Dave Winer and I had dinner last night and he didn't believe that Steve Wozniak designed the game Breakout for Atari. Here's the proof. I told him I keep watching Wozniak's web cam to see if I can discover anything about his new company, but so far no slip-ups yet. Hey, remember, last year I got a shot of him loading Windows 2000. You know Woz, right? He's one of the co-founders of Apple computer. You know, he's a far richer guy than I am (and far smarter) but we seem to have a similar life. Stare into the box. Type. Stare into the box. Type. You'd think that he'd have a bigger monitor or something. He uses a standard off-the shelf Powerbook as far as I can tell.

I'm winnowing sales leads for NEC. Sales is like journalism. What can I learn? What needs are there? How can I fill them? Before I started I visited Google for tips on questions to ask (open ended ones, of course). You know, Google is inspirational if you know how to use it. I bet it could teach you to do your job better too! Go ahead and ask it.

You know, whoever does the marketing at GoToMyPC.com (a really cool application sharing service) is really screwing up. I went to Google and searched for "application sharing service" and "share my desktop" and "share my PC" and a variety of other things and couldn't find them. They should buy some Google ads. Lame. Lame. Lame. If I can't find your service, how the hell do you expect me to use it? I wonder how many other companies don't have a clue about how important Google is?

JD Lasica says he's looking for a DVD recorder. I just talked to our DVD Recorder guy here at NEC and he says that NEC will sell a DVD Recorder that does both the plus and minus style recordings for about $200 here in the United States. He says that by about mid-year he expects the prices to drop to about $100. So, expect your next PC to come with a DVD recorder. At least that's what the pricing is telling me. Oh, and we sell OEM versions of our CDRW drives for about $40 each. Dang. I remember buying one for $300 just a year ago.

TabletPC Seen Helping eBook Adoption. eBooks have plenty of issues to overcome in order to spur wider adoption, such as royalties, digital rights and standardizing publishing formats. But publishers see hope for the future in the TabletPC. [internetnews.com: Top News]

My comment? Until eBooks are like real books I don't think they'll be widely adopted. What do I mean? Well, if I buy a real book, I can read it, and then hand it to someone else. I can donate it to a library and they can give it out to dozens, if not hundreds of people. It's too hard to share an eBook. At least the ones I've seen. Have they been improved yet? Here at NEC everyone will have Tablets within a year or two. I'd love to send around some books that I'll buy.

Choices, choices. I'm going to New York at the end of the month and want to visit a museum. The Guggenheim or the Met? That is the question. If I can only see one, which one should I see?

After Attacks, Fear of Flying Boosts Videoconferencing. As companies seek safer, more cost-effective alternatives for doing business, experts say that videoconferencing in its various forms, including Web conferencing, is likely to achieve increasing popularity in the coming months. [osOpinion]

My comment? I'm playing with several conferencing tools right now. They've come a long way. I still find myself wanting to get together with people, though. There's nothing like face-to-face communication for some things. On the other hand, we can go through a list of sales leads and find the one that's worth visiting with this technology. Leaders? Raindance and WebEx.

I'm tending toward Raindance due to lower bandwidth requirements and faster performance. WebEx is slicker and has a few more features. Anyone have any feedback as to which is best?

Iran Leader Won't OK Any U.S. War on Iraq [AP World News]

Say goodbye to dual loads. Microsoft is making us put only one operating system on our computers starting January 1. So, today you can buy our PowerMate eco (which just won PC Magazine's Technical Excellence award -- hey, we beat the IMac and the HP Media Center PC) with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP (you choose which one you'd like to use on first install). Starting January 1 we'll only sell it with Windows XP. Probably. We're still trying to figure out if there's any customer demand for Windows 2000. Is there?