Ernie the Attorney has a good wrapup of Pop!Tech.

Kase found a way to make Newsgator and Outlook 2003 work even better together. Cool!

Ed Cone's own weblog writes about the catalyst that brought about the column featuring me today.

I was just reading Corante's group weblog on social software and saw them talk about David Weinberger writing about "when blogs get big." Both of those links are must reads -- I totally agree and can't wait for the day when every team at Microsoft has a weblog.

And, if I was really smart, I'd sign up for Amazon's affiliate program so that if anyone bought one of those off of a link I'd get a kickback. But, I'm not in this for profit, only for fun.

You can now buy a Motorola Smartphone on Amazon. Cool!

Oh, the secret is out. Disney has a bunch of corporate webloggers too. They just don't show their face. But, at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference next February, the team from Disney will be speaking about Disney's use of RSS.

Title is gunna be: Leveraging RSS at Disney: from Collaboration to Massive Content Delivery

Session ID: 4763

Date: 02/10/2004

Time: 2:00pm to 2:45pm

Location: Plaza Room

It's on my calendar!

Jeff Sandquist says "don't thank me for the PDC blogging shirts."

Oh, are we announcing something tomorrow? Heh. Todd Bishop, of the Seattle PI, is keeping track of some of the press on the Office 2003 launch.

Photos + Wiki = Photowiki.

Scott Mace has two questions to ask at the PDC: "Why doesn't Java matter anymore? Why doesn't Linux matter anymore?"

Larry O'Brien in Software Development Times: No Reservations About .NET. Interesting column about his experiences with .NET and J2EE.

Neal Stephenson is wrong (Zane just pointed me at that page). Gates and Allen didn't come up with the idea to sell an operating system. If anyone deserves credit for that, it's Gary Kildall (founder of DRI Research, which sold CPM).

That said, Gates learns fast and took over quickly after Kildall messed up the IBM deal.

Regarding Waggener Edstrom: I appreciate them being there. There is a huge role for traditional PR and my weblog sure isn't gonna make them obsolete. That's as absurd as saying that weblogs are gonna make the New York Times or CNN disappear. That said, the role is changing and we're all trying to learn the new world. I wonder, what would happen if Waggener Edstrom would start a weblog? Why, then, they could call me a weasel for Ed's penning a headline that makes them look like a gatekeeper of Hades. Heh.

Full disclosure: I work closely with Waggener Edstrom folks. I have a vice president (Frank Shaw) over there in my IM and we chat often. I often ask for help on various PR issues. The help I've gotten has always been professional, fast, and, well, good. If you're a weblogger at a corporation and you don't have a good relationship with your PR department, you're skating on thin ice, in my book.

Where's the traffic flood coming from? Today Baseline Magazine's Ed Cone ran a column about corporate weblogging and my role of "humanizing" Microsoft. Waggener Edstrom's contacts of mine laughed about being compared to a gatekeeper of Hades. Personally I don't look at them like that (heck, if they are the gatekeepers, then what am I?). I note that when eWeek reran the same article the headline was changed to something a little less confrotational.

Dilbert's readers called me a weasel. I'm not sure what's worse, being a tenant of Hell (although it's a bit wet and cold here to be really convincing) or a weasel.

Anyway, my friend Matt Carter asked "can you fit your head in the door?" We'll see. It certainly is weird to visit eWeek.com and seeing your name on the home page (I took a screen capture).

Some other corrections: my boss is Robert Hess. I guess in some weird way everyone in my division works for Eric Rudder. Heh.

Also, Waggener Edstrom is spelled like that. That reminds me of a lesson in journalism school. When correcting an error, don't repeat it. I remember Steve Green teaching me that. See, some things from college still stick, even 10 years later.

Whoa, I see from my referer log that there's a flood of new traffic hitting my weblog today. Welcome new Scobleizer victims!

Update: 10 rivers under flood warning. Four inches, and still counting, of rain at SeaTac. People's homes with four feet of rain in them. Ouch.

Followup on my rant about the carpet store. KIRO-TV has a report on the Web. Turns out Alan Denman has ripped people off before.

Several of my friends also took me on about my "big vs. small" statements. You all need to understand that's just emotion of the moment. No one likes getting ripped off. I'm a big believer in small businesses. Most of my career has been spent at small guys. Heck, the software I'm writing to you right now with was done by a small company.

In fact, much of the cool software I use is from small companies. I also disagree with one of my commenters that said that big businesses can always underprice smaller ones. That certainly was NOT the case when I ran a camera store. We always had the lowest prices in Northern California. What really killed us was when the big stores figured out how to beat us. They'd just match prices (but only if asked). So, word got around "go down to San Jose Camera or LZs, get a low price, and then go to XYZ store and get them to match it." The problem was, once LZ was driven out of the market (as it was a few years ago) the big guys could charge whatever they wanted.

Anyway, just shows that whenever you buy things you need to be careful.

What is up with the weather lately? Let's see, in the past five months since moving to Seattle we've had:

1) The most continuous days of sunshine on record.

2) The hottest day on record in September.

3) The most rain in one day ever (today). Three inches and still counting!

To put that in context, the average rainfall in San Jose is 13 inches (per year).

But, you all should celebrate every drop of rain (unless you're a Microsoft competitor). Keeps all the programmers at Microsoft inside working.