Today At Microsoft – Tablets, Partners, Twitter and Martians.

It’s already been a busy week for Microsoft and we aren’t even done with Monday yet. About the only people who didn’t catch that Steve Ballmer talked about Windows 7 Tablets coming in the future were the Martians. More about them (the Martians) later. You can see video of Steve’s presentation at our Worldwide Partners Conference here and a transcript of the speech is available here. A full roster of all todays video and transcripts are also available.

But the biggest news of the day for Microsoft was around the cloud and particularly the Windows Azure cloud appliance. Companies like eBay, Dell, HP and Fujitsu signed on to use the new appliance with their own customers.

Azure also got some nice coverage externally from Forrester analyst James Staten.

We also tried to have some fun with all the news pouring out of the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C. We took selected highlights from the coverage and tweeted them out like a little quiz for people to find the answers. You can go find them by looking for the hashtag #wpcjoinus. We will be doing some more tomorrow and the next day so please keep an eye out and retweet if you like.

Microsoft Partners also helped out at the USO in Washington getting packages ready for shipment to troops overseas. We’d like to take a moment to thank all our partners who pitched in, and also to recognize the sacrifices of our men and women serving overseas. 

And if all the news coming out of the Partner Conference wasn’t enough, we alsobrought you the ability to take a virtual trip to Mars along with NASA and the Worldwide Telescope team. These photos are absolutely amazing – see if you can find the Mars Rover tire tracks.