Chris Jablonski, on ZDNet blogs, reports that Microsoft isn't as popular as Google or Apple, according to blog buzz tools.

Ahh, that's true.

But, what I wish Chris would have done would be to track the buzz over time. It'd be interesting to see Chris' report every quarter.

Here's my thesis:

1) You get positive buzz everytime you ship a new product. Apple has shipped several in the past few years aimed at the consumer space. So has Google. Google's "moon" thing alone got tons of positive buzz.

2) Bloggers are the most passionate in society. Remember Howard Dean? He had massive blogger buzz too. But he didn't win. Why? Cause that buzz didn't translate to those who are less passionate. Here's a homework project. At the next blogger meetup look at how many Macs there are. Now, the next time you're in an airport look at the percentage of Macs. Everytime I've done that exercise I've gotten a totally different picture. But bloggers are several times more likely to use Apple and Google products than the rest of the population (and, on our side of the fence, are more likely to have a Tablet PC and/or a Media Center than the average Joe or Jane).

But for me it comes down to shipping sexy, interesting, best-of-breed, end-user-oriented products. That's what generates buzz.

Chris, set your buzz meter up for measuring what happens on Monday. Come visit Channel 9 at 6 a.m. PDT Monday to see what the buzz will be about.

Oh, looks like there are more blog search engines coming.

And with that, I'm outta here. Gotta go to the airport. See ya later.

If you're in Atlanta on Saturday night, I'd love to meet you at the Atlanta Geek Dinner, details here. If you read my blog you're welcome!

I was just looking through all the Technorati and Feedster results that I reported on earlier. I don't believe Feedster's number. Yeah, they have hundreds of results, but it's not thousands. That demonstrates how difficult it is to accurately report comparisons between the different blog search engines. It's interesting but I've seen almost zero interest in trying to do any reporting on blog search engines. I guess it's up to the end user to try them all and see which ones he/she likes the best.

And, no, I haven't called Feedster yet to ask them about their link # reporting. But why call the CEO at 2:21 a.m.? We'll just link to Scott Rafer's blog and see if we get an answer there. I'll bet we get one by the time I get to Atlanta tonight. He's the CEO of Feedster.

Speaking of which, there's another big product announcement coming from Microsoft on Monday morning at 6 a.m. PDT. We'll run a video on Channel 9.

I spent the morning with Clay Freinwald, corporate engineer for Entercom. Who is that? They own several Seattle radio stations, among others. Clay has built seven HD stations in the Seattle area. Picture of him demoing HD for me is here.

Clay is one of their top engineers and has been in the radio business for 40 years. He invited me to talk about the radio business and to show me how the new HD Radio worked.

So, we climbed into his red Toyota pickup and headed off to Starbucks.

So, what's HD Radio? Well, it delivers a digital version of FM and AM radio stations along with the traditional FM and AM signals. In Seattle there are 13 stations already broadcasting the new HD signal.

So, when we got into Clay's pickup he took me on a radio tour of the stations and let me listen to the old FM signals as well as the new HD signal. He had a new Kenwood radio, picture here, that received both the old signal as well as the new HD one.

My conclusion? It rocks. Every station was clearer and had better detail. Far less noise and distortion. Particularly on cruddy signals.

How did it compare to my new Sirius satellite radio? Well, it's different.

First, HD radio is for the existing radio transmission system. It's free, where satellite radio costs money. Satellite radio has a lot more stations (about 150 on my radio) but doesn't have any local stations.

So, I see them as complimentary.

But, it's an impressive technology. On the radio station side, Clay says it costs about $20,000 to retrofit an existing radio station with the HD gear. But, here's the kicker. A station that usually spits 15,000 watts into the air can get HD into the air with only an additional 150 watts of power. Turns out using digital delivery makes it far more power efficient.

But, that doesn't matter to normal people. This technology has a long road ahead of it to get mainstream acceptance. Updating car radios is expensive and many people might see satellite radio as a more interesting choice (I told Clay that I rarely listen to local radio stations anymore because of satellite, for instance).

That said, the quality difference is stunning so that alone will get some people to try it out.

He also showed me how one Seattle station is multicasting two separate content feeds in one radio band. That is impressive cause it lets a radio station owner get twice the content into one bit of spectrum.

Anyway, here's a Wired article on HD Radio if you're interested in learning more.

I should hook Phillip Torrone up with Clay. They'd get along real well. I can see the Make Magazine article now: hacking a radio station.

Turns out there's a pilgrimage going on. I had a delightful dinner tonight with Peter Stathakos who was on his way down to Portland to visit the Code Camp.

I still can't comment on the news that'll be announced in six hours. But, I'm up and packing to go to Atlanta. My flight leaves at 5:30, so I'll be in the air when the news hits.

Anyway, I see that there's discussion all over the place of potential new name. Here, over on Channel 9 they are asking: "Windows Vista" name for Longhorn?

Paulo Marcucci says: "If that's true, I think it's a great name. In Italian it means "view" or "vision" or the scenery that you see outside of Windows :)"

Dave Winer: Interesting choice.

Searches for "Windows Vista" on blog search engines -- I only listed engines that gave results and/or gave results that looked anything like what you'd expect to see right now:

IceRocket -- 26 links; Technorati -- 112 posts; Feedster -- 3,378;

As of 12:17 a.m. it's #7 on the most popular Technorati searches list.