It pains me, truly, to see a cloud platform being praised for its resemblance to what developers already know. If I could say, "already know and love," that would be another thing -- but what about platforms that developers merely know and tolerate? My next live webinar will look at ways to move to a higher level.

If you are anything like me and spend way too much time in the twitterverse tracking the pulse of what ever it is you are interested (hopefully something more than checking out what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast this morning!) you may noticed the great new(ish)  feature to organize tweets based on interest, called Lists. 

I put together a very quick Salesforce News related lists which you may find useful to follow to keep up to date with the various Salesforce related tweets. Jon, also has one set up for interesting tweets on force.com. 

Try following these two lists for a start. I will surely add more in the coming weeks (hmmm ok days.....well fine, probably the next hour or so if I can stop reading Ashton's tweets.), as I try to consolidate some of the best Force.com developers twitter has to offer. As I do, I would love to know of any you recommend. As always, there is wisdom in them thar clouds!

Some people still can't tell the difference between running a business on the Internet, and being in the Internet business.

One example comes from a story last week at newsfactor.com, entitled "Technology Stocks Soared in 2009":

Meanwhile, some Internet companies offered the companies they serve ways to save money, Jacob says. Salesforce.com, for instance, sells companies access to Internet-based business systems that are, in many cases, less costly than packaged business software, Jacob says.

But all's not coming up roses in Internet Land. Both 1-800-Flowers.com and Stamps.com fell in 2009, a big disappointment for investors who chose the right theme but the wrong stocks.

No, I'm sorry, having ".com" at the end of the company name does not make for a "theme." This idea is just silly. Salesforce.com is selling lower capital cost, faster deployment, superior scalability (up or down) of capacity, and improved competitive focus of IT teams to people who are running a business that can benefit from those things. 1-800-Flowers.com is selling flowers. In a down economy, people need business process improvement a whole lot more than they need a bouquet—although some businesses might be in need of funeral wreaths.

It's really inexcusable, nearly a decade into the 21st century, to be confusing the use of the Internet as a business platform, on the one hand, with the business of making the Internet itself into a platform for doing business better. I remember Bill Gates being quoted, once, as saying "adding 'on the Internet' to a dumb idea doesn't turn it into a better idea." I'm unable to track down that quote, and would welcome an authoritative attribution—but regardless of the source, the point is worth making.

In exactly the same way, adding "on the Internet" doesn't turn awkward, complex, overly costly application development into something intrinsically better. Doing IT the way you've always done it, but on systems at the other end of an Internet wire (and perhaps on systems that only pretend to be there), is still doing development in a way that costs too much and takes too long to deliver a poor approximation to what the user really wanted.

Incremental evolution is over-rated. Every generation, as Thomas Jefferson said, needs a new revolution. Years that begin in zero are arbitrary milestones to declare a generational divide—but I'll use any excuse I can find to argue that the time for a revolution in development is right...now.

We entered 2009 with a vibe that the cloud was cool—but we enter 2010 with growing, mainstream acceptance that the cloud is both viable and necessary. The result will be a dramatic shift from conversation to action.

What's accelerating cloud timetables from indefinite to immediate? As early as May of this year now ending, we could see that economic recovery would be rapid—except for pesky details of rising unemployment and flat (or even shrinking) IT budgets. During March and April, the S&P 500 rose by more than 30 per cent, but the U.S. unemployment rate concurrently rose from 8.5% in March to 9.4% in May—on its way toward a peak of 10.2% in October.

November's employment upturn, a paltry 0.2%, took place in the shadow of Gartner's October forecast that global IT spending would fall by 5.2% during the full year of 2009; worse, that those budgets would not return to their 2008 levels until 2012. Half of CIOs will see no growth or negative growth in budgets for 2010, Gartner predicted.

Not only will IT in 2010 be done without new capital, it will also be done with a skeleton staff: "IT hiring will not pick up noticeably until late next year, and more likely 2011," predicts CEO and chief research officer David Foote of Foote Partners LLC. "Expect the length of the tail on this staffing lag to be much longer than previous recoveries, with volatility punctuating IT pay levels and specialty skills demand," he warned in his December outlook for the year to come.

