Today, Marc Benioff, the ever-vocal CEO of salesforce.com made a blog post over at Fortune on the end of Microsoft. In his post he outlines Microsoft’s latest ad campaigns, the ones spouting off about Windows 7 being "my idea." He pokes fun at one in particular where Windows no longer crashing was somehow deemed a feature.

Is that how low our expectations are these days? Certainly not in general, and it is a sad state of affairs for Microsoft that crashing is one of the expected behaviors of a Windows device.

He goes on further to point out the explosive growth and success of sites like Facebook and YouTube. These consumer websites have absolutely changed people’s expectations of what a web experience should be like: engaging, easy to navigate and providing loads of value.

Here at Model Metrics those themes ring true for everything we build. We do nothing but cloud computing, which is really what Facebook and YouTube are all about. Computing in the workplace has historically lagged behind what’s available at home. That’s no longer true. With technology from salesforce.com, Google, Adobe and Apple getting things done at the office is as easy as using your favorite personal websites.

While Microsoft isn’t leaving any time soon, newer technologies are showing better promise than the failed paradigm of machines prone to crashing.

I recently listed the desktop version of CardLasso on Adobe’s AIR Marketplace.  If you haven’t heard of AIR, check it out on the Adobe site.  It is the “Adobe Integrated Runtime” which allows you to run RIA apps on your desktop and distribute them with the ease of a web app.  Our AIR version of CardLasso is targeted at the Tradeshow user, and allows you to quickly gather business cards when you have no internet connection and save them locally.  You can sync them up to Lasso2Go later back at Starbucks or the hotel.

It seems like not a lot of people know about the AIR Marketplace so I wanted to write a quick note to raise awareness and let you know about the listing process.
First off, I really like their approach.  You can use your existing Adobe ID to create a publishing account on the marketplace, this took 10 seconds.

Next you enter publisher information to tell everyone a little about your company and upload a company logo.  Very fast and easy.  I was immediately approved as a publisher.

Then I filled out the listing for our application which included all the standard info you would expect, description, logos, links to download the app, etc…  (See below)

The only hard part about the listing process was sizing down graphics and screen shots to fit the requirements, but not a big deal.

Then I clicked submit.

Literally less than an hour later I had an email from Adobe with a few questions and suggestions on my listing.  I made the suggested changes and our product was live.
It was great to list a product on an online store and have it live a four hours after starting the listing process.  Granted it doesn’t have the volume that the Apple AppStore has, or the security implications that the Salesforce AppExchange listings have, but both Apple and Salesforce could learn a few things from how Adobe approaches the listing process.

It’s been live for a few days, check it out here and add a review to let us know what you think.