The bad news was that Bill Gates decided not to rock out to Guns n’ Roses’ on Guitar Hero III.

The good news was, Slash showed up to play for him instead. That, and Microsoft seems to be well positioned for the future even as its founder prepares to ride off into the sunset.

Slash’s appearance was the exclamation point on the final keynote address Mr. Gates will give as the day-to-day leader of Microsoft.

The presentation began about 45 minutes earlier with a hilarious mock documentary about how Mr. Gates will spend his last day at the office this coming summer, which apparently will involve placing joke phone calls to a truck load of celebrities and begging them for jobs.

In fact, the running gag of last night’s Microsoft keynote address here at CES focused on poking fun at possible scenarios for Mr. Gates following his imminent departure from the company he founded after dropping out of Harvard more than 30 years ago.

In the video, actor Matthew McConaughey appeared as Mr. Gates’ personal trainer, spotting him on the bench press.

“Am I ready to take my shirt off yet?” Mr. Gates asks.

“Uh, not yet,” McConaughey replies, looking horrified.

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show refused to take Mr. Gates on as a co-host while Hillary Clinton turned down his offer to be her running mate if she receives the Democratic nomination – something Ms. Clinton may want to reconsider after that Iowa vote.

Barack Obama on the other hand wasn’t even sure which Bill was calling him as he picked up his phone.

“Hey it’s Bill,” Mr. Gates says on the other end of the phone.

“Bill Shatner?” Mr. Obama says, sounding confused. (Sound quality must have been bad, hopefully it wasn’t a Windows Mobile phone.)  

U2’s Bono makes an appearance informing Mr. Gates that he won’t just fire his band’s guitarist just because the man from Microsoft racked up a high score on Guitar Hero. In another scene, rap mogul Jay-Z looks on as “Billy G” raps – badly – about “big pimpin” in a recording studio.

“So let me get this straight Jay, you can retire and then unretire?” Mr. Gates asks the rapper who walked away from the music industry, only to come out with a comeback record just a few years later.

Despite the video's suggestion that Mr. Gates is in search of work, the truth is he is likely quite happy with his decision to move on from his full time gig at Microsoft to pursue his charitable interests. The change of venue will allow him to make philanthropy his main occupation with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. However he does plan to continue to play a role at Microsoft working on special software projects, including health care and education initiatives – causes which are very close to his heart.

All joking aside, the world's biggest software company dealt with some serious business Sunday night. 

Mr. Gates touched on three major themes for the future of technology during his speech: the proliferation of high definition video and displays, the increasing connectivity and networking of all things electronic and the ever-growing sophistication of natural user-computer interfaces.

We are at the dawn of a new digital decade, Mr. Gates said. While the last decade of computing was driven by the keyboard and the mouse, the new frontier will be about more human ways of interacting with computers, from touch screens, to motion sensors and speech recognition technology. To illustrate his point, Mr. Gates designed a custom snowboard on a table-top touch screen computer, then simply placed his mobile phone on the table – where it was automatically recognized by the table’s software – and used the phone to email his design to ... whoever it was he was going snowboarding with, I guess.

All media and entertainment in the future will be driven by software, Mr. Gates told the assembled crowd of about 4,000. If the last digital decade is any indication, a lot of that software is going to be made in Redmond. 

Of course, there was also the announcement of big, gaudy, Microsoft numbers. There are now 100 million people using Windows Vista worldwide, which doesn’t include all those people who took it back and asked for XP. Windows Live memberships have eclipsed the 420-million mark, the company’s Xbox Live service now boasts 10 million subscribers and finally, there are now 20 million Windows Mobile-equipped handsets in the pockets of consumers, a number Microsoft believes will double this year.

Microsoft also announced it has struck a deal with NBC that may change the way consumers experience the Olympics, beginning with the Beijing summer games in August. Together, the two companies will create “NBC Olympics on MSN” a robust video website incorporating Microsoft’s Silverlight software. The site will feature 3,600 hours of live and on demand videos which can be customized by viewers. Considering most of the North American television audience won’t be awake when many of the events are happening, Microsoft has a unique opportunity to make a bold play in the sports broadcasting game as viewers look to tune into their favourite events.

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division took over for a bit and made a few announcements of his own. The most important one for Canadians was that the Zune media player will arrive in stores North of the 49th sometime this spring. You can read more about that here.

British Telecom subscribers can now use the Xbox 360 video game console as a set top digital television box. In other Xbox news, Microsoft has added Disney and ABC television shows to its Xbox movie download service. Now when you’re done playing Halo 3 against your friends on line, you can pop a beverage sit back and enjoy an episode of Lost, or Hanna Montana. Whatever suits your fancy.

Mr. Bach also spent a great deal of time showcasing Microsoft’s voice-recognition software, in everything from cell phones to Ford cars which incorporate Microsoft’s Sync technology, even ordering a pair of movie tickets to a screening of Sweeny Todd using only his cell phone and verbal commands.

To cap off the show, Mr. Gates returned to the stage to offer a sneak peak at an amazing new toy fresh from the labs at Redmond. The clunky device – obviously a prototype – features the latest in the company’s video recognition software. By pointing it at an object, the device recognizes what it sees and then displays relevant information. For example, Mr. Gates pointed the device at Mr. Bach and on the screen it read “Robbie Bach, president Microsoft E&D. Owes me $20.”

Just by pointing the device at a picture of a local movie theatre, Mr. Gates was able to get information on the theatre, find out what was playing and order tickets – all within about 30 seconds. While this device, whatever it is called, is a long way from hitting the market, it was easily the coolest thing I’ve seen so far here at CES.
 
That's enough Microsoft for one day I think.