Oh, geez, just when I thought I'd never take a step into another McDonalds they go and put up WiFi antennas.

If you search Google for "Google is God" my weblog comes up #1. That's weird. What's weirder is that five people searched for that today.

Joi quotes Kim Polese as saying "the buzz is back," which generated some interesting comments. Is the buzz really back? Well, it is getting to be fun to live in the valley again. We've decided "hey, if we don't have jobs and we can't pay our bills, might as well have fun anyway."

I keep thinking back to the trip I took to China five years ago, though. I expect the next round of real innovations will come outta there or India.

Someone asked "if you could interview anyone in the world, who would you interview?" and I think I'd like to go back to China again and meet with the professors who are teaching at the local colleges in Shanghai. Their voices are missing from the web and I think they'd really have some interesting things to say.

I wonder if I could get someone to fund a trip for me to go over there for a week? I'd take pictures, write tons of articles, and let you know what's really going on over there from an American geek's perspective.

You never know. Remember how I got my start in this business? Steve Wozniak funded my dreams in 1989 (and I only need 1/20th of what he gave me in 1989 to fund a trip to Shanghai).

Here's a homework project. Go to the RSS Search engine. Now go to Google. Search for these words: "InfoPath" and "OneNote." What do you notice? I like the quality of the RSS results a LOT better.

Heh, I told a VERY TIED IN friend "start a weblog" and he, being the PR maven that he is, went around to all his friends -- who are all professional journalists with "big names" and got back mostly the same answer:

"Stay away. Weblogs are nothing but cultic networks of people who get their egos fed from self-referential links."

To which I say: "that's right, and that's EXACTLY why doing a weblog is so important."

If you're not a professional already and don't have a platform, you gotta figure out how to get one. Hint: you don't just walk into Walt Mossberg's office and say "I want your job.""

Nope, weblogs let ME -- little old unimportant uninteresting me -- get access to the leading minds in the industry today.

The old school hasn't figured it out yet. I hope they never do until it's too late.

A paradigm shift hasn't happened to the journalism industry since USA Today. The question you have to ask yourself is: Do you want to hang around with Marc, Doc, Dave, Dan, Joi, Chris, etc, or do you want to hang around Walt?

To me, the answer is easy. I notice that I'm getting invited to all the cool parties lately but Walt isn't.

You know, it's really great when you get reviews like this one: "this device is spectacular." How many companies are getting reviews like that lately? Apple? Tivo? Canon? I can tell you: not many.

Thanks to my weblog visibility, I'm attracting several really cool friends who instant-message me at all times of the day or night. I love that! (My Windows Messenger address is robertscoble@hotmail.com).

I was just thinking. Why is a lowly "Sales Support Manager" representing NEC -- a company with 100,000+ employees -- on all the Tablet web sites? Why am I the only NEC employee to have a weblog? Why am I the only NEC employee to get invited to Silicon Valley's party of the year? I know other NEC employees are reading me now. Come on in, the water is fine! Oh, and why have our Tablet sales zoomed out of control? If you're doing something cool, let the world know about it! For instance, check out NEC's new fault-tolerant servers! Hey, how come the server group doesn't have a weblog?

Oh, oh. Another NEC employee -- from a totally different division than mine -- said today "I read your weblog."

Heh, Dan Gillmor helps out an independent software developer. Why is this even necessary? Why don't Microsoft AND Apple do whatever it takes to help small guys get going and survive? I know who the anonymous guy is that Dan is writing with and his stuff is killer. Too bad the platform vendors are all asleep. Oh. Wait. At least one guy at Apple isn't asleep. Anyone at Microsoft or LAMP want to play the game? I'll forward your email too.

Why don't all software companies have evangelists who write weblogs? I'd love to see the excuses that small guys like this get for not even getting the time of day.

Even more importantly: the analysts were not shown Longhorn (the next version of Windows). I don't know what to infer there, but it's yet another piece of data.

Hey, a couple of analysts who went to last week's meeting at Microsoft complained that Microsoft -- for the first time in years -- didn't provide any "gift bags" for the analysts. Hmmm. Maybe I should show you the Windows Media box that showed up at my house the other day with a free copy of Plus! Digital Media Edition.

Yet another guy looks to cash in on weblogs. (This time its the guy founded Red Herring magazine).

First Winer, now Weinberger is set to speak at the Meckler weblog conference, Michael Gartenberg says. Getting more interesting!

Is there a "right" way to market via Weblogs? Drewby.net seems to have noticed it.