Steve Ballmer Won't Sue NBC Over the Trademark On His Fists - Law & Order

Project Natal, Windows 7, Windows Mobile 6.5, Bing, ZuneHD, Live Mesh, and Windows Azure are all toys that Microsoft has either launched, launching by the end of the year, or within a year. Ballmer discussed all the topics and laid down the law, well pain, well plans of Microsoft with all its new toys. But first up...

Three Screens and the Cloud

Tech Crunch got an amazing opportunity to sit down with the CEO of Microsoft, Mr. Steve Ballmer and they covered all the above topics. Ballmer started this interview defining a shift in computer paradigms to the "three screens and the cloud" which he said everytime he says reminds him of "Three Men and a Baby." He like Ray Ozzie (Bill Gate's replacement) are making a huge push towards getting your content, when you want, how you want it, on any device and pulling it from the cloud. Live Mesh is a great example of this, regardless of platform (Mac or Windows XP/Vista/Seven/Windows Mobile) you can get your documents all the time. Word docs, powerpoints, excels, pictures, anything. If its a file it can be synced across these devices and viewed whenever you want.

Thus, the three screens and the cloud. Your home desktop, your TV, and your mobile device. All sharing the same information, platform independent. Steve said "If I'm out on vacation, I may want to know how an Xbox Live team is doing, why can't i just check this from my phone?" What's awesome here is, if he is making this up we are glad he is thinking about it. If he is talking about a future product/service it would validate rumors that "Live Anywhere" is a real thing. But we'll talk about that later. So seriously, what can you not love about an interview with the Sonny Corleone of the Microsoft family?

Probably the best question was... "It seems a like lot of people like the ZuneHD, it's selling out, etc. When you look at the Zune and the Xbox you seem to be more than capable at creating successful end consumer devices that are hardware based, tied to services...when do we get our Microsoft phone?"

Steve had a pretty long response, but this probably the most important that should be taken out of it. "Microsoft still thinks software is right for them in such a high volume market" and "when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software by a company that's sold by somebody who doesn't make their own phone."

Interesting response, but I don't care that even the CEO himself has denied the phone idea. I still say it is going to happen. It was one thing when HTC made phones that were Windows Mobile tailored - but now HTC is also running Android. It seems like less of a knife in the back if Microsoft were to reveal a phone. Just do it Microsoft.