I don't know who did this one, but somehow this latest picture is believable.

Off to Vancouver we go...am I addicted to blogging? Well, yes. Need a 30-hour detox...

It's my birthday tomorrow (I'm 39) and we're heading up to Vancouver to celebrate. See ya tomorrow!

I'm getting a bit of traffic from Tristan Louis, who wants us to replace IE with Mozilla.

"While I am dreaming about this, the realist in me says that it will not happen." He's right, but I really like having people around like Tristan who dream an impossible dream once in a while.

Update: I see why Tristan got a bit of traffic over to me. Sam Ruby pointed to him. Interesting web we're all weaving here.

Dude! Check this out. What a cool name for a Website. They are trying to make it easier for people to send around cool websites. I got a demo of this and it's an interesting "social networking" site. They are trying to make it easy for normal people to do what I do on my weblog. It's written in .NET, by the way.

I hear Paul Thurrott will be on campus this week. I love his WinInfo newsletter, but it really needs RSS and permalinks. I so want to point at it all the time, but I can't right now.

His comments about Mac Advocacy caught my eye.

Michael Gartenberg tears apart a portable video player.

Update: I changed this post. I thought he was talking about a Portable Media Center, but my readers astutely pointed out that he isn't talking about that at all. Hmm, I wonder which device he's talking about then. That'll teach me not to blog at 4 a.m.

Joe Wilcox, on Microsoft Monitor weblog: "I can sympathize that Microsoft might feel regulated by the consent decree or see competitors trying to use the agreement for gain over the company. But, I believe Microsoft must be stellar in its behavior with respect to the settlement--in all ways beyond reproach--if government relations are truly to improve and the company ever seriously hopes to fully restore its image tarnished during the court case."

Rebecca Dias is leading the Web Services track at Tech Ed this year, and she's looking for speakers. Sorry for the short notice, she wants submissions by Monday.

Back when I had dreams of being a photojournalist, I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer. Here's an article about one of National Geographic's first digital shoots: Shooting the D1X for National Geographic.

Is film's day coming to an end? The answer is clear: yes.

It's weird, but just 14 or 15 years ago I attended the Photo Marketing Association's show where digital stuff was first being shown (I attended it every year for a while). I knew then that digital would take over someday. I hung out in Kodak's booth. The salespeople there didn't get it. In fact, they kicked me out of the booth -- ever wonder why I never evangelized their cameras or digital equipment? I was too knowledgeable, they said, and was making their salespeople anxious. If they only knew they'd be out of a job within 13 years they might have tried learning something.

Link credit for that article belongs to the xBlog: the visual thinking weblog.

Steven Forte points to the just announced dates for Microsoft's Dev Days.

Yeah, I'm the last one to point to this, but CNN reports on a new study that shatters the Internet 'geek' image.

Speaking of which, I'm going to Vancouver for the weekend and won't blog again until Sunday. Have a great weekend!

The Church of the Customer blog watches Howard Dean for evangelism ideas.

Sue Mosher's excellent site on Outlook and Exchange points to this one: Curing the e-mail blues. A bunch of tips on how to deal with email effectively.

WriteTheWeb: "You know weblogs are passe when even politicians are jumping on the bandwagon..."

Oh, I guess I'm passe then. I've been called worse.

Dylan Greene asks "Do you research every thing you build to make sure somebody didn't already patent some concept that you just thought was obvious."

Simon Willison has what might be "the most ludicrous tech patent yet."

As an example of the new transparency, Eric Gunnerson, who works on the C# team here at Microsoft, is asking "do you have a question about C# that you want answered?"

Research Buzz reports that PRNewsWire is offering RSS feeds now.

Do you know a Visual Basic 6.0 programmer who needs to learn .NET? Have them visit this post on Duncan MacKenzie's blog for pointers to a bunch fo webcasts and lab exercises that'll help them.

Ed Bott: "I'm surprised that out of 141 comments (and counting) on Robert's blog, hardly anyone has mentioned Favorites."

Good point. I stopped using Favorites about five years ago. Hint, what happened about five years ago? Google. My favorites file back then was about 5000 items. It just got so big, and so out of date, that I stopped using it.

Today my "favorites" list is really my RSS Feeds. RSS is changing the way I use the Web more than any other single thing.

Noah Kravitz is doing an interesting series of articles on Windows vs. Macintosh in the classroom. Here's a hint. He's not nice to either Microsoft or Apple. But, that's why it's something both companies can learn from.

This article in CNN shows how individuals are increasingly involved in political campaigns, product design, and marketing. I call it "conversational marketing." CNN calls it "bottoms up."

"The successful products and services from now on will be those developed jointly -- company and customer working hand in hand.

