Mitch Ratcliffe is asking "does Bill Gates wear a watch?" You know, I took a bunch of pictures of Gates at the MVP Summit last year and he definitely was NOT wearing a watch back then either. Does anyone have any evidence that Gates wears a watch? Oh, neither does Jim Allchin, by the way. I guess I should post my pics proving this. So, two of the five most-important people at Microsoft definitely don't wear watches, at least not when they are speaking to MVPs. Interesting.

You know, I sure hope they find Lacy (but, so much time has passed, my hopes aren't high). Stories like this make me so sad. I hope I never have to go through anything like what this family is going through. I doubt any weblogger is involved, but hopefully awareness of this case helps in some way.

I just love photography. It lets me visit places I doubt I'll ever be able to visit otherwise. For instance, check out Paolo's walk. (Thanks Marc Canter for the link).

China has been of interest to me ever since I got a chance to visit there about five years ago. The big white guy absolutely nails why they control their people. The problem is, change is in the wind. People want to be free to discuss ideas and discover themselves. Thanks Dan Gillmor for the link.

George Ryan is a courageous politician. I want more politicians like that who try to do the right thing. As a society we've been putting too many innocent people to death. I used to be strongly pro-death penalty and I've changed due to the same evidence that Ryan is seeing. Our system isn't perfect. I'd rather innocent blood not be on my hands. If some guilty don't get what they deserved, that's better than if some innocent people get killed in my name. Kudos governor!

Along the same vein, I'm becoming more and more anti the war in Iraq. I really hate how I'm being sold on this war. I hate the language we use "putting our boys in harms way." What's so special about "our boys?" Let's be frank with our language: we're sending them over there to kill "their boys." I really don't want "their boys" blood on my hands either. President Bush hasn't convinced me that Saddam is worth all this blood. But, I'm conflicted. Saddam has killed millions of people in his lifetime. If there were a God in heaven and he was really on our side, Saddam would simply have a heart attack. It really sucks that a bunch of kids who aren't old enough to drink alcohol legally are gonna die because of President Bush and Saddam. I wish the world worked in a way that the two leaders had to duel it out. That'd be a much better way to settle all of this.

Oh, great, there.com got $11 million to develop a 3D meeting space. Do we really need to keep trying this? See, this is where I really don't get investors. They keep investing in things like this, while companies like UserLand, Pyra, Moveable Type, Broadband Mechanics and others are doing things that are far more useful for humanity (and aren't getting the funding necessary to really make weblogging mature -- the UIs and experiences in all weblogging tools suck, personally, and we have a long way to go).

The problem with the THERE.COM community? It's all about lockin. It's the same thing that killed PointCast. I thought PointCast was neat, but I only used it for a week. Why? Cause I couldn't tell my friends about it (you couldn't send a pointer to an individual news article -- soon afterward I saw the Web and PointCast was dead very quickly). Do we really need a 3D world? Yes, we do, but we already have Xbox and PS2 for that.

That all said, I'll try it out and see if there's anything interesting here. I seriously doubt it. I give this company 18 months to burn through its $11 million.

Hey, investors, why don't you give us $11 million to develop a cool experience for digital camera users? Imagine if you could have a world that you build using your own pictures. Now, if you could do that easily, then it becomes interesting. I'm watching for someone to do something really interesting for digital camera owners. It hasn't happened yet. It will.

A bunch of burger biting bloggers meet tonight. Heh. The problem is, this thing tonight is getting too popular. Oh well, we'll deal with the chaos tonight. Get there early or don't get a seat.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RADIO USERLAND!!!

Let's see, Jake and Dave are gonna be there (the two guys most responsible for Radio). I guess I should get a cake or something.

Plans are evolving for an education blogFerence in November. We might learn more tonight. Hmmm.

If you work for a company, you can keep up on it by visiting Google News and putting the company name in there. That's how I find articles about NEC. For instance, here's the search on UserLand.

NEC's stock is down again, to lowest point since 1980.

NEC supporting Linux on cell phones.

I told Maryam that tonight I was gonna throw a wild party. Wow, looks like there'll be 20 people at Barney's in Noe Valley tonight at 6 p.m. Um, are we all gonna get seats?

Why am I proud to be an American? Because so far the American government believes in free speech. Hopefully that's a trend that continues. So far it has for more than 220 years. Dave links to a bunch of sites today about China keeping its citizens from reading weblogs. What does that say about the Chinese government? They don't trust their people to do the right thing.

I just started reading Cory Doctorow's new book. It's free. I'll probably end up buying it, though, just to encourage other publishers to give away their works too.

I'm wifeless and kidless today. You don't realize how much love you receive until those who give their love aren't there. It's good to have a weekend like this just so I can realize how lucky I am. So many of us go through life starving for love. For the touch of another human being. For a connection to someone else. "About Schmidt" brought that all home for me last night. The main character (wonderfully played by Jack Nicholson) spent 42 years being married to someone he didn't even know. It hit hard cause I was on that track for nine years. Now I'm on another track and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Maryam is in New York working at a conference. I'm so proud of her.

Joi Ito is one person I look up to. Last night we were talking on ICQ and he said something interesting "I wouldn't consider the NEC Tablet if it weren't for you talking about it." After which he added something like: I wouldn't trust NEC's marketing people.

Now, you gotta consider something. Joi hangs out with the guy who runs Sony. He knows lots of people at NEC too. He's a Japanese journalist. He's going to Davos in a few days. He hangs out with all sorts of interesting people, both here in the US and in Japan. But what caught my attention is that he implied that he doesn't trust sleazy marketing or salespeople. Huh? Don't you realize I'm a marketing/salesperson? So, what's different?

I weblog. That's the epiphany? No. Joi and I are in a relationship. He knows I'm gonna post on my weblog every few days. He's met me at a weblogger dinner. He knows that he can send a bunch of his friends (Dave, Doc, Dan, etc) to beat me up if I lie to him. I know that too, so I always try to tell it like it is.

Now I really understand what Doc is talking about when he and David Weinberger says "Markets are conversations." If you write every day, people will start to get to know you and start to trust you and what you say. Yesterday, another person I have known for a long time, Joe Rotello, told me that I'm the only person at NEC he knows. So, for him, I'm representing a 100,000 employee organization. Isn't that a mind bender? Oh, Joe's been around the block. He's written for all sorts of publications.

Another email that I received yesterday told me "I'm considering the NEC only because of the support you're giving to the news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc newsgroup" (I'm the only representative of any major OEM that shows up there to answer questions)

Which gets me to the whole point of this ego-stroking exercise: I love NNTP.

Weblogs are cool, but I could spend hours talking to people in NNTP newsgroups. Unfortunately most people don't find out about NNTP newsgroups. They don't know there are groups for nearly every product and every human endeavor. During my divorce the alt.support.divorce newsgroup really helped me out a lot (that's on Usenet).

Yeah, there are problems with NNTP. You have your flamers. Your whiners. The folks who come in and don't read any of the old messages. But, for some things, I still haven't found a better way to have a conversation with another group of humans.

Oh, yes, many have tried to build Web-based communities (mostly so they can put advertising into the messages -- NNTP isn't a good format for advertising-supported communities) but alas, none have come up with something as nice and as easy as the NNTP format.