Reading Dan Gillmor's first chapter, I was taken back to 9/11. It made me want to look at my post for that day, so I stuck "Scoble 9/11" into Google and quickly found my post titled: "unforgettable day." My son's pictures are still powerful. I remember talking with Dave, and having people turn on all over the world that morning. Glenn Fleishman told me he learned of the news from my blog. It's amazing how much the world changed that day, and how we realized how our technology had changed our ability to learn, share, and figure out what was going on.

Just a decade earlier, during the 1989 earthquake, it took us several hours to get a single photograph across the country. We forget how much our lives have changed because of our computers in just a few short years.

Anyway, thanks Dan for the reminder.

As linked over on Scripting.com: Dan Gillmor has the intro and chapter one of his book up. Dan's a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News and has been watching (and participating in) the blogosphere for longer than I have. He's posting chapters and wants your feedback.

On my fast scan through it, looks like it'll be an interesting read.

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting essay about how the advertising industry is changing how it measures its effectiveness.

Thanks to Buzz Bruggeman for IM'ing this one to me: violent pong. I never knew Pong could be so violent. Brings me back to my childhood (that's what state-of-the-art videogames looked like back in the late 70s).

My brother Alex is an IT guy at a famous law firm in Silicon Valley. He's buying fire suppression systems for his data center. Anyone have any advice for him?

Personal note to Larry O'Brien. If you are gonna beg for an Orkut invite, put your name, and email address on your post.

Anyone else want to see what Google's Orkut is all about? I need several hundred more Orkut Friends to catch up to Marc Canter.

Fred Wilson theorizes that adding Google's ads onto his blog helped his page rank. I agree with his second post, though, where his readers told him that it's probably just that his blog has gotten more noticed by other bloggers. That's true. Fred's gotten onto my radar screen relatively recently. A link from someone like me (I have a Google PageRank of seven) will automatically raise you higher.

Dare Obasanjo: "When I think of thought leadership in the .NET world I'm more likely to think of Sam Gentile or Clemens Vasters than I am to think of some blue badge carrying employee at the Redmond campus."

I totally agree with that. But, I want to go deeper. What makes a "thought leader?" Dare has some opinions, but they don't nail it for me. And, I think this question goes to the deeper sense of reputation and trust that certain bloggers build up.

Why are Clemens and Sam at the top of my, and Dare's, mind when we think of "thought leaders?" Well, I know both of these guys from the offline world. They are expert in their domains. I know that from previous non-blog experience. So, when they say something on a topic, I believe them.

Now, let's compare that to Ryan Dawson. He's doing, by far, the most interesting stuff with the PDC Build of Longhorn. But, why don't we think of him as a thought leader? Because he hasn't been around very long? Because he hasn't spoken at a conference? Because he hasn't written a magazine article? Because he hasn't written an app yet? Because he hasn't had the cuts and bruises that this industry puts on people over time? (He's one of the younger people who came to the PDC).

How about Carl Franklin? He does the .NET Rocks radio show. Is he a thought leader?

Really, what's more interesting to people who develop with a technology? Something like the above or something like what Microsoft Employee Chris Brumme does? (please note that Chris Brumme and Dare Obasanjo are the only Microsoft employees I'll link to in this post).

I don't know. As a blogger, I really love what Mike Gunderloy is doing. Or James Avery. Or Julia Lerman. Or Larry O'Brien.

Anyway, I am going to work on this theme for a little while and try to build a directory of all the .NET bloggers who don't work at Microsoft. And then I'm going to try to give you my ideas on who is a "Thought Leader" in that community. No Microsoft employees will be considered. I'm finding a lot more .NET bloggers than I expected.

The Charlie Rose interview with Bill Gates is now online. Am I wrong, or is Charlie Rose the best interviewer in the business right now?

Tonight is the night to try out new search engines. Here's another couple (grats of Robin Good):

Mooter: groups your searches so you can see associated words, click on those, and see more.

Eurekster lets you remember your favorite searches. Personally, Feedster makes a lot more sense.

Grokker lets you see your searches in a useful visual format. But this costs money. Gonna be hard to succeed with that kind of business model.

Alan Reiter, over on Camera Phone Report, discusses new phones from Sony Ericsson. I still am drooling over the Motorola MPx phone, though. That one is gonna be tough to beat.

However it turns out, this year is shaping up to be "year of the camera phone."