I thought that I'd share with you a document, entitled "Software Platform Dynamics", that I've used in the past to help associates get up to speed with the nature of the software platform business. It's a fairly dense collection of thoughts gathered over many years; I hope that it serves to further the discussion... [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
And into this essay lie the reason for .Net
"As a platform nears or achieves practical ubiquity, and thus as the end of geometric growth is within sight, the most effective use of new investment is not to continue to enhance that platform, but to instead invest in either 1) new "layered platforms", or 2) new disruptive "alternative platforms". It is key that as a platform achieves practical ubiquity, its profitability curve transforms from its own toward instead being a direct function of the market, and thus increased investment in the platform post-saturation is purely defensive: it only works to continue to ensure that it continues to follow that market's own growth rate."
An Unbiased News Source. The wildly popular Google internet search engine has added a new free service called Google News, which culls headlines from thousands of internet news sources for your reading (and self-informing) pleasure. [kuro5hin.org]
What makes this service peculiar and extremely valuable is that its headline groupings are determined entirely by computer algorithms. As no human editors are there to contaminate with political bias, headlines from highly disparate perspectives often find themselves side-by-side.
