Loose lips sink ships

This week it’s TechReady at Microsoft in Seattle, a semi-annual event (this is TechReady 11) where Microsoft product teams show off their new stuff internally, a kind of a top secret product fair.

Microsoft employee and blogger M3 Sweatt, (Chief of Staff of the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), according to his about page) has taken a lighthearted approach to warning ‘Softies not to tweet away the crown jewels:

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Sweatt unveiled the graphic last week, for MGX, the annual sales meeting, held this year in Atlanta.  While some news did filter out, including a sneak peek at some potential new logos and a new company tagline “Be What’s Next”, and Mary Jo Foley was closely monitoring the tweetstream, the ‘Softies held things pretty close to the vest, although they were pretty excited about the Black Eyed Peas concert to end the event.  We do know that IE9 was demoed at MGX, and Joe Belfiore gave an impressive and personal demonstration of Windows Phone 7:

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Blogger Steve Clayton, while hinting at some top secret stuff the tweeters didn’t reveal (dang), gave us a bit of a flavor of the Belfiore demonstration:

Of all the demos I saw this week, the one that impressed me the most was Joe Belfiore with Windows Phone 7. That’s saying something as if I could tell about the stuff that was shown in the closing hours of MGX….well, I think it would stun most people.

Joe didn’t really show anything new – he just strung together a demo that made a tonne of sense. It was a demo of how he would use the phone himself. A personal demo rather than a feature demo and frankly we need to get much better at that stuff. Joe’s demo took us through the Facebook and Windows Live integration, the Zune services, Office integration and a glimpse of XBOX integration. Of particular note was the deep integration of Bing and location services. The demo just flowed, the device was fast and Joe was clearly enjoying it.

While we would love to know just what’s going on behind the curtains, this fall promises to be very interesting, with the release of Windows Live 2011 (Wave 4), IE9, Windows Phone 7, and maybe even a few more surprises.  Can’t wait!