It’s very weird to have a former boss (Steve Sloan at San Jose State University, who runs an excellent podcasting class) covering my current boss (John Furrier, CEO of PodTech) and my other boss (Maryam Scoble, who has about as much success as the other two at telling me what to do, although I did take out the trash this morning) while they put together a future of journalism and new media evening event for Stanford’s Innovation Journalism Fellows program.

I love this quote: “Furrier really impressed me, this is one sharp guy!”

Now you know how he talked me into joining PodTech. I totally agree.

In reading my 1,331 RSS items (as reported by Google Reader) today I found one by Scott Barnes where he noted that Ryan Stewart, who covers the rich Internet application space better than most anyone, noted that Microsoft was ahead in terms of developer workflow.

Absolutely.

You only need to watch the Sparkle video I did in September 2005 to see why (that was the code name for the product that became Expression Blend).

Yesterday, listening to the Adobe team, I was in a state of deja vu. Yeah, part of it was I was really tired, but the other part is that they were trying to articulate the workflow changes that are coming as clearly as  Manuel Clement and John Gossman did in that video.

Adobe came close, but didn’t match it.

The problem is it doesn’t matter. If you care about cross-platform (and if you are a Web developer, you do) you’ll put up with a workflow that isn’t quite as nice.

And if you’re a developer for a Windows only shop, you’ll be praising Microsoft for making your life easier.

Personally, I’m glad I’m not at Microsoft anymore trying to get Web developers to try out Expression. Why? Just come and visit 10 startups with me, and you’ll see why.

Macintoshes are showing up everywhere. WPF/E and Expression and the fun workflow that Manuel and John show off won’t matter one bit if you develop Web sites on a Mac.

This line, about my blog’s spam that’s been blocked so far, says it all!

“Akismet has caught 403,396 spam for you since you first installed it.”