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Updated 6/25/2008 1:32 AM | Comments 37  | Recommend 24 E-mail |Save |Print |Reprints & Permissions |

 Enlarge By Gary R. Voth, PR Newswire

At the CEO Summit in May, Microsoft's Bill Gates demonstrates the TouchWall, a prototype user interface technology with a touch-sensitive surface.
Gates looks into PC's future as career shift approaches


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ByEdward C. Baig, USA TODAY
REDMOND, Wash. — It's just a short time before he will leave full-time duties at Microsoft(MSFT), and Bill Gates is reflecting on a longtime passion: the human-type interfaces he believes will usher computing well beyond the keyboard and mouse — everything from Tablet PCs with handwriting recognition to Surface tabletop computers that recognize objects and human touch.
"None of these techniques — vision, ink, speech, touch — are mainstream," he says.
Microsoft is making a large bet on what Gates calls these "natural user interfaces." It's one of the areas in which Gates will remain involved post-retirement. After 33 years, Gates, 52, is stepping down from full-time work at Microsoft. After Friday, he will remain chairman and a part-time employee as he shifts his main focus to philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates' departure completes a long-planned transition. He gave up the CEO post to Steve Ballmer in 2000; three years ago, the two men first discussed Gates leaving his current gig. "There's no reluctance here," Gates says during one of his last in-person interviews before switching gears. "This is something that I've driven."
Gates won't be totally removed, of course. He'll work on natural interfaces and other projects, though he says, "I wouldn't try and suggest that my ongoing role is key to this stuff. … Steve and Ray (chief software architect Ozzie) will figure out how to use me effectively."
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The large Surface tabletop computer in the office Gates soon will relinquish to Ballmer offers one clue about where he thinks computing is going: The interactive, 30-inch touch-responsive tables can be used to order meals or display maps. They're now in use at AT&T phone stores and at Harrah's Rio hotel in Las Vegas.
Ballmer sees surface computing as a multibillion-dollar category. Indeed, such newfangled alternatives to the mouse and keyboard could have a far-reaching impact in the office, living room and car. Microsoft doesn't break out its investments in these areas. But as the company confronts major challenges in the post-Gates era — from feverish competition from Apple, Google and others, to making a mark in Internet-based computing — the technologies will make their way into many of its core products.
In private demonstrations and at the recent D: All Things Digital tech conference, Microsoft provided an early glimpse of "multitouch" in the next major version of Windows, which will likely appear in 2010. Windows 7 will employ technology similar to what Apple is pushing on the iPhone. For example, you can drag and enlarge photos with your fingers.
In another move beyond the keyboard and mouse, Microsoft last year bought Tellme Networks, which allows voice queries for news, weather and more. Tellme clients include American Airlines and American Express.
"Whenever we say natural interface, it's obvious what we're doing," Gates says. "We're taking advantage of skills that humans have innately."
Across its Redmond, Wash., campus, Microsoft is figuring out how best to apply those human skills to computing.
Typing vs. talking
No one expects the mouse and keyboard to go away, of course. So far, nothing beats the keyboard for inputting text, including your own voice, says Microsoft's Chris Pratley, general manager of the Office Labs research group and inventor of OneNote note-taking software. "You and I are talking at about 20 to 30 words a minute. Many people can type twice as fast as that. And voice will always have some small error rate, probably more than your typo rate if you're a good typist."
What's more, changing people's habits is a tall order. Consider touch-screens. "People have already learned not to touch their screens — you'll smudge it and make it dirty," says Ian LeGrow, a group program manager on the Windows team.
Yet you're meant to get your fingerprints all over the second-generation TouchSmart PCs coming soon from Hewlett-Packard. You can tap, drag and resize tiles or icons on the large, 22-inch display.
Gates figures the keyboard and mouse account for about 95% of the way folks use computers today, though he expects the percentage "will go dramatically below that."
Several companies will play a role. "Even though Microsoft has done some of the multitouch work with Surface, it's really Apple that has turned that into something much more mainstream (with iPhone)," says Gartner analyst David Smith.
Here are some of the areas Microsoft is focusing on:
•Using a pen. They haven't exactly been runaway best sellers, but Gates remains extremely bullish long-term on Tablet PCs, which let you use a stylus, or pen, to control icons or write directly on the screen in digital ink.
Gates says Tablet PCs from Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Toshiba and others sell in the millions today, not tens of millions. Early versions tended to be cumbersome and clumsy. Still, Tablet PCs have been adopted in insurance and medicine, and there's a real opportunity, Gates insists, in education.
"My daughter is at a school where everybody has Tablet PCs, and they use OneNote and don't have textbooks. It's been a phenomenal success." Gates said he had nothing to do with the Tablet PCs being in her classroom.
Microsoft's OneNote software lets you search and organize free-form notes, whether captured by pen, keyboard or audio recorder. Not surprisingly, Gates writes on a Tablet PC more than most. He'll typically leave notes in their handwritten form to share with colleagues or refer to later. But he sometimes converts written scrawl into typed text.
The recognition part has improved, a lot, Gates says. I've been "living this ink thing for a long time and always feel like we're on the verge," he says.
