During the 7 years I lived in Seattle and worked in the software development world there, I attended countless product development brainstorming sessions from formal meetings with investors all the way down to a couple developers sitting around in a bar scratching ideas on napkins. I’ve lost track of the number of times really great product ideas were abandoned because the principals feared Microsoft would kill them.

In one case, a friend’s company developed products that worked with the Exchange mail server. Once his company started seeing real revenue, Microsoft began to take notice — they told his customers that the next version of Exchange would include all the features from his product. When the next version of Exchange shipped (late as usual), it had but a quarter of the features. However, the damage was done: his customers hadn’t bought the product because they were waiting for Microsoft.

Finally, my experiences actually working for Microsoft in late 1995 solidified my absolute disgust for Microsoft’s business practices which included at the time withholding API documentation from their partners so that their products could appear to have an edge.

My positive experiences as an Apple customer aside, there’s no way for Microsoft to earn my trust.

I am one of the founders of /ROOT as well as Attention Trust. In addition to helping establish models and principles for each of these entities I am doing much of the product definition and design.

Writing here because I am delighted to see a conversation hybrib between privacy, security, standards, and UI. I specialize in customer experience design and HCI, but have spent much of the last 4 months thinking about the intersection of these other issues because of what /R and AT have evolved into.

If you go to the current root.net page you may find that it is different than when you signed up. We have pushed the /VAULTS down one level to expose the greater challenge we are addressing…how can we create an OPEN market place for the pricing and exchange of consumer data.

The message here will putoff many, and may compel current /VAULT owners to immediately login and “DELETE ALL”. We understand.

But, if you spend another moment with the principles of AT (property, mobility, economy, transparency), and reference this against the idea of a transparent exchange for attention data you can begin to see how this changes the game.

/ROOT aims to help its users understand the value of their attention data, and how it is a truly valuable expression of their digital identity.

Part of our consumer strategy is to enable users to pay attention to their attention. if attention is currency, this would be investing in yourself…believing that you are interesting. All the tools we are developing for consumers aim to convert their attention to influence, and provide a platform to leverage this influence.

What you currently see in our /VAULT product is the beginning of the beginning…we simply wanted to get something out there that works (even if topic assigning through DMOZ is horrible)

All /ROOT product development happens on top of our corporate values…my favorite is “fail fast”.

Please stick with us as we build these /VAULTS. We develop in an agile environment, and have engaged some of the best product designer/developers out there. We have a laundry list of features and functions that will surely delight all Attendees (does that term work for those who pay attention to their attention?)

So, thank you Josh and Robert for opening a /VAULT.

I hope the time you have SPENT, and the attention you have PAID will be properly converted to currency in this new marketplace.

Robert, you are a great evangelist for Microsoft. You argue with passion and honesty, and that’s awesome. I posted many moons ago about that, and I still think so. For my part, I think it will be a while before my opinion of Microsoft starts to change significantly enough for me to consider buying your products, but I can say that your efforts here and daily on your site are certainly a step in the right direction.

About IE. I agree, IE in the 4 days was the best browser out there, and insofar as it supported standards I was happy with it. Now Firefox and Safari are superior, and one thing that I really appreciate about them is that they support standards no matter what, and continually innovate. Dave Hyatt and gang just released a browser that passes the Acid2 test and that signals to me that they care about developers. The IE team only got back on the horse when their broken browser was being beaten. From a business standpoint it probably makes sense. From my standpoint as a developer, it’s frustrating as heck.

I’ll definitely check out Max and Sparkle. Thanks for the pointers.

And finally, hanging out in Apple stores might be the best thing that Microsoft employees could do. You’re an exception to the rule there, I bet. Further, I think it can only benefit the end user that companies like Apple, Google and Yahoo are firing on all cylinders now, and it’s bringing back some competition that all parties desperately need.

I hear you (and, if you and I were having a beer right now, I’d even agree with you).

A couple of things: yes, we have really screwed over the Web. No doubt about it. It isn’t so simple, though. I was an IE user back in 2, 3, 4, 5 because IE supported more standards faster than Netscape did. Remember CSS? Who did that first? Microsoft. Remember DHTML, er AJAX? Who invented that?

Regarding UI. Have you seen Microsoft Max yet? Anyone who has can’t say we don’t know how to make awesome user experiences. Or, check out Sparkle.

Windows Vista fixes most, if not all of the other things you’re complaining about. Is it late? Yes. I wish it were out by now too.

Regarding monopoly. 85% of our referer hits to http://channel9.msdn.com are from Google. So, you’re saying you can’t trust a monopoly with your attention data, right? Well, 85% in most people’s minds is at minimum dominant and is definitely moving into the line of a monopoly. When we were convicted of being a monopoly we had about a 90% market share.

Fourth: the last chapter has not been written on open data formats. It’s my prediction that all of our formats will be very open by the end of next year. Far more open than you might think or believe. Keep watching us on that one. The era of closed formats is about to end.

Fifth: I agree. Although a lot of that is just Steve’s personality. Do you watch Jim Cramer of Mad Money? A lot of that is the same kind of bravado. Sometimes you need that kind of bravado. Sometimes it hurts you. Here I agree it hurts more than helps.

Sixth: I agree. I hang out a lot in Apple stores. They are awesome. But don’t miss that you have to pay for that kind of service. Also, I get that same kind of service at Best Buy. I had a camcorder go dead and they took it back. Another time I just didn’t like it. They took it back and gave me a full refund.

Also, the things that we do with our computer are becoming less sacred. Sony took a jump very close to the “virus line” with their rootkits, which they, and I imagine others, just consider to be the natural extension of DRM.

In the future, any big company probably will find a way to prove that they own your data because you use their service.

The main reason I trust them is because they are so big and so highly scrutinized. I generally trust larger corporations because of the attractive economics of class action suits. If they did something with my data I think they would be screwed. Anyway. Another perspective.