The Nikon forum is trading desktop images.

Think you can't afford a photo studio? The "Foam Core Addicts Society" says you're wrong.

Paschal points to some futuristic Sony computer. Heh, I'd love to see Longhorn running on that! Now I know what we need non-rectangular Window shapes for!

Mary Jo Foley continues to update her list of Microsoft webloggers (the list includes both current and past employees).

AKMA believes webloggers have souls (he's giving a talk on spirituality in weblogs at the BloggerCon). I don't believe that at all. But, I know that most people do, so I'll point to it anyway.

Jeff Key wonders where the content is in tech journalism.

The Chicago Tribune makes it sound like Microsoft reads all my weblog posts in its article on workplace blogging. Just to be clear. No one reads my posts before I post them. And, in four months, no one at Microsoft has ever asked me to remove anything. They have, however, asked me to post a disclaimer that my words here are my own and Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with them (which I haven't done yet, at least not permanently). They also have asked me only once to post a link to our site about how to protect your computer.

I note, though, that of any company with more than 10,000 employees I can only name one that has more than a handful of webloggers: Microsoft. For that, I'm very grateful. Yes, they know there's legal risk here. Microsoft is taking a risk by letting us weblog. Does the reward outweigh the risks? I think it does. Conversational marketing is the future.

Dare Obasanjo exposes the data (top 10 Microsoft.com downloads) from Microsoft's new web services as an RSS feed.

Richard Caetano: "Pistachio harvest has just started." (He's the guy who wrote a Tablet PC app to run the USA's largest pistachio processing plant).

Just saw over on Denise Howell's site that TechTV is going to host a program titled "Music Wars." I haven't paid attention to TechTV for a while, but this one sounds real interesting.

Kevin Marks has an interesting essay titled "DRM destroys value."

Tim Bray talks about the New York Times' Thomas Friedman. I recently read Friedman's book too and agree with Bray's analysis. I didn't know that Bray spent 11 years over in the Middle East. I note that no one really cares, though. More and more SUVs show up here in Seattle land and down in Silicon Valley. If one of those ever hit my Acura or my wife's Toyota, we'd be gonners. I'll never understand why the US doesn't tax gasoline more like Europeans get taxed (they pay $5 a gallon and funny enough, most people drive small, fuel efficient cars).

But, we see it as our right to drive big trucks (most SUVs aren't really cars) that get 10 to 20 MPG. Well, that also means we need to deal with Saudi Arabia, even though their leaders thumb their noses at everything we stand for.

Hint: it was Saudi Arabia that raised most of the folks who flew the 9/11 planes. But no one cares. Wake me up when they do.

Alright, everyone warned me about the weather. But, in the past four months it's been stunningly beautiful. I hear we're having the second best summer Seattle has ever had! Well, they keep warning rain is just around the corner. Bring it on!

Microsoft Monitor Weblog: "I completely agree [with Scoble]. I would recommend that every company thinking about adopting Longhorn or every software developmer thinking about creating Longhorn products should find out about the new Windows as early on in the process as possible."

Joshua Allen has an interesting essay on software in China.