friends in virtual environments by way of their Xbox avatar. The most interesting thing about this service is that Kinect is powerful enough to identify people’s facial expressions so the virtual chats will show a true representation of a user’s reaction. This service will exist along side Video Kinect which is already available and links in with Windows Live Messenger.

Next up was some announcements of numbers; Microsoft sold 8 million Kinect units in 60 days, they were expecting to sell 5 million. Ballmer also announced that there were now over 30 million Xbox Live subscribers and that Microsoft had sold over 50 million Xbox 360s.

Following on from this Ballmer spoke about gaming on Windows Phone 7 and announced several new games coming to the mobile platform. Ballmer also announced that over the coming months will be several updates for Windows Phone 7 bringing copy and paste and faster app switching, a demo was then given showing off copy and paste.

Ballmer then went on to talk about Windows 7 and showed some new computers. Then a demo was given of the next version of Windows running on ARM’s System on a Chip (SoC) architecture. Surface 2.0 was also shown off with an impressive demo of the was each pixel acts as a camera to scan items placed on the screen. I detailed these announcements in more depth earlier.

And that was about it really. Some interesting announcements but nothing ground-breaking, on the other hand it was more interesting than last year’s keynote.

There were some notable omissions from the keynote, I was expecting Ballmer to talk about how many Windows Phone 7s had been sold. There were rumours that we would hear about Windows TV, or at least the way Microsoft was directly planning to compete with the Apple TV and Google TV (I actually think that the Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s best bet there so am glad there was no mention of Windows TV). Another rumour suggested that Microsoft would have a version of Windows for “thin PCs” or tablets, again nothing about this was mentioned, in fact there was no emphasis on tablets at all. Its good to see Microsoft not pushing Windows 7 as the answer to tablets but at the same time its disappointing that Microsoft still don’t have a strong and definite answer to the competition’s tablets.

There were no specifics of when we can expect updates for Windows Phone 7 or even what Microsoft have planned for the longer term. It sounds like we have to wait till the Mobile World Congress to find out more about the updates (reminds me of last year having to wait to hear about Windows Phone 7).

There were also no mentions of Microsoft’s plans for Zune, it got a demo on the Xbox but nothing about what new features the service will get over the coming year or even if Microsoft plan to release a new Zune device. Sadly there was also no mention of whether Kinect will be appearing on any other platforms.

However, there were some interesting things to take away from this keynote. It appears that Microsoft is betting on Windows far more than it ever has before. In fact the next version of Windows will remove the need for Windows Embedded. This then looks as though Microsoft fully plan to utilise Windows on tablets and handheld devices rather than using Windows Phone OS for the larger screened devices. The issue there is that Apple are likely to have released another 2 or 3 iPads and there will be countless Android powered tablets when the next version of Windows is released and that’s before we even know what the tablet version of Windows will be like.

One thing I think went mostly unnoticed at the keynote was the new tech Microsoft created for the Surface 2.0, PixelSense, which has each pixel as a sensor. If Microsoft were to ever release a tablet version of the Surface with technology it could be very useful, being able to scan things on the go using the screen on a gadget could be very useful…it would have been great for the Courier.

Its interesting to note that the Cloud was barely mentioned in the keynote despite Microsoft knowing full well its where the future of technology and computing lie. Perhaps they will talk more about the cloud later in the year when detailing more of what Windows 8 will do.

Despite the negativity within this post I actually enjoyed the keynote and from looking at several articles it seems that some people were impressed by what they saw. The Xbox is certainly going from strength to strength and if 2010 was the best year for it then I guess 2011 can only be better. I guess my negativity comes from wanting Microsoft to be as successful as possible and I wish they would move faster with some things (updates for Windows Phone 7 and announcements of Windows 8).

What did you think of the keynote?

Tom Warren found this video of the Media Center UI being used on top of Windows Embedded.

Along with the rumours of a new version of Windows for tablets or “thin PCs” and possibly some talk of Windows 8 at CES this year it certainly seems that Microsoft will be bringing the Windows brand to the front. It is also expected that Microsoft will announce Windows Phone 7 support for CDMA, the other type of mobile phones in the US, and may well demo some new devices. It is also expected to announce a new update for the mobile OS.

