Robert Scoble on Marc Canter

"Marc Canter is always a fun read. He's the guy who started Macromedia. Yes, they did kick Microsoft's behind. Let's see, Microsoft tried to lock in developers into our own proprietary DHTML tags and failed, but Macromedia's Flash format is all over the place. Who won that battle? What caught my eye about Marc's weblog today? Where he exclaims that there is money in tools. Damn straight there is. Let's see, Adobe makes money off of Acrobat. About a billion a year (Acrobat is funding an entire additional Silicon Valley skyscraper, Adobe's CEO said in a recent magazine article I read). Macromedia makes money off of Flash. Borland makes money off of tools. One of Microsoft's biggest buildings (#42) is full of guys writing tools.

Then Marc talks about the gender of Longhorn. Awesome stuff. Yeah, my wife is different than me. Thankfully!

What does Longhorn need more than anything else? Tools!

Why? Well, as an evangelist, I want tons of great apps for my wife to use on Longhorn (Longhorn is the code name for the next version of Windows). How is she gonna get those great apps? Developers are gonna have to create them. How are devs and artists gonna create apps for the operating system most of us will use in 2005 and beyond? Tools!

Translation: Marc, we gotta get you to sing at the PDC.

Deep translation: Marc, if you can't get funding with such an opportunity ahead of you, the valley must really be messed up. Here's your chance to kick our behinds again!"

[via The Scobleizer Weblog]