More fun with search. So, Google, who has the best geek blog? Ahh, that makes me feel good!

So, MSN, who has the best geek blog?

What does MSN have against me? Heh!

Which search is more accurate? To tell you the truth, I think MSN's answers are in this example. Even though my ego doesn't like it as much.

Tomasz Czajka "tomek" won the TopCoder contest. Lots of pictures over on my photo blog. Of course the Nine Guy was there to congratulate him.

He told me after the contest "this is getting too easy." It's the third TopCoder contest he's won. He's the top-rated geek in the world. Do you have the stuff to beat him?

I made a mistake earlier. The winner gets a $20,000 check.

Next contest to watch? The Imagine Cup. That's open to high school and college students. Registration is now open.

Hmm, if you search Google for "Evil Geek" I don't appear until the fourth page.

So far I like Google better. I'm less evil there. :-)

Alright! The MSN Search team's blog is getting interesting. They link to bombs and rumors. Hey, I didn't know that if you search for "evil corporation" on MSN you get Microsoft.

Oh, search for "evil geek" on MSN. Oh. I'm the most evil geek. Who is running this search engine? I want a recount!

Liz Lawley: the art of the apology.

We all mess up. It's human. We're all judged by how fast we fix up our messes. By the way, it's interesting, but both the reason for getting into the mess, and the way to get out of the mess were covered in my corporate weblogger manifesto.

In fact, rule #7 was how they got in. Rule #8 was how we cleaned up the mess. Rule #9 will be invoked next time around.

Personal note to Christopher Coulter: get a freaking blog already!

For the rest of you, he keeps sending me cool stuff in email like the "super" post.

James Governor writes a super super super blog post. Heh.

I must have missed that meme. I knew about the "so..." meme where Microsofties start every sentence with "so." I also keyed in on Steve Ballmer's "bla, bla, bla" meme. He says that often lately in the times I've seen him talk (uses it instead of etc).

But, I guess I'm not super enough to be included on the current speaking style. Maybe we should start an email alias for that -- the "how to sound like BillG" alias. Hmmm.

Anyway, have a super weekend!

Geek Dinner tomorrow night in Silicon Valley. 7 p.m. at Chef Chu's. Can anyone give a ride to Feedster's Scott Johnson? He's coming from San Francisco.

As usual, everyone is invited, even those of you who think I'm a troll or an idiot.

I love Marc Canter. He knows how to get me to link to him. (He gives feedback about Microsoft can better work with developers and entrepreneurs like Canter -- Canter started the company that now is known as Macromedia).

To answer his number one request, I'm interviewing Kosar Jaff soon. He's one of the guys who invented USB. I'll get his take on his vision of how home networking will go in the future.

Thanks for the nice compliment Marc!

Over on my link blog I'm linking to anyone who has anything intelligent to say about the new MSN Search. Some of the headlines you'll find there?

MSN Sucks; the new MSN Search: an unmitigated disaster; Will consumers adopt MSN search?; MSN Search (beta) Already Better Than Google in Some Searches; MSN Search is Learning in Real Time?; A wasted opportunity for Microsoft and the rest of us.

By the way, Adam Bosworth's weblog (he works at Google now, used to work at Microsoft) is most interesting. Here's a quote of his that caught my eye: "most of the value today is coming from the community, the reputation, the access to information and goods and services, and the media itself."

That fit right in when I was over at the CEO Bloggers' Club and saw this post from Laurent titled Monopoly friendly: Google king of the world.

Here's a quote: What was Google’s secret weapon against its competition? Trust. Google made a bet on transparency.

So, there's the hint. How can MSN (or Yahoo) beat Google? Be more transparent. Dave Winer, last night, told me exactly how to do that (and gave some hints in his essay about MSN search). I'll let him discuss it on his blog, but he's right. The search world today is NOT transparent. It isn't customer friendly.

What does that mean? There's business opportunity. Remember, the world thought search was done five years ago. Then two kids at Stanford reminded us all that it wasn't. You know the rest of the story.

The question is, who'll remind the two kids that it isn't done? A big company like Microsoft or Yahoo? Or those upstarts over at Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub?

My advice to MSN? Forget Google. Listen to customers. Listen to your Search Champs. Listen to the developers. Listen to the bloggers. Do what Microsoft does best: build a platform and let millions of flowers bloom.

One last thing. Neither Google nor MSN brought back the MSN Search Blog. Like I said, there's work to be done in search.

The TopCoder competition is intense. $50,000 is on the line for the winner. You can come over this afternoon and watch the finals. At the Santa Clara Marriott. It's cool, you can watch the competitors code right in front of you. They play their screen at stations around the room. So, you can get some insights into how they think. Each competition is an hour and fifteen minutes. Three problems to solve. You get to choose Java, C#, C++, or VB. The longer you take, the fewer points you get.

And your code has to run at the end. Whew.

Everyone who has gotten to this point (more than 1000 people started out in this particular contest) can write their own tickets. The recruiters from Yahoo, Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, are reminders that if you're smart and you can code you can still have a great career and you will be able to choose from a variety of interesting companies.

Anyway, I'll be back over there this afternoon. Watch my photoblog for more pictures.