08-18-1999 - It was brought to my attention that during the 99 Comdex, Bill Gates announced a new MS Natural Keyboard, due out in September.  Here are an excerpt and some links discovered in the Microsoft Hardware newsgroups.

    Chris Capossela - "We also have some consumer oriented devices, joysticks and game pads     that are coming out. Here's a keyboard from Microsoft that we're working on. It's not yet ready, but it's a new natural keyboard, and one of my favorite features is the fact that it's got two USB ports built into the keyboard, so I don't have to reach around the back of my machine. I can just plug USB devices right into the keyboard itself." 

Bill Gates transcript from Comdex 99 - http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/04-19spcomdex.htm

To view an archived video of it go to:  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/download/asx/ww99.asx
(keyboard part is at approximately 11:13 (of the 55:00 min.) in the video)

I would like to thank Brent Anderson for pointing this information out for us.