Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has unveiled products that will fight spam, tighten security and eventually allow for “seamless computing,” or the ability to share information among many kinds of devices.

Gates, the keynote speaker at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas Sunday, said SmartScreen technology, already used in the company's MSN network, Hotmail service and Outlook e-mail, will be included "in the months ahead" in Exchange Server 2003, Information Week reported. The technology will use algorithms to determine whether incoming messages qualify as junk e-mail and filter them out before they get to the end user's e-mailbox.

Gates said spam has proliferated only because e-mail is such an efficient communications vehicle for marketers. "Even if one in 10,000 respond, it is economic for them to send out that e-mail,” he said.

Microsoft also demonstrated the Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004, a tool to bolster network security. It will simplify how to keep software up to date with its security holes patched. The server firewall software is scheduled for beta testing in January.

Gates also talked about a future of seamless computing, when cell phones, PCs and even wrist watches will be able to communicate with one another. The technologies that will enable seamless computing include XML, Web services and the next-generation Longhorn operating system.