Gates Proposes Web-Enabled Alarm Clocks

Do you need a Web-enabled alarm clock that can tell you traffic conditions, too? What about the luxury of carrying the Web into other parts of the house, rather than walking to and sitting down at a desk?

If you answered "yes" to either question, you're just what Microsoft - and the tech industry - needs.

While the technology industry sits mired in the doldrums, Microsoft hopes to lever it free with new technologies plus new twists on some old tricks. Bill Gates, chief software architect at Microsoft, kicked off Comdex, sweeping a broad arc across the industry with his keynote speech.

As has been Microsoft's wont, Gates highlighted the Tablet PC and the Mira "smart display", calling them a natural outgrowth of computing. "After all the magic of the chip brings intelligence and the magic of software (is) spreading out to different devices and those devices are spreading out in different ways," Gates said.

While some attendees squirmed at the length of the speech, they sat rapt for what is usually the highlight of the night, Microsoft's commercial presentation. In a series of vignettes entitled "Behind the Technology", Gates parodied the laughable Microsoft BOB operating system; the Altair computer, which was sent pirouetting across the screen, iMac style; and even Gates' inability to recognize the Internet as a phenomenon.

"It was very clear to me that the Internet was where everybody was going to go," Gates said in the tongue-in-cheek parody. "It was clear to me once everyone had gone there."

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