Carl and Rory are giving away some cool stuff on .NET Rocks this week.

Speaking of Chinese, I'm reading a book "1421 The Year China Discovered America" that makes a darn good case that Christopher Columbus didn't discover America. He's done a ton of work that shows that the Chinese were actually here 60 years prior and that Christopher Columbus actually had copies of their maps!

That basically throws out a whole ton of history I learned in elementary school.

The book is a must read, by the way. Even if the conclusion is wrong it gives amazing detail about just how advanced Chinese culture was in the 1420s. I'm halfway through and had trouble putting it down to start blogging.

The book is also going to be a PBS Program in a few weeks.

Rajesh Jain points to a New York Times article on China today.

It's absolutely right. My dad just got back from a trip through China. My former boss, Olivier Garbe, still goes there often (his wife is Chinese and his six and three-year old kids speak three languages fluently, Chinese, French, and English).

Everything I hear about China just makes me more and more interested in the country. They are planning a major "coming out" party too for 2008. They are hosting the Olympics in Beijing. I really want to go.

My dad says that building in Shanghai continues on a wild pace. When I was there seven years ago 15% of the world's construction cranes were in Shanghai.

It's an amazing place and one that most Westerners know very little about. That's about to change bigtime.

Bram Cohen is the guy who wrote BitTorrent. He's a pretty smart dude. And that's an understatement. Anyway, on his blog he's talking about living off of credit cards and interviewing techniques. Interesting stuff from a developer who's done something pretty darn significant. Oh, you don't think BitTorrent is significant? Well, where's YOUR app that's gotten 10s of millions of downloads in the past three years without doing any PR or advertising?

Oh, Hollywood has found another use for the Tablet PC. Thanks to Microsoft Monitor (Joe Wilcox) for that one.

Stefan Goßner recently took a one-month trip through the Western United States and took a ton of awesome photos. It makes me want to take a road trip.

Last weekend we went to Mount St. Helens. That's something you gotta see before you die. The massive forces of nature are awe inspiring.

James: one thing. My Tablet PC +is+ a notebook. It has a keyboard. And works just like the Macintosh Powerbook my brother-in-law is using while sitting next to me right now. Only mine has a digitizer on it and can be used with the lame mouse keypad or a stylus.

So, I get the best of both worlds. You're the one missing out.

James Robertson is a Tablet PC skeptic: "No one I know wants to write with a pen."

Really? Meet this Indy Car race team. Or, ask any kid in college taking a chemistry class. Ever try to write down molecular structure using just a keyboard? ASCII art can go pretty far, but it's far easier using a pen.

Or, ask a digital photographer using Photoshop at the World Series to just use a keyboard (or use only one of those cursor-pads on a Macintosh or my Toshiba Tablet PC). I watched a photographer use a pen on his Tablet PC to make corrections to images in Photoshop.

Or, ask people in the real estate business. Imagine giving an appraisal on a notebook. Every few steps where you want to write a note you'd need to find a surface to sit your notbook on.

Or, ask the newspeople on TV who need to read their notes on camera. Tablet PC sure works better there than a regular notebook.

Or ask the doctor who needs to walk around and meet patients whether a Tablet PC or a Laptop is better.

Or, ask Larry if he could do his "art" using a mouse?

Or, ask the guys who run Paramount Farms whether they would rather have a Tablet PC or a Notebook. Hint: I did, and they say they wouldn't even think of a Notebook since they need to walk around the factory floor and don't have many places they could set a laptop down.

Shall I keep going? I could do this all day long.

On the plane tonight I should take pictures to show why the Tablet mode is so much better than the laptop mode.

Steve Makofsky: "I went up to the new Product Feedback Center and logged the bug."

Hey, isn't that exposing our dirty laundry? Well, yes. Thanks for the bug report Steve.

We're having a debate about whether or not it's a good thing to blog about your corporate dirty laundry.

Why the debate?

Well, Philip Su wrote about his experience on the Microsoft Money team. He gave the kind of insights that only an insider can have. Here's a sample: "I ultimately left the team because I was frustrated by the direction that Money was being led."

Keep in mind Philip still works at Microsoft. It's pretty rare to have an employee give this kind of insight. Usually corporate dirty laundry is saved for the book authors who'll occassionally be let into see how a company is run.

For instance, eBay let the author of "a Perfect Store" write about its dirty laundry (he details the decisions that led up to its servers being off air for about two days).

"But Philip got Slashdotted and that's bad," I can hear some of you saying.

Oh, hogwash. First of all, getting Slashdotted just gets people interested in your product once again. How long has it been since any of us thought about Quicken or Money? I haven't in years and this one post did more to get my attention than all the money (the real stuff) that the Money team has spent on marketing and awareness campaigns.

Plus, it added a whole new dimension. If there are some Money fans, it's given them something to talk about. Plus, they can look forward to the next version and see the market influences behind their most beloved (or most hated) new features.

Philip started a conversation. It's something that's rare in corporate life today. I hope to see more!

Think that sharing about your dirty laundry doesn't make great fans? Check out Mark Cuban's dirty laundry. He's the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks and lost a star player last week. Instead of trying to hide from that fact, he took it head on. I love this guy's blog and next time the Dallas Mavericks are in town I'm going to try to see them. He's turned me into a fan and I don't even like basketball.

Why does this matter so much? Why is it so powerful in building a brand? Because there's nothing like a good story to get humans interested. And this is corporate storytelling at its best. After all, what makes for a better story than someone sharing what they learned after making a mistake?

Another story along these lines? A few weeks ago I was talking with the speech writer for one of our top executives. He was working on a presentation about what makes a great demo. So, of course I called the top expert in the field, Nathan Gold. He coaches corporations on how to give great demos.

He gave me a bunch of free advice. Things like start your demo with a demo, you can always talk about your company's mission later.

Or, keep the number of points and the number of words on your PowerPoint slides down to a small number. I notice that Steve Jobs at Apple regularly has slides with three or four words on them when he demos to his audience.

Or, be passionate on stage. Nothing kills a demo faster than a monotone voice.

But his most important feedback for me was: "tell a story."

Wrap up your demo in a story. "Why does that work?" I asked Nathan. "Because people remember you and your demo more if you give them a story."

So, Philip gave us a story. I'll never forget it. Will you?

Tell us more dirty laundry!

I bet you'll never hear that advice at a business school.