Off topic, but Microsoft is around us all, and I remain interested in their future.  I have been critical of Ray Ozzie, but some things I have noted recently suggest to me, that he (or someone there is getting it).

First … recently Scoble noted he was invited to a private NDA session at Microsoft to talk about things, presumably blogging.  Pirillo and others of similar stature attended same session.  This I knew from, of all things, Twitter, so no links.

Now a colleague from Unspace, is at Microsoft this week, and since he is under NDA I won’t mention the topic.  But it involves an Office application.  He is there talking with senior Microsoft people, and MVP’s from Microsoft forums.  This particular colleague is developing applications that use Office in ways that stretch the imagination beyond the original expectation.  I will check, and talk about that more when I know I can.

My point here is not the colleague … my point is that while two data points hardly make a trend, I am willing to bet there is a trend going on behind the scenes where Microsoft senior management have been challenged to get outside their application specific mindsets, and learn from the activities of leaders in internet development. 

If Microsoft are doing what I suspect, they will change course.  Once Microsoft figure out the road map, they stick billions in development behind it, just make it work. 

The irony in that last statement is that the answer is not necessarily billions, but just doing it smartly.