CNET News.com has learned that Microsoft is aiming to ship its next version of Windows, codenamed version 7, within three years or so.

Microsoft discussed Windows 7 last Thursday at a conference for its field sales force in Orlando, according to sources close to the company.

Windows 7 will be under new orders to establish a more predictable release schedule, as suggested by Ray Ozzie following the multi-problematic Windows Vista rewrite and more than five years of development.

CNET comments, “Like Vista, Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows, but did not provide specifics or a time frame.”

Details were released, a representative said, “as part of our ongoing outreach to enterprise customers and partners, Microsoft has begun sharing plans for how they will continue to deliver value to businesses in the future…Software Assurance customers in particular. Microsoft is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year time frame, and then the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar.”

Windows 7 was previously codenamed, Windows Vienna.

Livestation built on Microsoft’s Silverlight will bring Live TV to your PC.

The project, currently in beta, uses technology from Skinkers, a UK based company and rebroadcasts the BBC live. It could also be expanded to other TV stations.

Don Dodge writes, “LiveStation is delivered on Microsoft’s Silverlight with extraordinary quality and crispness. The video is like watching a DVD on your PC — no jerky motion, no buffering — it is just like watching live TV. What is different? There have been several ways to watch TV on your PC, so what is different here?”

* LiveStation uses Peer-to-Peer technology to distribute the TV signal, so it doesn’t require a big server infrastructure and lots of bandwidth. The P2P technology was developed at Microsoft’s Cambridge research lab and functions similar to BitTorrent.
* Silverlight allows the video to be displayed in very high quality, and with amazing speed. Silverlight was unveiled at MIX07 earlier this year to rave reviews. LiveStation shows off the power and elegance of Silverlight.
* Live TV, this isn’t recorded TV being re-broadcast…it is live, without delay. Of course the technology could be modified to stream recorded shows or other types of content.
* TV on your cell phone? Silverlight runs on cell phones, so in the future it could deliver Live TV directly to your cell phone or mobile device.
* LiveStation is built on two research technologies, Pastry and SplitStream, from Microsoft’s Cambridge Research Lab. Pastry is a type of P2P system called a ‘distributed hash table,’ which makes it easier for computers to find and store information, and to organize themselves for collaborative tasks.
* Splitstream is an application built on top of Pastry which allows real-time streams such as live video to be robustly distributed peer-to-peer.

This could be big.

Microsoft has unveiled its revamped search engine which indexes more pages than before and claims to give direct answers to factual questions. It also features tools to assist searchers in creating more detailed queries.

With competition intense in the search engine sector, Google still lords it over the rest as the site people turn to most often when they go online to search for an answer or image.

The BBC reports : “In the last year, however, Google has faced greater competition than ever for users as old rivals, such as Yahoo and Microsoft, and new entrants such as Amazon and Blinkx, try to grab some of the searching audience for themselves. This renewed interest has come about because of the realisation that many of the things people do online begin with a search for information — be it for a particular web page, recipe, book, gadget, news story, image or anything else. ”

Microsoft is aiming to develop a significant rival to Google’s offerings.

So far, the company has indexed 5bn webpages and claims to update its document index every two days — more often than rivals. The Microsoft search engine can also answer specific queries directly rather than send searchers to a page that may possibly contain the answer.

For its direct answer feature, Microsoft is calling on its Encarta encyclopaedia to provide answers to questions about definitions, facts, calculations, conversions and solutions to equations. Tools sitting alongside the MSN search engine allow users to refine results to specific websites, countries, regions or languages. Microsoft is also using so-called “graphic equalisers” that let people adjust the relevance of terms to get results that are more up-to-date or more popular.

Tony Macklin, Product Director of Ask Jeeves, claimed that its search engine has been answering specific queries since April 2003. “The major search providers have moved beyond delivering only algorithmic search, so in many ways Microsoft is following the market.”

Microsoft is moving technology into new terrirory today with the launch of its new Suface computer.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch writes : “At the D: All Things Digital conference Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that will ‘break down traditional barriers between people and technology’.”

The computer is bin-shaped with a screen that forms the horizontal surface, like a table-top. The screen is able to recognize physical objects such as a comb or a telephone and allows direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. It is a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

Surface is touch-screen, point of sale technology taken to a new level. It will be targeted at hotels, retail outlets, and public entertainment venues. The guess is that it will be commercially available towards the end of 2007.

In its presentation Microsoft shows how to order a beverage during a meal with just the tap of a finger. Another example is browsing through music and dragging favourite tunes onto a personal playlist by moving a finger across the screen.

Clearly, we won’t have to move a muscle to do anything in the future. Obesity Plus here we come.