Harvard: why blogs matter. A case study. More details on Dave Winer's site.

John Battelle, in Business 2.0: the Net of Influence. "Influencers are critical to business success. But the last thing you want to do is treat them like a mass market. Instead, do the hard work of cultivating them in a personal network."

K. Scott Allen writes about "what if Microsoft bought Disney?"

I wouldn't worry about that. Bill Gates said last night on Charlie Rose that we aren't considering doing that.

Dan Stout points to some cool typographic animations. See, I like cool art. :-)

Marc Orchant points to the NNTP News Posting plugin for News Gator. "Now I can finally post to my newsgroups right from inside Outlook! No more launching Outlook Express. (And the crowd goes wild...)."

Update: Matt Hawley was the one who wrote this plugin. You know you have something going when third parties write plugins for your product.

Raymond Holzhey talks about ways he cleans up his inbox. That's a pretty good start, and is far better than what most people do, but David Allen makes a compelling case that the only way to really organize your life is to empty your inbox every day and do specific things with every email.

Sounds strange, huh? But, my coworkers who've bought into Allen's system swear by it.

I'll report on my workflow soon.

How do you deal with a huge amount of email?

Paul Boutin talks about RSS and Jonathan Epstein announces that Slate is now available on RSS. Subscribed!

Dylan Greene reports that XBox 2.0 won't have a hard drive in it. Hmmm.

Looks like the Lockergnome newsletter is moving from a CSS-based design back to a Tables-based design. That sounds really strange. Hey, Chris or Jason, why the change? Why didn't CSS work for you?

Ahh, I'm not the only one who doesn't get the social software scene. David Coursey rants on the topic.

I hate getting Linked In email. I'd far prefer someone just post something to their weblog and send me a note "hey, Scoble, I posted something for you on my blog at..."

Todd Bishop, of the Seattle PI newspaper, blogs Microsoft's TechFest. Behind the scenes info.

Microsoft wants to know who our friends are, News.com says.

Lili Cheng and team are behind this. I haven't tried it, but I'm increasingly getting turned off by the social software group of services. But I've said enough on this topic.

Susan Bradley writes: "I was dismayed to find that there is a Security patch needed for Windows 98 and ME computers [Security bulletin 04-007, KB 828028] but there is no information whatsoever on any Microsoft web site to let me and my community know that these patches are needed and must be called for. "

Today I changed my life in a David Allen seminar. For those of you who haven't heard of David Allen, he's the world's authority on how to organize your life. At least that's what my friend Buzz Bruggeman tells me. After sitting through a day of his course, I have to agree.

I could go on for an hour about what I learned today. But, getting organized is something you need to discover on your own. Otherwise you'll accuse me of being in a cult or something else strange.

Anyway, my boss and Buzz swear by David, and I see why. My email inbox is cleaned up. I'm a lot more organized. And we still have tomorrow's session to go through.

One thing David: I'd love to read a blog of yours. It'd really help your marketing. Plus, you need an RSS feed. You're missing the best way to build a relationship with a lot of people.

Macromedia, ActionScript Hero announces, is supporting Linux on its Flash MX.

And Macromedia also brings Flash to .NET.

Seattle Times: Microsoft researchers display wares at TechFest.

Several people have commented on Marc Orchant's recommendation for the Outlook search enhancement tool called Lookout (which I Scobleized with a link a week ago or so). It is getting great praise. For instance, check out what Jeff Maurone says about it: "I just, tonight, got around to actually installing it and completing the first indexing and oh man it's awesome."

By the way, I found Jeff by looking at Technorati's "link cosmos" for me.

Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates, on Charlie Rose: "Absolutely the Longhorn schedule has taken a back seat to our top priority ... Trustworthy computing (security)."

Carter Maslan, a Longhorn evangelist here, points to one of the coolest apps I've seen recently: Keyhole. It lets you "fly" over 3D maps. You saw this tech on CNN as they flew over downtown Baghdad.

Rory asks "Should the hobbyist programmer matter to Microsoft?"

He says no. I say yes. Why? Because hobbyists are the ones who change the world. Steve Wozniak, remember, was a hobbyist. I never underestimate the power of some kid sitting at home playing around on something to come up with something that changes everything.

