Tech Olive

Kicking off 2010′s CES is Microsoft’s opening keynote hosted by none other than Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach. The keynote brought many interesting announcements from Microsoft, ranging from improvements on Office 2010 to new “Slate PCs”. Follow us after the break for some highlights.

Ballmer kicked off the announcements with a little information about upcoming changes and improvements with Windows-embedded platforms found in new Ford and KIA vehicles. Then, after moving onto Windows 7 advancements, we were told about Microsoft’s new eBook reader that offers not only a huge content library, but also interactive features built into these books, and they will even read themselves to you. Improvements were also announced for Microsoft’s young search engine, Bing. With changes to the maps and directions options, Bing now offers street-views of the world, something that Google Maps has done for a while now.

Office 2010 is also getting a bit of an overhaul, with shared files, projects and streamlined slideshows. I hate to break it down like this, but it seems Microsoft has just copied Google Wave from the little we saw of the upgrade on the stage.

In hardware news, Ballmer showed us three new prototypes of Windows “Slate PCs”. While these were a disappointingly short topic, it was clearly just Microsoft’s attempt to outshine Apple by announcing and detailing it officially before Apple gets a chance to show off their tablet.

Moving onto gaming news, some big advancements for Xbox Live are coming. An excited audience was told details about Halo: Reach and promised an early multiplayer beta for owners of Halo: ODST coming this Spring. New to Xbox Live is “Game Room”. Put simply, it’s a digital arcade where you can play your choice of retro games. The best part of this service is that it will allow you to purchase your game and play it on your PC, as well as your Xbox 360, with the same leaderboards and achievements. Retro game choices will be changing weekly. No date of availability was announced.

The final big announcement of the night was regarding Project Natal and Microsoft’s work on their Natural User Interfaces (NUI). Mostly they talked about the same things everyone learned at E3 last year when Natal was announced, but ended the segment with the bombshell that Natal is scheduled for a release this holiday season. So, there’s plenty of time for delays to arise.

Stay tuned for further coverage of CES!