I'm working on some programs to do just that. Have a "hit squad" of knowledgeable customers and influentials, who'll be able to give the Longhorn team fast and great feedback.

Other people here are trying to figure out how to turn up the transparency knob even further than our 200 webloggers have already turned it.

But, how do you do that without randomizing the market? It's a tough question and one that we're all learning the answers to.

I love this: "Motorcycle maker Ducati is posting specs for several new prototype motorcycles online and asking for customer feedback as it decides whether to put them into production."

Imagine Microsoft putting up several different ideas for, say, something like the sharing interface, and letting you all have a voice in the designs? We're already seeing signs of doing that on the blogs.

One problem is, who owns the ideas that get suggested? If you're on a Microsoft-owned server, the terms of use are pretty clear. Microsoft does. But, what about here? This blog isn't owned by Microsoft. Unfortunately when you work at a big company that gets sued all the time, you gotta worry about legal ramifications.

Steve Eichert is looking for help on landing large .NET jobs.

Alan Reiter's Camera Phone Report talks about Sprint PCS's new $5 per month plan for unlimited picture messaging: "By offering a $5 a month plan without any extra charges, Sprint has made a smart move to help increase its mass market for camera phones."

Joe Jennett says "beware the namedroppers" and then says that only four of his feeds that he subscribes to show up in the Top 100.

Actually, that makes him valuable to me, because he's looking at stuff I might not otherwise see. It's blogs like Joe's that give me the good stuff that make me a better blogger.

So, he might not be watching the top 100, but the top 100 is watching him. :-)

Rob Fahrni is talking up PowerBlog, which is a Windows-based blogging client.

The Mozilla project has released version 1.6 of Mozilla. I've been playing with it, and so far it's quite nice.

ArsTechnica: "Now, this is just ridiculous. Since when did a silly link that opened up IE amount to "compelling consumers who buy music on the Web to use only Microsoft's Internet browser"?"

Why does John Battelle love blogs? "Because I can read a Yahoo employee ranting - in public - about the disingenuous behavior of his CEO. Thanks, Jeremy!... "

John writes for Business 2.0. Speaking of which, I haven't given our CEO, Steve Ballmer, any advice lately. If you could tell Steve to do something, what would it be?

The Newspaper Association of America's conference is this weekend, and they have a conference blog. Thanks to JD Lasica for linking us there (JD's blog keeps me up to date on the happenings in the newspaper industry).

Alan Reiter writes a damning piece about Microsoft's SPOT watches. "Clunky, heavy and ugly, these timepieces using Microsoft's SPOT (Smart Personal Objects Technology) will appeal to only the geekiest of geeks."

Ouch, that explains why I want one.

PocketPCThoughts' Ed Hansberry takes a look at Napster. Ed's been waiting for the chance to download songs for a buck a piece, hassle free for a long time, and he says he's happy now.

Paul Thurrott: HP's iPod moves could hurt the industry.

since1968 interviews Nick Bradbury, the guy who wrote FeedDemon, HomeSite, and TopStyle. Nick uses Delphi to write apps for Windows. His stuff is always cool and I can't wait to see what he does for Longhorn.

Thanks to John McDowell of Macromedia for this link. By the way, if you don't follow John's blog, you should.

Greg Reinacker, the guy who wrote the News Aggregator I use most (NewsGator) talks about NewsGator's Mobile Edition. I just started using this feature, and it's very nice.

John Robb is wondering how Google's ranking algorithm works and who is in charge. One day he's on top on Google. The next day his site can't be found.

Dean, the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team, just wrote "I want to confirm what Robert said: folks on the IE team are reading this blog, and all the comments, and thinking hard about what we read. FWIW, we love blogs; many of us have personal (non-work related) blogs. I know we need to do a better job speaking up out here. We will. Right now, we're pretty heads down writing code, testing builds, and working on specs."

Brent Simmons, author of the popular Macintosh News Aggregator NetNewsWire, makes a compromise and explains it.

"Most users don’t care about this issue; they want to read the news."

Roland Tanglao (about an article in CIO magazine): "Yet another Knowledge Management article that doesn't mention blogs. Up with blogs, down with Knowledge Management! In 2004, I wouldn't trust any KM program that doesn't include blogs. Blogs are the best way to tell stories and share tacit knowledge."

Aaron reports that Google opened an office in Bangalore, India. I wonder when my first trip there will be?

John Lam asks "is the browser finally being relegated to its rightful place?"

Radio UserLand users: Matt Mower has written a little utility that can optimize Radio's upstreaming feature. I'm gonna try it out and see if I notice a difference here.

Arcterex or Dana, wanna get together in Vancouver? The wifey and me are coming up for the weekend.