Microsoft set up a Building Windows 8 blog recently to tell us all about how the construction of Windows 8 is going, but so far the flow of information has been like blood out of a stone.

Perhaps this will change in the near future but the first three posts have been more like stalling than information. We had an opening "hi everyone", then a "rules and guidelines for posting comments" and now an "Introducing the team". This most recent post is about as close as we get to any real information - and it's a lesson in how much can be deduced from so little.

The information in question is simply a list of the teams working on Windows 8 (notice item 2 in particular):

• App Compatibility and Device Compatibility
• App Store
• Applications and Media Experience
• App Experience
• Core Experience Evolved
• Device Connectivity
• Devices & Networking Experience
• Ecosystem Fundamentals
• Engineer Desktop
• Engineering System
• Enterprise Networking
• Global Experience
• Graphics Platform
• Hardware Developer Experience
• Human Interaction Platform
• Hyper-V
• In Control of Your PC
• Kernel Platform
• Licensing and Deployment
• Media Platform
• Networking Core
• Performance
• Presentation and Composition
• Reliability, Security, and Privacy
• Runtime Experience
• Search, View, and Command
• Security & Identity
• Storage & Files Systems
• Sustained Engineering
• Telemetry
• User-Centered Experience
• Windows Online
• Windows Update
• Wireless and Networking services
• XAML

So now we know that Windows 8 is going to have an app store!

There isn't much else that can be deduced from the list apart from the fact that XAML and Hyper-V virtualization figure as part of the OS. The fact that XAML is part of the OS does back up the speculation that as well as HTML5/JavaScript Windows is going to features a new graphics system based on XAML. 

If you push the limits of imagination a little, you can start to read things into some of the other team names "In Control of Your PC" for example could be.... But what is really fascinating is why we are having to speculate in this way? What is it that means that Microsoft is so reluctant to explain what it is planning? What dark secret lurks under the cover of Windows 8?  Or is it that Microsoft is still a little unsure about what it is doing, even though the supposed launch date for Windows 8 is late next year....

More (?) information

A list of the feature teams building the next version of Windows

Even less information on Microsoft's Build

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