These three videos explain what many of the digerati fail to mention -- software is not really eating the world. It's really creating new growth. It is now so easy to get software -- you can get free Windows and Azure stuff through Microsoft BizSpark -- and it is so easy to get information about the software ecosystem and the problems faced by consumers and enterprises -- that we are seeing a huge order of magnitude increase in use cases that show software is actually bringing ideas, jobs, economies and people together.
In the consumer market and the enterprise market, it's not about the bright shiny device. It's about solving a problem. And software is just another tool in the hand that creates solutions.
First, a demonstration that provides context: Donald Leka at New York Tech Meetup this week demonstrating Glide, which syncs software for music and photo sharing through all devices running Windows 8. It looks like this app gets out ahead of Dropbox and Box.
Then there is Steven Guggenheimer, who just took the helm of Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism division, explaining at LeWeb the context around what makes the Windows 8 value proposition so worthwhile for developers. He takes a crib off of the concept that Leka leads with -- that there are three types of device platforms -- the Apple way, the Android way, and now the Microsoft way. Microsoft ends up being a happy medium between the rigid, hardware-mostly position of Apple, and the fragmented, software approach of Android, which is so multi-device led that apps makers are not going to be sure whether their software / app will work on a device.
Then I leave you with this -- a measure of how small affordable platforms are for any kind of coding team to build on. Developer Evangelist Sonal Mane, based in Chicago, sits down with a Startup Weekend team and figures out what they are doing to eat the world with their software.
I encourage you to listen to how the two developers describe the culture they work in, and the people that they interact with -- at the end of the day, it's not the wonderful thing you build. It's the solution that brings people together and helps them.