Tosh Meston wants to test my "LinkToWhoreness" (er, he wants to see if I can raise a site's Google rank from 0 to 4). Here's the site (Infinite Soccer), it's a place where soccer players can join teams and find games. That sounds cool.

What's "Goodle?" Just the good news, that's all! Yeah, it's a parody, but fun nonetheless.

Don Box has joined the SPOT watch fan club.

On Friday I met with the SPOT team (er, MSN Direct) and they have some very interesting plans for the future. They love the blog feedback, too, even the negative stuff.

If you put a suggestion on your blog, they'll see it, as long as Feedster catches your blog. Why? Because I'm watching blogs for mentions of SPOT or MSN Direct.

Christian Nagel points to interesting new blogs from the Microsoft Business Framework team. It seems like a new Microsoft blog starts up every few hours lately.

Brad Abrams points to a good compilation of .NET design guidelines.

Joel Pobar has an excellent article on the garbage collector in Rotor (if you are interested in such things. Rotor can teach you a lot about how .NET works internally).

What do you get when a Roomba robotic vacuum runs into a Tablet PC? Phillip Torrone has pics.

The geek dinner tonight was a lot of fun (and, yes, we had spicy noodles). I really like smaller dinners better. We can get into a lot more depth.

Al told us about his new company that got some funding (named JobFlash, does HR software for companies so that potential workers can apply via phone. Ikea uses them in California).

Micah Alpern, who works as an interaction designer for eBay, asked us how eBay could use blogs and RSS better.

Don Park showed up with his family and Niall Kennedy talked to me about the new security center that comes with Windows XP SP2 that's in beta right now.

Micah also told us about eBay Live! (June 24-26 in New Orleans) where they are expecting 10,000 of their most passionate customers. This is the second year for this eBay show, and last year's show sounded like a lot of fun.

Hey Microsoft's marketing department: this is a show we should be at. It'd be a great place to show off XPSP2, and evangelize more of XP's new features. Ebay's users are connected and social (and they have an interest in buying more technology, cause it helps them to sell).

Only downside is it's in New Orleans in June. Gonna be hot and sticky!

Matt Haughey points at the winners of the Creative Commons moving images contest. Good stuff.

Do you have Xbox Live? Jeff is looking for people to join a "tech blogger XBox Live links list." Specifically for playing Golf. He wants to create a virtual golf course for geeks. Got a handful already. Hey, isn't this the kind of thing that Orkut or Linked In is supposed to solve?

Speaking of which, Marc Canter called while we were in SF. He said he's in Orkut jail again. Orkut keeps throwing him in there because he keeps inviting more people into his friends' list on Orkut. Isn't that the whole point?

Patrick and I just got back from the Apple store. I've just uploaded a bunch of photos to my photoblog.

The store handed out 2500 shirts by about 2:15 p.m. We got ours. I'll wear it to Microsoft someday this week.

The store was packed. We watched a presentation on iLife. Checked out some new video games. And listened in on conversations. The Mac fanatics were there in force. At one point the line went all around the block.

The location is at Fourth and Market. That's a nice location, just about the busiest place in the city. Sony's Metreon is a short walk away (Patrick likes that better than the Apple store, cause it has more games).

Need a free weblog? Weblogs.us are offering just that. Cool, open yours up and then ask the "LinkToWhore" to link to it!

I'm off to the new Apple Store with my son. Then to a geek dinner tonight at Jing Jings in Palo Alto (call me 408-314-8233 if you want to meet up in either place).

Someone, in my comments about gay marriage, made an ad hominem attack against me and called me a "link whore." I wonder what that means? Does it mean I will sell my links? I don't accept advertising. Does it mean I'll link to any crappy site? It might seem that way sometimes, but even on a 50-post night, that means that I'm not linking to at least 1245 sites that I subscribe to (and they each point to several other sites).

Does it mean I'll do anything for an inbound link? Hmm. Maybe. But, I'm already on Technorati's top 50 and getting one more in-bound link really ain't gonna matter to me anymore.

