Microsoft announced yesterday that they will be releasing speech-to-speech translation in an upcoming version of Skype. From TechCrunch:

In a chat before the demo, Pall said “Skype is about bringing people closer, and breaking down barriers.” That started with the idea of cheap international calling and expanded into face-to-face communications via video. Now it’s taking on the challenge of breaking the language barrier.

This is very exciting and reinforces to me what Microsoft should be focusing on with all of its properties. The question they should keep asking is, “how do we enable developers to create amazing products?”

As a developer we need all kinds of services to make our products go in a connected world. Microsoft could be the source for many of those services, from syncing to login, from up-to-date data and localized information. Translation is just another one of those services that many developers would be very willing to pay a trusted source.

Azure is just step one. I hope Microsoft keeps pursuing this angle, leveraging all of its assets including Skype, Microsoft Research, Kinnect, Bing, and on and on and on. There is a bright future there for the kings of software.

I’ve read quite a bit about Microsoft’s Build developer conference and listened to others talking about it. I’ve also been watching Microsoft’s moves very closely. All I am seeing is positive signs.

The release of Office for iPad and its immediate success is a very good thing. 12 million downloads in the first few days is absolutely amazing for any product, and while I’m sure a lot of people are only kicking tires, there are also a lot of people who rely on Word, Excel and PowerPoint for their every day activities.

Even more subtle moves are a good sign. Changing the name from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure is fantastic news. It is clear that if Microsoft wants to remain relevant then minimizing the impact of Windows is a good thing. What Microsoft should be asking is what’s the operating systems [1] for the next generation of devices, not the last ones? The last ones all ran Windows. The next ones all run browsers and apps. Yes, browsers and apps run in an OS but the OS they run in is less and less important as time moves on.

It seems Microsoft gets this. From what I heard there were plenty of Windows 8 tablets on stage during the Build presentations, but there were also tons of iPads, iPhones and other devices too. Azure is a very interesting service to power the next generation of software and software services. Moving toward cloud-based developer tools and more services provided around Bing are exceptionally interesting moves. I’d like to see web-supported systems as easy to develop as desktop software used to be. That would be a huge step forward for us developers.

But this isn’t the only reason why Microsoft’s success is important for us. The reality is that Microsoft’s interests are the only ones who align with us developers, at least those of us who want to charge customers for the products they use. None of the other major platform players do that. Amazon charges for media. The apps — all free and on as many platforms as possible — are only how that media is delivered. Google and Facebook give away their software to get more eyeballs. Those ads are worth billions to them. Apple makes their money from hardware. Only Microsoft sells software, previously one-off but now as a subscription. And that’s how most software developers make money, too.

Remember, the key to success is to make money from your revenue stream and commoditize all the supporting elements. Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple all aim to commoditize software.

The latest moves are a positive sign for Microsoft. I believe a resurgent Microsoft is also a positive sign for us.

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[1] Yes, plural.

As most of you know I’ve been “mobile first” my entire career. We developed our first apps for Newton and PalmPilot in 1997, although Apple cancelled the Newton before we shipped an app for it. We then developed for Windows Mobile and Windows, although our Windows version was designed for the pen-based tablets, not the desktop OS. This was followed by BlackBerry, iOS, and Android.

When we started developing Equals we started it as an iOS application. Multiple rounds of prototype development were done on iOS, where the web served primarily as connecting tissue, syncing templates across devices and giving our customers a read-only view of their notes so they could be followed.

I was always uneasy with this approach. There are significant problems starting a service on mobile devices. Here’s a few of them:

1. Gives us massive scale immediately
2. Requires a high level of polish
3. Long release cycles
4. Connects us only indirectly to the customer
5. Offers only vanity metrics

When starting a new service, all of these are required in reverse. We can’t handle massive scale because we don’t know how or where to scale yet. Plus, we need to control who uses the app. We want a rough product to launch that can be revised quickly and easily. We need tons of customer touch points so we know whether we are on the right path. We need in-depth data and knowledge to refine our metrics, not vanity metrics such as downloads that tell us next to nothing.

Last year I fully realized the folly of my ways and we started making the shift to a “web first” approach. We had minimal skills here though. As of last summer I had never written more than three or four lines of JavaScript. I knew what responsive design was but had never thought about how to implement it. We did (and do) know Rails, CSS and HTML basics, so we weren’t completely starting from scratch, but all the same I knew it would be a difficult but necessary transition.

I lined up contract gigs that taught us HTML5 and got to use responsive design for the first time. We refined our skills for most of the year, iterating over development projects and working on Equals between the contract gaps. We have the skills we need now and are full-time on Equals. We will have a web version that runs on various desktop and mobile browsers available before April is out.

We still have plans for mobile-native versions of course, but this gives us the flexibility to build at our own pace, learning a ton, refining the features, and then make the best possible mobile apps we can when ready.