My weblog tool is still messed up and will remain so until Sunday night. Sorry about that, but now I'm on a speedy machine. Things are working a lot better. If you wanna see old posts of mine, visit http://scoble.weblogs.com.

53 posts is enough. I won't be back online until Sunday evening or later. Have a great weekend!

Are blogs a community? My IM says yes. Whenever I start posting, I get a lot of IMs. Right now Robert McLaws is talking with me. He said he really loves the new MSN (he was a beta tester on MSN 9).

Interesting all the conversations that start cause of a blog.

Tom Mertens notes that MSDN's Erica Wiechers gets a lot of Google hits. Hey, do we have a cult of personality here? Can I get her to sign my Tablet PC? :-)

Better not go there. Maryam was jealous when Hillary Clinton fingered my Tablet. Erica would set her over the top.

Robert McLaws gets quoted in E-Commerce Times about Longhorn. I think the media tends to overblow all that ship date garbage. Heh.

Longhorn fans will find this article, on the Code and Effect weblog, on Longhorn's compositing engine interesting.

Jian Shuo Wang, who's a Microsoft employee in Shanghai, China, talks about the cost of living there.

I remember having dinner at one of Shanghai's best restaurants. How did I know it was best? Because the French President was eating at a table nearby and they closed off half the city's streets to get him there. Seven people. Seven courses. Including wine. Cost $70, including tip. Course that was six years ago. I hear it's a bit more expensive now.

Loren tries his hand at drawing a comic on the Tablet PC. Heck, I think that's funnier than the new comic they put in the employee newsletter at Microsoft. Maybe you have a new career Loren!

SpotStop is a place where you can learn about Microsoft's Smart Personal Object Technology. I really want one of those watches. Hey, my 39th birthday is January 18!

Jeremy Zawdony notes that Apple is making Windows hardware and asks is hell freezing over today? Well, it has been darn cold around here so far, although the snow is mostly melted now in the front yard.

Lawrence Oluyede is working on a .NET project to create Atom feeds.

Don Park talks about the Behr Paint app that Lazlo created. My wife used that to pick the paint for our new house.

Mark Polino is fed up with online music. However, in my quest to simply play music, that I have acquired legally, on my iPAQ's SD card, I've come to sympathize with casual music theives.

My story? I've bought individual songs from BuyMusic.com, Wal-Mart.com and MusicMatch. All the songs play fine in my iPAQ's main memory. None of them will transfer to the SD card. If I manually transfer them I get a license error. iPAQ's have very little main memory and use expansion cards to hold large amounts of data.

Can anyone help Mark get music working on his PocketPC device?

ConsultingTimes: How to misunderstand open source software development.

John Palfrey points out that CNN is now posting transcripts of its breaking news. Cool.

Brad Abrams is looking for feedback about Enums in .NET.

Dana Epp, who is a security expert, was hired recently to get into some machines that a disgruntled former employee had locked up. He explains his thought process of how he got access to the machines. Interesting reading.

Omri Gazitt notes that Microsoft published the Web Services-Eventing spec on Tuesday.

Vijay: Finally, Banalore, India beats Silicon Valley!

I note that he also pointed out that I was drowning in misconception. :-) Glad he straightened out my perception.

Business 2.0: Is the Mac back in business?

An excerpt: For Steve Jobs, it was a rare flub: In his Macworld Expo keynote address Tuesday in San Francisco, Apple's (AAPL) CEO stumbled when describing a new feature, confessing to the audience of Mac fans, "I don't even know what that is."

He wasn't talking about new, smaller iPods, or spiffier video-editing software, or new features in the iTunes Music Store. Jobs, as usual, had his gadget patter perfect. Instead, his gaffe came while discussing the Xserve, Apple's little-known but supremely powerful server.

The jist of the article (sorry, subscription required) is Everyone at Apple -- from Jobs on down -- needs to learn the language of the data center.

Steve Sloan, who is a diehard Mac fan (I'll get him with Longhorn) is blogging from MacWorld in San Francisco. I love it. He is asking folks "where's the tablets?"

NewsGator 2.0 has been announced. It remains the best news aggregator for use with Microsoft's Outlook. Tons of new features. I'm watching 600+ feeds in mine (I've been beta testing it for a while). Not a single problem. Great job Greg! Can't wait to see what else you do.

DonXML digs into Longhorn's vector graphics and declarative animation. This is cool to see Don discover, because now that we have resolution independence we can build really wild user interfaces (Don demonstrates the new techniques by building a clock).

Frontline's reporter Jane Kokan should win a Pulitzer prize for her reporting on the Iranian student movement and the government that wants to stop it. The video will be online on Monday. Very disturbing. Not for kids. But, a must-watch for freedom loving people's everywhere.

