Om Malik on Microsoft: "...it doesn't have the attention of the developers as it used to have."

For the last 16 hours or so I've been doing something I haven 't done for a very, very long time - totally geeked out with my computer to the exclusion of absolutely everything else. I got started out last night poking around the edges of PodCasting - really trying to figure out what the puts and takes were, where it shines and where it sucks. (Aside: It sucks precisely smack dab in the middle of some very unsexy but highly unfulfilled market requirements = big opportunity here for someone...) Throughout this process I've been playing with a ton of new software and generally bringing my laptop back to the configuration level I had it at before I crashed it last month. (I can't believe how long it takes to get things back up to speed nowadays - really makes a strong case for good backups ;)

One thing I've noticed is how broad, deep and useful the software space is nowadays. I had no problems finding a really solid range of free and non-free multimedia product tools and other assorted widgets and gizmo's along the way. All very cool things.

But almost immediately I noticed how anemic the support is for Microsoft applications like Media Player 10. This tool sits at the intersection of Microsoft's media software strategy for Windows users and the range of available plugin's totally sucks. Reading Om's post this morning, it struck me that the problem is that Microsoft is doing nothing, or very close to nothing, to inspire higher-level developers to play in their sandbox.

Sure, if you are looking to create standalone applications for one of their systems or platforms, you'll probally get all sorts of great treatment, education, grab-bags and other assorted bits that inspire cool developers to write hot code. *But* unlike most of the competing application vendors, there is no buzz around building tools that add value to existing Microsoft applications. Other than Newsgator, I can't even think of a hot plugin or must-have add-on for a Microsoft application.

How many developers do you know that are building plugins for IE and Outlook? How many for Firefox and Thunderbird? Microsoft needs to do some serious outreach to its development and user communities and start convincing people that building widgets for Microsoft apps is easy and useful.

I really should spend some more time expanding on this notion and presenting a more defensible argument...perhaps at some other point...