Here's an idea that might be useful for my Radio setup:

Something to add to my Radio setup here. Matt Mower up to his usual tricks. Thanks Matt and thanks Lilia for passing this along.

Technorati macro for Radio.

For Thomas and others: Radio macro to get Technorati cosmos for a post (see this post in browser for an example).

From Matt Mower via IM:

• save http://matt.blogs.it/gems/postCosmos.txt into your Macros folder
• edit #itemTemplate.txt adding <%postCosmos( <%itemNum%> )%>
• publish

I also edited macro to display "Technorati cosmos" instead of "What other blogs are saying about this post", you'll find it easily in the text.

[Mathemagenic]

[McGee's Musings]
10:59:45 PM  #  

My Radio weblog serves as a sort of back up to my back-up brain at Davos Newbies.

I save a handful of interesting things I read in weblogs that don't really have an appropriate home at Davos Newbies. I also try to use the categories as a way to file items that are relevant to projects currently in progress.

12:30:34 PM  #  

LEADING-EDGE BUSINESS IDEAS.

A few interesting articles on innovation, knowledge and the future of business - worth a read: Distributed Social Software, by Eric Gradman via Seb Paquet at Many 2 Many: A grad student surveys the current generation of social software and agrees with me that it needs to be simpler, less centralized and more personal. Life in 2010 - Home and Work, by Patrick Dixon: A futurist who sees that new technologies are going to be smaller, more portable, more specialized, easier-to-use and more personal. Some excellent thinking here. Weblogs and Journalism (jump to pg 59 of this pdf), features 18 articles by bloggers and journalists, that I've mentioned before, but are worth a second read because of their broader implications for the use of weblogs and other personal content management and personal publishing apps in business. WL Gore & Associates, per this case study by Cyndy Payne of the Foundation for Enterprise Development, is not only one of the world's most innovative companies (they invented waterproof, breathable, Gore-Tex fabric and a whole bunch of high-tech materials you've probably never heard of), but also are a prime example of a true partnership of equals (what they call a Non-Hierarchical Corporation and what I've called a New Collaborative Enterprise).

[How to Save the World]
5:55:15 PM  #  

One of the things I told the Microsoft people this week is that if they screw with RSS the way Google is, I will quit, permanently, and never look back. If the result of all this hard work is just another venue for the ongoing pissing match between Microsoft and Silicon Valley, I'm out. It occurred to me that I should say this publicly too. I mean it. The users now have enough data, and the tools to speak for themselves. That was the point of doing blogging software, so that we would never be held hostage to people who sit at the top of a pyramid and look down at us, their minions, and sigh when they have to kill our dreams. It doesn't have to happen. The political bloggers have been able to out Trent Lott, and now are working on Dubya. We've launched a Presidential campaign. We are powerful. Use your minds, and gather all the bits of data you can, and form an opinion. As Howard Dean says, and he's right, you have the power, not me. Tell Google to get with the program and work with the developers who brought you aggregators, publications, blogging tools, and other RSS apps. Tell Schmidt and Ballmer to view this space as not-theirs, not to be fought over. Make products for us, compete to serve us better, but if you try to break us, we'll break you. [Scripting News]
5:53:29 PM  #  

Back in the blog saddle.

I'm back!

Now, what to write?

First, it's good to take a week off. I spent a lot of time looking at the blogosphere and listening and learning.

I did a bit of soul searching. Looking at what value I can add here and how much I can do.

First, I can't be the geek aggregator anymore. It was killing me. Too much posting and too little saying anything. So, I'll be more selective in what I post here and what I say.

Second, I don't know if you noticed, but http://blogs.msdn.com has gotten some excellent bloggers in the past few weeks. For those who don't know, that's where Microsoft employees are now being given free blog space. So, you'll see more and more Microsoft employees there.