In this environment, every event that I attended this past year that used the label of "cloud computing" saw standing-room-only crowds. We saw more than 500 at Cloudforce Eindhoven in the Netherlands in June; more than 1,000 at Cloudforce Singapore in July; more than 3,800 (registration closed early due to space limitations) at Cloudforce Japan in September; and 19,000 at Dreamforce in San Francisco in November. People came to find out more about the lower capital commitment, faster return on effort, and more efficient use of scarce IT talent that the cloud has been proven to provide.

Every leading analyst firm is putting cloud computing on its list of major trends for 2010—and so is every IT vendor and service provider that wants to be relevant in the decade to come. "Cloud computing will continue on a very steep growth curve driven by the potential for massive scalability, cost savings, cost predictability and reliability," says Brett Roberts, who holds the position of Innovation Director at...Microsoft. That can't be easy to say, when your company has just unveiled what may well be remembered as the last of the fat-client blockbusters.

In fact, it's startling to realize that Windows 7's major achievement is that people are merely willing to tolerate it as a low-priority replacement for an operating system that shipped eight years ago—with market pressure forcing Microsoft to acknowledge that "Another compelling reason to encourage customers to move to Windows 7 is the ability to downgrade to Windows XP." That's got to be the oddest use of "compelling" that I've ever seen. Further, even those who strive for a sense of urgency can't make the end of Windows XP sound like it's coming soon: "Plan to be Off Windows XP by Year-End 2012," admonished Gartner in a bulletin this October. 2012? When XP will be into its second decade?

Meanwhile, the dominoes are falling in the direction of cloud applications and platforms. While fat-client evolution slows to a glacial pace, cloud applications are seizing the future in places like Los Angeles. While tools and practices for client-server development seem to struggle for incremental progress, top-tier software providers like CA and BMC are adopting Force.com.

It's going to be quite a year.

As 2009 comes to a close, I find myself reminiscing of all the great things that occurred over the past year. So for your reading enjoyment, I present my "Top 10 Favorites" of 2009.

10.  Dreamforce 2009 - The one time in the year where I can hang out with over 19,000 Salesforce and Force.com users. If you didn't get to attend, or just need a refresher on the latest announcements and technologies, check out the recorded keynotes and sessions. 

9. Three major releases to Salesforce Apps (Sales Cloud & Service Cloud) and Force.com (Custom Cloud). Spring '09, Summer '09 and Winter '10 introduced advanced features and incredible innovation.

8. Service Cloud 2 with Knowledge and Salesforce for Twitter. It's amazing with these technologies how much better the support experience can be for your customers. You'll wonder how you lived without it!

7. A plethora of amazing features and technologies. Here's just a few of my favorites:

• Force.com Sites with Google Analytics support
  
• Enhanced Page Layout Editor (including adding Blank Spaces)
• Cross-Object Workflow
• Opportunity Genius
  
• Content Delivery
• Automate Salesforce to Salesforce
  
• Chart Analytics 2.0
• Org-Wide Email Address
• Batch Apex
• Bulk API
• Sandbox to Production
• Lookup Filters
• Workflow Visualizer

5. The new Force.com Workbook - One of my favorite resources got updated. These 10 tutorials will help you build your first app in the cloud. Jump to your favorite tutorial to learn a specific platform feature.

4. Team Volunteering at Alcatraz - Salesforce.com is constantly encouraging our community and employees to volunteer. We had the pleasure of visiting Alcatraz to help garden and maintain the beautiful landscape. Looking to manage your volunteering? Try Volunteerforce, a free app built entirely on Force.com.

3. A Fresh New Look - Many of the salesforce.com web properties have been updated to help you be successful. Salesforce.com, DeveloperForce, salesforce.com Community, Partner Portal and the AppExchange all have new features to make you more effective. And best of all, we used Force.com in each one.

2. Force.com Forty Innovation Showcase - We scoured the ecosystem and received hundreds of entries. We narrowed the list to the top 40 innovations on Force.com. Congratulations to all the finalists and thank you to all that entered.

1. Salesforce Chatter - Announced at Dreamforce 2009, Chatter revolutionizes the technology  industry with a collaboration and social platform for the enterprise. And best of all, the work you've done with Force.com will integrate. Soon you will have all the social capabilities of Chatter at your disposal.

I'd love to hear your favorites from 2009. Here's to your continued success in 2010. Happy New Year!