A friend tells me Google is still trying to figure out how to remove webloggers from its index. One question: if they remove webloggers from the index, what kind of results would you get when you search for, say, "Corporate Blogging?"

Ever wonder how long a Microsoft product will be supported officially? Here's the place to check for the answer.

VUNet: "Favorable response to Microsoft's new licensing" and "Gartner analyst Alvin Park says the enhancements make SA worth another look for users that previously avoided buying it."

ZDNet: all roads lead to Longhorn. Mine certainly did.

Paul Flessner, senior vice president of the Windows Server System division at Microsoft Corp, is interviewed by Computer World. Lots of info on the future of Microsoft here.

Heh, check out this "WiFi Speed Spray."

Here's some more leaked MSN Messenger 6.0 screen shots.

So, I've survived four weeks at Microsoft. That breaks all odds, doesn't it?

And I haven't said a damn thing about Longhorn. Ain't that a bore?

On the other hand, I've been playing with MSN Messenger 6.0, which is supposed to be top secret, but I see that screen shots have leaked out. I can't wait until everyone has this, though. It'll make my Tablet PC far more useful with my IM friends.

Christopher, I'm getting tired of your IMs. "Wait, there's more Tablet PC news today" he says. Here's Itronix new "light and rugged" Tablet PC announcement. Here's a news story about it, instead of the PR release. Whew. Any more Tablet items today?

Dang, I'm just fulla Tablet PC news today. Here's Motion's announcement. They say they are the first 1GHz Tablet PC powered by Intel Centrino. Motion has the best docking station in the business, by the way. But, does it really matter? Did you see Jeff Sandquist's docking station on his desk? It's a picture frame he bought at Target. I took that photo of Jeff on his weblog, by the way.

Today I was watching a Microsoft Research video on large and multiple screens, but I see a Microsoft VP (Jeff Raikes) has taken this a bit too far. He uses three Tablet PCs on his desk, InformationWeek says. Hey Jeff, we gotta try that! Do you think we could talk our boss into letting us "keep up with the VPs?" Heh.

Holy crap, I wish I had this when I was in math class a decade ago. Check out Mathjournal! For your Tablet PC. Yes, another thing pointed to me by Christopher. Waggener Edstrom, you should just hire Christopher. Seriously, he's doing more to keep the Tablet PC in the public eye than anyone else I know. Mathjournal does math equation and ink conversion. All the math freaks should check it out. This could be the killer app for the Tablet.

Christopher just wrote me in IM. "Make sure you add the "new" forthcoming Toshiba." He says it's top secret and he doesn't know all the details, but rumors are that it'll be 14.1" and 1.7 GHz and will come in August or so. I usually don't report rumors, but Christopher's have been amazingly good. He told me about Acer's plans before anyone else.

While we're talking about Tablet PC stuff, here's another Christopher Coulter link -- this time talking about UML (modeling software) for your Tablet.

Oh, the Tablet PC World is going freaking nuts!

First, check out Jeff Sandquist's weblog. I took that picture of him. He works down the hall from me and is my mentor. He has a killer Tablet setup and controls two machines over the Internet! I'm building the same thing next week. Congrats to Lora over at whatisnew.com for coming up with some really nice Tablet software. I still need to try out the screen saver there.

But, the really big news is NEW TABLETS COMING!

First, let's head over to a really cool French Tablet PC site done by "HP Clean." It's one of the best Tablet sites out there. He has a good review of the new Acer -- here's an English translation over at Alta Vista's Babelfish site.

Here's the news about new HP and Acer Tablet PCs -- including one with a 14.1" screen coming soon, as reported over on DigiTimes.

Sharp announced a new Tablet which has the fastest Centrino announced to date in a Tablet (1.1GHz. My friend Christopher Coulter says this one has the best specs, best battery life, and is the best looking, in his opinion.

HP/Compaq has a new "Astro" Tablet coming out that'll support pressure sensitivity, Chris says.

My former employer NEC won PCWorld's award for "best Tablet PC."

As always, if you want the latest news on Tablet PC's, check out these two sites:

1) TabletPCTalk

2) TabletPCBuzz

Thanks to Christopher Coulter for giving me all this good stuff -- he's gotten the Tablet PC more "buzz" than any other person I know. He doesn't have a weblog, but if he did, it'd be real interesting.

Chris says the new Toshiba is the one to watch for, by the way.

