Microsoft’s keynote at CES is about to begin. We’re live-blogging the event.

Make sure to refresh this post to see all the goodness as it happens.

9:29pm – Keynote will being in 2 minutes

9:31pm – Video being shown about CES. Kinda cheesy, just saw Sony and BluRay on the screen. Hah.

9:33pm – Gary Shapiro, president of CES, comes on stage to Dave Matthews Band music. He’s welcoming people to CES. He’s flubbing some words… not that big a stage Gary Talking about how the show floor opens tomorrow, blah blah blah. Bring on Bill Gates.

9:35pm – Bill Gates is announced, applause. Too bad it’s a tease. Shapiro is hyping up Gates.

9:37pm – Bill Gates intro video plays. Showing technology from old days until now. Showing off the connected experiences Bill talked about from last year. Computer, Xbox 360, Windows Messenger, Windows Mobile, etc.

9:39pm – Bill is finally on stage. Looks like Mr. Rogers in this pale purple sweater.

9:40pm – Bill’s talking about how things have changed since 1994 when he did his first keynote. Talking about how all media and entertainment will be driven by software, no more disc based or film based content.

9:43pm – If he says “first digital decade” one more time I’m going to smash my laptop screen.

9:44pm – Time to talk about this being his last keynote and moving on from full time at Microsoft. Showing a video of Bill career, what his last day might be like at Microsoft.

9:45pm – Wow. This is horrid. He’s playing with Chewbacca toys on his desk. Celebrities in the video trying to look cool. Oh Christ now Bill is rapping with Jay Z. Now he’s playing Guitar Hero, trying to talk to Bono on a cell. Now he’s trying to be Wolverine, and in all kinds of stupid movies. This must have cost so much money, and it could very well be the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

9:48pm – Oh God now they’re bringing in presidential candidates and talking about Bill being VP running mates with some of the candidates. This is horrible.

9:50pm – Video is finally over. He drives away with his box of crap on top of his car. Thank God it’s over

9:51pm – No more first digital decade, now we’re talking about the second digital decade. Talking about applications powered by Microsoft running on multiple platforms, including on the internet (or “on the cloud” as Bill says)

9:53pm – Bill wants HD experiences everywhere. We all know this is where everything is going, so this isn’t a huge stretch of the imagination.

9:54pm – All “rich media” devices will be connected. This seems to be reiterating things he’s talked about in the past.

9:56pm – Power of natural user interface. First digital decade powered by keyboard and mouse. Now we’re getting touch interfaces. Yes, Bill mentions the iPhone. New gesture experiences with Microsoft Surface, etc will be how we control devices in the future.

9:57pm – Windows will evolve as the centerpiece building block of all of this. PC sales grew 18% in the past year. Bill is pleased that Vista has over 100 million users. The OS is a piece of crap, so I wouldn’t be bragging too much.

9:58pm – Over 420 million Windows Live users. Over 20 million Windows Mobile users. That’s a lot of people who deal with crashing phones (yeah, I’ve had Windows Mobile. Never again).

9:59pm – Enter Mika Krammer, head of Windows, she’s here to talk about how cool Vista and everything is. Shows how one single Live ID lets you get everything in one place (only if you’re using their services).

10:01pm – Showing off Windows Live Calendar. Overlaying calendars from multiple people. Looking at Windows Events (basically a Microsoft version of Evite).

10:02pm – Windows Live Photo Gallery creates panoramic picture from multiple images. Not a big round of applause for that one. It’s something you can easily do with all kinds of photo programs that don’t annoy people (like Windows Live Gallery).

10:03pm – Moving on Windows Live Spaces. Microsoft is creating their own versions of everything. This one is like MySpace.

10:04pm – Windows Live Mobile on her mobile phone. Send photos taken with her camera phone to her Windows Live Space. Mike finishes up by saying that everything familiar is connected. Nothing big yet, just demonstrations of what’s available.

10:05pm – Bill’s back on stage showing off Microsoft Surface by designing a snowboard. It’s definitely a cool interface, but who has room for a bit table to do this kind of stuff. Puts his Windows Mobile phone onto the Surface table and uploads the image of the snowboard he’s created to his phone and Windows Live. Cool feature, but again, who’s going to do this in the home?

10:08pm – Silverlight time. This is crap by the way if you haven’t used it. Makes browsers crash. It’s essentially a Microsoft version of Flash. NBC is going to partner with MSN for the 2008 Olympics to view live or on-demand with Silverlight technology.

10:09pm – Video showing NBC footage for what to expect from the 2008 Olympics. Bob Costas talking about stuff. Most ambitious and comprehensive broadband video event ever, with over 3000 hours of video being made available. I hope they make Silverlight a lot more stable before then.

