Someone asked me recently what technology inspires me. Oddly, the question sort of took me by surprise. I’ve been so heads-down in one startup and then the next that I didn’t have a list at the ready.

The answer I gave, incidentally, was Ruby on Rails. I haven’t been so inspired by a hands-on programming tool in years. Suddenly, I’m able to go from napkin sketch to working prototype quickly and relatively painlessly. It reminds me of my early 20’s when I was slinging set-up box and Website code myself.

So I got to thinking more about my answer and my idea that I’ve become a business architect over the years. Ask an architect what inspires him or her and you’d probably get the same kind of list that comes to mind for me with tech. Some of the stuff would be very tactical. Like new materials and techniques that let buildings reach impossibly higher into the sky. And some of it would be actual art — as in the buildings that are coming together for the next Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

So FWIW here’s my Top 5 list of inspiring tech…

1. Ruby on Rails - Love the community. Love the idea of “opinionated software.” Not quite sure yet about DHH, the father of Ruby on Rails. Opinions are good. Big egos are OK. But you can’t hold-up slides saying “F*ck you” to critics forever.
2. Mac OS X - Not only do I get the ease-of-use and integration of iTunes, iPhoto, Pages and Keynote — plus the power-user path to Final Cut Studio, etc…I’m also funding that the *nix underpinnings behind the scenes make it super easy to do some hardcore development. In 10 minutes, I can be running a Web and database server that I can start and stop with a click via XAMPP. And Mongrel is running even on my laptop for a full RoR demo environment to showcase my newest startup ideas in development.
3. Windows Media Center - Say what?! Not TIOTI, my Startup 2.0, or Hulu or Apple TV or Joost? Nope. And I’m not sucking-up just because I’m here in Seattle and playing to the hometown crowd. I have been running a Sony VAIO Digital Living System as the main hub to my living room entertainment for more than a year. It’s been painful at times, but I’ve now got several hundred DVD images on a big network hard drive being served-up on demand to systems around the house via the slick DVD Library menu in Vista Ultimate. I’ve also been impressed with the community that’s starting to plug-in, too. I installed WebGuide before Microsoft acquired them last year for Slingbox-like remote viewing. And I just discovered a great program to wrap all the metadata around the DVD files I’ve stored on the server.One little TIOTI-related note here, too…I was always pushing for my co-founder to have a close look at the way the Sports section works in Vista Ultimate. I get a focused EPG that delivers just the sports that are on in the window of time I’m searching, and I can see highlights (like the score) of games in progress as I surf the guide. Very cool and, IMHO, a sign of where EPG’s will evolve beyond The Grid.
4. Windows Home Server - If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. I run the HP MediaSmart box which pretty much just started doing its thing out of the box. As someone who has had to setup ACLs, LDAP and a bunch of other services with obscure acronyms on the back-end servers running my companies, I appreciate the “instant” nature of WHS. Some cool add-ins are also out there as add-ons and WHS saved my behind just yesterday by doing a full PC Restore on a Sony all-in-one that had failed.
5. iPhone - Sure, I still mostly use my Blackberry because of the amount of e-mail typing I do. But iPhone firmware 2.0 + 3G is going to be huge. I’ve seen some demos of things developed by third parties using the iPhone SDK and some of it will, I think, be truly disruptive. I’ll definitely write about some of these things here in the coming months.