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John Markoff at the New York Times is reporting that Microsoft will be making a product announcement Tuesday in San Francisco. As far as announcements go, this one looks to be a snoozer — Bill Gates will be on hand to announce "unified communications" — which is corporatespeak for "we upgraded our IM client." To make the announcement more palatable, it seems that Gates is taking a cue from Steve Jobs's Apple keynotes and bringing in some musical accompaniment. Want to know the difference between Microsoft and Apple? Bill Gates's idea of cool is 62-year-old guitar hero Eric Clapton. Sad when the "surprise" of your "surprise performer" is that he's still alive.