Todd Bishop has an interesting analysis of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell’s keynotes up, using Tag Clouds and textual analysis. I think a glance at the tags is pretty revealing of the differences between Apple and Microsoft. The biggest tag in Job’s cloud is “Phone” followed by “iphone” and “ipod“. Clearly Steve’s keynote was very focused on the ipodination of the consumer electronics market. Bill Gate’s biggest tags are “great” and “devices” (“windows” and “vista” seem to come in third and fourth respectively).

I find it interesting that one of Bill’s biggest tags is an adjective, whereas Steve’s is a product. While Bill’s keynote may have been less focused than Steve’s, Apple’s head salesman’s highest ranking adjective (which is also great) is somewhere around fourth place. See, a lot of people think Bill’s keynotes are boring compared to Steve’s; and for the most part they’re right. It’s the same way that a cool cell phone commercial with the latest teeny popper hit is more exciting than the Discovery Channel. Steve Job’s Keynote is nothing more than an advertisement for the ipod and the iphone. Bill Gate’s Keynote is more about a vision, the way Microsoft would like the world to be. A lot of “Great Devices” powered by “Windows Vista”. I think Bill has a far grander vision than Steve. Steve is just better at packaging his product.

As for Michael Dell… his biggest tags seemed to be gaming, home, online, great. So he’s interested in “Great Home Gaming Online” it would seem. Honestly I haven’t listened to Dell’s keynote so I don’t feel qualified to post any opinion, anyone out there that does?

***Edited: 1/15/07@10:30pm*** Figured since I made Scoble’s Shared Items, I should make my post make sense. :)

Why? Simple, because they can do something Microsoft can’t or won’t. Bring competitors together. Google AND Yahoo together on stage! Who would have thought it? With Microsoft screwing their partners, while Apple is brining competitors together, one has to wonder how long until Microsoft implodes. Apple is shrewd indeed. They talk like the iPhone is competing with cell phones, when what it’s really competing with is Microsoft’s UMPC initiative. What we have is not a phone, but an ultra portable computing platform. It just happens to make calls. So Apple beat Microsoft’s Zune with the iPod and is now going to beat Microsoft’s UMPC with the iPhone. The only way Microsoft will win is through sheer force of will (and dollars), which is not to be discounted in this case. Bill has to be fuming.

Oh man am I tempted to call up Scoble and be all like “Hey man! I want in on the BlogHaus, can you send me some plane tickets? Oh and can I bunk with yas?” All the CES talk has me a bit bummed that I’m stuck here doing my normal, boring job stuff. Oh sure, I have CodeMash in a couple weeks, but it’s in Sandusky not Vegas, and it doesn’t have an adult convention next door. Poo. So a little piece of me dies every time Scoble picks someone else up in his limo. Looking through my feeds, it looks like there’s a ton of bloggers there, alot that don’t even necessarily cover consumer electronics regularly on thier blogs. I’m sure the face to face is wonderful, unfortunatly I can’t afford in either time or money to go, hopefully there’ll be something in the Midwest/East Coast some time soon. I’m looking forward to the Microsoft annoucements most of all, but every year is exiciting to see what toys I’ll be buying in the next year or two. Well, while you are are out there enjoying the lights and booze, think of all the hundreds of thousands of bloggers that are stuck at home, wishing they could be out there having fun with y’all. At least CES is one of the most covered events on the web, with all the live coverage I’ll at least feel like I’m almost there.