Microsoft to webcast Windows 8 keynote Tuesday

Computerworld - Microsoft will webcast the opening keynote at its developers conference tomorrow when its top Windows executive is expected to reveal more information about Windows 8.

Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, will take the stage Tuesday at 9 a.m. PT to kick off the company's BUILD conference.

Microsoft will webcast both Sinofsky's keynote and a follow-up the next day that will be led by Satya Nadella, who heads the Server and Tools Business division, and Jason Zander, a vice president in charge of the Visual Studio development tools group.

The BUILD keynote speakers were confirmed by Brian Kyle, a Microsoft evangelist, in a blog post today.

Later on Monday, Kyle pulled the original post and replaced it with one much shorter that omitted the names of Sinofsky, Nadella and Zander, as well as a broad stroke list of Windows 8's features. A cached version of Kyle's original post is still accessible via Yahoo.

None of the latter were new, although Kyle did say that Windows 8 would include "support for all the most important apps that people use today." [Editor's note: Emphasis added.]

Sinofsky is expected to offer up more information about Windows 8 during the keynote, building on the brief demonstration he gave at June's All things Digital conference, and the posts he and others at Microsoft have published on the "Building Windows 8" blog since mid-August.

Microsoft has been mum about a release schedule for Windows 8, but the timing of Sinofsky's return to blogging and the anticipation that the company will provide developers with a preview edition Tuesday may hint at a timeline similar to 2009's Windows 7.

In the run-up to Windows 7, Microsoft gave attendees at a similar developer conference an early build almost exactly a year before it officially launched the OS. That same day, Microsoft promised it would offer a public beta of Windows 7 within months, which it did Jan. 10, 2009.

The speaker slate for BUILD suggests that Microsoft will devote Tuesday's presentation to Windows 8 on desktops and tablets, while Wednesday's will focus on Windows 8 Server, and developer tool upgrades and changes.

Microsoft will post links to the webcasts on the BUILD Windows website shortly before they begin, said Kyle today.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more articles by Gregg Keizer.

Read more about Windows in Computerworld's Windows Topic Center.