Want to see brave journalism? Here it is. This is the highest form of journalism I can remember seeing.

PBS's Frontline Program has an awesome show named "Forbidden Iran" on TV right now. It's all about the student movement. Very moving video.

That Stereolize video that I talked about earlier? That thing is freaking awesome. And it even gets better. I just learned that the software uses managed code (C#) for the player and the designer and DirectX9. It was written by ONE guy, Ralf Stahnke, in about eight months and makes use of .NET remoting and webservices.

Roland Tanglao used my Radio UserLand template but he added categories. I really like what he's done and am considering doing the same thing. What do you think?

I'm wondering what NBOR is and how it'll help me. Their website is amazingly amateurish for something that's getting a bit of hype before it's released. Too many words. Not enough demonstrations. And no RSS -- that's lame for a small company website not to use (heck, it's lame when Microsoft doesn't have RSS, but at least I understand why existing business systems need to be reworked to support new marketing ideas). Come on guys, get into conversational/relationship marketing. You got me interested, but now you're gonna force me to come back to your site to get the demo? Sorry, outta here. Wake me up if something happens.

Ever seen a WindowsXPbox? Now you have!

Michael Gartenberg, one of Jupiter Media's analysts, apparently liked what he saw from Microsoft at CES: "This is amazing stuff from Microsoft." Calls out the new Portable Media Center and the Media Center Extender for the X-Box.

Arnit Singh has an interesting website about "what is Mac OS X?" This is great evangelism. He positions the Mac versus Windows and Linux.

San Jose Mercury News's Mike Langberg: Microsoft as legal piñata is getting old.

Dylan Greene is like me. He sees the bright side in a bad situation: Office 2003 crashed and it was cool.

Steve Sloan pumps up my ego. Thanks dude! (He's my former boss from a decade ago -- I cause all my bosses a lot of hell, so this is nice to hear).

And, yes, I was quite a Mac fanatic back a decade ago. Was even quoted in Mac User magazine, among others.

Some people have called X1 a hint at what Longhorn's WinFS will do for your life. What do you think? I've been playing with the beta and it sure is interesting (albeit I think Longhorn is far bigger in scope).

RSSWinterfest is looking interesting. January 21 and 22.

It's a conference you can attend from your desk.

Joe Beda talks about using Longhorn's Avalon and DirectX 9 together. Joe should know. He's a playa on the Avalon team.

Scott Gutherie talks about a simple RSS reader that can be built with the new ASP.NET Whidbey alphas.

Wait a second, if we're such meanies, how can Real Networks release a player that plays Windows Media formats? Hmmm.

Wired says that Microsoft is Apple's unlikely guardian angel.

Hey, it gets deeper than that. My brother-in-law works there, so gotta keep him employed or else he'll want to move in with us! Heh.

MVP Tony Toews has a list of security utilities that he uses and recommends and a list of software that he uses and recommends. Interesting lists, and not all friendly to Microsoft.

One advantage of open source is that many people can work together on a single project. Ahh, .NET also has that capability. You can work on FlexWiki, for instance.

Christophe Lauer is tracking the death of the browser.

I'm now giving Dave Winer's RSS feeds list my OPML. This is an awesome new set of services. Really got my brain firing.

Michael Gartenberg keeps bragging about his SPOT watch. Now he wants RSS on it. I got to see a SPOT watch a week ago, they are awesome.

If it had RSS, I'd buy one. Right now I'm on the fence, even though they are cool.

I just got a new scam email, promising me $1 million lottery winnings. How many suckers will take the bait?

I totally agree with Ben Voigt that Plaxo is hot. I've gotten at least a dozen requests to update my Plaxo contact info in just the past few days. Great way to keep your contact info up to date and trade contacts with people.

Plaxo: you should hook this into Longhorn's WinFS.

Dylan Greene has a whole bunch of suggestions for XBox game developers.

One one of the mailing lists that I subscribe to folks are talking up Geek Superhero as a good way to combat spyware and other nasty stuff.

Nick, who works on the Windows Media Center group, refutes the Register's report that Windows Media Center is dead.

So does Mary Jo Foley. So does Michael Gartenberg. Any more needed?

Bill Gates' CES keynote transcript is here (I hear video is coming soon).

Screw PowerPoint, I want Stereolize (you'll need Windows Media Player for this, but it'll be worth it).

Steve Gillmor in eWeek: Gates vs. Jobs. Users are converged. Jobs may see it. Gates may not.

Gizmodo has CES coverage.

Darn Comcast. My cable TV and modem were down for two days. So, couldn't post. My Radio UserLand blog is still messed up. Jake is rebuilding that for me. If you want to get to my old files, go to http://scoble.weblogs.com.

Are your aggregators ready?