Maryam and I are going to Paris in early December. Can't wait!

Vince Anido reviews the Lenovo Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC (formerly IBM).

Had a great BBQ here today. Had lots of geeks here. Maryam invited a bunch of her friends. At one point I was talking with Joe Beda of Google (he works on the Google Talk team), Ted Leung who is working for Mitch Kapor doing an open source PIM, and a few people from Microsoft (Matt Carter who works at eLearning, Ben Constable and Vikram Dendi, both of whom work on secret projects at Microsoft and Liz Lawley, who works at Microsoft Research and her husband Gerald), Nate Grigg, musician at Monolith, Keith Pleas, works at Patterns and Practices at Microsoft, Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, and Chris Pirillo, founder of Lockergnome.

I joked with people that it was the FOM-BBQ. Friends of Maryam BBQ. Of course, the geeks were here because of the wives or significant others who were really the ones Maryam invited. Tena, Elizabeth, Ponzi, Rachel, Julie, Kim, Cathia, Jennifer. See, you want to start a geek event? Invite the significant others. The geeks come along. Heheh. Bunch of kids too, between the Xbox and the Slip-n-slide they were most entertained. Maryam joked with me after this post that I never link to the women. So I only linked to the women here. I do what Maryam tells me to. If Maryam had her own blog she'd be more popular than me, that's for sure!

Dave Winer is blogging other Hurricane sites. CNN just reported that landfall is about nine hours away. Ernie says on his blog "Katrina is going to completely change the City I live in."

Any other readers out there who are affected by this storm?

I'm sitting here with Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords. Our mutual friend Ernie the Attorney is stuck in New Orleans, so is gonna ride it Hurricane Katrine out and try to blog it. His phone isn't working, but he can get SMS messages out. The storm is about six hours from hitting. Amazing.

Hope you Ernie rides it out safely. CNN is saying this is the storm of the century.

Update: he says he's 10 stories up in his dad's condo.

I was over at Alex Barnett's blog this morning and saw he linked to a survey that said that 87% of influencers use RSS. This is PRECISELY why I've been telling everyone to get RSS feeds and why they should be full text. If no one else in society uses them, this is enough reason.

The Blog Herald doesn't get what I was trying to say: What about free speech Scoble?

Here's a clue: you want free speech? Get your own blog. Comments are owned by the person who's blog they are on. They aren't a place you're gonna get free speech (although, my policy here is to not delete any comment).

I HATE entitlement. That attitude has gotta go. You don't have the right to take me down by posting illegal stuff or stuff that'll get me sued or spam or really anything in my comment area.

Because it's on my blog I'm responsible for it. It has my name associated with it. So, no, you TOTALLY don't get what free speech is if you think you should have free and unfettered speech in everyone's comment area. Get a clue about what free speech is.

Want free speech? Get a blog of your own. That way only you are responsible for your words. If you're writing on someone's comment area, though, the standards are (and should be) different.

New definition for RSS: Robert Scoble and Son.

:-)

So, next weekend, now you know why I say I'm going on an RSS trip.

Olivier Travers: The Microsoft Office I Really Want.

Olivier, you might be surprised by the next Microsoft Office. I was. See ya at the PDC!

But Olivier has the thin-client disease that's all the rage lately. Here's a hint: the thick client is coming back.

Dave Gray's Communication Nation is everything I want in a blog. Interesting content (on how to communicate). Nice design. Original art. He's the CEO of Xplane. Does it get any better?

Thanks to Evan Williams for pointing us there.

I've been listening to Pandora all evening. Steve Gillmor thinks it's not gonna be big. Sorry, Steve, this is awesome.

You put in a group and it builds a music channel with songs similar to that music. I was listening to Black Eyed Peas all night and the music it brought me was awesome (and you could hear how Pandora's professional musicians picked songs similar to the ones that Black Eyed Peas performed).

Update: Cindy De Smet also likes Pandora and suggests that it be a standalone app.

I TOTALLY agree. I really hate this "everything has to be a Web app" trend that we're in the middle of. This service is totally crying out for a rich-client application. I'd love to be able to buy some of the songs I'm hearing, too. I bet they are hoping Apple or MSN buys them and puts this service into their music service.

If I had Bill Gates money I'd be thinking along these lines. Pandora totally changes my relationship to music. Disclaimer: I'm sending Bill an invite.

They need a bigger "invite a friend to try it" button too.

Jason Dowdell rips apart the Feedster top 500 list. Mostly he argues with Feedster's definition of what a blog is, but has some other good points too. Me, if I were doing a list, I'd be making a list of people who've released cool software that's improved my world. Hmmm, who would be on that?