Ahh, the forgotten Robert Fripp recording is now up on Channel 9. It wasn’t forgotten. Just sort of lost. Marketing wanted it held until after Vista shipped. And my messy tape organizing kept it almost lost for months. But they found a recording. It’s one of the few recordings of Robert Fripp, guitarist, that exist (he doesn’t like to be filmed).

Interesting look into the creative process that led to the development of four notes that play when you start up Windows Vista.

I love this video. I could listen to Robert Fripp work for hours. I’m so honored that I got to sit on the floor at his feet and record him. Thanks to Steve Ball for inviting me over (he’s the guy you see in parts of the video). There was a small audience (about 10 people, if I remember right) so this is pretty historic video.

He plays music for quite a while on this video, so you can watch the creative process that went into the recording part of finding the four tones, then we go backstage for an interview with him and other Microsofties who were involved.

Over the next several months I hope to have videos from all the folks who are trying to become your start page (and unseat MyYahoo, or Google’s IG, or Microsoft’s Live from your browser’s default starting point).

First up is PageFlakes. Dan Cohen, CEO of PageFlakes, sat down with me to talk about the space. Cool stuff. How will you decide on your home page? What’s your favorite place to start the day out?

I got both a demo and an interview. Dan worked at Google and has lots of interesting things to say about the space.

DEMO of PageFlakes:

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INTERVIEW with Dan Cohen, CEO of PageFlakes.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/03/PID_010394/Podtech_PAGEFLAKES_interview.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1379/killing-portals-with-pageflakes-ceo&totalTime=1566000&breadcrumb=3F34K2L1]

Ted Leung is an open source developer (he works on Mitch Kapor’s Chandler project) and he warns that Adobe wants to be the Microsoft of the Web with its Apollo and Flex platforms. He doesn’t want to give control of his work to yet another single vendor.
The problem is he admits he doesn’t see much alternative other than hoping that Adobe opens up its platforms.  I actually think that would be very smart of Adobe to do. The revenue for Adobe is in the toolset anyway. Do most people use a free Photoshop competitor like GIMP? No, most of us shell out hundreds of bucks for every version of Photoshop. So, the value here isn’t in the platform (other than the ego and brand building value of owning it) but rather the value is in the toolset that you can build on top of it.

This is actually one thing that developers tell me they like about Sun Microsystems’ direction with Java. By opening that up developers feel better about it as a platform (and can help fix things and improve it).

One thing I thought was missing from the Adobe Engage event earlier this week was an understanding of just how powerful community involvement in a platform could be. None of the apps demonstrated any open source thinking on behalf of the Adobe teams. It sure would be nice for Adobe to think about that. Thanks Ted for bringing that up!