Inside the company, researchers are working to further improve the Tablet PC experience. One example, still in the prototype stage but available as a download, is called InkSeine. Traditional pull-down menus and other trappings of the mouse/keyboard environment have been ditched in favor of an interface designed with the pen in mind. It takes advantage of "gestures" (e.g., you can scroll by drawing a little spiral). "We want ink to be more of a first-class citizen," says Raman Kumar Sarin, a senior developer at Microsoft Research.
•Voice. Typing on a cellphone as you drive is awkward. Not to mention unsafe and illegal in some places and soon more, with California and Washington state about to implement hands-free driving laws. Tellme recently launched a service that lets BlackBerry owners use voice search instructions for movie listings or places to eat. (Yahoo and others are also driving mobile voice search efforts.)
But ask out loud for "Thai restaurants" and you'll receive a text response, thus still diverting your attention from the road. "Our goal is to further advance this and add audio playback," says Dariusz Paczuski, who heads the consumer services group at Tellme.
Microsoft has already teamed with Ford on the voice-activated, in-car Sync technology, a combination stereo and hands-free calling system. Tell it to play an artist or call home, and the system obliges.
Voice still presents challenges. Great strides have been achieved in voice recognition through the years. These days, you can bark out commands or dictate into a microphone and have a PC respond in kind. But there's still a "big gap," Gates says, between a person understanding another person in an office environment vs. a computer understanding a person. For example, computers can recognize random numbers read aloud when it's quiet. But people perform far better than machines in noisy environments and in understanding context and ambiguities. Even amid a din, Gates says, humans can think, " 'Well, it must be such-and-such, because I know what this person came to me to speak about, and I know the way they were looking at me.' "
•Touch. It's been just over a year now since Microsoft first showcased Surface, which turns an ordinary tabletop into a tabletop computer. Surface combines multitouch capabilities with sight — below the surface are cameras with infrared filters to sense cellphones, digital cameras and other objects placed on them. Through multitouch, lots of folks can interact with the table at the same time.
At the iBar lounge at the Rio, patrons sitting around the table can watch promotional videos of shows and hotel attractions, order drinks off an interactive menu and play a game of virtual bowling. A Flirt application lets guests at one table meet people at others; Surface tables are networked, with cameras on the ceiling.
In AT&T stores, you can compare specially tagged cellphones placed on the Surface tables, dragging buttons to check out features, accessories and service plans. Eventually, you'll be able to complete a transaction right from the table, or customize your own handsets with pictures, ring tones or games, just by plunking them on the surface.
Prices need to come down before Surface tables become viable in the home, possibly three to five years out. They're in the $5,000-to-$10,000 range. The idea is you might play board games on them or look at photos by placing a camera on the table. Or you might drop your keys on the table to view messages and your calendar.
Now, imagine an upright Surface of sorts, and you have a rough sense of another early-stage prototype, the TouchWall. Gates demonstrated this "intelligent" touch-based multimedia white-board in May at Microsoft's CEO Summit.
Using your hands on a TouchWall, you can drag and dive into business presentations and spreadsheets, zoom in on any portion of the screen, display videos or engage in videoconferencing. Behind the 4-foot-by-6-foot plexiglass screen is a rear projector. Three filtered lasers sit just off the surface of the screen.
Microsoft has no immediate plans to make it commercially available. The question is "how cheaply, how quickly and how easily can we build it?" asks Ian Sands, a Microsoft Office Labs director.
For now, Microsoft isn't saying a whole lot about Windows 7. But the company has shown how you can "paint" on the PC screen with your fingers, play an onscreen piano, zoom in on maps and make an underwater scene ripple. Most people will need new hardware to take advantage of these and any other multitouch stunts. (Less-advanced touch capabilities were built into Windows Vista.)
Moving on
Gates will be well into his new role by the time the next version of Windows appears. "The biggest challenge for Microsoft moving forward is, where does the leadership come from?" says Smith of Gartner. "Whenever a founder leaves, there is usually a big hole."
Of course, Gates may be plugging some of the holes. "He's still the chairman, he'll still be on the board of directors, (and) he'll still be the No. 1 shareholder. So I think these priorities are going to continue to be priorities," says analyst Matt Rosoff of the independent Directions on Microsoft research firm.
"I'll miss doing the work here, and I might find myself saying, 'You know, I would have done something differently,' " Gates admits.
Will he share those thoughts? "If it's constructive," he says with a laugh.
Gates is even willing to get nostalgic, to a point. "Part of the reason Microsoft has been so successful is, most of the time, we don't look back," he says.
But "This is a big milestone," he acknowledges. "My role will be completely different. It is a chance to say, 'Wow, in 33 years, Microsoft has become a significant company and had a chance to be at the center of the whole creation of the software industry and the empowerment of personal computing.' "
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Posted 6/24/2008 9:32 PM
Updated 6/25/2008 1:32 AM
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Comments: (37) Showing:   Newest first Oldest first Most recommended   New: Most recommended!

