The Adobe Engage event is already proving interesting. Ryan Stewart wins the first report to come through Google Blog Search.

Takeaway? Adobe is indeed coming after developers. It’s interesting to hear their positioning vs. Microsoft. My post last week pretty much nailed it. Adobe’s Kevin Lynch says they try to extend the Web where Microsoft looks, he says, to extend Windows.

Adobe’s weaknesses? Corporate developers are safely in Microsoft’s camp because Adobe’s Apollo system (which lets developers build Windows, Mac, or Linux applications) can’t get to the Windows API (or the Mac API, or Linux’ API).

The other real loser here? Java. Apollo delivers real cross-platform apps that look a lot like what Microsoft always demonstrated with .NET 3.0 (great looking UIs and rich interaction).

But, clearly, Lynch wanted to position Apollo against Microsoft’s WPF/E, not Java.

Anyway, more later, we’re sitting through a ton of third-party demos now.

No, I’m not going to Microsoft’s MVP Summit. Instead SXSW in Austin is calling my name. Anyone want to meet up?

Next Tuesday, though, Kevin Schofield will give me a tour through Microsoft’s coolest research stuff. That should be fun, considering the stance I’ve been taking for the past week here.

Liz Lawley wonders why I hyped up all things Microsoft when I worked there, but now don’t get excited anymore. She missed that I was only talking about Internet stuff that goes in the Web browser, not stuff that Microsoft is more traditionally known for like Windows and Xbox and all that. I don’t remember too many things I hyped up back then that were Web services. Virtual Earth is one glaring example. Yeah, that still wows me. I still love a lot about Microsoft (the first time, if you remember, I saw Office 2007’s new interface I said “wow”) but look at the examples Liz got excited about. Do they really make you go “wow?”

I still get excited by Vista, Halo, Tablet PCs, new mice, etc.

UPDATE: One area where I was wow’ed and now am seeing that wow tempered is Windows Presentation Foundation. It builds the coolest demos (see Tim Sneath’s blog). But now that I have a Macintosh I find it isn’t nearly as interesting as when I lived in Windows-only world. Why? Cause WPF/E isn’t done, doesn’t run every WPF application, and for tools developers will need to use Windows (the best tools, Expression and Visual Studio are Windows only).

Oh, and Liz, I hate your comments. I have to register just to leave you a comment. That sucks.

The real point here is to look at the commentary my post started. Not many people could come up with things that Microsoft has done lately that get them excited about its stance on the Internet. Can anyone else come up with some?

I’ve heard about the Ignite Seattle videos a few times here at Northern Voice. Two that rose above the rest are Hillel Cooperman’s “How to make every meal a memorable experience” (he’s a software entrepeneur, used to work at Microsoft on the “Max” project — now killed, sorry — and is a food blogger); Ryan Stewart’s “Rich Internet Application Lowdown“. I like the trend of videotaping smaller events and putting them up on sites like Blip.TV.

Oh, boy, Don Dodge says that Microsoft will not fall into innovator’s dillema.

Hmmm, someday I’ll post an email to me from a top Microsoft executive that had the words “business value” repeated 13 times (I asked them to buy a variety of things, including Flickr (this email was written three weeks before Yahoo bought Flickr). The executive was running a business with billions in revenue and didn’t see the business value in what I was proposing Microsoft do. Truth is, Microsoft is run by people who aren’t taking risks and don’t see the value in Web stuff. Why can I say that? Name a single Microsoft Internet product/service that made you say “wow” in the past three years. I can’t name one and I’ve been looking.

But, in this trip to Seattle I had a few meetings with MSFTies that I didn’t talk about cause they don’t want to be quoted on my blog. In them I was reminded once again that Microsoft has a far deeper problem: it isn’t shipping cool stuff THAT IT ALREADY HAS BUILT. I can’t tell more. I heard the story of yet another team that had a killer service that was killed. Funny enough several members of that team have left because they were demoralized about building something cool, getting close enough to ship that they had already sent the technology outside of Microsoft to partners, and then getting reorged and getting the product killed.

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard this story, either. I remember when Mark Lucovsky said “Microsoft has forgotten how to ship software.”
I stuck up at that time for Microsoft. Kevin Schofield, who works in MS Research, defended Microsoft too. But, yet again, another developer left Microsoft (this time Chandu Thota, on the Virtual Earth team, who is starting up his own company). Just remember, happy workers don’t leave. And the continual flow of smart developers leaving Microsoft tells me that Microsoft has deep managerial problems that are going to prove challenging to overcome.

But, I’ve learned never to bet against companies with billions of dollars in its pocket and tons of smart people still working there.

If Microsoft gets the marketing teams, the executives who are constantly reorging teams, the bean counters who don’t want to spend money to acquire interesting companies, out of the way, watch out.

Then what Don Dodge says will really have some truth behind it. Until then, Microsoft is sure getting boring to watch lately.

Can’t wait to hear what Ray Ozzie is working on. The silence gets worse for Microsoft with every passing day. I wonder how many companies are looking into Amazon’s S3 service yesterday. Last night I met Jeff Barr, Amazon’s Web Services evangelist, he told me that I wouldn’t believe how many customers are adopting that service and how big Amazon’s data centers are getting because of it.

