During his keynote address at the Streaming Media West Conference in San Jose Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates outlined the coming "digital media revolution". Calling the use of digital audio and video "the next wave" of the Internet, Gates announced a series of partnership agreements and new technologies designed to expand the use of Windows Media technology within the broadband industry. "I don't see anything holding back this industry," said Gates. "The enabling elements are going to improve very dramatically in the next 12 months." During his speech, Gates put the spotlight on several companies that had just announced partnerships with Microsoft.

• General Instrument Corporation will roll out a television set-top box with streaming audio and video capabilities that runs on the Windows CE operating system.
• Sonicbox, makers of Web radio products, announced it will use Windows Media technology to enable its remote tuner to deliver songs saved on a PC to be played over a traditional stereo. The tuner also lets you play Internet radio stations over a stereo.
• RCA's Lyra portable music player will support Windows Media beginning in next month.
• And Texas Instruments' programmable digital signal processors (the technology that powers several portable music players) will support Windows media rights management technology. Rights management is the technology that monitors which users have the right to download specific files.

According to Kevin Unangst, lead product manager for Microsoft's streaming media division, Tuesday's series of announcements is another sign of Microsoft's plan to partner with as many companies as possible in its efforts to make Windows Media technology ubiquitous, despite the ongoing antitrust negotiations. "Microsoft has been successful because we are a driven company," explained Unangst. "When we see the industry going in a certain direction, we are going to move to make that happen. That's what we do." Currently, most experts agree that widespread adoption of broadband is about three to five years away. During his speech, Gates acknowledged that, initially, the audience for the types of services he demonstrated is limited. "We're bootstrapping off of all the people connecting up at work and at educational environments who are really the pioneers here," Gates said. Unangst compared the current broadband situation to the age-old "chicken or the egg" dilemma. "Right now there's not a lot of content optimised for broadband," Unangst said. "People are coming online and just doing the same stuff, just faster." To focus attention on high bandwidth content, Microsoft has launched a broadband section at Windowsmedia.com showcasing broadband content. Microsoft's next big initiative will be increasing the use of digital video. Windows Movie Maker software, a digital video editing and publishing tool system, will be included in the next edition of the Windows operating system. What do you think? Tell the Mailroom . And read what others have said.