Quoted: It would take over 4 and a half years before the licensed software became cheaper. By that time, I'm quite sure there would be another solution that could replace SharePoint, and the cycle would start again. We can quibble about the numbers, but you get the point. Plus, the numbers don't reflect that the SaaS solution is likely to improve and innovate faster than the licensed software by a significant amount.

Quoted: More than 7,000 companies and organizations signed up to participate in the multitenant beta for Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Microsoft has added newsfeeds, social graphs, etc. to Live.

Quoted: Microsoft's Live.com portal will change significantly this evening. No longer will it be a simple search engine with a few other services bolted ...

Quoted: The SaaS 20 Stock Index tracks the software as a service market, using software as a service companies and a few traditional high-tech firms moving into SaaS.

Quoted: The key to being able to view the Cloud as hardware is in which services from the Cloud you consume. Does the Cloud Platform you’re looking at present you with essentially virtual hardware, or is it focused on fairly proprietary services? In other words, are these Cloud Services something that impacts your software architecture very little and is it easy to find extremely similar services from many vendors?
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I would argue that Amazon EC2 and S3 qualify as virtual hardware while Amazon SimpleDB does not.

I think this is key. Arguably, the cloud by itself will become a commodity.

Quoted: Q: You described this week as a turning point for Microsoft. Is it accurate to say you think cloud computing will define Microsoft's next era in the same way the PC did the first?
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Ozzie: I know that people don't like the term, but I would say software plus services defines Microsoft's future more than just cloud computing itself.

Quoted: Instead of selling, they’ve raised their first real round of financing after the seed funding from Y Combinator - $900,000 from True Ventures, Chris Sacca, Tim Ferriss (author of the 4-Hour Workweek), Mike Seckler and Mike Koss.

A handy list.

Quoted: This is a map of companies in Seattle that do software work. It is not limited to companies headquartered in Seattle, but includes any company with a development office in the area. I've tried to keep companies off the map that are out of business or not yet viable, but please let me know if there is something that needs to be added, removed or edited.