Speaking of RSS news aggregators, there's another new one, Optimal Access. It started out as an add-on to IE (it adds two rows of tabs, which makes it possible to store a bunch of stuff inside IE in new ways). But, when Karan Bavandi, founder of Optimal Desktop, originally showed it to me, I said "put an RSS aggregator in there and then I'll be interested." Well, he did. And I am.

I didn't know a browser could be made to do so much! Congrats Karan.

Add in all the new stuff that's happening in the Podcasting space and it's gonna be a good week for RSS users!

Anyone else know of a new RSS aggregator that not many people know about?

Randy Holloway is asking "where are all the SmartClients?" In the context of RSS aggregators.

How many do you need? There's Pluck. NewsGator. RSS Bandit. SharpReader. FeedDemon. IntraVnews. Klip Folio. With a new one shipping just in the past few hours: Viapoint. And that's just on Windows. I've been using Viapoint for a few days now and it's really interesting. Desktop search and RSS aggregator integrated.

I'll be writing more about Viapoint soon. It's worth trying out, though. There's a demo here. Already I can see a lot of ways I'll be using it. Anyone else try it out?

Hey, Randy, how many more do you need? Anyone else know of another non-browser-based News Aggregator that's out for Windows?

By the way, my definition of a SmartClient is one that doesn't run in the browser. So, I guess, Radio UserLand complies too, although the aggregator part runs in the browser.

On Saturday, Patrick and I got a tour through the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (it's on Shoreline, right by FWY 101, in the old Silicon Graphics building). I was blown away. Far better than I expected it to be. Following BloggerCon, we'll be going back because the Vintage Computer Festival is coming to the museum on November 6-7. I posted some pictures from the museum, among other places we visited with the nine guy on Saturday, to my moblog.

I'll be visiting this museum often. From what Dave Babcock, our tour guide and SR. docent there, told me, only 5% of the museum's holdings are on display.

This is not to be missed if you are a geek and you come to Silicon Valley. It was free too, and uncrowded (that won't last long). Volunteers are needed as well. They have big plans and seem well funded (they are rebuilding a DEC PDP-1, among other things).

I don't know how I continually get so lucky, but on Saturday my son and I took the Channel 9 guy on a tour of Silicon Valley and on the tour we met the CEO of Google, and the founder of Silicon Valley's most important camera store. I put the details about that over on Channel 9 (you gotta check out the funny video that Chris Pirillo did).

We met Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, in the Keeble and Shuchat camera store in Palo Alto. I dropped in there to see if my friend James was working (he was off -- he was the guy who started their digital camera division back before anyone knew anything about digital). I knew James cause he worked at a competitive camera store back in the 80s when I worked for LZ Premiums in San Jose.

While there I grabbed a Bogen part for my tripod and headed for the line to get to the cash register. Almost bumped into a guy wearing a Google shirt. "Do you work for Google?" I asked. Turns out he did and when he said his name was Eric Schmidt I almost fell over. "Very honored to meet you."

Anyway, I tried to be a good ambassador for Microsoft. I gave him a Channel 9 guy and my business card. Told him I liked the new Google desktop search application. "Thanks," he said.

After he walked away I got to the counter. There, running the cash register, was Terry Shuchat, founder of the camera store. He remembered me, even though I hadn't seen him for 15 years or so. Wow. We had a nice chat, told me that he'd heard from my old boss, shared some stories.

On the way home tonight I thought about what Terry had taught me. It was more than you might think. He taught me the value of a good back-door partnership between competitors. You see, if we ever ran out of cameras, we'd call Terry and he'd be happy to get us some more. We always returned the favor. He took care of me, even though our store was a fierce competitor of his. It's something that I remember even today. It's why I go to his store and often pay more than other stores charge.

The other thing that impressed me was he was working the cash register. What a great leader. He has enough money and respect that he doesn't need to do that anymore. But it's a statement that he's gonna do all the jobs in the store. I'm sure that's a big part of why his employees are incredibly loyal -- and the store always is the best run of any camera stores I've been in.

Anyway, hope you had a great weekend.

Bill Gates, in Information Week: The Enduring Magic of Software.

No, this isn't the memo I asked Bill for a week ago. Dang, I wish Bill had a blog.

Update: I corrected a mistake in this entry. Sorry to Information Week for getting it wrong.

Just got back from a fun weekend. I'm uploading 350 items to my link blog. Got a bit behind, that's three days worth of stuff. Big trends? Google's desktop search, Jon Stewart's thrashing of CNN's Crossfire (I heard people in the plane tonight talking about this), and of course, Podcasting. But, I'd guess that these three topics together only make up 70 of the items. Lots of interesting stuff. Unfortunately the RSS feed will only show the last 100 items, so gotta look in the browser if you want the full effect.

Thanks to my brother-in-law (the one who works for Apple) for putting us up for the weekend. Yes, he made sure to taunt me with his 17-inch PowerBook. Ahh, modern families.