Skip to main content

Microsoft Is a Great/Terrible Enemy

Well - the basic point is true "Microsoft is a juggernaut, a terrible enemy to have.", quoted by Mozilla's Scott Collins.

But not for the reasons noted in the article, I prefer to think about how Guy Kawasaki looked at Microsoft (paraphrased):

Microsoft has the ability to turn on a dime. They missed the first Internet revolution - Gates changed the entire company to be internet-focused in less time than it took to release a new product.

Yes, Microsoft is an elephant - but it's an elephant that can turn faster than most mice and that is Microsoft's competitive advantage.

In truth, people would likely prefer IBM or some larger monolith as an enemy - a company that basically takes time to print out blank pages (intentionally left blank) instead of one who basically says "our goal is to beat the market out of whoever we compete with".

Now that's the "theory" of MS competitiveness - the reality of course gets you dealing with lawyers, license agreements and EULAs (enough people have complained about this that I'm not even going to comment anymore).

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

FoxInCloud Stats

FoxInCloud sent this link a while back about their statistics regarding visits to their site: http://foxincloud.com/blog/2017/12/27/VFP-community-lessons-from-foxincloud-site.html What's interesting here is the breakdown of people. Yes, I think it's understandable that the Fox community is getting older. Another factor is the growth of the mobile and web environments taking over development. These environments really do push people towards the newer non-SQL or free SQL/hosted environments but more towards hosted storage options like Amazon and Google. A tool like FoxInCloud that helps MOVE existing applications to the cloud inherently competes with those environments. But FoxInCloud also allows developers to extend their application further by giving them a starting point using Javascript and the basic CSS (such as Bootstrap). If you're not rebuilding your application from scratch, it's certainly a great step forward. FoxPro VFP

Facebook Revolt - imeem alternatives?

When Scoble noted how Facebook under major revolt , I immediately thought of a site I found yesterday. The value offered by Facebook's feeds however do seem very cool - if only they had been smart and made them opt-in, instead of opt-out. I have been impressed though with Facebook's opening of their API's - they certainly get it that they need to open it up to developers. I haven't really explored this other site, beyond my first look. In some ways, I think the whole social networking site thing is just silly , but this site (imeem) definitely showed some value. I could find music (as posted by the artist), it worked in Firefox and it allowed people to rank, add to delicious and more. And when I'm looking at someone, I can see what they're up to (or rather what they allow us to see). Anyways, you may want to check it out.