Steven Martin, Microsoft's senior director of developer platform management, discusses Microsoft's call for an open process to define cloud computing going forward. Essentially, Martin expressed concern about a so-called "Cloud Manifesto" and Microsoft's view that it is biased to benefit its authors.

Apparently Microsoft has a thing for conservative Japan. Just when I thought Microsoft had closed patent cross-licensing deals with every Japanese firm ever to have considered corporate existence, Microsoft surprises me with a deal with Onkyo.

Microsoft truly continues to amaze me. Over the years Microsoft has definitely been able to make my jaw drop at most of its brash business moves let alone some of its quarterly earnings. But Microsoft being Microsoft still continues to defy all logic because “hey they're just that rich”.

"...Microsoft's proposal is for web developers to opt-in to Internet Explorer 8's standards mode by adding in a new meta tag (or HTTP header) [...] Microsoft are demanding that we web standards developers favour them with time, cost and effort, while they continue to abrogate their responsibilities to their half a billion clients. [...] Microsoft on the other hand are now expecting us web developers to carry the burden of their responsibility. Instead of Microsoft abiding by the responsibility of rendering pages according to the open defined standards, Microsoft are intent on making standards-based pages second class citizens. [...] We web developers should not be paying for Microsoft's mistakes.

Microsoft is usually very good at presenting new products years ahead of the actual launch - but there continues to be a very remarkable absence of a single strategy for support of Windows applications or Windows as a well integrated desktop.

This week the Dutch government will discuss a proposal to switch as much as possible to open standards and open source software. The Microsoft director for the Netherlands, Theo Rinsema, responded that Microsoft is not objecting to open standards, but the proposal excludes too many not open standards, like PDF, MP3 and GSM, which are widely accepted standards.

In discussing the motivation behind its newly launched Windows Server 2008 Foudation product, there’s one word the folks from Microsoft were loathe to mention: Linux.

But I thought that it might be useful to pause to share the "Huh?" that I experienced when I stumbled across this article by Andrew Donoghue at ZDNet while enjoying a brief respite of laptop connectivity in the lobby of a hotel. The article is titled, "Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOMXL" and is based on an address by Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee.

Why, then, is Apple, in a letter full of talk of openness and standards, promoting this closed codec, a codec that will once again shackle the web to a proprietary technology, just as we're busy breaking free from Flash? ...
Jobs' letter talks about how it's bad for a platform if developers use cross-platform technologies... And yet, without any sense of shame, Apple ships iTunes for Windows.