Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

What just happened?  Did Microsoft do something right for a change?  Something, dare I say, cool?

According to Fast Company, Microsoft just released a new dashboard codenamed "LookingGlass" that tracks a company's social media cred.  It's still in beta and will only be available to paying customers -- at least initially.  FC pegs it as a better PR tool than Seth Godin's latest contraption which has a few eyes rolling in my line of biz, but that's another post altogether...

LookingGlass isn't entirely unexpected but nonetheless a nice surprise.  It comes from Redmond's own labcoats and helps to bridge a gap between self-proclaimed web gurus (like me) and PR flacks trying to make a buck in a Web 2.0 world (like me).  That, and Microsoft can't let the upstarts and whippersnappers have all the fun.

Also last week, TechCrunch reported the launch of WebSiteSpark, a free software suite for web developers that includes a web server, database engine and other goodies.  Not the first time they've offered trials like Visual Studio gratis, but for good for three years?  Not bad, not bad.  And if that doesn't pique a penguin's interest, then a stripped-down 2-meg download of Microsoft's Web Platform Installer will.  Even the apps are worth a glance: you'd be surprised what a Windows web server can run.

For many years, web pros shunned Microsoft like bad sushi.  Unless your hapless corporate IT department demanded otherwise, you opted for  alternatives ranging from Java to Dreamweaver to Mozilla to MySQL.  Internet Explorer was the reigning heavyweight everybody loved to hate (and hack), and Microsoft was no fan of open source.  Fast forward to now: the market changed and Microsoft had no choice but to follow.  Now the company doles out virtual machines like an open bar, dangling free drinks to web developers that eschewed expensive licensing in the past but are willing to tinker with new toys anytime.  The Developer Toolbar and IE8 Readiness Toolkit were big hits, as was the IE team's shocking revelation that it gives a damn about the web's future after all the incessant bitching... well, you get the idea.

So will a few freebies sway enough indie web designers to matter?  More Silverlight sites than Flash?  Less Google, more Bing?  LookingGlass and a dish of downloads may not be enough to wrestle the web world away from established analytics, frameworks and IDEs but it does prove one thing: Microsoft can still innovate and, in the process, compete.