I'm outta here for the weekend. Gonna go wine tasting with Maryam.

In the meantime, I've uploaded a bunch of stuff to my linkblog. That should keep you busy reading for a few minutes.

Or, how about this? The Transcend Digital Album, is a $360 portable music and photo sharing device with a 20GB hard drive. One big advantage over the iPod Photo is that you can shove Compact Flash cards in here. Oh, that's cool. Now I could take one of these and copy all the photos off of my Nikon.

Steves Digicams has an awesome review. I love that site.

Only plays MP3 audio files, though. Which, for most of you, won't be a problem.

Bummer, no microphone, so not a good podcasting device.

Gateway comes out with a portable media device that plays audio files and photos for $249.99. Holds 4 gigs. That'll hold about 820 songs assuming each song is about 5 megs. Same size and weight as an iPod mini.

Here's the same thing on Engadget.

Heh, my former boss (Steve Sloan) takes pictures of my current boss (Lenn Pryor). Lenn was giving a speech on podcasting today at the OSX conference. Steve was my boss 13 years ago when I was a student at San Jose State University (I worked my way into a job setting up Macs and stuff there).

Steve's been doing a great job blogging the OSX conference.

By the way, Bluetooth is really cool. I see that Dori Smith gave a talk on it (she's one of the people responsible for getting me into blogging). The other day Peter Loforte used my phone to connect to the Internet. It took just a few seconds to set it up. It was amazing to see a Tablet connect to my phone and then use its Internet service to get out on the Net. We take this stuff so for granted, but when I was at San Jose State if you had told me that my computer would connect to my phone which would connect to the Internet -- all wirelessly, I would have said "no way."

The other funny thing? I have more RAM on my phone than we had in the entire journalism department back in 92. Back then we had dozens of Macs: all with 8MB of RAM. RAM back then cost something like $400 a meg. It just blows my mind to realize that I have 512MB on my phone.

Pat Helland's blog made me cry. Does your personal life belong on your blog? Yes it does.

I don't know what else to say. I didn't know Pat's wife, barely even know Pat for that matter (I've seen him a couple of times on campus and interviewed him for Channel 9).

It's not an easy thing to read, but its one of those pieces that'll hit you emotionally. It sure did me. I gotta go hug Maryam.

Ken Levy sent this along. It's a video of the new electronic voting machines in Florida. Funny! Or maybe not, if you've been reading the real news lately.

I was listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code last night and he laid into Steve Jobs for not getting that people want to use their iPods for anything other than music.

That's OK. You can podcast on, um, other devices out there. If Apple won't get that people want to create content and that other people want to listen to that content, we'll be happy to jump in and help out.

There's a podcasting revolution underway inside Microsoft. Just yesterday I was listening to Adam Curry and someone heard it and walked by and said "is that Adam Curry? He rocks!"

Jake Ludington helps out too, showing how to podcast on Windows Media.

Bill Gates' birthday is today -- he's 49. He told me that all geeks could take off November 9th in celebration. Just kidding. He didn't tell me that. But we're taking the day off anyway. Can you guess why? Just blame it on Mick Stanic's blog.

Speaking of Channel 9, we're now including enclosures in the videos RSS feed. It'll be interesting to see if I can get it to shove these things onto my cell phone automatically.

Heh, the Channel 9 guy goes to Disneyland and Legoland. I wonder where he'll show up next? I hear he got an invite to the Google open house, but since he's touring the world I'm not sure if he sent in his RSVP yet. Thanks to Adam Barr for the photos!There's a bit of Lego news on his blog too.

The home page of Microsoft.com is changing a lot lately. Yesterday there was a Macromedia Flash app on the home page with some cool content. Today a whole nother thing is there. Nice to see that we're experimenting with things on the home page.

The Technorati Top 100 blogs list has changed a lot recently. Lots of new blogs and it feels more accurate based on my looks around the blogosphere. I'm honored to be holding down the #64 spot.

Compare to Feeds.scripting.com's Top 100 list; Feedster's Top 100 list; and Bloglines Top Blogs list.

Russell Beattie is on a streak. Here he tells Steve Jobs that he's wrong. That people DO want video on their portable devices. I agree. My memory card arrives tomorrow for my Audiovox 5600. First thing that's going on it? Some podcasts and some video I took of my son. While you can just show your friends pictures of your kid on your iPod, I can show you pictures AND video. It's a killer feature.

Notice the stats that Russell quotes from cell phone industry. Video is hot.

I'm playing with Microsoft's new Photo Story 3 application, released yesterday, free for Windows XP customers.

Yesterday we put up an interview and demo that Channel 9 did with the team. You get to meet the geeks who wrote and tested it. It's a good way to see how a team at Microsoft is organized.

It's been getting good reviews so far. Paul Thurrott reviewed it. Sean Alexander talked about it. Amit Agarwal wrote: "If you use Windows XP, you need to download Photo Story 3 immediately. It's that good."

So, Tim at Sun, and Jeremy at Yahoo, both are looking for a new cell phone. Problem is they just want a phone. That caused Russell Beattie to respond with this:

"ARE YOU TWO OUT OF YOUR F*****G MINDS!?!"

Actually, I'm going to take a totally different stance. All three of them are right and the thing is, they can all be happy.

See, I wanted a phone too. You know, something that looks like a phone. Is small and light. Feels good in the hand. Doesn't look like you're talking to a plate when you're using it. Something that fits in a pocket. Something where I can look up phone numbers easily and enter them too. Something with a keypad that looks similar to my first AT&T phone that I used back in the late 1970s.

That's exactly why I'm so happy with my new Audiovox phone.

But, Russell is right too. You should demand more. You should have a nice color screen. A Web browser so you could check the World Series score, even when you're stuck in some meeting somewhere. Fun games so you can make your kid happy when he's stuck in the back seat of your car for two hours. Pictures. Videos. A camera so you never have to miss a special moment. Bluetooth so you can sync everything up to your new PC and, maybe even, your car.

Yes, all three of you are right. Let me know when you want to check out my phone.

Yeah, I know Russell doesn't like Microsoft stuff. There are phones like mine that run Symbian too. No excuses. But check out how my phone synchronizes my calendar and email and I think you'll be sold.

What's the power of an empowered blogger? Well, check out the picture of Carl Franklin in the New York Times today talking about podcasting. His show? .NET Rocks!

So, Dave and Adam, that took, what, seven weeks to go from your blogs to the New York Times? How about next time we shoot for four weeks?

Do you understand how blogs work as message amplifiers yet? See, Cyrus Farivar, the author of that piece, reads blogs. He has one of his own.

It doesn't matter if you're an "A list" blogger. It just matters if you can get Cyrus to check out your idea and take it on.

Another blogger, Steve Rubel, is featured in another article in the New York Times where they write that Madison Avenue is pondering the potential of weblogs.

Every blogger who talks about your message amplifies it. Some amplify it just a little. Maybe they only have 10 readers (it was only three years ago that I fit into that category). Maybe they have millions like the New York Times has.

Now, the trick is getting people to talk about your ideas. That's the hard part. But, it isn't that hard and I'm sure that any of those guys quoted above would love to give you, your cause, or your company, a hand in getting started.