With so many expected and rumoured Windows announcements and the expectation that Windows 7 will continue to do well this year and its even thought that before 2011 is over we will have a beta version of Windows 8. It certainly looks like 2011 will be the year of Windows.

Another rumour for an announcement Microsoft might make tomorrow will be about Kinect as someone managed to snap some photos backstage that clearly shows a new product or service “Avatar Kinect” being talked about. There has also been speculation of Microsoft talking about new “Surface” tablets and even the successor to the Zune HD.

Tomorrow’s CES keynote could be absolutely mega, but after last year’s disappointment with very little announced (and what was announced never coming to market; I’m looking at you tablets) I don’t want to get my hopes up for this year. The keynote is at 18:30 to 19:30 (Pacific time, so it starts at 2:30 in the UK on the 6th) tomorrow and can be watched at microsoft.com/ces or on the Microsoft Facebook page.

Windows

2.5 Screens and the Cloud – Total Score 3.5 (previous 3.5)

• PC Screen – Windows 7 + Windows Live – 1
• Mobile Screen – Windows Phone 7 + Windows Live – 1
• TV Screen – By using a PC connected to a TV, definitely not mainstream. Kinect brings Windows Live Messenger to the TV screen and soon TV will have Messenger inbuilt – 0.5
• The Cloud – Windows Azure + Windows Live – 1

Office

2 Screens and the Cloud – Total Score 3 (previous 3)

• PC Screen – Office 2010 – 1
• Mobile Screen – Office on Windows Phone 7 – 1
• TV Screen – Nothing – 0
• The Cloud – Office Web Apps , Docs.com– 1

Zune

3 Screens and the Cloud – Total Score 4 (previous 3.5)

• PC Screen – Zune PC Software – 1
• Mobile Screen – Zune on Windows Phone 7 – 1
• TV Screen – Access to music, Zune Pass and movies through Zune for the Xbox 360 – 1
• The Cloud – With a Zune Pass users can listen to any music online – 1

Xbox & Xbox Live

3 Screens and part of the cloud – Total Score 4 (previous 3.5)

• PC Screen – Games for Windows Live – 1
• Mobile Screen – Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 – 1
• TV Screen – Xbox 360 and Xbox Live – 1
• The Cloud – Possible to play some Xbox Live games in a browser against people using Windows Phone 7 – 1

That gives a total of 14.5 out of a total of 16, not bad going considering my unscientific method the company was only scoring a total of 10.5 back in January of this year. From my method I think that Xbox Live and Zune now complete the “3 screens and the cloud” strategy, but in some cases still lack features that could really make them great. I don’t ever see Office coming to the TV, although considering that Microsoft are working on a way to integrate Lync and Kinect together maybe there are plans to bring some kind of Office support to TVs. I also wonder about how Windows/Windows Live can come to a TV screen, it certainly needs to be more than just Messenger or an easier, more obvious way to get Windows PCs connected to a TV screen for me to up the score.

I was wondering what other services could be added to my scoring system and have decided that Bing should probably be added too.

Bing

2 Screens and the Cloud – Total Score 3 (previous N/A)

• PC Screen – Current Bing experience on any desktop and any browser is very good and only expected to get better when HTML 5 version is released – 1
• Mobile Screen – Integrated into Windows Phone 7 – 1
• TV Screen – Very, very limited Bing integration on new dashboard – 0
• The Cloud – Obviously – 1

Adding the Bing score to the total now sees 17.5 out of 20. Hopefully Bing will have far more of a prominent position within the next Xbox interface update.

Microsoft is very close to having fully achieved its 3 screens and the cloud on all its consumer products and it will be interesting to see what this score is like after CES, MIX, E3 and certainly this time next year.

Ballmer then went on to talk about “A New Era of Opportunity” talking about how there are various device types, the phone, PC and Xbox, and there are services in the cloud, Bing, Office 365, Azure, etc, and it is Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5 that will allow them all to work together. As previously known Ballmer also said that there will be new form factors for Windows machines before Christmas and more to designs to follow after too. He also quoted some of the figures of Windows 7’s usage.

