Oh, not to mention, Zeldman is missing the biggest thing to happen to the Internet since 1994: RSS. I find I'm using more and more Smart Clients (read: not a browser) to read sites lately. That's where the Web is moving to. And it's moving VERY fast. I would not be suprised to learn that more sites today are published as RSS/XML than are published in XHTML.

So, who's standard is winning? I remember Don Box asking "who cares about standards anyway? What really matters is what protocols get adopted."

Dirty HTML ain't going away anytime soon. I think our best hope is to get people onto the RSS bandwagon (and other XML-based protocols) and build Smart Clients that take people beyond the Web browser.

Now THAT'S something I'd like to see debated on weblogs.

Jeffrey Zeldman: "My point is limited to this: in the 21st century, web tools should create compliant markup."

Hmm, I think most Web designers and developers are taking a more pragmatic approach. How can I make my Web site look good for the least amount of developer time (translation, for the cheapest price)? Right now, reality is that most people are using IE 5, 5.5, or IE 6 to surf the Web (65 to 98%, depending on who's statistics you believe). That's reality and no amount of gnashing of "standards" teeth is going to change that.

Even if Microsoft shipped IE7 that fixed all the problems of IE6 tonight (hint, if you've been sleeping lately: Microsoft ain't gonna ship a new Web browser anytime soon), it'd take five to seven years before enough users would change to IE7 so that Web designers like Zeldman could develop sites that'd work on IE7. We still have a significant number of folks using IE 4 out there. Yikes. Getting the "masses" to upgrade isn't easy. If it were, we'd all be using Mozilla right now, right? After all, I have already switched to Mozilla. (Hint: I'm a geek, and I want the latest advanced technology).

So, lots of people are talking with me behind the scenes (not just Microsoft-centric folks, either) about "why should I develop a standards-based Website?"

You know, I don't have good answers for them (yeah, I've read Molly, Zeldman, and Mark Pilgrim's sites and know the issues). I switched my weblog to CSS and mostly strict compliance because it made my page size smaller -- and cause I wanted to be "cool" in the standards-guys eyes (try selling THAT benefit to your boss). But, CSS is an architectural decision. Many people don't see it as a big deal. And moving to XHTML just doesn't give most webmasters any advantages over doing dirty HTML. Many people don't see having the absolute smallest page size as a competitive advantage. Deal with it.

But, these issues don't get debated on weblogs because we all know that webloggers are heavily into standards and will jump on anyone who isn't willing to toe the "vee must support standards" line. Particularly if they work for Microsoft.

So, we just smile at each other on the weblogs, and don't really get to any consensus. I can tell you, though, that not everyone aligns themselves with Zeldman. The "standards" crowd needs to do a better job of evangelism. But, it's tough. Moving the market is hard work. I wish it were easy. I wish you all supported automatic updating of software so that platform vendors could instantly update everyone's systems overnight. But, we're a long, long, long way from anything like that.

We're stuck in an imperfect world. But, that's looking at the glass as half full. The other way to look at it is: 10 years ago the Web didn't exist at all. How far we have come.

Am I trying to get linked by Michael Taht? (He writes Postcards from the Bleeding Edge). Hell yes. That guy is wacked!

Microsoft employees constantly ask me "why should I weblog?"

Wrong question. Hint: I ain't gonna help you figure out the right one.

Another question I get a lot lately is "isn't weblogging a fad?"

Be original. Rich Levin, radio talk show host, told me "you won't be weblogging in a year." That was three years ago. Yes, weblogging is a fad. So what? Writing or reading Harry Potter books is a fad too. By the way, Rich has a great website if it was still 1994. Dude, you gotta move on!

Asya Schween is back to doing her eerie self-portraits again. Her latest is titled "lamenting my dead tongue."

David Gelertner of the Weekly Standard talks about "The Next Great American Newspaper."

Crud, we talked about all this stuff 13 years ago in journalism classes at San Jose State University. Where is journalism going?

Personally, it's already arrived. In an early form. Weblogging certainly has taken over the opinion page of the newspaper. Has it taken over the front page? Maybe not the whole thing, but combine news sites like CNN.com or MSNBC.com with weblogs, and you sure have a better newspaper than you can buy anywhere today.

Local news? On the Web already too. I haven't read a newspaper in months. Why should I? The news that "normal people" will read in 10 hours in the morning here in Seattle, is already on the Web.

The only thing that needs to happen now is quality, maturity, and maybe a new user interface. The Web really sucks for a whole lot of things. I'd rather get my news into a Smart Client (er, RSS News Reader) and read it there. That's where news innovation is happening now. That's where innovation will happen for the next few years.