10:12pm – Robbie Bach coming on stage. Time to talk about what you all care about – the games.

10:13pm – Connected Entertainment. Buzz words are the big thing in this keynote. Talking about Vista being a great operating system for gaming. Yeah, not so much there Robbie. Talking about 17.7 million Xbox 360’s sold. Saying this year (2008) for the Xbox 360 will be the biggest year in video game history and only on the Xbox 360.

10:14pm – Passed 10 million member mark on Xbox Live, six months faster then they expected to get to that number. ABC and Disney will be bringing their shows to Video Marketplace this month. I personally see no point in paying again for tv shows, but that’s just me I guess. MGM is also bringing movies to Xbox Live. More on-demand content than any cable provider.

10:15pm – Media Center Extenders now being discussed. Samsung and HP will be making new extenders, with HP building it into new HDTV’s.

10:16pm – Mediaroom service that provides IPTV and such. Over 1 million users connected to the service. DVR Anywhere will allow you to record to one media center and share across the LAN to view that content anywhere in your home.

10:17pm – Xbox 360 being set to box for Mediaroom. British Telecom will be the first to support this and will be selling 360’s to connect to this service. I guess this is just for Europe. It’s been over a year since the announcement of IPTV on the 360 and we have nothing in the US. Still nothing important. How about we talk about how much Live has sucked the past couple weeks?

10:18pm – Zune is THE alernative to the iPod. Is Robbie on crack? Not many people like the Zune. Inviting Molly O’Donnell on stage to discuss Zune Social. Wasn’t this the big selling poing when this thing launched? Bascially a MySpace/Facebook type web app for showing people what kind of music you like and see what kind of music your friends like. You can see favorite artists, most played on the Zune, etc.

10:21pm – Glad I brought some gingerbread cookies with me, cause I’m bored and need cookies to entertain me. This keynote is blah. Seems like the crowd isn’t into it either. Hardly any applause, and hardly anything that would deserve it.

10:23pm – Talking about Sync in Ford cars. I’ve used it, kinda cool, but nothing earth shattering. MP3 players connect wired, mobile phones connect with Bluetooth, etc. Sync is upgradable. Great… now my car needs to connect to Windows Update. The first update will be a 911 update which calls 911 automatically when you get into an accident. Actually a nice feature.

10:26pm – Windows Mobile time. Phones outsell PC’s around 4:1. LOL. He just said Windows Mobile outsells Blackberry and iPhone. Is he on crack. Every piece of data released shows the exact opposite. Maybe he’s pulling data from the Redmond campus only. Working on Tellme search service to find things close to you based on GPS in the phone. Showing off buying tickets for a movie. Can make purchases and send information to others with the service. Applause, but seems forced.

10:28pm – Showing a trailer for Cloverfield on a Windows Mobile phone (Motorola Q9 from AT&T to be exact). Talking about mobile advertising… I do NOT need ads on my cell phone, thank you very much.

10:30pm – Seems like Robbie is wrapping it up, talking about Connected Entertainment again. Seems like he’s about done. Bringing Bill out to show things that will be out in the future.

10:31pm – Visual recognition coming to mobile devices. Huge device in Bill’s hands he’s using to show off. Recognizes people and places. Shows Paramount Theater, which pops up an advertisement for what might be playing there. Do we really need more ads? Can get a Virtual 3D map to a restaurant, view menu, make/change reservations, etc. Remember, this is designed to be in a Windows Mobile phone. Pretty cool, if and when it ever comes out. Also depends on how much integration is available.

10:34pm – Showing off historical clips of his keynotes in the past with this device. Organizing in all kinds of ways, seems kinda of cool, looks like something in OSX to be honest. Just checking out videos of the past. Automatic recording of past information. Yeah, ok Bill. Don’t think that one is gonna happen.

10:35pm – Bach challenges Bill Gates to a game of Guitar Hero 3 for $20. Let’s see if they’re really gonna play…

10:36pm – Rabbie Bach brings Kelly Law-Yonne onto stage to play. She’s a Guitar Hero world champsion. I actually saw her at the GH2 event in NYC. She played the Intro of Welcome to the Jungle on Expert on practice mode. Bill Gates is bringing Slash onto stage to play real guitar. Playing Welcome to the Jungle intro. Probably one the biggest rounds of applause for the night.

10:38pm – Slash plays more, Robbie says goodbye, and he and Bill never actually play the game. Lame.

10:39pm – Wow, that was actually the end of the show. This could be THE lamest keynote from Microsoft. No announcements, nothing big upcoming. Just bragging about what they’ve done and showing how to use it. I really expected more. A lot more. I wonder if the HD-DVD cancellation had anything to do with this?