I’m headed to Vegas this week to hear the current propaganda du jour spewing from Microsoft’s collective mouth. This will be the third year in a row I’ve made this trek.

Mix06 was when we heard about MySpace utilizing MS technology and Vista.

Mix07 was when we first heard about Silverlight, and witnessed a MS without Bill Gates giving the keynotes.

Mix08 promises to be another Silverlight oriented affair, but this time taken within the context of “an open Microsoft”. They’re even putting on an ‘open space’.

For those of us who have put in the years attending MS events (my first one was the MS CD-ROM developer’s conference in 1986) - there’s a fine art in understanding the koolaid and various ointments that get offered to us at these affairs. MS is really good at putting on shows, yet they cease to amaze me at how clueless they can be - while being (on the outside) well intentioned.

This year’s faux paix has to do with asking Guy Kawasaki to keynote with Steve Ballmer (which is bad enough) but to add insult to injury they’ve asked Guy to chair the panel I’m on - about social networking. Now those of you who know Guy - know him to be the epitome of a blow hard marketing wonk, unable to back up anything he says with anything more than “say it in 3 words”. Brilliant.

Now I’m not that pissed off about this - as I figure I’ll just answer all of Guy’s questions in 3 words, that’s simple. But they’ve loaded up the panel with 6 people, and including Guy - that makes 7 people doing a panel. In other words - I don’t even really need to show up - it’ll be a complete waste of time. Lets see 7 people, divided by :45-:50 minutes, that comes out to….. well you do the math.

Not really worth flying to Vegas - huh?

But its the rest of the show that’ll be so amusing - I can’t wait to go! Microsoft claiming that they’re open? That’s like saying George Bush now understands that women need abortions or that War is bad. It’s like the Supreme Court going back and giving the election back to Gore. It’s like Rush Limbaugh voting for Obama.

This is not how the world is supposed to be!

Microsoft is supposed to be the evil devil, so we have to wear garlic around our necks to protect our souls. But MS claiming that they’re open is so against the grain of how our industry operates, that I’m afraid I might just break down and start crying.

So in the spirit of optimism, openness and willingness to work together, here are a few suggestions of what Microsoft could do to reach out and actually do something with this new openness (NOTE: suggestions on how to spend their $6B R&D budget to follow.)

1. Allot has been made lately of Microsoft joining the OpenID foundation board and in supporting DataPortability.org. So my first suggestion is easy: “we need extensive testing and compatibility labs setup to make sure that OpenID inter-operates between various implementations!” Nobody can do testing labs as good as Microsoft. They practically invented bugs. So I’m hoping that they’ll do the right thing and fund these sorts of labs, which of course will then force Google to fund some labs as well. Nothing like dueling testing labs to make sure an open spec is solid and that end-users can guarantee a seamless experience!

2. How ’bout connecting Windows mobile to Google’s Android, the iPhone and ALL the existing handsets in the world today? Instead of thinking of these other handset OSes as the competitors, the way we do things in the open world, is embrace and sing Kum-Bah-Yah! Wouldn’t it be totally coolio to have a windows mobile device inter-operate with data devices and smartphones from around the world - and not be told “sorry we are not compatible with that device?” Wouldn’t it be coolio for MS to exert some of its famous industry manipulative skills to get the carriers to open up more and inter-operate more? Remember - open is the new black.

3. and then there’s the XBox. If there ever was a lesson in how to lose $5B and buy market share - its the XBox. How can MS turn its popular game console into a game changing device? I love the notion of the XBox set top box. And I love XBox live, which clearly needs to be completely open and allow anyone to run their own contests, tournaments, IM systems, etc. on it. The XBox is a gateway to the living room (see below) as well as a kickass real-time rendering device (see Second Life and all the opportunity of creating 100 Second Lives…..) Then there’s the reality of media downloads. How are ANY of these musicians and movie makers ever gonna stay in business as the new distribution channels which are just eating their lunch. Well the one thing an XBox can do - really well - is be a media player. You figure out what happens when the world’s largest computer company gets open and has this device out there that costs $250 and is connected to the Internet …… and it’s really smart too and knows about my digital lifestyle, what I like and is tied into targeted ad platforms. And monetizes attention.

4. With all the talk of being open, I wonder what MS thinks its enterprise customers will do when they’re told “go open old man.” Its time for a change, here’s the documentation for Windows and how to reverse engineer Office. I wonder what happens to their $25B a year in profits nest egg? This whole open thing smells like…… teen spirit. How does this all translate to the enterprise? I bet it doesn’t. I bet they’ll just forget to talk about it. “Oooops - did we forget to talk about the open office of the future. Oooops.” Sorry that wasn’t a suggestion, just me falling back into being cynical. I still don’t believe all this!

5. My favorite suggestion (which I’ve actually been making to Jeff Sandquist for several years now - ever since Scoble and Len Pryor invited me to the PDC on Lomnghorn in 2003) is that Microsoft needs to get open data flowing into the Windows Home Media system. That (by all accounts) is the leading Living Room platform and a place where families, singles and seniors can all unite together while gathering around the hearthfire of American life - the TV set. Sure videogames are hot in the living room, but most of those are relegated to the kids bedroom or family room downstairs. The Living room is the holey place, where new episodes of Lost and March Madness are consumed like so many buckets of koolaid propaganda. How ’bout doing some mashups around events or reviews? How ’bout establishing some shared, public XML servers filled with Event or Review data on it - so that a whole generation of family oriented Home Media apps can be built that tie into mobile, enable doctors appointments, shopping lists and TV guides? How come we don’t have apps that understand what my favorite TV shows are and notify me when my fav shows have been recorded successfully or download my fav playlists of jams onto my car MP3 player (oh that’s right - MS still does DRM.) Then there’s the whole bevvy of APIs and inter-connected issues which will arise when we try and gateway open standards and shared platforms, like Twitter or OpenSocial? How’s this all gonna work?

You can see that MS has its work cut out for it. But I don’t see Google being anywhere near here - for a long time and just cause Yahoo bought Meedio, doesn’t mean that’s anything but yet another meaningless acquisition that’ll get bured within the behemoth of non-execution.

So from my vantage point - MS is the ONLY player that can gateway all these coolio opportunities to the world of mainstream computing. And the ONLY way to do that - is by getting open.

And guess what?

That’s actually what they’re saying they wanna do! Now gee - “how far does $1B go in helping to promote open activities?” Open standards. Open mashups? Open data?

Only problem left is - that they’re still Microsoft.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 5:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.