Jeff Sandquist is looking for a tool that'll let him create a linkblog of podcasts. Kunal, what do you think? He's the one who wrote my link tool. Jeff has a new Zen Micro, and is listing some of his favorite podcast.

Joel Spolsky recommends sticking with VB 6.

I agree. If you have software that already works, why upgrade to a new system?

On the other hand, do you need something that .NET provides?

For instance, check out some of the stuff that Indigo or Avalon will let you do. Will that make your app better? If so, go for it. But, yes, be prudent.

Don't just change because Microsoft tells you to. Seems like good advice to me!

There are so many people blogging here that I'm not worrying too much about doing SXSW blogs. Visit Technorati. There's two sites: SXSW and SXSW2005

Blogging isn't all fun and games. Here's a blog, Anoopa, done by Dylan Greene (a reader of this blog), for a woman who is tragically close to death due to a car accident last week.

I don't know what to say. Anoopa will be in my thoughts all day.

I'm 10 feet from Wonkette (aka Ana Marie Cox)! First news? She's married. Sorry guys.

Is she a star? Well, at SXSW it's standing room only. And there are TV cameras here and lights.

We just posted Chapter two of our corporate weblogging book. Shel Israel researched and wrote this one, which is mostly about Microsoft's role.

Don't worry, this book won't be about Microsoft. Shel is talking to the Firefox guys and the General Motors folks and many other businesses for future chapters.

Dave Sifry, of Technorati: State of the Blogosphere.

I agree with Denise Howell, this podcast done by Chris Pirillo (an interview with a spammer) is really scary. Several people have mentioned it to me in the hall here at SXSW.

Rogers Cadenhead has more on how Mark Pilgrim's "ScobleF***ker" script works. I originally misunderstood what this script did. I corrected my original entry. On any of my pages it ONLY displays the links on the page. Heh!

Dave Winer: Mark Pilgrim's "Butler" is a GreaseMonkey script. It only runs in Firefox. You need to load GreaseMonkey first. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any webpage to change its behavior. Then you gotta add Mark Pilgrim's "Butler" script.

This was to make a point that the users are in control of how content can appear. It does a bunch of things. Removes Google adds. It can also add links to things (I was mistaken earlier when I said it removed links to my site. Instead it adds links to whenever it finds my URL on a page). For instance, like here: http://scoble.weblogs.com.

Very interesting.

Some people are wondering if I find this evil, even though it does almost the same thing that Smarttags and Autolink do.

I don't. Here's why: this is all about individual users. There's no default behavior loaded. Users need to go around and add in scripts individually. And, I can make my own Greasemonkey scripts.

I'll have to play with it more. I wonder what happens if there are two conflicting GreaseMonkey scripts, for instance. How does it decide which link to use?

Heh, Scott Hanselman and Rory Blyth put together a funny "bathroom" video: Rory and Scott go to TechED.

I love all these funny videos! The Don Box'er jokes are funny. Open source marketing? Well, no, open pants marketing? Hmmm.

At SXSW I'm in the "Does design matter" panel discussion and Jeffrey Zeldman pulled up "Virtual Stan" and Joe Clark found that he temporarily couldn't continue because Virtual Stan was up on screen. I guess you just had to be here to get the joke. Update: Virtual Stan was just funny because the page was up on the screens and Zeldman was making

But, back to the point. Yesterday I joked that I didn't want design here. That's not quite true. I chose my design because it is faster and because it works on all devices.

Kelly Goto, on the panel, got it. She says that in many contexts design won't matter. Particularly because of mobile computers. Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out that there's a difference between my site and Jason Santa Maria's.

Update: I'm sorry for making it sound like Joe couldn't complete his session at all. I guess you just had to be there. I updated this post to make it more accurate of what actually happened.

Yesterday I had lunch with Craig Newmark, the guy who founded Craig's List (along with Terry Storch and Brian Bailey of Fellowship Church). Terry reports on the lunch. That was a real thrill. I got my job at NEC due to a Craig's List posting. If it weren't for that I'd never have gotten to Microsoft.

I'm staying with Brian Bailey, who graciously put me up in his hotel room. His wife had a funny line:

"Now I really know you're a link whore."

Oh, Craig says thanks to Bill Gates (and me) for buying him lunch.

Why is that significant? Cause Craig uses Linux for everything. We joked that we could try to buy Craig's List on Microsoft's American Express card. We think eBay might have something to say about that, though. But, we doubt American Express would approve THAT!

Better Bad News today is just too funny. At SXSW we are having a good laugh over this one. "Is being clueless a crime now?"

They are responding to one of my readers -- James Robertson -- to make fun of themselves and James.

Classic stuff.

Kim Cameron is a guy I've been paying a lot of attention to. Why? He's taking a leadership role here in identity. What's identity? Well, why is that when you sign into Typepad that Google Maps doesn't know anything about you? Imagine a system where your various Internet services could share information about you? Cross-company. Cross tool. Really scary stuff, if done wrong, but if done right will make the Internet far easier to use. So, I watch Kim's blog very carefully. So should you if you care about such things.

Today, though, he explains how blogs are helping him, as an architect, build better products and services.

Good stuff!

Speaking of Firefox. Lots of people have been coming over to me and showing me this new plugin named "Greasemonkey."

And, of course, they show me Mark Pilgrim's greasemonkey script (Full set of his greasemonkey script is here).

Oh, the fun!

What does it do? If you run it it removes only shows the links in my content on my pages. Heh! Payback for my anti-Smarttag and Autolink stances is so cruel.

On the Autolink topic, I've had lots of discussions with folks about Autolink. See, I don't mind things like Greasemonkey at all. Why not? Because they are individually programmed or loaded by the users not by a corporation.

I hope that when Microsoft does linking utilities that they do them like Greasemonkey does. I've loaded Greasemonkey into my Firefox.

Some people here at the SXSW shindig were giving me heck because they said that MSN's new aggregatore at www.start.com/1/ didn't work on Firefox.

So, today I tried it out and, hmmm, there's a new greeting on that page "now in new Firefox flavor!"

Cool!

The MSN bookmark manager at www.start.com/2/ still only is IE for now, though. I love it, though. The message on that page? "We hear you: Firefox support is nearly here!"

Steven Levy has the bloggers talking about the "blogging divide." He asked where the women and minorities are in the blogging world. Memeorandum has links to both the original article and some of the blogger reaction.

Joe Wood asks "is Aero dead?"

Aero is the code-name for the new user interface that'll come with the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.

No, it's not dead. Aero doesn't depend on Avalon, by the way.

That said, a lot about Longhorn has been changing since I first saw the prototypes for Longhorn more than two years ago. I'm going to continue to be quiet about Longhorn until I have bits to hand out because it's just too hard to try to explain all this until you see the full picture. When you get the full thing, then we can talk about how it all works and whether or not it exceeds your expectations.

Translation: there are a few suprises to come. Let's talk at the PDC in September.