One of Gates' Favorite Themes Continues in His Absence

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service This year, the biggest crowd at lunch during Microsoft's analyst meeting was at CEO Steve Ballmer's table, with people standing two rows deep around the lucky few who actually scored a seat. In past years the honor would have gone to Bill Gates, who stopped working full time at the company last month. But although Gates wasn't at the meeting in person, at least one project that has been near and dear to his heart still made it into the presentations. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, showed off some futuristic ideas for a natural user interface -- one of Gates' favorite themes over the past few years. Mundie demonstrated a future application for Surface, Microsoft's multitouch tabletop computer. In the scenario he described, the computer could appear in a hotel... [read full story]