Sadly, I missed the highlight of Microsoft's Holiday Event at The Richmond in Toronto yesterday.
This is an annual event, wherein the company invites journalists 'round to show off what they'll be flogging come holiday time. I enjoy it -- when you do enterprise tech all the time, it's fun to get out and rub shoulders with the sleek and shiny consumer stuff once in a while.
Microsoft had the event organized around kids' technology, teen technology and adult technology. On the adult front, Microsoft was largely pushing new Windows Mobile devices with the updated 6.1 operating system. Some promising stuff, surely, but overshadowed by the new HTC Touch Diamond, all sexy and GPS-enabled. (We've got a video demo of the Touch, if you're interested; there's a more comprehensive video review in the works, but it isn't posted yet.) Say the word "pizza" into the phone and, through the magic of GPS and mapping software, it will actually MAKE A PIZZA FOR YOU. Actually, that's not true, but it will identify any source of pizza in the immediate area and give you turn-by-turn directions to your pie.
Teenworld focused on the Zune line of media players and productivity tools for students, as if "productivity" and "teen" actually belonged in the same sentence. The new Zune has 120 GB capacity, bigger screen and built-in Wi-Fi and FM tuner. If the radio station you're listening to transmits song data, you can "tag" a song if you like what you here, and put it in a shopping cart for later. Microsoft is pushing the sharing aspect of the device -- wirelessly transmitting songs, photos and videos from Zune to Zune, online "Zune cards" that let you share your musical tastes witth friends (integrated with FaceBook), and the like.
But the highlight was in the kids' room and, as I said, I missed it.
We were demoing a very cool tycoon-style game -- Zoo Tycoon 2, in which you build a zoo, populate it with animals, try to attract admission fees and keep the whole ecosystem healthy. "What would happen," I wondered aloud, "if we put a few hyenas in that pen with the zebra?"
What happened, at first, was: Nothing. Fresh off the truck, the hyenas were well fed and didn't show much interest. So we extracted the zebra and let the hyenas get a little peckish, while I wandered off to another exhibit.
Upon my return, things had gone awry. The hyenas had gotten a little too peckish and the main course hadn't arrived on time, so they'd turned cannibal. With the pen littered with hyena-corpse icons, the survivors were reasonably fat and happy, if remorseful, and the zebra would have to wait, very fretfully, I imagine, for another time.