Ironically
Posted by pat 68 days ago
Great article by Robert X. Cringely relating a conversations he had with Bob Frankston (from VisiCalc fame) about net neutrality, billability, infrastructure, and APIs. A quote that warmed my heart (emphasis mine):
My recent discussion with Bob Frankston started with talk about Microsoft and what that company might do to turn itself around. "Microsoft seems to confuse end-to-end with womb-to-tomb," Bob said. "Or at least BillG did the last time I tried to speak to him about it. The problem Microsoft has is that it hasn't really given people enough opportunity to add value to the computing. Ironically, Google's APIs and mashups go more in this direction and I do need to give Ray (Ozzie) some credit for joining in this trend. The challenge will be reconciling that with the monolithic platform company. .Net, a stupid name for a great idea, could do very well if liberated from Windows."
Giving people opportunity to add value to computing: that summarizes what APIs are all about quite well. See you all at Mashup Camp next week, to see how we can add more value to computing:-)
PS: obviously, the title of this post is heavily inspired by Daniel Handler's latest book, Adverbs, which I wholeheartedly recommend.
