So What’s New?

Stuart in his post yesterday basically asked what’s new? I agree. In many ways he’s right. A lot of what we see these days is really what I keep calling “Me Too, Me Also, not Me Different” from many companies. That’s why eComm should be very exciting. Many new companies will actually be showing NEW and DIFFERENT. Organizer Lee Dryburgh spent many months working on that key point.

At eComm I’m candidly not as interested in what Google or Skype have to say. I expect big things from them, but won’t be disappointed if they don’t say much. They are big corporate companies now. Stuart also mentions Apple. Apple’s idea of innovation is making the complicated easy. The more they do it, the less the geeks go nuts over it, but the more the “that’s cool” crowd will. By the way, the “that’s cool” crowd far outnumber the geeks. They’re called consumers and the easier you make things for consumers the more likely they will buy something. Steve Jobs has that idea down cold. There SDK will make things very interesting, but while a lot of VoIP players will quickly jump on board, Truphone beat them all there months ago and proved it, paving the way for others to follow

Stuart also casually tosses Ribbit under the bus. I’ve openly not been a fan of Adobe powered platforms for Voice. While I do like the Adobe tools for graphics and page layout, give me ccXML, Voice XML or Ruby On Rails over AIR or FLEX any day. I’m sure pal Erik Lagerway of Gaboogie fame would agree. Yahoo VP Jeff Bonforte (if he is still still there) was the first to tell enlighten me about Ruby (and Cocoa) two or three years ago. Erik and Jeff are two guys I respect when it comes to what works best to program in. I’ve actually bever heard or read either say nice things about Adobe’s platforms when it comes to voice.

That’s why to me anything related to Adobe AIR or FLEX trying to be innovative in voice platform programming space is also rather funny to me. Let’s look at the history book. Adobe inherited Breeze when they purchased Macromedia (FLASH) and not much has really happened with that. Don’t you think if there was the same potential for Voice within their platforms that Adobe would already be there? Adobe knows how to make great software, but their attempts in both video and voice have been utter failures. Just look at how many Product Managers and EIR’s Adobe’s had on it and how many startups have talked to Adobe and how little happened ….well connect the dots You don’t have to be a genius to figure out Adobe is now looking in other directions.

To me the real fun at eComm is not the known companies. It’s the unknown companies who are on stage, in the audience and hallways that will make the conference the second coming of eTel. That’s what makes it interesting.