A good article by Robert Scoble on PDC coverage...

Quoted: This week Microsoft didn’t get much hype for its three major announcements. Certainly it didn’t stay on top of TechMeme as long as, say, if Steve Jobs gets a sniffle. But don’t miss what they did.

Quoted: 1. On day 1 of the PDC they announced Azure, which is a set of cloud services that competes with Amazon’s S3 and Rackspace’s Mosso and will radically change enterprises’ acceptance of cloud services for a whole lot of reasons.

Quoted: 2. On day 2 of the PDC they showed off Windows 7 which is getting high praise from my blogging friends who were lent laptops with it on there (I didn’t get Windows 7 yet).

Quoted: 3. On day 3 of the PDC they showed off new Web-based versions of Microsoft Office that were really nice. Will the new PowerPoint have the collaborative features, of, say, SlideRocket? Will Zoho go out of business? No, and no, but this is a significant move into the Web for a group that’s tried to pretend that the Web didn’t matter that much.

Quoted: 4. They also released new Mac and Mobile versions of Mesh and further explained how that’ll enable new kinds of Internet-connected apps to be built.

Quoted: Translation: It doesn’t matter that Microsoft didn’t get all that much hype this year at the PDC or that it didn’t sell out or that other companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are ahead in the cloud game. You just saw Ray Ozzie turn the creaky old cruiseliner hard to port and damn, it is impressive.

Some of the comments are good to... here are a couple of my favorites:

Quoted: After watching what Microsoft is doing to the EDM space with SharePoint, nothing surprises me. When Microsoft decides to come to the game, they come strong. Never count these guys out.

Quoted: I think you are spot on. Microsoft isn’t going anywhere and I think Ray Ozzie is awesome and glad he’s such a big part of the Microsoft “cruiseliner” as you put it :) //g

Quoted: Like one commentator on Twitter said, it’s as if this is a new Microsoft 2.0 which doesn’t have any shred of the old bunker mentality and “must not cannibalize our own base at any cost” thinking.

The comments aren't all positive, but it's nice to see something in the blogosphere that is overall positive about Microsoft.