I’m in Las Vegas this week covering CES. For last night’s keynote by Bill Gates I chose to skip the long lines and maddening crowds and popped into the Podtech Bloghaus (a high-falutin’ name for the Seagate/Scoble suite at the Bellagio), where the video was being streamed on a 47-inch TV.
The video? Hilarious. Seriously, you have to see this look at Bill’s last day as a full-time Microsoft employee. (I can’t find a direct link, but you can watch the whole keynote here. The video is near the beginning. The direct link is here.) And BillG has a self-deprecating side, at least when paired with the rich and famous and powerful.
The keynote itself? Eh. It wasn’t death by PowerPoint, but the demos were flat and uninspiring. Note to Microsoft: Take some chances, will ya? That demo of Windows Live Spaces, for instance, would have been awesome if a 10-year-old girl had been at the podium. But having a product manager dressed in pink with a pink-themed Live Spaces site do it was, frankly, weak.
And the Bloghaus? Double-eh. I found myself frustrated by the unbalanced sound and the noisy crowd that made it impossible to hear what was being said, and judging by the reaction of the folks around me, I wasn’t alone. I finally left in frustration about two-third of the way through the speech. So if it got better at the end, I missed it.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
Bah! Its impossible to watch the recorded keynote without Silverlight.
Ed, you didn’t miss a thing in the keynote. I think this was one of the dullest ones I have ever seen. Although, as always the Bill Gates videos are great.