More IE talk:

1) Pete Cole

2) Jeffrey Zeldman

Sometimes other human beings make me ill. Especially when they talk about killing others in the name of "God." Like this Saudi executioner.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, would probably get a laugh out of Rory Blyth's weblog, where he talks about dreaming of a human game of Breakout. Woz is the guy who wrote that game for Atari. Little known computer trivia.

Oh, another one of my old VBITS speaker friends has a weblog. Welcome Carl Prothman!

Evidence that putting photos onto the web is way too hard? There were somewhere close to 10,000 attendees at the TechED conference. Now look at the TechED photo blog. Only a few handfuls of pics. It seems to me that photoblogging needs something to really get people interested. For one, looking at tons of faces just ain't interesting. For two, loading photos onto the Web is too freaking hard. For three, we need something viral to get people to put them up. Maybe something like the famous "Hot or Not?"

A KLog Apart is trying to answer these questions: How many people are blogging? Where? Why? With what? How many blogs are there? How are they connected? Who's doing the research?

I gotta try out Groove again. It's been a while. I think it'd be useful for the projects I'm working on. Here's a weblog on Groove.

Ahh, Adobe's Acrobat 6.0 isn't pleasing everyone.

Steven Vore talks up IRC chat. OK, so how do we offer IRC-style chat to 5000 attendees, all at one time? Man, I sure don't wanna participate in that chat. Anytime KGO radio got more than 100 it was nearly impossible to keep up, and the signal to noise ratio went all to heck.

On the other hand, I'd love to have an experiment. Even if 5% of attendees did it, that'd be quite a chat room.

The Canon G5 looks awesome. Here's a first look from Digital Camera Resource Page. Here's DP Review also has its usual great report.

Clint Ecker pointed me to Sterling Hughes weblog. A little background. Sterling Hughes is a big-name developer in the PHP industry. He's written a PHP book.

So, when he says "ASP.NET technology is better than PHP technology" people tend to stand up and listen.

Joi Ito invited me to join his IRC chat the other day. I haven't done chat since I helped run Leo Laporte's chat server when he was still on KGO radio. I can see some real uses for using this at conferences. Good old plain IRC. You gotta love it.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to improve the TechED Conference Weblogs?

Marc Canter covers the uproar over Photolog's new pricing structure. You know, I just have no sympathy for people who want their stuff for free. It costs money to do web sites. It costs money to design icons. (Really, when I was at Fawcette, even a low-cost graphic designer would charge $35 an hour, and the best ones went for $100 or more). It costs money to deliver bits over the Internet. It costs money to buy servers. It costs money for the software to host them (even Linux isn't free -- you gotta pay people to load them and maintain them). Software and systems aren't free. Anyone who is getting stuff on the Internet should realize that SOMEONE is paying for that. Either advertisers. A rich dude who is giving away stuff for free. Or a company with deep pockets who sees some strategic reason to do that (MSN anyone?)

I'm with Marc. If we want to see new services. New software. New ideas. We better be willing to pay for them.

Oh, no. Dan Shafer, self-avowed Microsoft hater, is saying nice things about Microsoft. I figured I'd have to work with him for years before he'd find something nice. What is the world coming to? Congrats to support, though, for coming through.

Note to Julia: can you let us know more about the Women in Technology event? What are the issues that women face in technology? I'll raise one issue: there aren't enough of them. At the first VBITS conference (about a decade ago) there was something like 425 men and two women. Today, the numbers have changed a bit (to 15% to 20% women) but it still is an issue for our industry and our culture. I don't know what to do about it, though. A lot of computer programming is math-dependent and by the time I got to second-year calculus in college most of the women had disappeared from math classes.

Heh, give employees free soda, and this is what happens.

Colt Kwong praises APress for its support of user groups.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, wrote us a very long letter yesterday outlining what Microsoft needs to do. In part of it, he wrote "Many customers, MVP's, employees, and industry analysts have said to us that people would appreciate our innovations more and the value we deliver if they knew the company and its people better."

In another part: "To generate enthusiasm for our company and innovations, we must also communicate more broadly and in a more human and compelling voice."

I bet that next year he'll be talking about weblogs and the part they play in doing just that.

Oh, remember that dollar that Steve gave me back at the MVP summit? It was for saying this. So, I wrote a paragraph or two of his letter. All for a buck. Not a bad return on investment on his part.