This has been interesting.

At the very end of last week, I put out a call for questions to ask Steve Ballmer this week on the eve of the Windows 7 launch. Encouraged to note that I ended up with a really good selection of questions, as well as an entertaining handful of obscene, scatological, ribald or just generally cheeky ones (as expected).

I've arbitrarily chosen a small handful of the best questions, tweaked the wording slightly, where needed (mainly just editing for length), and created a mini Twitter poll to help pick the final question.

The candidate questions are:

1. Many felt the Vista launch was not your finest marketing moment. Have you made a conscious effort to market Win7 differently?
2. What is the primary goal for Win7 - where does this OS fit in Microsoft's overall strategy?
3. Which features in Win7 will best combat the Mac OS and which features go way beyond your competition?
4. The transition from XP to Vista was a very steep learning curve for the average user. Will the shift to Win7 be as big?

You can vote at the poll over here.

Voting closes at 07:00 Eastern Time tomorrow morning, October 20th.

The question with the most votes will be included in a special one-on-one interview with Mr. Ballmer himself later this week. (No, I'm not doing the interview myself - this is a kind of proxy interviewing thing).

BTW - if, on reading the questions, you think you could come up with something even better, feel free to email or leave me a comment here. Who knows...

I promise this is not a joke.

Through some fine friends in the media, I've been invited to ask a question that will be put to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a special interview he's doing with a Canadian publication next week, on the eve of the Windows 7 launch.

I was exceptionally surprised and immensely flattered to be asked. Strangely, perhaps, my first instinct was not to try and come up with some dazzlingly intelligent and incomparably deep question on my own - instead, I immediately knew I wanted to crowdsource it.

I want you, my lovely blog readers, Twitter followers, RSS relatives, and Friendfeed roommates, to help me craft the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything (from a Microsoftie Windows 7-centric POV, that is).

Think of it this way: you're the only person standing in the elevator at the foot of the CN Tower, about to take the short ride from the ground floor to the main deck at the top of the tower. Just as the doors are closing, Steve Ballmer steps in and intones a friendly "hello".

You have about 58 seconds alone with one of the most influential men on the planet and certainly one of the most powerful tech industry executives of all time. Time enough to ask him just one question.

What's it going to be?

Serious, searching, or flippant. How are you going to use your one question?

Give me your suggestions in the comments here, by email (to: michaelocc AT gmail.com), or on Twitter (@michaelocc).

Only one restriction: the topic is Windows 7, so let's try and stay on topic, please. I know you want to dig into Vista. I'm sure some of you might just want to say: "So Steve. Bing. Really, Steve? Bing? Really?"

But no. Let's stick to Windows 7, please. OK?

And no - before you ask - no one has asked me to do this. No fellow flack has put me up to this. The journalist asked me directly, and I decided to have a little fun with it.

I'll assess all the questions I get between now and Sunday night (October 18). Then in my entirely arbitrary and subjective wisdom I'll tweet my choices for the top three questions and ask you to vote.

The question that gets the most votes by 23:00 Monday, October 19, will be included in the interview and actually put to Mr. Ballmer himself. I'll then link to the interview results here once it's published.

How cool is that?

[UPDATE Monday, October 19: 16:30 - Not counting the utterly silly, but often genuinely amusing ones, I've got 29 questions in so far, from the comments, email and on Twitter. Thanks! Still time to squeeze a few more in, if you have any brainwaves. I've started sorting and ranking the ones I think make most sense, and will have a Twtpoll up later this evening to ask for votes on the top three. Stay tuned.]