It’s only been a few months since Bill’s last day at Microsoft. Everybody asked themselves (and him, obviously) “what’s next?” Clearly his greatest responsibility is to the Foundation, but to leave tech entirely? Not likely. Although it may be an ignominious comparison, consider Michael Corleone: “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” And now, his reentry to the tech world is in the form of a mysterious company with no stated objective. Will bgC3 be another force in the world of technology, or is it just a front so Bill has an office to go to every day?
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Check it out! The latest commercial has Bill, but no Jerry. It actually drives home that a lot of people use a PC and not everyone looks like Apple’s PC character. Well done.

Yesterday, we told you that the Seinfeld ads were being axed and we were 80 percent right. Microsoft will roll out the next phase of their marketing campaign sans Seinfeld. However, this doesn’t mean that Seinfeld is out for good. In fact, there are multiple spots remaining, but it’s unknown at the moment when they will roll.

There’s obvious confusion going around with some saying the ads were being pulled because they made no sense or because they sucked, but the reality is that this was planned the whole time. The naysayers will argue that it’s just a PR move to say that it was planned, but, trust us, it was. We were just never supposed to know about it. As always, more as we get it.

We’ve confirmed with multiple sources that Microsoft will announce the second phase of their $300 million marketing campaign, which, unfortunately, axes Jerry Seinfeld. Waggener Edstrom confirmed the move tonight. According to WaggEd, Microsoft will spin it in a way that would make us believe that axing Jerry was the plan the whole time, which it is according to our sources out West.
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Microsoft’s second commercial just aired during Big Brother and I’ve gotta say this one is pretty hilarious. Check it after the jump and let us know what you think. Read More

Here’s that commercial we told you about earlier – the first in the series of ads for Microsoft’s $300 million campaign to help prop up Windows Vista. I just grabbed it off my TV while watching the Giants/Redskins game.

While this ad doesn’t really tell us anything about Microsoft or its products, it does tell us that someday computers will be edible. So there’s that. Gates is kinda funny, too.

Here’s a cartoon from GeekCulture.com’s Joy of Tech series. Enjoy.

The Joy of Tech [GeekCulture.com]

This is probably old, but it’s really, really slow today, so I’ve been playing this for the last 30 minutes. Thanks to the fine folks at Super News.

As we learned from Zero Punctuation, web comics are very easy to make. They involve a few basic things: a knowledge of the CE industry, an appreciation for its many absurdities, and the inability to draw. The results are somehting like SiliconApartment which has a basic premise: what if Steve and Bill had to live together. The resulting hilarity is fairly limited but it’s always nice to see Steve Jobs’ 5 o’clock shadow every once in a while.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, today was Bill Gates’ last day working at Microsoft. I won’t eulogize much here other than to say that whatever qualms you have with Microsoft’s code, business strategies, or design decisions, you have to admit that things wouldn’t be the way they are today in the computing world without the influence of this nerdy guy right here. And the computing world is pretty damn amazing right now. So let’s have a cycle of silence as one of the most influential people in technology’s history takes off to do some much-needed social work.

Bye, Bill. It’s been a long, slightly buggy trip.

In case you want a recap of what was actually said this morning in Redmond.

The Seattle P-I has tracked down an old e-mail from 2003 that Bill Gates sent out to members of the Windows Usability team. The pages-long e-mail message chronicles Gates’ attempt to download Windows Movie Maker. Here are some especially tantalizing tidbits, with the full e-mail message to be found after the jump.

“I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated…

…I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?…

…Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state…”

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Bill Gates leaves Microsoft on June 27, and every news outlet is now running their own version of “What happens now?” Newsweek’s is among the least annoying, comparing a photo taken in 1978 at a mall in Albuquerque to one taken a few weeks ago.

All the big players are there, from Gates himself to friend and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to a then-programmer who’s now a cattle rancher.

Fun and lighthearted, perfect for a Sunday.

I don’t use a mouse. I use the trackpad on my MacBook or a trackball when I’m at the desktop, but Bill Gates thinks all these things are going they way of DOS. He sees a future where waving ones hands over a sensor is the way to interface with your computer. He stops short of saying the keyboard is going away — that’s a Jobs thing — but he claims the days of the mouse are numbered.

And he’s probably right. With multitouch going everywhere, and devices like the touchwall and Surface are about to explode into the mainstream.

Computers will still have use for mouses, though. Gamers in particular are fans, some spending real money for precision mouses for precision sniping in their virtual worlds. For the rest of us, though, you might start seeing them disappear sooner than you’d think.

Bill Gates finally admits at D6 what Mac users have been saying for years, “all Microsoft products are disappointing.” What is not disappointing is Sony’s announcement of a 27-inch 0.3mm Thin OLED Screen, but the pricing leaves much to be desired. Amazon is also launching a video streaming service to compete with iTunes. Maybe this will breathe some life into Amazon’s poorly accepted Unbox service.

During Bill Gates’ recent trip to Korea he not only inked a deal for Sync to make it’s way into Korean autos, but he also extended a very special Xbox 360 to Korean president Lee, Myung-bak with a pearl inlaid Xbox 360. Artist Kim, Young-jun adorned the game console with ume flowers, butterflies and a black lacquer finish. The end product is being dubbed Peace as the flowers and butterflies represent patience and perseverance.

Bill Gates was recently giving a speech at Canegie Mellon and said the following:

“We say that there’ll be more searches done through speech than through the keyboard five years from now.”

That’s five years from now. 2013. We’ll have jet packs and flying cars and push-button girlfriends by then, too. At least I will.

Bill, as your neighbor and friend, I must recommend you stop buying the cheap crack. Go to Belltown and get the good stuff.

In related news, Logitech has been accused of hiring a hitman for an anonymous murder in an affluent Washington State neighborhood. (No, not really.)

Gates predicts rise of voice-based search [Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog]