The CTIA Wireless Internet Caucus has turned on a blog. CTIA is one of the most powerful associations in the wireless and mobile space (you know, cell phones and stuff). Who's doing the blog? Alan Reiter, one of the world's top authorities on mobile stuff. He does a few blogs of his own including one on wireless and one on camera phones.

News.com: Apple wins round in lawsuit against fan sites.

The judge's findings here disagree with my own writings. Major win for Apple (and really all PR and marketing people who want to control information -- this is a major tool in their quiver to make sure you don't learn anything before they are ready to discuss).

Watch for more suits like this.

Welcome to Ray Ozzie: now that you're on board, can you and your team start your blogs back up? I really miss having your voice out there and now we need your voice more than ever. Also, Jeff Raikes told us you'll be playing a key role in our Information Worker vision. I'd love to hear your ideas on how RSS and OPML will play in that vision.

Oh, and make sure you get a nice Tablet PC! Your first stop after your new employee orientation should be building 32 where the Tablet team hangs out. I'm sure they'll be happy to show you the latest stuff. :-)

Scott Guthrie (he runs the IIS team, which is Microsoft's Web server): A few specific web-server benefits that IIS 7 will have over Apache 2.x.

I can't wait to see IIS 7 ship and see how developers like it.

Jason Matusow is the shared source guy at Microsoft and is now blogging. His latest post about open source is interesting: more open than open.

What I like about Microsoft is if I get bored of talking about Windows I can go over and talk with developers like Jason about the latest Linux distros. Welcome Jason, I'm subscribed.

Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Microsoft wants to reform the patent system. There's a major need for this. But gotta do it smartly so we don't end up with an even worse system. I hope some of the podcasters can get some patent attorneys to talk about this. I'm giving a talk next month at my brother's law firm. I'll see if I can arrange something like that.

I've also been talking with our intellectual property folks about a Channel 9 interview. Would that be interesting?

If you're at SXSW or in Austin, TX, and wanna get together, let me know. Right now I'm sitting in the Austin Convention Center. Free WiFi. My cell phone is 425-205-1921.

Paul Vick, who is on the Visual Basic team here at Microsoft, answers back the VB 6 petition.

Lots of people disagreed with me when I said that if you are always representing your company when in public. Tejas Patel, for instance, disagreed with me.

I find it interesting that people wanted me to take a much more aggressive stance on this issue. The problem with doing that is that most companies I know are very conservative about their public image. If you aren't careful out there you can get fired. We have several examples of companies firing people because they didn't match the public image the company wanted presented. So, I'm taking a more conservative approach.

If that scares away a few people from blogging, so be it. I'd rather people know what risks they are taking when they are in public than not.

And, again, you misunderstood what I was saying. I obviously have lots of opinions that don't agree with the "official" Microsoft opinion. Heck, I doubt you'll find many other Microsofties who agree that you should get fired for not having RSS on your Website (if there were, every Microsoft product site would have RSS, right?)

See, there's a difference between "speaking for" and "representing." Many of the people who argued against what I said don't understand the difference.

Here, let me try again. "Speaking for" is when you write "Microsoft's official position on XYZ, that was decided in a meeting last night is..."

"Representing" is when you decide to dress decently when going out in public with clients. Here's a test: if you did something illegal, or you walked around without any clothes on, you'd probably get fired, right? Ask Boeing's CEO. He had an affair with a coworker and got fired for that. Why? Because his behavior didn't match the image that the company wanted to portray. It was private behavior, but that doesn't matter.

And, yes, when you decide to speak in public you live under different rules than those who decide to stay quiet or anonymous. I don't recommend anonymity, though, because unless you're really good at hiding your identity you might get found out and then you'll be looked at the same as the rest of us are.

So, how do you protect yourself? Have a talk with your boss and find out what he/she will support. Every boss will have different standards. But if you're blogging in public and people know who you work for you gotta have that conversation.

That said, I recognize there's disagreement here and different attitudes. Just read my comments yesterday to see how disparate the views on this are.

Charlie Owen, who is on the Media Center Team, is wondering if there's interest in doing something with the Media Center Team at the PDC in September. I am! A Bird of a Feather session would be really great.

I just posted a bunch of things to my link blog. I was reading feeds on the red eye and almost caught up. In there I see a few people wondering what I thought about Microsoft's purchase of Groove.

Most excellent. But I didn't know about it before it happened. Ray Ozzie is a great guy, though. I've met him a few times. I'm looking forward to working with him and his team. Hey, Ray, wanna come on Channel 9?

I've used Groove a bit over the years too. Back at Fawcette Steve Gillmor had me using it with him to plan conferences. It would be interesting to see Groove-style functionality built into other things here, but don't wanna set any expectations since I don't know what the plans are.