Keynote Trickery and Moorestown

When Anand Chandrasekher steps on stage, you can pretty much bet that something groundbreaking is going to happen within the span of his address. This morning was no exception.

Taking a look at internet usage over the past 10 years, Chandrasekher pointed to the weeding out of “traditional” top portals such as AOL.com, AltaVista and others. In today’s age of the “embedded internet,” social networking and collaborative sites are holding down the top Web destination spots.

Seeing a 2:1 preference among users for a full, rich internet experience rather than a watered-down, content stripped version, Intel is working to enable the next generation of internet-capable devices build on the Atom processor.

Many of you reading this probably know what World of Warcraft is. For those of you who don’t have the pleasure to live with a roommate who is as into gaming as mine is, it’s an immensely popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). The game is so graphically rich that the interface can sometimes lag on even newer desktops. To show the robustness and raw computing capabilities of the Atom processor, Intel panned over to a demo running on what appeared to the untrained eye to be a mini-desktop. But wait… what’s this inside that chassis? It was a MID hooked up to the monitor system! No way? Yes way.

Moorestown also had a cameo in the keynote, but the gritty details of the product will have to wait until IDF Taiwan for its full coming-out party. The video shown on the screen pictured an iPhone-esque form factor device that was about half the width. While the unit isn’t in production, it showed video conferencing, map functions and much more.

For the full run-down of the keynote, visit the video page.