Remember PointCast? I predict we'll see a return of something like that. Only a lot better this time around.

You know, if PointCast had two things, it would have owned the world of news. What were those two things?

1) The ability to point other people at a specific article. In other words, give me the ability to point other people at articles via URLs like this.

2) Let me copy and paste text from it. PointCast had DRM. Way back in the mid 1990s. You couldn't copy and paste text from it. That was the major reason I uninstalled it within two weeks of downloading it.

If PointCast hadn't had those two things, it would have ended up being far more powerful than it ended up being. Maybe not as big a deal as the Web, but certainly a big deal.

Josh: "perhaps Scoble will work his magic on me and try to move me towards the Microsoft future."

As much as I have a huge ego, and as much as I am getting into the "royal we" I need to correct this perception.

I have no magic juice.

All I'll be able to do is show you what Microsoft has been working on. You'll need to decide whether or not there's a "win" for you in what we've been doing or not.

I can't put lipstick on a frog. If you don't like the direction we're going in, there's nothing I am going to be able to say or do that'll "talk you into" using our stuff.

By the way, have you evaluated .NET lately?

Chris Pirillo asks "when will someone build a PDA for me?"

Aaron Swartz posted a few things that are interesting.

1) A link to Sam Ruby's The Weblog format roadmap. He wants the weblogging tools industry to go back to the drawing board and come up with specifications that we all agree on. Personally, I'm recusing myself from this effort. Why? Cause too many of you (despite the disclaimers) might see my support or rejection as something that Microsoft has decided on. So, I won't pile on either side of this. I will say, however, I'll be suprised if this effort brings the world anything we don't already have today.

2) The voice of America, results of various opinion polls. Humorous, and don't know if it's true, but it sounds like it. As Bob Fricke, one of my history professors in college, likes to say "the masses are asses."

Someone emailed me today and said "your comments are down, did Microsoft force you to take them down?"

Ahh, the black helicopters are circling theory. Nah, it's far worse than that.

My weblog is done for fun. It's a hobby. It's not in my official job duties.

So, I refuse to spend money doing it (well, much money, anyway). That means that I use services like Haloscan, which supplies my comments.

Haloscan runs on a certain "non-Microsoft" operating system and a certain "non-Microsoft" database system. Haloscan goes down a lot. Draw your own conclusions. ;-)

Now, I wonder, is there a way to have a win-win here? Hey, Haloscan, if you wanna run Microsoft software, I will buy you a copy of our latest stuff and donate it to your cause.

GE gives us a cool Flash applet and an approximation of what it's like to draw on a Tablet PC. ;-)

OK, my career depends on having fantastically fast access to information. I just learned that my weblog is a key way I can outperform most other Microsoft employees in that area. How?

Well, at Microsoft, we have tons of internal mailing lists. There are lists on all sorts of topics, from talking about restaurants in the area, to Linux.

On one of those lists today someone asked "can anyone tell me where to find the API's for using SAP inside .NET?

Funny you should ask. I remembered writing about just that on my weblog a while back. So, I fire up Google, type in "SAP .NET Scoble" and out came the answer.

Now you know why I link so many things here. If I ever need to find something, I'll just fire up Google and find it.

Yeah, I was the first one to answer the question. Does that get me some sort of award? Not in this case, but what happened if I won a very large proportion of these kinds of things? Think I wouldn't get noticed?

Now, take this challenge to your job. What's the real problem with programming today? For me, it's finding the APIs. The name spaces. The way to do something.

Here's one way to make yourself more productive in the future. At least I know that if I ever need to program against SAP, I'll know where to find the details.

"Hi I'm Robert Scoble," I said today to Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategies (here's an interview he had with eWeek a while back).

"Nice to meet you, I read your weblog," he answered.

"Oh."

Congrats Apple on getting the fast new Macs out. Of course, if you were a reader of this weblog, you would have known back in December that hot new Macs were coming. I wonder if John Dvorak will take this back now? Of course not. When will pundits ever admit they were wrong? I admit when I am wrong, though. Why don't you John?

Krzysztof Kowalczyk: "My future will so bright that I'll need sunglasses. ... Now, excuse me, I have some software to write..."

Yasser Shohoud weblogs again: "WSE, ASMX, and the .NET Framework."

HPClean reviews the new Acer Tablet. He's one of the best reviewers I've seen. And, he's French. No dissing French wine around him! Here's a translation to English.

Chris De Herrera: "Windows CE 2003 for the Enterprise."

Joshua Allen: "Microsoft's omnipotence is overstated."