As IE will be the way to unite devices and the cloud Dean Hachamovitch came on stage to talk about IE9 and how Microsoft plans to provide the best browser for developers. Hachamovitch was wearing another IE related t shirt with “developers” written across it with the “e”s replaced with the IE logo. Hachamovitch demoed a very nice looking website which is built entirely from HTML5 but perhaps looked the most like an app of any HTML5 demo I have seen. You can check out the demo at kexparchive.org.

As part of the demo Microsoft announced that a new IE9 Platform Preview would be available. Read more.

Ballmer then came back and spoke about Windows Phone 7, there wasn’t really anything announced just reiterating to developers why Microsoft believe the mobile OS has a great future ahead. However the main part of Ballmer’s speech about WP7 was to announce that all attendees will be getting a free Windows Phone 7, I will talk about mine in another post so if you happen to be massively jealous you don’t need to read about my phone.

Then Scott Guthrie and Brandon Watson took the stage to demo some apps on Windows Phone 7. First up was Bejewelled Live which certainly looks to be a good game for the platform. Then the Facebook app was shown off. Following this attendees got the first look at the soon to be released Kindle for Windows Phone app. The app will also bring an exclusive feature to Windows Phone, Kindle Store recommendations. One final app was demoed for US citizens showing them how much tax they should be paying.

Scott now took over from Brandon and created a Silverlight app that pulled date from ebay, he was searching for red onesies for his child (insider joke). He announced that a new OData library would be available and new features for the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

Ballmer came back on stage and was discussing how Windows Phone 7 already has more apps than some mobile OSes that have been out for a few years. He went on to say "when it comes to Windows Phone, make no mistake. We’re all in. BOOM, BABY!", made me laugh.

Next up was the main focus of this PDC really, the cloud and Windows Azure. There was a lot of talk about things I didn’t fully understand but the theories all made perfect sense. Windows Azure has been built to be a major platform for the cloud for everyone to use. Use its based on existing technologies but has been designed that it can run on a few or many servers in one or many data centres around the world. It is an operating system, that part Bob Muglia was keen to stress.

To prove how useful the cloud will and the potential for Windows Azure Pixar’s Chris Ford then took the stage with Muglia and the two discussed why Pixar believe in Windows Azure and the cloud and how it will be useful. There was then a video of Pixar’s Renderman showing clips from the various films it has made and the software used to create them. The reason why Pixar think the cloud will be useful is that is provides the scale and flexibility required to perform processor heavy tasks.

The demo shown was rendering a clip, if using a single computer it would take days to render the clip and many, many years to render the whole film. The cloud allows for great flexibility so more or less servers could be put to the task of rendering depending on how urgently the clip needed to be rendered. This would be very difficult and costly for companies to manage themselves but becomes cost effective and practical when done in someone else’s massive data centre.

Next were a few announcements about new features for Windows Azure, its now possible to upload a virtual machine to the cloud, Server App-V allowing App-V like functionality on servers and Azure and a list of smaller additions.

Following on from this was how Channel 9 has used some of these new features of Azure. It sounds to have been a major undertaking moving Channel from “on premise” to Azure but it sounds like it went off without a hitch.

Then some more announcements: Visual Studio Team Foundation Server on Windows Azure will be release as a CTP next year, allowing people to develop wherever they are storing all the files in the cloud. Some updates to other areas of Azure such as caching and Access Control now has more providers. And finally Windows Azure Marketplace and Windows Azure DataMarket. The DataMarket is live now for developers to access vast amount of data from respected sources, some are free. I think it interesting to see the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a data provider.

After the keynote I met with some fellow bloggers and journalists, however I fear me being given a Windows Phone might have alienate at least of them (the press don’t get a free phone). Following this I went to a session about how Azure can be used with Windows Phone 7, it was interesting if a little heavy for my non-developer mind and didn’t have any stunning demos to talk about. You’re best off watching the video of the session when its available.

