Inside the Insiders is (going to be) a series of interviews with some of the most recognized and outspoken Microsoft influentials, journalists and enthusiasts I know. I plan to go around interviewing as many of these peers as possible to find out more about their background, life outside of Microsoft and their darkest Apple fetishes. At least that’s what I tell them. Little did they know their answers will help me annihilate them and my other competitors. They say to keep your friends close, and enemies closer.

Robert threatens to blow his head off after Apple’s iPhone announcement

The first of those to fall for my inconspicuous trap is Robert McLaws, from the formerly LonghornBlogs.com fame and now the leader of the Windows-Now clan, consisting mostly of himself. Not only did I have the pleasure of meeting Robert at this year’s CES event in Las Vegas, but also listen to his peaceful snore. What happens in Vegas, makes great jokes later on. Personal details aside, Robert is a great questioner and interviewer himself – always setting the benchmark for heated discussions and topical issues at questions time. Here’s what he had to say from the other side.

Long: Hey Robert. Thanks for falling for my cunning plan.

If you were on a dating site, how would you describe yourself?

Long: Looking forward to “Everybody hates Robert”.

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First they take your calls, then they take your bag, then they take over the world. At the annual Microsoft CEO Summit in Redmond on Wednesday, Microsoft showcased what they thought was an innocent virtual office-lady. Little did they know, she would be a threat to humanity. The Microsoft conference center was filled with some of the most powerful and profited people in the United States, so Microsoft had to show them the latest toys to make their job even easier earning more money.

As Dan Richman described briefly, one of those toys is a conceptual “virtual personal assistant” designed to send shivers through every receptionist across the globe. Not only can machines transfer your call now, it can identify people, understand natural language and even take action depending on the contents of your call, for example, making an appointment. During the keynote, Paul Duffy gave this demonstration of Bill Gates’ virtual assistant.

This is an impressive piece of technology combining many emerging technologies such as speech recognition, natural language processing and cross-platform interfaces (phone-to-PC). I don’t know how much of the female voice or responses were scripted, but it sounds like a product worth realizing. But the first problem that came to my mind was how is a computer suppose to identify who is who. Can’t I say I’m “Paul Duffy” too?

However, the strangest thing would have to be saying “goodbye” to a computer that you know does not care. But I guess if you don’t, they’ll come back to haunt you when they take over the planet. 😉

For a moment there, I thought all hope had been lost for a cool video segment to come out of WinHEC 2007. Usually there’s always something funny, something smart, something in-your-face to be enjoyed at the keynotes – it makes staying up at 2am worth just that little teeny weeny bit more. Of course the big blow came yesterday when Microsoft played the messiest ‘flashback’ feature I’ve ever seen – made for people with an attention-span of a second or less. For a marketing campaign worth $500 million, and the best Bill Gates quote they could find was “an operating system has never had parental controls before”. Even Bill had to pause for a moment to comprehend what was played behind him.

Needless to say, I didn’t have much of an expectation for day two. But then came this. A skit about “Certified for Windows Vista” involving a coach and a bunch of hardware devices. Might only make you smirk, but better than hitting rock bottom.

The next time your router plays up, you know what to do.

During Bill’s WinHEC 2007 keynote speech yesterday, Microsoft played a teaser video summarizing its entire launch efforts globally for Windows Vista and Office 2007. Normally, Microsoft produces these promotional videos with very high production value, for example the recent and notable oPhone parody, but what came out yesterday was the worst video mash-up I’ve ever seen. If you don’t have a headache, then you will after watching this video.

It felt like nothing on the screen could stay still for one second – always zooming in and out, shaking, flashing or flying away. And what about those featured quotes? “Microsoft is putting it’s money where it’s mouse is -USA Today“. “This is an excellent release of Windows -Houston Chronicle“. Are those the best quotes they could find about Vista? It feels like Microsoft didn’t put much effort into the WinHEC keynote at all.

However, the Windows Rally infomercial, Windows Home Server demo and Craig Mundie’s presentation made up for the lesser efforts.

Microsoft’s forward-looking black-hole, Steve Sinofsky strikes again! Although this time, it’s not a secret screenshot of the next Windows release, or telling enthusiasts to stop getting excited about the future, but sucking up the links to the webcasts stream of two exciting events over the next two days – WinHEC 2007 and the Microsoft CEO Summit.

Believe it or not, the URLs to the webcast streams of these two events have actually been ‘hidden’ in HTML comments to be unveiled some nanoseconds before the actual event. Whilst it might be great to build a lot of site traffic for unsuspecting users who spend hours looking for these links, it’s frustrating to some of us who enjoy watching these live from the comfort of the bed couch. I’m sure Sinofsky played no part in the HTML coding, but everyone else who I can make fun of has left the damn company. 😛

The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference might sound like a boring mix of circuits and drivers, it’s actually pretty interesting because it often showcases the latest in Windows client and server technologies powered by the latest and upcoming hardware platforms – in fact, the first Longhorn demo was showcased at WinHEC 2003. I’m personally looking forward to some of the virtualization technologies, DirectX 10.1 and future storage & input concepts. The webcast starts at May 15 8:30am PST:

• 100K (crap) quality
• 300K (not-so-crap) quality
• 500K (one thumb up) quality

Update: Day 2 keynote webcast URLs are available straight from the WinHEC website (like it should be).

The Microsoft CEO Summit on the other hand isn’t as so practical as WinHEC, but it doesn’t mean it won’t contain some interesting demos or concept products. The Summit hosts around 100 CEOs representing 3 trillion dollars and 11 million employees, so Microsoft will want to show them the best of the best. Most notably, the Tablet PC made much of its debut at the Summit, also where every CEO walked home with one to try. You can say it’s a high-class event. The webcast starts at May 16 8:50am PST:

• 100K (drops of Ballmer sweat) quality
• 300K (puddles of Ballmer sweat) quality
• 500K (buckets of Ballmer sweat) quality

Start streaming now for your complimentary copy of the Microsoft classical music collection.

I don’t recall AMD or Intel ever announcing the termination of their graphics divisions, in fact even S3 Graphics still makes Vista-compatible graphics cards, but according to an internal Nvidia “year-in-review 2006” video, they’re as good as gone. I’d like to see what AMD, Intel and S3 thinks of their sudden demise.

Cool video nevertheless. Music is called “The Adventure” by Angels and Airwaves for those of you playing at home.