Mary Hodder responds and says she wasn't asked to keep the Bloglines deal a secret.

Hmmm.

Google does it again: Google Maps.

Oh, we're gonna have fun with this, though.

Search for Microsoft's street address:

One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052

It is at least three miles off. Microsoft's campus is actually real near the Eastside Hospital (it's across the 520 and East from where the pushpin says it is).

I wonder if they are trying to get us employees lost on the way to work. Heh!

It was accurate, though, for my home. (Sorry, I won't put the address here in public).

Also, if you type "Google Mountain View" it accurately will bring you to Google's headquarters, but if you type "Google Kirkland" it doesn't know where the new Google office is up in Kirkland.

Ask it where "Silicon Valley" is and it takes you to Kansas. Hmmm.

But, those are unfair questions.

Now, how can I put my blog on this map again? Hey, we'll stick our map guy, Chandu Thota, on that. :-)

All joking aside, though, Google Maps is pretty nice!

Compare to:

Microsoft MapPoint.

Mapquest.

Yahoo Maps.

Map 24.

Streetmap.co.uk (England).

Any others we should be comparing Google's new offering to?

Which one do you like the best? Why?

Sad to see the "Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk" site go. It's now redirecting to Bink. Thanks to Ron Green for letting me know.

Larry Osterman reviews Adam Barr's new book "Find the Bug." Larry has worked at Microsoft writing code for more than 20 years, so he knows a little bit about the topic.

Just had a great lunch with Leo Laporte here in beautiful downtown Petaluma. Talked about podcasting, blogging, radio and more. I recorded our lunch on my Tablet PC. He's gonna podcast it later. We gave Craig Stammler, the owner of Bella Luma Caffe heck for his website. He's going to start a blog. Great sandwiches, nice people!

Frank Barnako, of MarketWatch, says that bloggers won't keep a secret.

Hey, I'm keeping several secrets right now. Not just Microsoft ones, either. Quite a few companies that are showing their wares at Windows Anywhere this week, and Demo, next week, have given me sneak peaks. All they had to do was start the conversation with "now, can you keep this off the blog until Feb. XX?" If I agreed, and I later broke that promise, then I deserve heck.

By the way, I know of several instances where mainstream press reporters broke embargoes and NDAs to report stories too. Including some of the most famous reporters around.

The thing is that the new world isn't controllable. If a secret gets out everyone will know it within hours (if not minutes).

In the old world the word-of-mouth network was inefficient so you could always spin your way out of things.

Those days are long gone.

14 years ago when I was a student at San Jose State University there were only a small number of professors who were pushing the bleeding edge. Stephen Greene was one of those guys. I'm honored to be invited to speak to his Journalism 132 class later this week.

At 2:30 p.m. on Thursday I'll be speaking to a group of students (it's open to the public, actually) at San Jose State's awesome new library. Details here.

Free music? Every day from Feb. 8 through Feb. 12, in the United States only, As part of its coverage of the Grammy Awards, MSN Music will give away the MSN Music team's pick for Best Song in pop, rock, rap/hip-hop, soul/R&B, or country, with a different genre highlighted each day.

Over on Channel 9 we're in the middle of another tour of Microsoft Research. The video I put up today is a fun one. You get to meet Eric Horvitz, Microsoft's top inventor. What's he working on? Solving information overload! Oh, my favorite topic.