Al Nevarez, one of the blogger burger bashers last weekend, just sent me this link, which takes you to a talk at Stanford by Google's Product Managers about the "how and why of Google's UI." Interesting.

Should people write and speak for free?

Man, do I have a lot to say on this topic and totally agree with James Davidson's theory that conferences and magazines should pay their authors and speakers.

On the other hand, I'm writing this weblog for free. Hmmm.

Update: Dori Smith of BackupBrain.com, has another, similar, complaint.

EMPLOYEEBIAS=ON

NEC's Tablet wows BETT visitors.

EMPLOYEEBIAS=OFF

I Tivo'd Steve Case talking with Charlie Rose the other night and agree with this Newsweek viewpoint. What has AOL done in the past five years since buying ICQ? Name one invention/innovation. I can't name one. They had an opportunity to buy a Weblogging company for very little money (I bet Dave Winer or Evan Williams would have sold for $10 million or so -- remember, AOL paid $290 million for ICQ back in 1996). Case did make the business deal of the century. The problem is that he didn't execute. For that, he'll be added onto the scrapheap of CEO's who basically handed Bill Gates another billion dollars of value. You know, Microsoft has had the fortune of having pretty incompetent competitors. If I ever start a business, I hope my competitors are as incompetent as the ones Microsoft has faced. If you think that's an incorrect statement, well, then, I'll remind you of all the things that Microsoft's competitors have done to give them one of the greatest monopolies the world has ever known.

One thing I'm watching is all the anti-Northern-California stuff on the Web (several webloggers have posted stuff about what makes New York better than Silicon Valley). My response? I've been living in Silicon Valley for 33 years. This place sucks ass. Why don't you all leave and make it suck less? You all paved over my favorite Orchards. You've built mile-after-mile of forgetful boxy industrial parks (now deserted, thank you very much). You've made traffic on the local freeways hell. You've bought SUVs and smogged up the place. You've made it hard to get a parking space at the local movie theaters. You've planned a horrid public transit system (not to mention that you made the valley into a bunch of centerless suburbs). Shit, what did we do? We copied Los Angeles! So, yes, I aplaud the latest "pro NY" efforts of a few Webloggers. Get people to leave this shitty place so the rest of us can enjoy our beaches and parks in peace.

"Damned newlyweds. No posting since Monday," Guy wrote in my comments today. Sorry!