Are you a geek? In London?

Well, a group of people have put together a Geek Dinner for February 2 in London. Special guest? Frank Shaw, vice president at Waggener Edstrom.

Don't be fooled. Frank is a geek and is one of the most tied in people in the industry. I wish I could be there!

Oh, I hear Hugh Macleod (he's the guy who does those cool drawings on the back of business cards) is gonna be there too. Damn, damn, damn.

Jean Paoli, co-creator of XML, dropped by my office yesterday beaming with his French smile. Told me that Microsoft had opened up our Office format and showed me the press on it:

Official Microsoft Office site listing the new Office 2003 XML Reference Schema.

Techworld: Microsoft makes Office an 'open standard'

CRN: Microsoft Works on Open Formats with State of Mass.

Calling all David Allen fans:

Jeff Sandquist has started a Getting Things Done Wiki.

Another co-worker, Scott Garvey, just emailed me about the Escape Travel Album and said it's the coolest thing. After playing with it for a few seconds, I agree.

Who did this?

Scott gives a nod to Josh Rubin who linked to it.

Congrats to Jason and Allie Shellen (works at Google on the Blogger team) on the birth of their new son.

My coworker Karsten Januszewski (he works a few doors away from me in building 18) wrote an easy-to-follow article on creating 2D and 3D dynamic animations in Avalon for MSDN.

Dave Ciccone: iPod Shuffle vs. Sandisk MP3.

"Sorry Apple big miss here!"

My comments aren't working right now. Looks like a server filled up. Am working to fix that. In the meantime, post on your own site and I'll watch PubSub.

Update: Dave Winer fixed the problem. Thanks Dave for the Saturday evening tech support! I really appreciate that.

Yes, yesterday my Apple iPod Shuffle arrived.

Some folks have said that the Shuffle won't be good for Podcasting.

They are full of it.

Not because they aren't right. Yes, I am already frustrated by the lack of podcasting UI. I can't skip ahead in MP3 files. I can't see which tracks I have and I can't choose to pull up a specific one (since I can put dozens of podcasts and music files on a Shuffle that might be fun).

But, if you look at the world through a "the feature glass is half empty" point of view then you'll totally miss what Apple has done.

Apple has made a new product category: geek jewelry.

This thing is SSSSHHHHHHWWWWWWEEEEEEETTTTTT.

Wearing it makes me feel young again. Something that, now that I'm 40, I need to do occassionally.

It's like my cell phone. It makes you want to fondle it. It is so light. And feels like Lego made it (the plastic evokes those emotions and reminds me of when I used to build wonderful things out of Legos).

OK, let's just admit it. It's about the white headphones. Apple has made those a cultural requirement. If you don't have white headphones you aren't cool.

How can Creative and Dell and all the other players compete? Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

The first thing they need to do is admit that it isn't about the features. It's about the whole end-to-end experience. From seeing the iPod billboards on the side of the freeway to buying the thing at the store to opening up the package to loading your first songs or podcasts to putting the headphones in and listening to it to the conversations that happen when you wear it.

The non-Apple side of the world isn't even playing the same game.

I've gotta say that Steve Jobs and his crew deserves all the kudos and stock price that's come to them lately.

It sure will be interesting to see how the rest of the world competes with Apple. There are some exciting big names out there that I'm waiting to really show up on the big boys' table. Sony. Dell. Creative. Panasonic. All the consumer electronics companies. Aiwa. JVC. Denon. Etc.

Can they create a cultural movement the way Apple has? Well, I know they can. But it takes us working together.

Sony working together with Microsoft? Hey, Joi, you know where you can find me. (Joi Ito has great relationships with folks at Sony and other Japanese electronics companies).

Until then, I'm wearing these white headphones.

Thanks Steve Rubel for the geek jewelry.

Claire Giordano loves the signage at Oakland International Airport. I agree, it's the best that I've seen in an airport so far. Seattle's signage sucks in comparison (Seattle's isn't as colorful or as useful).

I'd love to meet the developer who did Oakland's system (it runs on Windows, by the way, the font gives it away).

Oh, and since Claire works at Sun Microsystems and said something nice about a Microsoft system she gets a link. What good is that? Well, now we can have a conversation about Solaris on her blog too. See how that works? Cross-competitor linking.

Did that ever happen five years ago? I don't remember it ever happening in this industry. Isn't this much better for customers than trying to pretend that the other guys don't have some good ideas? By the way, Sun's bloggers have made Sun much more interesting to watch lately. Don't you agree?

Subscribed!

Oh, and if you're in an airport and find better signage than Oakland has, can you post a picture of it?

Rumors of my demise are going around the net. Not true. But, I am a bit burned out. My friends tell me "take some time off for yourself." And that's what I've done the past few days.

I just got through half of my feeds -- my linksite has tons of new stuff.

Oh, and something small and white arrived today. Thanks Steve Rubel! It's awesome.

I have a ton of email still to get caught up on (I'm struggling to get back onto David Allen's system and am a good ways back, but whew, email just flows in lately faster than I can look at it. When I was out with David Allen the other evening I showed him my cell phone and showed him that about 30 emails had come in while we were out to dinner.

Sorry if you've emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you. It's becoming clear in my life that I can't do it all.