A bunch of people are seeing my posts about the Slingbox and say "you should try out Orb." Orb sounds really cool. I'll try it out soon since I'm getting a Media Center this week.

Think search is done? OK, try this one. Search for:

Toshiba Gigabeat

Did you find a Toshiba site? All I see is a lot of intermediaries.

I interviewed a few members of the MSN Search team last week and I gave them hell about this. When I'm writing I want to link directly to the manufacturer's main Web site about their product. Why? Because that's the most authoritative place to go.

But I keep having trouble finding manufacturer's sites on Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Relevancy ratings on search engines still suck. Let's just be honest about it as an industry.

Can the search researchers find a better algorithm? I sure hope so.

Here, compare for yourself. If you're looking for the Toshiba site, did you find what you're looking for when you do searches on Google? On Yahoo? On MSN?

Here's the right answer: http://www.gigabeat.toshiba.com. Did you find it with any of the above searches? I didn't.

Both MSN and Yahoo, though, got the consolation prize. They came up with gigabeat.com, which is also a Toshiba site (Google has an intermediary as its first result) but I didn't like that site as much as the one I gave above. Why? Cause it's a Flash-based site and isn't as easy to use as the regular old Web page.

Either way, this is a very clear example that relevancy has a LONG way to go.

I'll be honest. I am seriously in love with the iPod Nano. But there are lots of users who are unhappy with the product. News.com is reporting that they scratch very easily. A user even got pissed enough to open a Web site: FlawedMusicPlayer.com.

Patrick spent the whole weekend telling me he wanted one, but then today at Fry's we saw the new Toshiba Gigabeat player (as seen on Engadget). The color screen on this blows away the iPod's screen. Patrick was impressed. We should have done a podcast about this.

Let's not let Katrina's victims slide from our minds. The Red Cross and other organizations still need massive resources to keep up with the challenges ahead. Charlie Owen shows the way. He's spearheading a raffle of software to raise funds. They've already raised $800.

I'm already planning out my 2006 schedule. Definitely on our plans are Northern Voice (in Vancouver on February 10/11). The first Northern Voice was one of my favorite blog conferences. Had a very non-commercial and enthusiast feel to it.

Other events I'm already signed up for? I'm speaking at TiE Pittsburgh on January 19.

I'm also speaking at MeshForum May 6-10 in Chicago.

Other conferences I have on my schedule? SXSW. Reboot in Europe. Yossi Vardi invited me to Israel, not sure yet we'll get there. Maryam wants to go to Iran. What other conferences should I be at?

Tor Bjornrud says he switched back from Macs to Windows. He told me in email that there was another reason: blogs. The corporate blogs that he reads convinced him there's a future in the platform. I've been hearing that one more and more lately.

Vikram says "fun week ahead" and talks about where you can get the latest news on the Palm/Verizon/Microsoft announcement that'll be made at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. Here's the links for the videoconference: 300kb; 100kb; 56kb.

Robert Cringely usually is digging into Microsoft's offerings, but here he looks into Google's AdWords in his "Google Goes Las Vegas" post.

Everyone should read this to understand how Google's advertising works. It's not as simple as you might think. By the end of the post Cringely even says "it feels just a little bit EVIL."

Andrew Hughes is having a fun "Carnival of Computing" theme on his blog. He's collecting the week's best tech blogs. Lots of interesting tech blogs to read.

Tomorrow morning I'm doing a MSDN Webcast about blogging with Jeff and John. Oh, and my wife Maryam will be introducing us! That's gonna be fun. The fun starts at 10:30 a.m. by clicking this attendee URL.

Steven Sinofsky has an interesting post on what managers do and how big teams should be. He runs the Office team.

Hey, Steven, the steak knives work great (he gave me a set at the PDC). How about an interview for Channel 9 on what makes a great team?

Hey, Steve Gillmor, is this subtle enough? ;-)

Ahh, my trolls are giving Steve heck too. Ahh, Steve, welcome to the club! I'm glad to share some of them with you.

Personally, keep being subtle. I like you.

Just got home and see that the Blogmap on the right side of my page has now been updated to use Virtual Earth's data. You can drag it around now. Thanks to Chandu Thota, who revealed this on his blog today.

I'm taking the rest of the day off, gonna take Patrick to Fry's, then up to Petaluma to drop him off, then fly to Seattle. My entire life is traveling, it seems. In the meantime you can head over to Channel 9 where they are discussing whether or not the PC's time has come and gone (Sun's president restarted that debate in comments linked to from that thread). Oh, my Slingbox demonstrates very well that there's a lot of life left in the idea of having smarts at the edge of the network.

Now you know why a former boss used to call me an "edge case."

I'm listening to AOL's CEO Richard Parsons who is on Charlie Rose. I like him. I want to have dinner with him someday. Lots of people have counted out AOL. I wouldn't count them out. Not with this guy in charge. He is focusing on making AOL front and center in Time Warner's strategy.

I really love my Slingbox. Although I found that on weak Wifi networks it falls apart a bit.

The interesting thing is how the family room is changing. My wife's mom is watching TV on the big screen. I'm watching my TV on my Tablet PC with my Ultimate Ear headphones (they are so awesome I can't even say, but way too expensive for most people to afford -- but in this new living room they are a must so that you can block out all the other noise). My brother-in-law is using his Mac to talk with friends and play games on Pogo. My son is surfing yet another Mac.

Former Microsoft and Apple exec Linda Stone talks a lot about continuous partial attention. Oh, this concept is reality for me in this family room.