$100

Don Box has a couple of interesting posts on Microsoft's support for REST/HTTP. I don't know a whole lot about the products, but there's a long list.

He asks a good question: how would you dole out $100 in support of REST/HTTP within Microsoft. Since I cannot really address specifics within their current product line, I'd consider something like this:

• $25 toward furthering their current investments in open REST technology, e.g. Atom and APP support in various systems and frameworks.
• $25 toward open RESTful "push" technology, e.g. XMPP and mod_pubsub.
• $25 toward a RESTful coordination technology above HTTP per se. Something like Rogue Wave's defunct Ruple XML tuple space, but using REST/HTTP. Deliver this as a live service (i.e. like Amazon's S3 but with somewhat richer associative memory than just keys or URLs (a URL is just a key, right?)) as well as a framework that others can deliver on their own systems and customize.
• $25 for better treatment of dynamic languages at Microsoft. I believe REST/HTTP/XMPP/etc. are to distributed systems generally as dynamic languages are to programming languages generally. To be fully RESTful I think you have to be as simple as possible and fully dynamic. Doing this will stimulate more RESTful ideas within Microsoft. I know they have a number of Ruby programmers... turn that amp to eleven.