Future Vision (0 friends,send message) wrote: 9/12/2008 7:09:38 AM
Dear Edward Baig,
I Wish to share my vision on future with Mr Bill Gates. Hope you can pass on the message to him if possible.
Below is my message in simple words.
" Hi Bill,
Wish to share my vision about Future which only you can turn into reality.
Future should be
- Only displays ( LCDs / thin film / display curtain walls / .. .. ) everywhere ( means everywhere - offices, buildings, lobbies, houses, road, vehicles, shops, planes, ships, .... every place you can think of...
These displays are touch screens, optional keypads, scrollers / mouse / digital pens, camera, audio, memory chip readers / memory readers in any form,
- all these displays having all kinds of security functions - Retina Eye Detection, Finger print detection, Logins, Pwds, ...
- In today's world we are having our emails ( hotmail / yahoo / gmail / .. ) and photos ( youtube / facebook / ... ) on servers which we don't know where it is .. but we are having login and pwds to access it.
- In future, we should have ALL OUR DATA whether it is Office / Personal DATA on servers which can be accessed anytime / anywhere in the world. That means there will be DATA SPACE SERVICE PROVIDERS or MANAGERS. with whom we have to subscribe for our Personal DATA SPACE and OFFICE DATA SPACE... Once this is done, we can access our DATA anywhere and at anytime... In that case, we will not even need our laptops / laptots / netbooks to carry anywhere...
The biggest advantage is whenever we want to dowload any software onto our DATA SPACE... our Service provider will add that software to our DATA SPACE and that even a licensed one and debit our accounts digitally..... This way the PIRACY of software will reach to ZERO. The world will be PIRACY FREE .. definitely for software.
The above will help in such a way... that for eg... i am on the road... and i have to provide / share some photo or some important details to my friend which is available only on my personal computer.. i have to just search for DISPLAYs on the road, shops, lobbies, ..... nearby and log on to my SPACE ( personal or company ) , retina eye detection, finger print detection... and lo .. i am onto my SPACE...
This is like having your COMPUTER DATA everywhere - at any place - at any time even though you are actually not carrying the computer.
Even when i am sitting in my friend's house... or in the plane, ....or in the toilet or in the car or taxi or bus.. i should just have those displays...by which i can access my SPACE... and that's it.
The world will be reduced to ONLY DISPLAYS with all sorts of Security Features & DATA SPACE Service Providers with strict SECURITY control.
ONLY YOU CAN MAKE EVERYONE CARRY THEIR SPACE WITH THEM.
I may sound crazy.. but this will be the future... or you can say this ought to be the future.
Recommend 8 |Report Abuse

