Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, just wrote that they've been shipping a bunch of fixes to their engine. That's cool. We'll keep checking in.

But what I'm worried about with Technorati is that they are just getting out executed by their competition.

Here, check this out:

Technorati search for Dave Sifry's blog reveals 735 links.

Bloglines Citation search for same thing reveals 2,644 links.

Dave, that's what you need to fix. Bloglines is building a better index and, at the end of the day, that's what's gonna matter.

Technorati has a nicer design, though.

Update: I made an error on this post, which I corrected in later posts. Padawan.info points to all the relevant followups to this post.

Just in case you didn't get enough of Steve Ballmer last week here's Todd Bishop's reporting and linking to Steve's presentation at Microsoft's partner conference.

Phillip Malone: Dell tells bloggers to go away -- good on them!

Um, yes, Phillip, I got your message. :-)

I think I was wrong to join in the pile on on Dell. It's not really fair to beat up a company for not blogging and life isn't fair anyway.

Not blogging is a missed opportunity to start a new conversation -- on the customer's terms.

I am a happy Dell customer, by the way. Their machines rock.

Now, did I need to call tech support to say that? Why isn't there someone watching to see that I just said Dell rocks to reinforce that idea?

Being out here on the net is a competitive advantage. Too few companies see that.

Rachel Clarke noticed: Seth Godin gets more women to show up than I do.

Technovia's Ian Betteridge asks more questions about what I do on my blog. First of all, did I ever claim to be a journalist? No. I do occassionally do journalism here (you know, the multiple source thing that Ian talks about).

"this you don’t get as a blogger – call you up on the phone to complain if you get it wrong."

Absolutely wrong. My personal cell phone is on the home page of my blog. Is your personal cell phone on the byline of your stories? I absolutely get calls when I get it wrong. Oh, and who's usually first to call? One of my coworkers or bosses.

I agree that corrections don't always cut it. I too wish for a more accurate reporting system, but this system is pretty darn good at self correcting. So far I've been watching for factual mistakes where Microsoft is concerned and there hasn't been that many.

I got tired of asking people for full-text feeds. Now Steve Gillmor picks up where I left off.

The other thing I realized is that life is too short. If people won't give you their content in the way you want to subscribe to it well then I'm gonna unsubscribe and go somewhere else. It's not like there aren't too many feeds to choose from anyway.

Why is it important? Well, you ever try reading a partial feed in an airplane? It's frustrating!

Asa Dotzler (he works on Firefox so knows something about open source and software development): Linux not ready for the desktop.

Regarding the Atlanta Geek Dinner next week. It turns out I won't be able to make it to Atlanta until Saturday, so let's do the geek dinner on Saturday night, July 23. Sorry for having to change the night. Let's say 7 p.m. at the 5 Seasons Brewing Company.

By the way, turns out there's a regular Nerd Dinner in Atlanta.

If you're planning on coming, just leave a comment here so I can know approximately how many people will be showing up. Thanks!

Hugh Macloed: London Marketing Soiree. Hey, Hugh, getting Seth Godin to visit your watering hole is a big step up from getting me to visit! I'm so jealous, wish I could have been there. But, thanks to all the audio/video and blogs it's just like being there anyway.

Michael Sampson wrote a provocative manifesto: Stop! An IT Spending Manifesto.

You might expect me to disagree with him. After all, he is basically telling you to stop buying Microsoft stuff, right?

Personally that's sound advice IF (and it's a big if) you can't see any advantage to our new stuff. The onus is on US to demonstrate there's value in upgrading.

Believe it or not, there's no way we can force you to upgrade (nor should there be).

But, in every area he talks about I believe I can show pretty deep value for a whole range of businesses. I couldn't live without the new Outlook, for instance. Why? The old one has a 2GB PST limit. The new one has none. The new one has search folders which make me dramatically more productive. The new one is faster and more reliable. The new one works in flaky online conditions (er, wifi networks) a lot better. And I could go on.

I don't mind if people decide to stick with our old stuff. I just want a good chance to come in and demonstrate what we have and try to show that there's value for what you get.

Dave Winer: The community directory.

"The podcasting community did more than bootstrap a new medium in record time. As if that wasn't enough, it also bootstrapped a directory of podcasting resources and podcasts themselves, and a way of doing directories in communities that goes way beyond podcasting in importance."

Shelley Powers has some wonderful photography on her blog right now.

Dori Smith writes that she's recommending that girls stay away from the computer science field. "I'll bet cash money right now on the number of times -- zero -- someone will bring up the 800 lb. gorilla in the room: they're encouraging girls to choose a career path that, by every metric I've seen, is decreasing in both number of jobs and wages for those jobs."

Meanwhile nearly every team I talk to says they can't find enough great programmers (Microsoft translation: that's folks who can write C++ or .NET code).

I wonder what Gretchen over at Microsoft's Jobs Blog will say about this?

Jason Salas has an interview with APress founder Gary Cornell. Twelve minutes long. This is exactly what I like about podcasts. I get to hear from someone interesting. But it might only be interesting to a handful of my readers (if you're a geek you know who APress is). The audio is a bit cruddy (it's a Skype call) but it's unmistakeably Gary.

Think that Windows Server 2003 isn't very secure? Count the tamales over on Stephen Toulouse's blog!

Nathan Mercer is excited that he can search the GAL from a Windows Mobile device. Jeff Sandquist showed me that yesterday. He was so excited about it. Heh, we are so easily pleased. It is cool to be able to look up your coworkers from our phones and PocketPCs, though.

Rick Segal tears into recent conferences he's attended: TEDGLOGBAL vs. well, everything else.

Doc Searls jumps in with a few other links to similar writings: Pro and Conferences.

I far prefer the "unconference" style of things -- at least partially. But, on the other hand, at some conferences you just simply MUST make the trains run on time. Why? Imagine the chaos if we allowed the PDC to run the way the single-room 300-attendee Reboot conference ran?

But, that's excuses. The PDC team is trying a lot of things to make the experience as good as it can be for thousands of people. By the way, the PDC's ticket sales are continuing to run very strong. Microsoft conferences all year have been running pretty good. TechED sold out. PDC looks like it's headed the same way.

Yesterday we got a preview of some of the demos that you'll see at PDC. I'm inspired. Can't wait to ship this stuff.

By the way, if you want a Longhorn beta, don't beg me in email. I just can't deal with the request volume. I'm trying to find a better way to deal with those. Be back soon.

Mark Cuban has been going on about podcasting lately.

Shel Holtz answers back Mark's first anti-podcasting screed. "Cuban suggests podcasters can’t make a living from their work, but I suspect the host of Endurance Radio would shrug off such a proclamation. With a paltry audience of hard-core, dedicated endurance sports enthusiasts, Endurance Radio has attracted the likes of Gatorade and Fleet Sports to pay $4,000 a month to sponsor the show. The audience may not be large, but it’s hard for an advertiser to find so concentrated a group of its target market."

Mark then answers with a second rant against podcasting.

I'm confused, we're supposed to be making money doing this? Dang...

Damn, do I have something to agree with John C. Dvorak about? Yeah, I do. Maryam and I have become big Southwest fans. There's a lot to learn there about how to run a good business. Let the employees have fun, darn it!

Alaskan lately has been charging more and giving less. Well, except for the little prayer card that John mentions. I guess that's supposed to make me feel better about the non-existent food they give you on these things. At least Southwest doesn't pretend.

Jet Blue, though, rocks. I wish they flew more places.