Anyway, I think my ad hominem attacker is wrong. I see myself more as a "linkto whore." I wanna link to cool webloggers and cool sites. Sites like yours. So, if I have never linked to your site, and you'd like a link, leave your URL in my comment feed. I'll subscribe and start watching you. I'll link to the interesting ones. (If you're really embarrassed, you can email me your URL to robertscoble@hotmail.com).

Why would you care whether or not I link to you? Well, for one, GooglePower. If you don't have a high Google PageRank, one link from someone like me (my Google PageRank is seven) will boost you up to at least four.

So, who wants to be Scobleized by the "LinkToWhore?"

Cameron Reilly asks whether Microsoft is ahead of the curve on corporate weblogging. Well, for a company with more than 10,000 employees, Microsoft is certainly out front. By how much? It's hard to figure out.

Most companies don't want to encourage blogging because of the PR and legal risks. What they haven't seen yet is how blogging actually helps you with PR and with building better products by increasing the feedback that teams are getting.

Over on weblogs.asp.net I see that the MBF team has now started blogging.

But, yeah, Microsoft's bloggers are getting noticed because more people pay attention to what Microsoft is doing.

I just heard about MaxiVista. It lets you use your Tablet PC or Notebook as a second monitor to your desktop system.

Sounds like ShareKMC. Anyone use either of these tools? Compare them?

There's a new version of Plaxo out. I've been getting a ton more "business cards" from Plaxo users lately. This is a plugin to Outlook and Outlook Express that lets you share your contact info with other people painlessly.

Clemens Vasters has an interesting analysis of open vs. closed source: "Where do you want to go, Aiden?"

Congratulations Apple on opening another store (this time in San Francisco). I hear people have been camped out all night to get a look. I might take my son down there. The weather here in Silicon Valley is freaking awesome. Solid blue skies.

Chris Sells is looking for feedback on the Longhorn Dev Center (he's the guy who runs that).

Steve Gillmor, in eWeek: The New Mouse: Microsoft's Aura Project and Personal Data

"Microsoft's Aura research project uses a cell phone equipped with a bar-code reader to capture and annotate user interactions with the physical world. These events produce what Smith calls "the inscription revolution: the ability for things you're doing to leave metadata behind." When you flip through a print magazine, the pages you read are not recorded. But in the world of Google, blogs, e-mail and IM, identity is the collection of places you go, and what you write is the evidence you leave behind."

Sean Alexander has some goodies on his blog this week. First are some ScoobyDoo animations for the Windows Digital Media Plus Pack. I met the team that did these animations. Really talented people. They did tons of motion capture on real actors doing things like break dancing. Then turned them into the animations you can download for free.

Second thing is that the steering committe for the DVD Forum has announced provisional approval of Windows Media Video 9 Series technology as mandatory for the upcoming HD-DVD video format along with two other formats.

Ross Mayfield started a new blog meme: the blogalyst. Then Roland Tanglao said that I'm the definitive blogalyst. Thanks!

I've been getting lots of questions about "Windows XP Reloaded." I'm still doing some research about this, but looks like we're going to make a big splash about XP when we ship XPSP2. I don't have a lot to say about it right now, other than "Reloaded" is obviously a temporary name.

Microsoft Monitor has some good analysis of the news this week.

By the way, interesting how the word "evangelism" has become synonymous with "marketing."

Anyway, you asked us to get back to talking about current stuff and this shows we're listening. Maybe not reacting properly, but XP is it and there's quite a few new things in XP (both here and coming) that people don't know about. We'll work on changing that.

Brian Jackson says I almost feel sorry for people with popular blogs; having public expectations must be very limiting. I'm glad no one reads this, so I can say just about anything.". Heh. Some days I pine for when I had 18 readers (or less) too. But, having a few thousand readers never stopped me from saying something.

Associated Press: Enthusiasts call Web feed next big thing

Nice article about RSS. Will run in dozens, if not hundreds, of newspapers tomorrow.

Silicon Valley Geek Dinner. Tonight. 6 p.m. Jing Jings in Palo Alto. 408-314-8233 is my cell phone if you need directions.