Kevin Tofel asks “Why would I want different reader apps for different publications?”

He’s talking about New York Times’ Reader.

I’ve tried the reader, and I remember seeing prototypes back when I worked at Microsoft. This was an app designed to show off Windows Presentation Foundation, er, .NET 3.0. Some things that that technology does that the Web doesn’t do are much better text control, better typography, and better resizing of the app on different resolution screens.

But, it doesn’t matter. Google Reader is eating the lunch of this approach. Why? Cause we’ll put up with a little less readability in order to share items with other people, in order to see the information on multiple computers and platforms, and the ability to mash up the content with content from other services ala BlogLines, NewsGator, or Google Reader or other RSS aggregators.

The other trend I am seeing is the stunning growth of Adobe love among developers. Everywhere I go I hear “Flash, Flash, Flash.”

Next week Adobe is showing a bunch of us a bunch of stuff that’s going for developer’s love in an even bigger way. Microsoft is under full scale attack in the developer world. I’ve had developer after developer ask me the past few days “what is Microsoft doing?” Even companies that are seemingly in Microsoft’s camp (like TeamDirection, which is a .NET shop using Sharepoint) are talking about going with Flash, er, Flex and Apollo, which lets developers build standalone applications with Flash technology.

Why is this happening? Because Microsoft is leaving influentials to the Macintosh. Developers who choose Macs (and I see more and more every day) are forcing a move away from Java and .NET toward Adobe Flash stuff.

Microsoft will fight back with WPF/E, which is a .NET 3.0 runtime that runs everywhere, but will it be enough to keep developers from moving away?

OK, if I were an investor I’d be thinking of buying some Amazon stock.

So far today I’ve interviewed three startups and two of them say they are using Amazon’s S3 Web services (JamGlue, a music mashup service, and TeamDirection, a project management software both use it — these two services could not be more different). It’s not just today I’ve noticed this trend, either. Amazon is getting GREAT love in startup land for making it easy to build services on top of the S3 storage service. Every entrepreneur who has decided on Amazon RAVES about the service.

It’s amazing to me that Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are letting Amazon get such a huge lead here. These companies will never switch off of this infrastructure if Amazon keeps delivering this level of service. It lets these companies startup for very little money, and provide services that are very advanced. It’s like owning your own data center without the headache of buying new servers as your startup expands.

Oh, and I’m really bummed I missed yesterday’s Photowalking in San Francisco (Eddie took my place). The photos that Thomas Hawk got are stunning. Some of thsoe photos are hosted on SmugMug (the CEO and team showed up) which are, you guessed it, hosted on Amazon’s S3 service.

Gotta run, another interview coming up.

Oh, and what did Amazon show me this morning? I can’t tell, but it was surprising. Can’t wait to talk about it. Damn NDAs.

Scott Mace, a journalist I trust, is writing for NurseWeek and told me to check out his video of Scott Eckert, CEO of Motion Computing, showing off the Intel C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant that got some press yesterday. He thinks he has the only video of the event.

Why did he send it to me? Cause he knew I have a soft spot in my heart for Tablet PCs. This is pretty interesting. Great example of why Microsoft’s ecosystem keeps Microsoft humming along.

Ahh, the prepare-for-Ray Ozzie’s-speech-at-Mix-7 events have already started. Adam Sohn (he was the PR guy in our group when I started at Microsoft) is quoted on Redmond Developer saying that Microsoft is preparing a Live Development Platform. Ahh, an API that’ll do it all? Hmmm. I’m worried about the boil-the-ocean approach. Web developers like small, discrete APIs (I was just over at Redfin today and saw how they are using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth maps) that don’t take dependencies on other things (which is why Windows Vista itself was so late). Oh, and they like to see lots of iterations, er, small improvements in the service over time that demonstrates a team’s commitment (Virtual Earth got dozens of little, and some major, improvements over the past three years).

Translation: Microsoft is still not speaking the Web’s language. It’ll be interesting, though, to see what Ray does say when he comes out of seclusion.

Shipping is a feature. I keep getting reminded of that. Scientific American has a long article on the MyLifeBits research that Microsoft (er, Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell) is doing. You can see these two guys in a video series I did while back at Microsoft.

I wish I could play with their stuff — the research they are doing is interesting. But, I find it interesting that we’re using Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, MySpace, Flickr, and other things to record our lives and share them with either friends/family or the world.

This is the problem with the “boil the ocean” approach. Gordon and Jim might end up shipping something brilliant, but will we care when it finally comes out?

This is why I’m scared by what Ray Ozzie is doing. Clearly Ray has bought into the Steve Jobs’ school of “keep it secret, don’t talk, and ship something cool.”

I just don’t think that approach wins many friends in the Internet space. Why? Well, it’s the iteration of things that gets us involved.

I think back to how I got into Twitter. It wasn’t because Steven Levy or Walt Mossberg told me about it.

Yeah, I can hear you saying “Twitter is lame, it doesn’t do much.”

That’s the point. It started small, with a very constrained feature set (frustratingly small, at times when you want to tell your friends something more than a few hundred characters worth) but it works, it started in the grass roots, and it’s getting more interesting with every new user that joins it.

It’s a little puddle growing bigger. Meantime we’re waiting for Ray Ozzie to tell us something.