Kuro5hin.org: Who will Google Buy Next?

Audio files from the Reboot conference last week are starting to appear. Nicole Simon links to them.

Shelley Powers: When one hears persistent squeakings of teeth.

Interesting set of links and interesting point Shelley! And, yes, I am being piled on. That's cool. It's nice and warm at the bottom of the pile. :-)

Mike Hall and I are having an argument in the halls here. I believe that podcasting is a term that should only refer to technologies that deliver MP3 files via RSS feeds.

He, on the other hand, believes that podcasting can refer to any file delivered via an RSS feed.

I suggested that we use these terms:

podcasting=MP3 delivered via RSS.

screencasting=screen videos delivered via RSS (format could be Camtasia, WMV, Flash)

videocasting or videoblogging or or vlogging or vblogging=videos delivered via RSS (format could be Quicktime, Windows Media Format, Real, MP4, Flash video, etc).

Do we need other terms?

Oh, and what happens when Steve Jobs releases a video iPod?

What do you think?

Sun Microsystems launches OpenSolaris. Congrats! Yet another piece of evidence that we live in interesting technological times.

Yahoo is making moves to be a real powerhouse in "Generation C" software services. Jim Winstead just announced that Yahoo bought blo.gs.

I told the audience at Reboot that it feels a lot like 1989. Back then, if you wanted to create content on a computer, you probably needed a spreadsheet program, a word processing program, and a presentation program. All from separate vendors. All with a separate user interface.

Today, if you want to create and share content on the Internet you need to use a blog tool (like Blogger or MSN Spaces). A podcast creation tool and sharing service (like Audioblogger). A videoblog creation tool and sharing service (like Ourmedia). A photosharing service (like Flickr). All from separate vendors and all with different user interfaces.

Tomorrow? You'll probably choose a family of services all from one vendor.

What's the root system that connects all these "generation C" services together? Ping services like blo.gs or weblogs.com (Dave Winer owns that one).

So, now I wonder who'll buy weblogs.com.

Don't think that service is very important? Well, technorati, feedster, pubsub, and other services rely on it. Looks like Yahoo is making moves to make sure their "forest" doesn't rely on external resources.

I wonder what the MSN Spaces folks think about this? Do they see that blogging is a tree and that there's a bigger forest out there? One that a decade from now will look as important as the Office suite does today? (Hint: I think they do, which is why I'm so excited about the Virtual Earth team, but it would be interesting to see if MSN starts building other services around the blogging tree which would require either purchasing an already-existing ping server like weblogs.com or technorati.com or building their own which will be difficult to get interoperability from other "tree" vendors on).

Other comments? Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo. Dave Winer.

A friend of mine wonders if there's a place he can compare server stats with other bloggers on -- you know, hit rates, browser types, etc. That sounds like an interesting wiki project. I know Tim Bray puts some of his blog stats out in public. Anyone else?

I wish I had good blog stats, but UserLand doesn't provide many stats other than daily hit rates.

Big news. Joshua Micah Marshall, the guy who writes the Talking Points Memo, has endorsed the Tablet PC.

Don't know who he is? Famous political blogger. #12 on Technorati's list of top bloggers.

"So how did it go? Well, in so many words, the technology more than exceeded my expectations. And that's probably both a comment on the particular hardware I bought and the state of the technology in general. Over the last four or fives months mine has become completely integrated into almost all the work I do. And I can't imagine not using one."

Dan Gillmor shreds my post on the Chinese censorship thing.

Some quick hits before I go back to work. Vacation is over! Sigh.

Tristan Lewis compares Technorati vs. Google's treatment of A-list bloggers.

Sarah Blow is riding for the British Heart Foundation and is looking for sponsors for this worthy charity.

Nick Finck is helping put on the Webvisions 2005 conference in Portland. Lots of interesting Web developers, including Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr, are speaking.

Ponzi wants to get a "hottest geek contest" going (she's Chris Pirillo's fiance and is helping plan Gnomedex).

Brian Bailey is starting a new meme: thanks Dave.

Eric Marvlets posted about a guy who hacked himself. That's funny!

Robert Hess posted a new .NET Show, featuring 64-bit Windows.

Bud Gibson writes that Folksonomies are making Technorati's Google Juice go up.

The EFF has posted a new legal guide for bloggers.

Ryan Campbell links to a long post by Kevin Hale about the importance of RSS.

The podcast crew at TechED has posted a ton of videos from that big Microsoft conference. Hey, guys, these are NOT podcasts. Podcasts are MP3 files delivered over RSS. These are videocasts or WMVcasts, but don't mess with the terminology.

Seattle blog meetup is this Wednesday.

Dru Sellers wants to know why it's so hard to see what's happening on his Windows box (and gives us some ideas for how he'd like to see this data in the future).

Don McAllister asks are we cloning Bill Gates (and gets his clip played on Adam Curry's show). Oh, darn, the truth is out! Heh!

Vanilla Gorilla asks "could Microsoft be developing an RFID browser?"

Hmm, a new tool that lets me mirror my posts, which I do on Radio UserLand, to a Blogger.com address.

Ward Cunningham, the guy who invented Wikis, is using the Channel 9 Wiki to make his first scenario and a solution. Speaking of Wikis, the guy who wrote FlexWiki, the wiki technology used on Channel 9 will be up on Channel 9 later today as soon as I get time to post the video up.

Paul Colligan has a bunch of podcast tools up. Here's the URLs: http://www.podcasttools.com - free training and videos for starting Podcasters; http://www.podcasttools.com/blog - my blog on the "business" of Podcasting; http://www.mypodcastcenter.com - my directory; http://www.premiumpodcasting.com - we figured out how to password protect RSS feeds

FireAnt for Windows has been released. They claim it's the easiest way to find, download, and watch video on the Web. Downloading now.

Emily Hambridge writes about the fun of dating an Apple developer. Good advice for those who want to date geeks. Replace Apple developer with Microsoft Geek and Maryam probably would agree with lots of that advice.

Last week Microsoft released a new Update Service. That got Fred Pullen very excited.

Userland, last week, released a new version of Manila.

eWeek: Former Linux Architect Moves to Microsoft.

Interesting!

The article got one thing wrong, though. He's actually working for Bill Hilf -- his team is doing a bunch of Linux research.

Some requests from my readers:

1) What's the best page that explains RSS for beginners? Is it the RSS page on Wikipedia?

2) I have a friend who is looking for a consultant he could hire in Seattle, WA to do some easy marcom work for him. Making T-shirts, arranging a dinner, stuff like that. Know anyone who is free over the next week, works for a fair price, and is good?

Mary Jo Foley: Should I Be Spanked?

I'm staying out of this one. But, interesting discussion on some of the news surrounding Longhorn.

More on speech on the Internet:

Doc Searls: Unmediated speech.

TechCentral Station, and others, via Memeorandum: An End to 'Everybody's Press'

Scary stuff out there.

The Associated Press: 'Freedom' a Taboo Word on Chinese Internet.

"Microsoft and its Chinese business partner, government-funded Shanghai Alliance Investment, work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, said Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director for MSN.

But he added, "I don't have access to the list at this point so I can't really comment specifically on what's there.""

Rebecca MacKinnon: "to state that Chinese students and professors have an "anti-free-speech stance" is the biggest pile of horseshit about China I've come across in quite some time."