I know there are people who think that Microsoft MVPs all got advanced copies of the Ballmer and Bach keynote for CES, but um, we didn't. I'm gonna be like everyone else at home, checking out the live stream of the keynote tonight and seeing what Microsoft has to unveil. They're setting the tone for the CES show, the year 2010 and the start of a new decade, so I'm hoping that they bring the thunder.

For corn's sake Microsoft don't go all WWE on us and get complacent. You have a Monday Night War brewing with Apple and Google. Show us some meat, make it sizzle, put some A1 steak sauce on that sumbitch! That's good eatin'...

Zune-wise, I could only think that they would announce any new important partnerships for the TV and Movie side of Zune Marketplace or any other important integration with XBOX 360 -- specifically, allowing Zune to do something about that God-awful music interface that's sitting there now on my XBOX dashboard. Am I the only one who would totally enjoy having the now-playing stuff on my XBOX 360 instead of those acid-trip visualizations that they use now?

Everyone also seems to be giddy about Windows Mobile 7. Interesting because I own an HTC Pure, with Windows Mobile 6.5 and I don't even use the actual WinMo UI. I use the HTC Touch Flo UI. So I'm curious to see what they plan to do to finally bring themselves into 2008, er 2010 -- you know what I mean.

One thing I hope they don't do is that mess of a presentation where they try to show you what the future could look like. You know, where they say shizz like "If I decide I want to hear a bedtime story, I could walk over to my wall, touch it and up pops a virtual bookcase. I touch a book and a soothing voice (presumably an audiobook) begins to play over the 9.34 surround sound in the room. Should I decide I want to take that audiobook with me, I put my ZUNEXBOXHD360 on the nightstand and in the morning the entire book is all sync'd and ready to go".

Yeah, you know what? Stop telling me about that unless you can deliver it within 2 years.

Now overall, I expect to see some wonderful things coming out of CES, from Microsoft and all of the tech companies. This decade could be one of great innovation and design. I think companies are shooting for something like the "consolidated living space" where you don't need tons of different tech plugged everywhere to get the best experience. I think companies are shooting for having you get one or two devices that will do everything you need it do. It'll be the firmware within these devices that really push them forward and give them longevity.

On an unrelated note, the People's Choice Awards are tonight as well. You can join me on Twitter as I proceed to skew the entire show :-) I've enjoyed doing this with award shows, so let's see what goes down at the major event where, according to them, the people decide who are the real winners and losers.