Brings me to aggregation. I couldn't keep up with that page anyway. There's more than 260 Microsoft bloggers on that page alone (and that doesn't count guys like me or John Porcaro who post on non-Microsoft-owned properties).

So, I'll change, but I'm not quite sure yet how I'll change. But life is boring if you live today the same way you lived yesterday.

One final thing. Dave Winer says I deserve a medal for blogging. No, I don't. Here's why:

I'm totally in control on my blog. If I get fired, it'll be my fault. No one else to blame.

So, who should get the medal? The execs who allow this grand experiment to continue. Why? Cause that really is scary. They allowed other people who they don't really control to put their opinions up for everyone to see. Vic Gundotra in my case, but I keep hearing that the blogging experiment was discussed with a bunch of execs. I know of a couple who were (and remain) skeptical. They are still worried we'll do something to hurt their careers. But, even the naysayers are brave. They let it go on.

So, to those who let the blog experiment continue at Microsoft, my "medal" is for you.

Oh, and you might have noticed that I have a new banner. That's a photo my wife took on our honeymoon. It's of a tree in the high Sierras. Here's a better look at the tree. But it's not just any tree. That tree is a metaphor for standing up against all odds. That tree looks down at Donner Lake. Ever hear of the Donner party? Yeah, that tree has seen snows that completely cover it up. And, just a few feet to the right of that tree is the transcontinental railroad.

[The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]
11:04:23 AM  #  

Casey says he sucks at being an MVP.

Casey Chesnut is a new MVP and says he sucks at it.

Microsoft MVPs are people who've gotten rewarded for being noticed supporting Microsoft's customers online. Used to be only newsgroups, but I've seen a ton of webloggers get added recently (reflects the fact that hundreds of Microsoft employees are reading and writing weblogs). The program has greatly expanded recently (when I was awarded MVP status there were only a couple of hundred MVPs, today there's 2500).

By the way, MVPs are going to be in Redmond the first week of April. That's going to be a lot of fun. 1900 of our most passionate customers all in one room. Steve Ballmer, among other execs, will speak to them.

Someone else asked "how do you get to be an MVP?" Easy. Get noticed by a Microsoft employee. I'm looking for new people to promote to MVP status. If you're a weblogger, it's easy for me to subscribe to you and watch what you do.

Somehow I think Casey will be an MVP for a while.

[The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]
11:04:04 AM  #  

Blogging in business this year's hot topic....

Oh, forgot to say thanks to DL Bryon. I talked with him a few days ago about blogging in business. He's giving a talk at SXSW on that topic and we compared notes since I'm speaking on that topic at Demo. Here's a relevant quote from his latest blog: "We’re on another media convergence of the old and new and I’m not sure where it’s going, but it’s definitely more than just people loving their pets, shilling product, politics, instant pundits, or wardrobe malfunctions." Absolutely!

Lots of interesting in business blogs lately (Fast Company and Business 2.0 have both written about the trend and the K-Log mailing list is covering the topic well). I'm sure that'll be the next thing to get overhyped. But, where there's hype there's sometimes something useful. We'll discover it together.

[The Scobleizer -- Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]
11:03:49 AM  #  

The new influencers.

Can one person decide what the entire industry will buy and use? Anita Rowland points at one story (the Zamboni) where that seems to have happened.

That's precisely why evangelists like me pay attention to influentials so much. The problem is, now EVERYONE is an influential. Why? Weblogs. That's why I subscribe to 1227 RSS feeds. In the new world I have to pay attention to everyone.

Here's an example. One of my influentials, Ryan Dawson, is about 20 years old. Most other companies wouldn't pay attention to what he's doing. He's not important enough, right? He hasn't spoken at industry conferences. He hasn't built a business. He hasn't been noticed. Well, yet.

But look at what he's doing with the PDC build of Longhorn. He's quietly off in the corner building apps and writing about them. Will he influence others? I'll bet he will. Should I pay attention to him? Damn straight I should.

Anyone else I should pay attention to?

