Like the Microsoft Store? http://store.microsoft.com/home.aspx easy to say and valid... but there is another take to it...
There is some merit in the idea that an OS resident application, like the "Welcome Center" or "Windows Update" that allows Windows users to buy software and other PC products directly from the OS.
To some extent the Windows Sidebar, Side Show and Gadgets represent the potential available - Microsoft needs to lead here. There is an incredible opportunity they have missed, to add tremendous value to Windows and make it much more compelling. For example, there is no reason whatever that the most useful parts of enterprise, P2P and B2P applications should not have companion Gadgets. Microsoft could have and should have leveraged the daylights out of these two very useful areas.
Most especially, Microsoft should, via both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth extend Windows Gadgets to phones and UMPC's/Netbooks of every type - Mesh'ing if you will, useful and entertaining information into a bevy of Gadgets that are part of every device a person uses - digital picture frames, DLNA compliant televisions included. As an example... the dang refrigerator needn't have some kind of display... that is silly... but the dang thing should talk to one's phone and allow one to build a shopping list, or alert people that the kids just drained the last of the milk... that should push to one on the road, so we can make a stop on our way home and not have to make a special trip, etc... save gas... save money... save the planet, or whatever the mantra of the day is... bottom line should be... make life better.
The trick here isn't "Make Windows Better" - the idea is: "Make Windows more useful and more personal and more compelling" by leveraging what it already has. 'It ain't your Daddy's Side Bar!"
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