While over at Marc Canter's blog, I saw this link to Dana Blankenhorn's blog over on Corante. "The problem for bloggers is getting it read."

I don't know if that really is a problem. If you have good stuff, it'll be found. Why? weblogs.com. I regularly visit sites there randomly. If your title is anything technology related, it'll get noticed even faster.

Don't expect MSN or AOL or Yahoo to do anything more than what current blog tools do for you. Building traffic isn't easy. It takes time and energy. It also requires being there day in and day out. Otherwise people lose interest in you. Look at Eric Rudder's weblog. He hasn't posted in months. No one cares anymore. And, yes, I'm still watching Alan Meckler, but he hasn't been interesting enough to point to in months too.

Rajesh Jain came up with the awesome Blog Street (a bunch of utilities for webloggers). You might remember Rajesh, he has the best Indian weblog. Thanks to Prakash Swaminathan for the info.

The guys with the URLs longer than my wife's last name (Ghaemmaghami) are at it again. Here's "WatchingGoogleLikeAHawk.com."

Scott Watermasyk has released a new version of .TEXT. Awesome. Getting noticed inside Microsoft.

I heard from someone that Jakob Nielson was having a contest to redesign his site (which is way too ugly, and unusable, for a usability expert -- but I shouldn't throw bricks. My weblog is unusable and ugly too. Hey, I steal from the best!) But I can't find any information about the contest. Was the rumor real?

Martin Roell says "Need an Expert? Ask the Blog-Headhunters!"

Yes, it's true. Want a link from me? Quote me! Oh, wait. Let me know first, then I can be sure to quote you, and I'll also help you get more information on the thing you want to talk about.

Hey, what would conversational marketing be without the conversation?

InternetNews.com asks "Is RSS the Answer to the Spam Crisis?"

Hey, I'm quoted. "For participating in conversational networks, RSS can't be beat and will only continue to get more popular," Scoble added.

Whenever I take myself too seriously, I go off and check out Rageboy. Today's is a humdinger. The difference between art and decoration. It contains sexual metaphors. Words that offend Mormons. And other things like this: "Nothing sells like what we've all got in our pants."

Sometimes I wish I could write like Rageboy. But, then, I remember that I'm not disturbed enough. Or using the right drugs. Or the right combinations. Or something. Now go enjoy your Tuesday. :-)

Anyone see these digital ink displays over on Gizmodo? That's killer. Holds an image for more than ten years without needing power? Can't wait to see more.

You know, there's a new powerbroker in the tech industry. It's Gretchen Pirillo. I met her cause I know her husband, Chris Pirillo (who keeps Lockergnome and does those cool Gnomedex conferences). But, Gretchen throws killer parties. So killer we barely noticed that the host of honor (Chris) didn't show up. Hey, Chris, you missed out. My favorite? Brad Neuberg and Tantek met. Brad works on Mozilla. Tantek worked on IE/Mac. Two really smart guys genuflecting. It was sweet.

Why is she a power broker? She's nice. She makes killer cheesecake. She keeps a great home and she has a guest list that runs from Dave Winer to Gnomegirl.

With guests like those, who wouldn't have a great party.

Hey, Gretchen, you're invited to my New Year's party. Leave Chris at home with the humper dog. Heh.

Mary Jo Foley (she keeps the interesting Microsoft-Watch.com going) noticed that the numbers of Microsoft webloggers are growing exponentially. She wonders whether people are being forced to weblog. Um, no. If that were the case, today we'd be swamped by 55,000 weblogs.

I think what happened is they saw that webloggers like me and Joshua Allen, among others, have had fun weblogging at Microsoft and decided to jump in the pool and see what they could add.

On the other hand, lots of the blogs that Mary Jo links to have been inactive for quite a while. Including our top executive Eric Rudder.

Reminds me, I gotta add the usual disclaimer. This weblog is my own opinions and is not those of Microsoft or anyone else, for that matter. Not that that disclaimer will help save my job if I decided to start speaking for the anthill, but it makes some people happy, so there.

Andy King has released a new Web Page analyzer. He's the guy who wrote the book on optimizing web sites. Literally.

eWeek is saying that Longhorn's schedule slipped. Um, the schedule hasn't changed -- that's not what Gates was saying at the Financial Analysts' meeting. What is changing is that executives have started remembering that this is software with several thousand people working on it (translation: they've stopped talking about the schedule publicly because they don't want to set expectations that might turn out to be untrue later on). It'll be done when it's done and no earlier. Longhorn is a freaking HUGE project. I spent the weekend reading Brent Rector's book chapters (on my Tablet PC, of course) and the amount of new stuff coming is overwhelming.

On that topic, Ole Eichorn just asked me via email "why be at the PDC if Longhorn won't be out for at least two, and maybe more, years?"

Excellent question! First off, only 20% of the PDC will be about Longhorn. At the PDC we're also releasing information on two other HUGE projects: Yukon (next version of SQL Server) and Whidbey (next version of Visual Studio) and we'll talk about some stuff that'll be useful to your career today as well. Here's Microsoft's official answer on "why you should attend the PDC." Oh, and have a look at the Agenda and Schedule for the PDC -- you'll see it covers a lot, not just Longhorn, and very technically deep sessions. The PDC isn't for people, like me, who are still struggling to get to chapter three of "Learning C#".

