As the BUILD conference represents a combination of formerly separate software and hardware events, Microsoft has many sessions dedicated to the design of hardware for Windows 8 devices. In the first of these sessions, Dennis Flanagan provided an overview of the hardware improvements in Windows 8 including some interesting connectivity additions and improvements.

As most people would have seen on the B8 blog, USB 3 enables much more performant file transfer operations. On top of this, Windows 8 will also take advantage of newer power profiles that exist in the USB 3.0 specification to enable lower power usage with USB 3.0 enabled devices.

Windows 8 also enables connecting to peripherals that aren’t already mainstream. By adding support for Bluetooth Low Energy, Microsoft anticipates a range of new low-powered interactive devices such as medical monitors with just watch batteries to connect and transfer data with Windows 8.

To extend existing technologies, WiFi Direct is a new standard that enables devices to easily create a peer-to-peer connection without a network. Windows 8 adds support for these connections to exchange data with higher bandwidth requirements than Bluetooth. Windows 8’s PlayTo will also be able to use WiFi Direct to stream media and videos to players like TVs.

Finally, Windows 8 also has built-in support for Near Field Communication to enable instant device-to-tag and device-to-device communications. As demoed in the keynote, Windows 8 has the ability to launch web links and applications by simply tapping a NFC-card. What wasn’t demonstrated will also be the ability to share URLs, photos, applications and games between Windows 8 devices by simply bumping them.

On a related note, Microsoft explained networking is one of the biggest culprits of driving PCs to higher energy states than optimal as an increasing number of application require constant network access.

To optimize the balance between power usage and network connectivity, Windows 8 enables a network-connected standby state that filters and collates network requests in a more efficient manner that groups separate requests before passing it onto applications and the system.

I just discovered this interesting feature of Windows 8 that allows websites to connect users with Metro-style applications.

The BUILD conference website uses a currently undocumented meta tag that changes the website’s icon to a button in Internet Explorer. Clicking the button reveals a “Switch to BUILD app” button which seamlessly launches the BUILD app.

The META tags also seem to imply applications have the ability to hard-code their application ID which may match ones that exist in the Windows Store so users without the app installed can be taken to the listing directly. This would make application discovery for website-driven brands (ex. news sites) much easier.

Following the Steve Ballmer’s appearance at the conclusion of the second keynote at Microsoft’s BUILD 2011 conference, the trademark exhibition hall opened up to the public for the first time with vendors and Microsoft booths showing off new products and technologies.

Of note are the booths of AMD, Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia who each have at least one Windows 8 device showed off inside a glass cube. Many of these devices are prototypes of smaller-sized slates of around 8″. No specifications or models were detailed on any of these devices so it’s assumed most of these are just concepts.

Last but not least, Channel9 Live is sporting a custom version of MetroTwit Show which I’ve been working on. Go check out their live show throughout BUILD.

Join Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Paul Thurrott, Tom Warren and I as we liveblog the second keynote of the inaugural Microsoft BUILD 2011 conference where Microsoft is expected to discuss Windows Server 8, the cloud and more.

There’s been lots of buzz around the new application runtime environment of Windows 8, appropriately named the Windows RunTime. Shown during a big picture session of BUILD 2011, the graph above gives a simple but detailed rundown of exactly what capabilities it exposes to developers.

The most interesting aspects to me are the NFC proximity sharing capabilities, “PlayTo” which enables native DLNA streaming for any media source, contracts that encourage greater data portability between applications and SMS which enable an additional communications channel for Windows 8.

In one of the first sessions of BUILD 2011 after an intense keynote of Windows 8 announcements, Jensen Harris of the Windows User Experience team took the opportunity in a “Big Picture Session” to elaborate on more details of Metro on Windows 8.

Among many interesting insights, Jensen explained some interesting usability research conducted for the design of the touch behavior and user experience.

The thinking behind the research was the belief that everyone uses touch computing slightly differently. To gather data on this, their research analyzed a sample of people on how they used existing touch product in the home, work and in their dedicated research labs.

One of the conclusions of the research revealed that people use many different postures when working with touch devices. They include but are not limited to on the knee, on tables and two hands on the side which they found surprising as the most common posture regardless how light a device may be.

Following this, they asked participants to fingerpaint on a piece of paper placed infront of the screen. Each user would then paint one area they can reach comfortably and another color for areas that’s harder to reach.

The result of these research is prominently visible in at least two areas of the Windows 8 user experience. The first is the application bar where icons are not evenly spaced across the entire span of the bar, instead, grouped onto the left and right within reasonable distance from the edge. The other is the split keyboard layout which hugs the sides of the device, within comfortable reaches of the thumb.

As we also witnessed during a press briefing of Windows 8, user experience research played and still plays a big part of the evolution of Windows and this is just one of the latest examples of how it is impacting the design of Windows.