Michael Gartenberg: "What's wrong with Microsoft's mobile strategy?"

Michael Gartenberg, on PowerPoint: "Nothing worse though than a PR flack with a 40 slide presentation that's mostly background."

Oh, totally agreed. When I was an editor lots of people came around and tried to pitch me on their products. I hated it when they started out with PowerPoint slides about their company and their mission. Damn it, hook me first! Show me the product and give me a demo. Then explain how great your management team is. Or, even better yet, forget that part. I really don't care. My readers don't care. They care about whether your product will solve their problems. If they care about your management team or your mission statement, they can read that on your website or ask you.

Mac Daily News: "Microsoft's 'Longhorn' will attempt control of the Web with proprietary technologies."

Read the comments there for my replies (obviously I think that's a flawed viewpoint). Toadmaster has a good comment: "Robert, you are truly brave for posting on this website."

Conversational marketing. How do we turn around market opinion? One conversation thread at a time.

Microsoft Monitor: Microsoft opens up IP licensing. "The new licensing program is another sign of ongoing changes as Microsoft matures as a company and takes on more of a role as technology leader as opposed to just being a pit-bull competitor."

Jeffrey Zeldman, my favorite Web designer, has a bunch of great CSS links.

Eric Bachtal shows that a simple "thank you" goes a long way. "I feel better. A lot better. Kinda giddy, in fact. Why? Maybe it's the ease with which I reached Mr. Scoble."

Christopher Laco expected the worst when he bought a Microsoft wireless router, but instead found: "But I must say, this card and it's drivers have been ROCK SOLID where the Linksys simply crapped on itself over and over."

Smug Canadian: "If Microsoft builds a half-crappy Google that has such an API, they will eat Google's lunch."

Dare Obasanjo says my question about Atom is misleading.

Jim Moran asks why my weblog isn't hosted on a Microsoft-owned server yet. That's because I don't want my weblog to be on a Microsoft-owned server. Why? Because it's my personal weblog and my personal beliefs. I'm not compensated for what I say on my weblog. At least not yet.

I like the tool I'm using right now. I'm playing with other tools (I have a Longhorn blog on .TEXT for instance). Yeah, Radio UserLand has its warts, but it has its good points too.

Also, if I switch my blog somewhere else, I'll lose my URL (which I don't own) so I'll lose all my Google Power.

Finally, I've been preaching that Microsoft is a "new company" now and that it's friendly to ISVs (Independent Software Vendors). How friendly would it be to an ISV if I pulled my support from UserLand and gave it to Microsoft wholly?

See, I want to see more software companies, not fewer. Why should I support only Microsoft-owned technologies -- especially when I'm trying to convince those same companies to develop software for Longhorn?

IT Manager's Journal has an interesting interview/article about one of the more controversial pieces of Longhorn: the next generation secure computing base initiative.

Many people assume Microsoft has the worst of intentions when it comes to this initiative. Several of my friends have told me "there's no way I'm using Longhorn if this initiative makes it into Longhorn." Read the comments over on Slashdot to see some of the concerns.

Will this be the "SmartTags" of Longhorn? (SmartTags is a feature I, and quite a few others, really hated and actively campaigned against. Microsoft listened to us back then and pulled that feature). We're listening now too. So, what do you think?

Rory has another funny blog in his "Microsoft steals from everybody" post (which points out that the new Java desktop looks suspiciously like Windows XP). Now you know why we didn't include Aero in the PDC build of Longhorn.

Diego Dovall: the atom debate heats up again.

Scott Karren, the Channel Pro weblogger, writes his ideas of what the industry loses when retailers don't do their job. Great ideas and an interesting weblog. Subscribed! I love this blog for a few reasons. One, it establishes the Channel Pro as an authority in channel development. Two, he practices conversational marketing techniques. He links to people (he linked to me) and then adds some value onto that. How did I find this site? In my referer logs. First rule of getting traffic on your blog? Link to people!

Chris De Herrera posts his discovery process about finding a security bug in Windows Mobile. I think this is a great process to go through if you find a security problem. Yes, we have real people watching the secure@microsoft.com alias. I met a few of them at our security fest over the summer. They work hard to figure out what the problems are and fix them fast.

Microsoft employee Joe Friend's 16-year-old son started an XBox blog. This is already a favorite blog. Today he posted links to some Halo 2 videos on Gamespot that simply are inspiring. Damn I want that game.

Anyone gonna blog tonight's Longhorn event at the Silicon Valley Windows SIG? By the way, I used to attend this user group. It's a great group.

Wow, 114 comments in 24 hours. Atom vs. RSS debates still get the geeks going.

One thing that was pointed out to me is that the comment technology I use (Haloscan) is not good enough for my blog. Heck, it's free so I can't really complain. But, I'm looking to improve the experience. I'll work with Dave Winer to improve that and/or am evaluating other alternatives. One problem is that my comments don't show up on my RSS feed.

Anyone have any good suggestions? I'm interested. Lots of people are asking me what blog tool to use to start their blogs up. So, your comments are very helpful.

As far as Atom vs. RSS. I'm disappointed in the level of debate. How many real Atom benefits did we learn about in that 114-comment thread? I didn't learn many. And, very few of the Atom supporters pointed to it on their weblog and wrote about it. Yesterday I threw a nice soft pitch right over homeplate and no one took a swing at it. I wanted to start a conversation, but no one talked back.

In fact, the biggest benefit to Atom that I learned about, I learned about from a Six Apart employee (and confirmed by a Microsoft employee offline): it looks like Atom (both the API and the syndication format) might work better with Microsoft's technologies, including Visual Studio. I'm amazed no Atom supporter pointed that out on their blog or in my comment feed. Are you Atom types scared of appearing to be friendly with Microsoft? If so, why?