That said, this is the Innovator's Dillema, isn't it? If we only focus on existing customers and existing needs, we'll miss the next thing.

Just think about what would have happened if Xerox would have realized what they had in their Palo Alto Research Center. Only the entire industry in one building. But, because they were focused on copiers and documents, they missed everything they had.

By the way, you can learn .NET today with a $40 book and nothing else. You can write .NET apps in Notepad. Visual Studio is not required (although, once you get into it, VS sure helps a lot).

Mark Harrison points to Siegfried Weber's new SharePoint Syndication RSS generator. Cool. Sharepoint could really come on strong in the coming years in online publishing.

Kevin Schofield's team is the one who organized the TechFest. Thanks to blogs we all know something about Kevin and have a way to start a conversation with him. I wish he would write about what he thought was interesting at the TechFest. Or, even better, tell us more about what Bill thought.

I'm watching Bill Gates on my Tivo too. Charlie Rose really is a great interviewer.

The Village Voice's Whitney Pastorek covers all of the reasons that blogs suck.

I hear these claims all the time. Within days of starting my blog more than three years ago someone told me "oh, that's a fad, you won't be doing that in six months."

Today someone asked me "why are blogs important? Aren't they really ego gratification devices?"

Recently our community team and Microsoft Research did a study of Microsoft employees. Most hadn't read a single blog. But, looking at it the other way, a sizeable group had, and that group is growing rapidly.

So, now, blogging is seen as "overhyped" or "lacking a business model" or "just something egotistical people do" or "just for teenagers who post insipid stuff about their trips to the mall."

Heck, let's look at the Whitney's claims:

1. No one shows up for anything anymore. Whitney certainly doesn't hang out in my echo chamber. I have more dinners and a richer social life now than I've ever had before. It's gotten to the point where I'm forced to blog at 1:30 a.m.

2. No one tells me anything anymore. This one has some truth, but then I put my cell phone on my blog. And my IM address/email address. If you wanna know something, drop me a line.

2a. No one has fights anymore. Hmmm, you missed all the fun stuff that happened after I supported gay marriage here. Oh, and you should search on "scoble smarttags" on Google and see the fights I got into with Microsoft employees back before I was employed here. Plus, I had a divorce after I started weblogging. Don't know why you think fighting went out of style just cause we started blogging.

3. No one invites me to anything anymore. I have frequent geek dinners (I don't call them blogger dinners anymore on purpose). The general public is ALWAYS invited to these. I even make sure they are held at places that are affordable so everyone can come.

4. They have created a new world order. Oh, yes, the echo chamber. The cult. The group think, as my friend Christopher Coulter likes to call it. Yes, this happens. So? We still don't have a blogger in the White House. There aren't very many bloggers who are executives at major companies. Translation? Having an A-list blog and $3 will get you a latte at Starbucks, but not much else.

5. Did I mention that blogs are ruining my life? Well, I shouldn't throw stones. My blog has ruined my life too. Not. But I won't bother writing about the good things that have happened to me because of my blog.

Danah Boyd: What I want in an RSS tool.

I'll be honest. 1300 blogs is breaking me. But, I'm pushing through it. I wanna see what I learn from trying to swim in such a sea of information.

I'm having a ball and learning a ton (and building some awesome relationships with people like Danah).

Remember the Pew study of Internet users? The one that said only 2% of Americans weblog? Well, Marketing Wonk compares the numbers to CNN's viewership and comes up with some interesting conclusions.

So, who has the echo chamber now?

Seattle PI has a more-in-depth article on the Microsoft TechFest that I talked about last night.

S.B. Chatterjee points at news from Groove (they are running a developer's conference right now). S.B. also talks about Groove running on a PocketPC. I wanna see that!

SAP Ventures' Jeremy Nolan: Is email really dying.

It isn't here. However, for marketing purposes, it's already dead. I don't subscribe to email newsletters anymore. Finding them is too frustrating and RSS has replaced email in that area specifically.

Agreed about IM. I am using it less. Why? Too much noise. Too many interruptions.

Dow Jones columnist Jeremy Wagstaff: Did A Computer Virus Bring Down The Soviet Union?

I have heard stories like this for a while. If true, Jeremy's right to ask whether the CIA is among the first virus writers.