[The Scobleizer -- Geek Aggregator]
2:03:39 PM  #  

Coming soon, branded RSS experiences?.

Don Park: "I think the next step in content-syncation markets is emergence and proliferation of OEM news aggregators for premium content service providers."

You mean like this Howard Dean aggregator (which was built in .NET)? I totally agree. If Microsoft were smart every product team here would start publishing its news in RSS, and then we could build a Microsoft-centric news aggregator like the Howard Dean one. How powerful a marketing channel would that be? Wouldn't your company like one of those?

[The Scobleizer -- Geek Aggregator]
2:03:26 PM  #  

The Hard Way. My summer holiday activities over the last couple of months included a lot of work on my music collection (I’m slowly transferring from vinyl to MP3/AIFF) and rereading Nick Hornby. So, I was naturally struck by how rapidly the skill of making compilation tapes, a central theme of High Fidelity has gone from the esoteric to the everyday. Not surprisingly, not everyone is happy about this. Joel Keller, writing in Salon, says

Putting together a home-brewed compilation of songs used to be an act of love and art. Now it’s just too damn easy to be worth caring about.

and much more in the same vein, though his conclusion is more elegiac than polemical

When making the decision between practicality and artistic merit, I’ll choose practicality more often than not. I may be wistful for the old days, but I’m not an idiot.

So let’s have a moment of silence, for the mix as we used to know it is dead. Technology has overtaken the experience and made it cold and impersonal. But it’s time to look forward, as the Internet has allowed us to trade and download more varied types of music, making for better-sounding, albeit more antiseptic, mixes. One of these days, Nick Hornby should do a sequel to “High Fidelity” and list Rob’s Top 5 music downloads. I’m sure it’ll be a nice read. But it just won’t be the same.

The first time I heard this form of argument, it was from my Grade 4 teacher, lamenting the arrival of the ballpoint pen, and its adverse effect on the quality of handwriting. Possibly since I never mastered the steel nib/inkwell technology still favoured by the South Australian Department of Education in the 1960s, I was not impressed. Since then, I’ve seen the same argument applied to calculators, word processing and desktop publishing. And of course, the argument wasn’t new when I first met it - in one form or another, it’s been applied to almost any technical innovation that replaces a complex skill with an easily usable machine. (It’s separate from the income-distributional arguments that apply when skilled workers are displaced by unskilled ones, although the two are often entangled).

[Crooked Timber]
2:46:36 PM  #  

The meme you've never seen.Big media sleaze. If po .... The meme you've never seen.

Big media sleaze.

If power corrupts, then being a press baron corrupts preeetty sweetly, thank you. Robert Maxwell was a crook. Conrad Black *ahem* "borrowed" a few million dollars from his company, but forgot to tell anyone. Even Murdoch has secured his empire by grovelling to a totalitarian state and censoring criticism of it.

Yet Big Media never gets called on corruption. Sure, the stories get coverage, but just as stories, never as a narrative.

Imagine if out of the top 6 ministers of Tony Blair's Government, one was a thief, another had turned out to be corrupted by the Chinese communists and another had "borrowed" millions of dollars? Oh, and the other ones are respectively, an appeaser of Nazi Germany and a pornographer. Every Labour party member in the country would be asked to examine their conciences for supporting such swines. Everyone who had ever worked for these men would be ruined.

Yet I've yet to see a journalist, or editor who worked for one of these corrupt moguls being asked why they never asked the basic questions about their bosses. Come on. The editors of the Spectator, Telegraph and many other papers were working for a company which was being stolen from. Which brave journalist blew the whistle on the scam? Ummm. Same goes for the Mirror gang.

It's the story you never see. The men who control your newspapers are self interested, frequently corrupt and willing to sell out the truth for commercial favours. After all, who'd pay over the odds for a media company without an angle to work? Conspiracy theory? Unfortunately not, just the facts. [British Politics]
5:07:17 PM  #