Kunal just told me that I'm getting about 4000 page views per day on my experimental aggregator blog. 71338 views so far this month. Whew. Hope you all are enjoying it. Wasn't it just a year ago that I was joking about having 18 readers a day?

That's page views, though. If you all are hitting it once an hour with an RSS news aggregator that'll over report actual people. By the way, I set NewsGator to only download once per day. Why? Cause I only read blogs once a day, so why should I download all blogs 12 times everyday?

Robert McLaws is working on Visual Blogger 2004. This is going to be an awesome way to edit a weblog. McLaws was telling me about the Visual Studio integration. Here's how it'll work. Highlight a few lines of code in Visual Studio that you want to blog about and right click. Choose "blog this" and Visual Blogger 2004 will open up, with the lines of code already in the editor, and will let you publish those lines of code to your blog with comments.

Along with Kunal's "MagicFolder" app that publishes from Outlook, you're seeing a new trend. There's a publishing platform being built that's very powerful. Imagine being able to blog from every Windows-based app? If you're building an app today, you should take a look at what Kunal Das and Robert McLaws are doing. Who said one or two guys can't change the industry?

By the way, I've been updating my experimental aggregator blog all weekend long.

While I was tasting wine in Sonoma last weekend I met Brian Kelleher, senior contract officer for CalTrain. I thought that was cool. I love CalTrain (it's the train that travels from San Francisco through Silicon Valley to Gilroy. Serves thousands of people every day).

I used to take CalTrain every day. It really is a great service and sure beats being stuck in your car in traffic. Secret tip: most of their cars have power outlets if you sit on the top deck.

Anyway, Brian and I were talking and I asked him "are you guys putting WiFi on all your trains?" He said "we really want to do that, but don't know how, and the proposals we've seen are too expensive."

So, I thought I'd put a note here and see if any of the WiFi experts who read here have any ideas.

Here's a way you can really make a difference in people's lives. Having WiFi on trains might convince another few thousand people to get out of their cars and take the train to work. That improves everyone's lives, plus, if you're one of the people on the train you'd be able to be productive even while you commute.

And, for a company out there, this is a business opportunity if you can figure out how to do it at a reasonable price where everyone can win.

Anyway, post a comment here and I'll put you in touch with Brian. Maybe Alan Reiter, who writes the WiFi Weblog, has some ideas?

Adobe's CEO, Bruce Chizen: "But when I think about competitors, there's only one I really worry about. And it's one that happens to have $35 billion in revenues and $50 billion in the bank. And it happens to be in the software business. Microsoft is the competitor, and it's the one that keeps me up at night.

If I had the opportunity to meet with Bruce, I'd tell Bruce how Adobe became great. Here's how: Adobe bet early on new platforms. It was one of the first companies to bet on the Macintosh. It was one of the first companies to bet on Windows NT and Windows 95. How do I know that? Because back in 1995 I was a beta tester for Adobe. In fact, I reported more bugs in Acrobat that year than anyone else (Adobe gave me a $1400 Postscript laser printer for that accomplishment). How did I do it? I had betas of the Mac OS, Windows NT, and Windows 95 and I had Fawcette's library of dozens of magazines, all of which were done in Pagemaker format (Visual Basic Programmer's Journal was one of the few magazines to bet on Adobe all the way).

Adobe fixed the hundreds of NT bugs in Acrobat that I reported. That impressed me. Almost no one was using NT back in 1995. I think more people were using OS/2 and NeXT. But Adobe bet big on Microsoft's operating systems and now is reaping the rewards (NT became Windows XP, and it's my theory that most of Adobe's recent growth comes from XP-based customers).

Let's go back to 1984: Did Warnock and Geschke worry about what Apple would do to them? After all, back then Apple was far bigger than Adobe (and, if you talk to pioneers like Dave Winer, they were scary back then too). I watched Adobe back then. Adobe came out with Postscript, a ton of fonts, and later Illustrator. Served a new market that hadn't been served. Took advantage of new trends and new platforms from Apple.

Jump forward to 1995. Did Adobe worry about Apple (which was still bigger and still controlled its major platform) or Microsoft (which was bigger yet)? I don't know, but the 1990s saw Adobe come out with Photoshop, Acrobat, Indesign, and tons of other stuff that served markets that Apple and Microsoft simply didn't see.

So, in the Longhorn timeframe, will Adobe behave as it has in the past? Will it come out with a handful of "killer apps" that just turn the industry on its head? I hope so. I can't wait to see what the guys who did Photoshop and Illustrator and Indesign and After Effects come up with for Longhorn.

Bruce, how can Microsoft work with you to help you find new unserved markets? How can we work with you to rebuild your existing apps to take advantage of the new platform technologies in Longhorn? How can we help you come up with a "killer app" for Longhorn? That's what I'm losing sleep about.

Update: I changed this post to correct an error. Aldus came out with Pagemaker and was later purchased by Adobe. Adobe did the Postscript page description language for Apple's first laser printer.

I'll try to get to the Blogger Meetup in Seattle on Wednesday evening. Things I like about this meetup is 1) Anita Rowland is there (I think of it as Anita's meetup) 2) Everyone is welcome. 3) It's in a low-cost venue so no one needs to dig deep in their pockets. 4) There's always a good geek quotient (and lots of people I've never met before, I like meeting new people). 5) You don't need to be a geek to come and there usually are non-geeks there as well, so my wife has more fun too 6) Usually there are people there who don't blog, either. It's lots of fun, something for everyone.

Want to work at Microsoft as a Longhorn Evangelist? Carter Maslan (who is already a Longhorn Evangelist) is advertising a new position.

I'm so happy Randy Holloway is coming to work at Microsoft. Thanks for the nice compliments too.

Tim Bray says yesterday's piece on persuasion was the best thing I've ever written. Coming from Tim that means a lot. I didn't think it was that good, but even my mom liked it.