dennis95326 (0 friends,send message) wrote: 6/29/2008 1:14:45 AM
Bill Gates did it. Don't waste your time putting him down, just go out and do it yourself or make it better
Recommend 4 |Report Abuse

CubeShield (0 friends,send message) wrote: 6/27/2008 11:48:36 PM
Many of these new natural user interfaces sound great, but it takes a balance of technology, practicality and price in order for these innovations to be adopted by the masses.
Recommend 3 |Report Abuse

8675309 (0 friends,send message) wrote: 6/26/2008 3:14:43 PM
" People may have been turned off to vista cause they didnt have enough RAM. You should have at least 3 GB of Ram for Windows Vista. At least if you want it to preform well.'
_____________________________________
thats exactly the problem. BLOATWARE !!
Recommend 4 |Report Abuse

stillarfish (9 friends,send message) wrote: 6/26/2008 1:37:40 PM
MicroSoft has always created good products yet they focus upon the gee whiz and not upon dependability. As a former developer, I have yet to meet a MicroSoft product which cleans it's registers to prevent poor performance, errors & crashes. I have always written an initialization module to be used by all my developers just to circumvent future challenges which I knew were inevitable. Internet Explorer is a prime example of poor planning as you must enable cookies to view most web sites yet it keeps the cookies and internet garbage after you exit requiring manual deletion or the purchase of additional maintenance products simply to keep the garbage from accumulating!!! The matter of security is moot when all users leave a trail of garbage behind tracking their activities!!!
Recommend 3 |Report Abuse

BigE (33 friends,send message) wrote: 6/26/2008 5:35:26 AM
forrest green45 notes: "Next computer for this consumer will definitely not be a Dell and it will not have Microsoft OS on it. As for Cowboy and BigE I'm sure you know what you are talking about and I don't question your knowledge...just don't question mine or my word on what has happened. "
----------
Dude, we're on the same page -- I'm not questioning you at all. You missed the sarcasm in my post -- read it again.
"OS X" refers to Apple's Unix-based operating system and is not the same as "Microsoft Windows XP". I completely understand that many people, for whatever reason, want Windows running on their machine, along with all of its well-known idiosyncracies (like having to wade through the various problems you outlined above). The last thing non-computer types want to have to deal with are operating system internals and driver debugging...
I strongly adhere to a KISS (simplicity) model -- the simpler the better. I am also a strong advocate of aesthetics, usability, and industrial design. Apple's Macs and OS X excels in both of these categories with their systems (read review after review comparing the two camps, and Apple frequently comes out ahead). While Microsoft made some good strides in the right direction with Vista, it failed because it is incapable of adhering to a KISS model. Thus, people using Vista have a tendency to get really familiar with the internals of Vista just to get the thing started and to keep it running. When I drive my car, I don't want to know what the spark advance setting is at any given time, nor do I care what the differential gear ratio is, or how the wiring harness is installed. All I want to do is drive the bloody thing... Vista and XP require you to become technically aware of operating system internals. Mac OS X, for the most part, does not.
While Apple products will certainly have a small set of issues, that list PALES in comparison to what you see in the Windows world. The concepts of debugging device drivers, defragmenting your drive, having to approve every web-based mouse click because of Vista's strange and draconian security model, and the need to constantly subscribe to anti-virus and anti-malware software simply don't exist under OS X.
Don't listen to the fanboys from either side in this forum -- it gets pretty ugly from time to time. Do this instead: Go to a Best Buy and look side-by-side at Windows machines and Apple machines, and take each for a 15 minute spin. Then decide what your future holds, and report back.
Recommend 6 |Report Abuse