Through out the day I went to “the commons” a few times and played with Kinect and a 3D, 3 screen gaming PC which was pretty fun. I also had a chance to speak with Scott Hanselman and Laura Foy. I think Scott should set up a “school for life” he was offering out life tips to another Microsoft employee, it was very amusing. I saw Channel 9 Live being recorded and picked up some little Ch9 guys.

Next I went to pick up my Windows Phone 7 after which I had a short chat with Brandon Watson. I went to another session, this one about the finer details of coding for Windows Phone 7 and the best practices. Again, probably best to watch the recorded version of the session than let me explain it.

At 4 I went to the Microsoft Home and saw [NDA kicks in here], it was great.

Next up the other MSPs and I had a chat with Charlie Kindel. The other MSPs have all written several apps for Windows Phone 7 and had some questions that they wanted answered, I on the other hand just wanted to know if there will be any Windows Phone 7 announcements about new features soon.

After this chat it was time to leave the campus and head into downtown Seattle, I was invited to the press function instead of the bowling alley where all the attendees were going. At the press event the woman wouldn’t let me in as I wasn’t press but after pulling a few strings and Brandon Watson coming over to sort it out I was let in.

It was a great day and I look forward to more interesting news and chats with people today. You can be sure that I will keep you posted on my day through Twitter. Expect a write up about my Windows Phone 7 at some point today, I seem to have run out of time to write one now.

Qwiki, for those that don’t know and I didn’t until yesterday, is a start up who’s product aggregates information, pictures and video into a single experience and then read’s allows the information whilst cycling through the associated images and videos. From the demo they gave at TechCrunch Disrupt it looks to be a very capable product. It looks good in its current form but could do with a little fine designing.

Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.

The reasons cited in The Next Web article are that this product could be added to Bing to give it another, very strong weapon to compete with Google and I have to think they have a very valid claim here. I doubt Google could purchase Qwiki due to anti-monopoly rules but I also think that Qwiki will only be really great as part of another product. I’m not sure Qwiki will do all that well as a stand along product but should be integrated into some other information source, such as Bing.

Another argument as to why Microsoft should by the start up is that it is also very good at announcing a day’s schedule for a person on their mobile device. It can inform them of the forecasted weather, their appointments and any news of the day. Microsoft could do well to integrate this into Windows Phone 7 or some variation of this to give a very different way of providing information to people.

I fully agree that Qwiki’s technology could well be put to good use in Bing and Windows Phone 7 but as I said I have some other ideas too.

Microsoft, as you know, will soon be releasing Kinect for Xbox 360 the hands free controller for the console. Aside from using one’s body to control the console it is also possible to use one’s voice to control the device such as by saying “play”, “pause” and “stop” while watching films and there are several other voice control options too. There have long been rumours too that Microsoft plans to bring Kinect to more than just TV screens but also PCs and possible mobiles too.

Microsoft are bringing Bing to the Xbox 360 in a very limited way this year but again I can see Qwiki being an excellent way to explore information on the big screen using one’s hand to select which picture or video to watch whilst being able to control what was being said and searched for just by speaking to the Xbox. I am pretty sure when one term is being described there will be some things mentioned that need extra explanation or exploration which is where I see voice controls being used here.

I think it would be great if users could interact with the previously mentioned Bing/Qwiki experience by talking to their PC. Imagine saying something “more” or “expand” to the PC and it then searching for the related content it was just talking about and showing a new Qwiki experience about the new term. Bing already does a great job of suggestion related searches and it would be good to just say “related” to one’s PC and have it start talking about the top related search to the original term.

This could also be used on mobile phones, Windows Phone 7 already has voice control features built in which could be used to explore more content without having to physically interface with the device. Such as finding out more information about appointments later in the day or having the device read out more weather forecasts than its default.

If Microsoft were to buy Qwiki and integrate it with Kinect we would be certainly be living in the future I have envisaged since the 1990s, well apart from hoverboards. It will be great when technologies actually gets out of the way of users and with Microsoft increasing focus on Natural User Experiences it only makes sense that user’s can find out information just by having a conversation with their devices.

Have you got any other reasons why you think Microsoft should buy Qwiki?