Second, whenever there's a major new OS that gets released, new business opportunities appear. This happened when DOS first shipped. When the Mac first shipped. When Windows 95 first shipped. When OSX first shipped. And now the industry is getting ready for Longhorn.

Any decent software project will take 18 months to get going. So, if you want to be on stage with Bill Gates in 2005 (or whenever Longhorn ships) you need to start today. Particularly if you have a day job.

Anyone who attends the PDC will have a significant business advantage over those who don't pay attention to Longhorn and .NET today. Yeah, it's safe to say that much of this information will be available elsewhere, but believe me, I'm trying to learn about Longhorn by reading the books and articles you'll see soon on Longhorn, and it's really a pain in the ass. I've learned more by simply watching one one-hour demo by the Avalon team, then by reading the books. Something about ASCII text just leaves you wanting when you're trying to learn new capabilities of an operating system (not to mention Visual Studio, SQL Server).

Also, I know quite a few people who are trying to decide on their future career paths. Do they decide to go "anti-Microsoft" and go develop Linux apps? Do they see other opportunities? Should they go make pottery and get out of the industry altogether? And, if they decide to stay inside Microsoft's camp (or come into it) what are the opportunities?

Ever hear of networking? Yeah, weblogs are great for that, but I've found a lot of more interesting stuff happens when you meet people face-to-face. The Microsoft software industry is gonna be at the PDC. The vendors. The book companies. The training companies. Microsoft's biggest customers (and, yes, even our biggest competitors -- I've seen the attendee list) all will be there.

But, here's my best pitch: Longhorn is big. The WinFS alone will be covered by 1000+ page books. It's that big. So, do you want to learn that all at once by taking a month off in 2005 and attending a Wintellect, Franklins.net, or Developmentor course on the topic, or do you want to leisurely learn it over the next 24 months and be ready for 2005 without breaking a sweat?

And, what happens in 2006 when your boss decides to switch to Longhorn/Whidbey/SQL Server development, and you aren't ready? Will your job be "outsourced?" Will your career be on hold while you learn more skills and catch up to the 5000 people who were making sure their skills are up to date?

Remember what happened to folks who ignored Windows until 1995? They were left behind and quickly became irrelevant.

Right now you're witnessing yet another inflection point in the IT industry. You have to decide whether or not to be there or not.

Did I miss that we've renamed SPOT to MSN Direct? Looky here at the MSN Direct page.

By the way, Steve Gillmor has an excellent interview with Jonathan Schwartz, Executive VP, Sun Microsystems, up right now. (Part I; Part II)

I disagree with a few things that Jonathan said, but particularly when he says that Microsoft can't compete. That's a common myth, but I watched Microsoft compete with CP/M in the early 80s. I watched them compete with WordPerfect, Novell, Borland, Apple and others in the late 80s. I don't think you can say this company doesn't have competition in its genes. I think Microsoft does its best stuff when it DOES have competition.

Finally, yes, the SmartPhone might look dead today. But, don't make the fatal mistake of assuming that because the industry aligned against us for a time that they'll always be aligned against us. Believe it or not, we do learn, and we do keep trying to make life better for customers. I wish I could buy a SmartPhone. It is something I will switch carriers to do. Think that message won't get heard eventually?

The PDCBloggers site is up. We already have more than 50 webloggers (Jeff Sandquist is keeping a list of everyone who's attending the PDC). Yes, Steve Gillmor, there is a PDC RSS 2.0 feed.

I've gotten several spams now with the words "blog" or "check out my blog" in them. Of course, it's just spam for a porn site.

Robert McLaws asks me to make sure user education is addressed at the PDC.

My answer? I don't believe that's possible. After spending time with real users this weekend (ie not geeks) we need to build in security and automatic updating. Why don't I believe education will work? Most people don't like, and don't trust geeks.

Much of our society is in backlash against geeks. A friend of Maryam's I know won't even date geeks. She's tired of them making her feel like she is stupid. She dates a guy who tows trucks and drives a Harley. Seriously. There are huge numbers of people who have a computer, cause they have to, but they will not spend any time learning about it, except when it crashes and they can't get it started again.

On the other hand, I've seen a ton of scams come along lately that take advantage of people like this. I've seen friends computers with tons of ads that yell "protect yourself against viruses and pop ups." Yeah, all that information is available for free, but many people don't wanna learn and just wanna pay someone $30 to take care of this stuff.

Am I wrong?

That said, we'll do our best to arm developers at the PDC.

Good morning! On Saturday night I attended the weblogger dinner, where I sat next to Steve Gillmor, columnist for CRN Magazine, and the conversation went something like this: "hey Steve, what you writing about?" Steve: "RSS." "Well, what are you interested in writing about?" Steve: "RSS." "But, what do you think the industry should worry about?" Steve: "RSS." "Come on Steve, you're pulling our legs, what other things do you think about?" "RSS News Aggregators."