forrest green45 (0 friends,send message) wrote: 6/25/2008 10:51:59 PM
I'll admit as far as what Os Vista does...much better than XP. Dell and Microsoft are both problems though. Since I'm not employed in computers but have a decent understanding of them...I'll say this. I bought a Dell with OS XP and it was bad right out of the box. I purchased all kinds of extended warranties good for in home repair 24/7 and they've never come to my home. They won't honor their word. I spent I have no idea how many hours with people...most of which I couldn't understand...finally got to where when I got one of them I just hung up and kept calling until I got someone that could speak english that I could understand.
Dell would do nothing for me even though I had spent thousands of dollars with them. Finally...this past May was a year ago when I was once again attempting to get some help just to be able to read email...they up and sent me a new computer but with OS Vista. Now this is funny and typical of Dell. I purchased a Dell combination printer/fax/copier/scanner that matched my very nice looking computer. If looks counted for anything I'd been doing great. But when I got the Vista out and plugged it up, read the manual, read the online material they have with it and downloaded Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare system the computer worked great and delivered like the prior one with XP never did. Then I needed to print something. Printer wouldn't work. Unloaded my printer software...loaded new drivers as needed supposedly...reloaded my printer software and only the copier will work. Wouldn't work. Gave control of my computer over to a technician at Dell twice and they couldn't make it work. Would they come to my house...honor the contract I have with them? Not in this lifetime...it might pay for Michael Dell a meal sometime, whatever it would have cost them to be an honest company. Oh yeah...why did they give me a new computer with Vista? They gave me the computer because I was raising cane with them just at the time the New York Attorney General filed suit against them for this, among other things, very reason.
Vista works fine but when I run my OneCare scans I'm now up to 9 registry problems. Computer still working but Microsoft has refused to answer one of the several emails I've sent them...they allow you to do that in certain areas.
Next computer for this consumer will definitely not be a Dell and it will not have Microsoft OS on it. As for Cowboy and BigE I'm sure you know what you are talking about and I don't question your knowledge...just don't question mine or my word on what has happened. The two companies just don't care and will eventually go the way of the auto companies in this country...I'm sad to say. And I have never been able to bring myself to own a foreign auto because of the wars and my age. Yes...I have Chinese cr*p but couldn't get by if I didn't purchase some things from China...and many you don't know until you unwrap them. Sadly enough I bought a pari of reading glasses the other day from CVS Pharmacy and got home and took the plastic holder off of them and what do you think was under it...Made In China print.
I have Japanese and German friends but I will not purchase their cars unless I'm forced too. Looks like I may not have a use for them anyway...nothing to put in them that I'll be able to afford if prices continue to escalate for oil products. It's a crying shame that so many of our corporations, and most of those overseas, aren't worth a tinker's da*n anymore. Didn't mean to be so depressing Bill. Melinda and you will have more time to play hide the wei...oh well...a story for another day.
Recommend 5 |Report Abuse

cowboysrfun (0 friends,send message) wrote: 6/25/2008 9:34:40 PM
When I first bought vista I thought I was in for a big head ache. WRONG, if you have any computer skills at all, Like knowing about RAM,PROCESSORS and did a little home work, like reading the book "windows vista in a nutshell" they also have one for XP, you would'nt have a problem, I love my machine, have not had a problem at all. (knock on wood) networking peer to peer, two machines vista, one XP home, one XP pro and the all share one printer on one vista machine, the other lexmark copier, scanner,printer on XP home. it took me about 2hrs to config. and everything works fine. I don't know it must just be me. (READING,HOMEWORK)
Recommend 4 |Report Abuse
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