I've been thinking about the Technorati top 100 list lately (and others like it like the Bloglines list or the Feedster Top 500 list). The Blog Herald's prediction of the demise of the geek bloggers and Jason Calacanis' challenge to keepers of the lists got me to think. I know, it's rare. So stay with me.

The whole concept of a single list is just stupid and doesn't add any value.

The thing is there isn't a single blogosphere. There are thousands of blogospheres. What I want is a list for each blogosphere. For instance, scrapbooking is a big deal, according to Technorati. There are 36,218 posts about scrapbooking. Tons of ads too.

But, quick, look at Technorati for Scrapbooking and tell me who the most linked-to blog is in that blogosphere. Or, tell me who has the most traffic. Or tell me which link has been clicked the most times.

That's what's lame about being on the Technorati top 100 (and the Feedster Top 500 is no better).

This is a world of niches. Show me the niches! I'd love to have a "top 100 list of scrapbookers" or, a "top 100 list of geek blogs." Now that WOULD be valuable.

Northwest Airlines has RSS feeds for promotions and stuff. Unfortunately I know a few people who've had bad experiences on Northwest lately due to their labor disputes.

Mmmmm, FOM-BBQ! That's me slaving over the grill at the "Friends of Maryam's" BBQ. Well, a subset, at least. Maryam has so many friends that she can't invite them all to one event so tries to spread the love around. I'm glad she's my friend, though! Here's Chris Pirillo and Buzz Bruggeman.

Joe Beda, his wife Rachel, their new baby, Anne, and me. Very cute kid!

Here's a pic that includes Ted Leung. Hmmm, I'm seen in pictures with an open source guy (Ted works for Mitch Kapor on Chandler) and a Google guy (Joe works at Google in Kirkland). I wonder if I'm gonna take any heat for THAT! Heheh.

I figure you better make friends out of your competition. Maybe I can hire them! I wonder if Joe is getting bugged at Google. I can hear it now "what did you tell Scoble? Don't you realize he works for Microsoft and is tied into the evil borg"

Oh, Sergey and Larry, he just gave me Google's Master Plan. Nothing very important, you see. Heheh.

No, Bill and Steve, I didn't tell him our suuupperr secret plan for how we are gonna compete with Google. I didn't have THAT much to drink! And, no, Chris Payne, I didn't make any deals with Joe to open up MSN Messenger's APIs. Although if we had continued drinking the wine Buzz brought you never know! ;-)

Dan Larson recently released an RSS plugin for Sharepoint. It includes a "nifty" OPML generator for SPWeb list feeds and autogenerated feeds for SharePoint lists. Thanks to Marcus Hass for pointing that out.

The King County Library System here in the Seattle area is offering digital books. Cool.

Is Google trying to recruit Susan Dumais or just have some fun with her?

If you don't know who Susan is, she's one of our brightest researchers and works on MSN Search, among other things. Do a Google Search for her name. Now look over at the ads. I think someone at Google is saying "hey, Susan, come work for us."

I did several other searches on Microsoft employee names, and Susan is the only one I could find that is being targetted this way.

Tim Verpoorten send me this one. Windows Servers Gaining, Rackspace Says.

Speaking of which, come back tomorrow and we'll have another video for you. The one coming tomorrow is with Iain McDonald, director of Windows Server. We have a fun chat about Server R2.

Search Engine Watch links over to a couple of great search articles from Time and Globe.

Incoming fire!

Om Malik: Scoble is wrong about thin clients.

Larry on ApproachingNormal: Robert Scoble is not right in the head.

Hey Om and Larry, go watch the WinFS video! Thin clients are fine (an entire wing of our business, MSN, builds for them) but thin clients fall apart when you fly in planes every two weeks (without Wifi). Is that drinking the Microsoft Koolaid? Maybe, but when you get Photoshop in your browser let me know, OK? And technologies like WinFS will keep thick clients relevant for more than a decade.

I just uploaded the WinFS video to Channel 9.

Tomorrow's video? Iain McDonald talks to us about Server R2.

Update: the WinFS team has a blog too.

Oh, looks like we can talk about WinFS today (they were holding me back until 6 a.m. tomorrow, but news got out early). Tom Rizzo of the WinFS team just posted that the beta 1 bits are up.

I did a Channel 9 interview which will be posted soon. They built an app that they showed me built on top of WinFS that blew my mind. WinFS is gonna enable a new style of app. More when the video is up.

Oh, and they demonstrated the whole thing on Windows XP. So, WinFS will be downlevel and doesn't require Windows Vista.

WinFS to come back? Hmmmm. Rumor seemed to have started with Mary Jo Foley, and is spreading now to other sites/blogs.

I can neither confirm nor deny any rumor to that effect. At least not today. Tomorrow? Well, come back then. ;-)

I really love Digg.com. The folks who are registered over there vote on their favorite sites and bring us some killer stuff. Here's a selection of things that caught my eye over there:

TechPhile has a podcast with Kevin Rose who's one of the guys who invented Digg.

Google Blogoscoped has "why good programmers are lazy and dumb."

Virtual Sweden has really great panoramic Quicktimes of the Louvre.

Lean Back Vids has an awesome video of Seattle using Google's Virtual Earth.

Digg's link to Windows XP Downloads (Windows Marketplace).