Inspirational Technology

Transparency

God help us if we're wrong. [Don Box's Spoutlet]

Don's talking about the increasing number of Microsoft employees who are blogging and the increased transparency it's bringing to the company. This is a trend that I'm very impressed with and is providing a fascinating look at some of the smart people who work there. It's also bringing a better level of community and personality to what had previously been a very cold company. I've been adding more and more Microsoft related blogs to my regular reading and it's definitely improved my feelings about the .Net era Microsoft. Even if the amount of transparency is currently small, it sure is better then what existed before and it seems more Microsoft bloggers are coming online everyday. Of course it will take a lot more then this to regain trust and things like WPA, Palladium and the completely broken mess that is Windows don't help any, but it's good to see things improving and there are definitely some things in .Net that I really like.

I'm hoping that we can see more blogging in the Macintosh developer community. Especially among Apple employees, but also among independent developers. I'm only aware of two Apple employee blogs, Ken Bereskin and Dave Hyatt. Both are great resources, hopefully there are more out there that I just haven't found yet. Dave Hyatt's blog in particular is interesting because of the development oriented discussion around Safari. Given Apple's extreme stance on secrecy it has to be a tough line to walk, but I sure wish more Apple employees would jump in.

There are quite a few independent Macintosh developers with blogs, many of which were very early adopters. People/Companies like Brent Simmons / Ranchero Software , Don Watson / Karelia, Robb Beal / UserCreations, Michael McCracken, Unsanity and CocoaTech and of course I'm working on Mac software now too. I haven't publicly released any Mac OS X software yet, but it will come someday.

Macromedia is another company making big strides in this area with people like Mike Chambers, Kevin Lynch and Jeremy Allaire blogging. The blogs offer an interesting mix of company marketing and personal insight. Hopefully more of the latter, but regardless it puts a much more human face on the company. In fact, I don't actually use any Macromedia software, but still read some of the blogs just to keep an eye on things. Actually, Macromedia Central is something that I am interested in, but for now I'm just watching it.