For those of us that enjoyed the stop action Christmas movies in the past as part of growing up, Bing has brought them back this holiday season. This one features the snowman not quite getting his roar right so he uses Bing. It’s a must see video!

Microsoft is going to push the Kinect into the PC world with a strong hand. They are holding a program to help 10 developers or companies with development help from Microsoft themselves, along with some capital, development kits and expert help.

Bringing the Kinect to the PC is going to really bring the “Minority Report” feel home. I really don’t like using that reference, and it is overused when it comes to the Kinect, but it is a reality. That is the best way to describe what is coming – nothing else really can describe it! With a new Kinect that can respond to gestures as close as 50cm, roughly 20 inches, it will be a non-touchscreen way to interact with your PC without a mouse and keyboard. While this isn’t for everyone, and may start out as a novelty, I’m sure that the applications that use the new technology will be very effective and possibly usher in a new era of gesture based, “hands off” interaction with your PC. We’re just waiting for that one killer app!

The ten people or startups accepted into the Kinect Accelerator program will spend three months in Seattle working out of the Kinect Accelerator office, where they will receive technical training and support and be mentored by entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives. They will also get US$20,000, an Xbox development kit, and the Windows Kinect SDK (software development kit). At the end of the program, the companies will present their business ideas to angel investors, venture capitalists and the media, and potentially receive additional funding.

According to new research from Forrester, Microsoft may be missing the perfect time for tablets. Earlier this year nearly 50% of surveyed consumers wanted a Windows powered tablet compared to only 25% today. The desire for the Windows Tablet is waning, and Microsoft may have to pull a magic rabbit from their hat to get consumers back in the mood for Windows on the small screen.

Cheap alternatives, like the Amazon Fire and the Nook Tablet are bringing down the need and want for an expensive, but fully featured, tablet like a Windows powered or an iPad. Android powered tablets still haven’t reached the personality and ease of use of an iPad and this would be a great place to help Microsoft gain some leverage. Users want a tablet to be a tablet OS: easy to use, quick, very simple yet powerful. They don’t want a full fledged desktop operating system with a million options to get the thing working. It just has to work, which is what the Windows Phone 7 does quite well, and I hope it translates into Windows 8.

For product strategists, Windows 8 tablets provide a cautionary tale: To be a fast-follower, you must amp up the experience — and do so quickly, before the market changes beyond recognition. Windows 8 tablets must provide consumers with a more differentiated product experience than it otherwise would have, had Microsoft entered the market sooner. They’ll have to take a lesson from Amazon’s product strategists, who fundamentally changed the tablet product experience by leading with content and services rather than feeds and speeds, at a compelling price point. In the rapidly evolving tablet market, Amazon — and Barnes & Noble, with its Nook Tablet — demonstrate fast following done right.

Last week marked the highest selling week in the history of the Xbox 360’s 7 year history. With 960,000 consoles sold last week in the United States, it made an amazing sales record, continuing the Microsoft’s console record sales year. Of note is that 800,000 of those sales were in a single day. 750,000 Kinect devices were also sold (both stand alone and bundled with the console) during the week.

I have to say that is an amazing feat for such an “old” console. With sales still very strong, it may push the next generation of consoles out a bit further.

“We have seen tremendous excitement from customers for our hot holiday gaming offers,” said Chris Homeister, senior vice president and general manager of Home Entertainment at Best Buy. “Xbox 360 was among the best-sellers at Best Buy this Black Friday, and is a testament to the continued popularity of the gaming category this holiday.”

While some are upset about the revelation that the Windows 95 startup music was done on a Mac, there are those of us that see it for what it is: someone used a tool to create something for a different tool. I don’t hate Mac’s, or Apple in general. They are good tools for what they do. I just don’t have any need for the tool. Some people go their whole lives without touching a wrench (I can’t go a week, BTW). I just happen to use Microsoft tools mainly (and a few Linux based). They get the job done that I need done. If I needed something that required a Mac, so be it. I’d use a Mac to get the job done. I know quite a bit of ‘softies that use Mac’s and iPhones and other Apple products.

I bet Sony executives use Microsoft OS’s, among others, to create PS3 games. So does Nintendo for their Wii. Ouch, feel that sting? Nah, me neither.

For those nostalgic types out there, here is the old startup music. Bring back memories. Good ones and nightmareish ones! I hated supporting that old OS once it’s successors came along.

I used WordPerfect long ago, and while it was a decent word processing system, I quickly transitioned to Microsoft Word due to it’s ease of use and better integration with Windows. WordPerfect seemed to stay behind in a DOS like phase, not wanting to grow into the better Windows interface – perhaps not sure if Windows would be as popular as it has become. Bill Gates testified in a Novell lawsuit against Microsoft today stating the obvious: Word is/was better than WordPerfect.

"We worked super hard [in 1995]," Gates said. "It was the most challenging, trying project we had ever done."

Novell failed to drive improvements in WordPerfect, Gates said. And that, combined with Microsoft’s relentless drive to improve its own product, is why Word beat WordPerfect. But WordPerfect had lost well before Windows 95 was released, he added, noting that Word had supplanted WordPerfect as the best-selling word processor for personal computers in 1994. "That was an important win for us," he said.

Steven Sinofsky has updated the Building Windows 8 blog today with a nice write up on the Windows 8 setup experience. Many users decided against upgrading to Windows 7 due to the complexity of the installation, even though they would like to have upgraded. The setup is probably the most intimidating part of the upgrade. Learning the new OS is a notch below that. There are some great new features included in the Windows 8 setup process that will help streamline and make your setup experience much easier.

In Windows 8, rather than having Upgrade Advisor, Setup, and Windows Easy Transfer as separate apps or features, we’ve folded them together into one fast and fluid experience in which we first determine if your PC, apps, and devices will work in the new OS, note which things you want to keep (apps, files and/or settings), and then install the new OS.

We’ve also added the capability for setup to resume automatically after certain actions (such as resolving a blocking compatibility problem), which in the past would have required restarting setup again from the beginning.

Dennis Ritchie, father of the C programming language as well as a major contributor to UNIX, has passed away. This man was a great man with many accomplishments. Another huge loss for the technology field.

In addition to being the creator of C, Ritchie co-authored "The C Programming Language," commonly referred to as K&R (after the authors, Brian Kernighan and Ritchie) and widely considered the definitive work on C. He also made significant contributions to the development of the Unix operating system, for which he received the Turing Award in 1983 (along with Kenneth Thompson).

President Bill Clinton awarded Ritchie and Thompson the National Medal of Technology in 1999 for their contributions to Unix and C. He won many other national and international awards for his work and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 for "development of the C programming language and for co-development of the Unix operating system."

The Zune has had quite a life this week. After it’s death was reported, a resurrection occurred. The cycle happened again. Now, for the third time, Microsoft has announced that the Zune is again officially dead. Whether or not it returns from the grave again remains to be seen. With the Windows Phone 7 doing some amazing duties as a music player, among many other incredible things, the Zune was losing it’s place.

We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players. So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing. Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices. Customer service has been, and will remain a top priority for us. To get the most out of your Zune player or for additional support, see the following sites:

The launch trailer of Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster has been released. It looks like a fun game for kids. I’m sure if my kids were younger, I’d pick this one up. As a lifelong Sesame Street fan, this looks like it will be a big hit for the younger crowd! I know my younger niece and nephew would love it, but they need to be a little bit older… Just a little.

Edit: They love it (they are 14 months old). As does my 10 year old. 🙂