With Google
buying Blogger creator Pyra Labsmany are wondering when and if Microsoft will take a similar plunge into the Weblog-tools world.
It will come as a surprise to many that, with little fanfare,
Microsoft officially entered the blogging-tool space. At the recent
VSLive! developer conference, Microsoft unveiled five new sample
applications built on top of its ASP.Net scripting environment. One
of these five ? the ASP.Net Community
Starter Kit ? is a blog builder.
The
Community Starter Kit consists of application code, templates,
documentation and forum-based help. According to Microsoft's own
definition of the kit: "The Community Starter Kit enables you to
quickly create a community Web site such as a user group site, a
developer resource site, or a news site."
Some additonal commentary from Drupal:
Food for thought and
discussion. What would happen when every MSN/Hotmail user was
automatically given the option to opt in for a free weblog (a
la LiveJournal)?
Here is an extreme scenario. Having single sign-on in place
(.NET Passport), every MSN user could comment on anyone else's blog
and have his personal preferences follow him or her as he/she
travels from weblog to weblog; a problem the rest of the weblog
world has yet to solve.
Well! I think we have one Virtuoso Blogging Subsystem evangelist
in the making here :-)
Naturally, their weblogs would seemingly integrate with
their IM service/client, and both Internet Explorer and Outlook
would get a handy "blog this" feature. Moreover, having billions of
MSN users, they could establish de facto technology
standards and render existing technologies such as
the Blogger
API, MetaWeblog API
and Trackback
almost useless. At every aspect, they would have an immediate
technical advantage over established weblog software.
Like you know what .. they would! These APIs simply need a
product that demonstrates:
What they are, Why they are useful, and more importantly how they
preserve freedom of choice re. IT infrastructure Lampooning --
(L)inux, (A)pache, (M)ySQL, (P)HP|ERL|YTHON|)-ONING -- isn't the
solution but potentially the problem.
I think we see why OPS needs blogging, ditto Virtuoso !