Dave Winer working on new RSS aggregator?

December 29, 2005 By

Looks like Dave Winer is working on a new aggregator. This is cool because his style of “river of news” aggregators is far more appropriate than the “folder by folder” or “3-pane” approach that I’m using currently. Why? The folder-by-folder approach requires you to be pretty anal about reading all your feeds and makes you mentally tired if you fall behind. Sorta like email. It’s to the point sometimes that I dread opening up Outlook.

But a river of news approach is more discardable, sorta like a daily newspaper. Does anyone get itchy if they don’t read every last story in a newspaper? No! You read what you have time for, which is why there’s an editor who decides what the most important story of the day is, and why journalists are trained to write in reverse-pyramid style (the important facts of the story are always at the beginning).

Dave should be at the geek dinner tomorrow night so maybe we’ll learn more there.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Russia

Amazon hooks in Naked Conversations?

December 29, 2005 By

When we started our Naked Conversations book blog (the book starts shipping next week, by the way) I never imagined that booksellers would change their practices to include book blogs. Amazon just announced its Connect program that does just that. Here’s the details on Memeorandum and on ClickZ.

This is going to kick off a trend, by the way, of combining walled garden approaches like the one Amazon has with the wide-open hinterlands of the blogs. I’m getting demos of other companies who are similarly looking to make the blog the center of the world. Even at Microsoft we’re starting to think this way. The CES crew asked me yesterday whether I could blog from CES with a special CES tag that they’d use to suck my content in and redistribute it.

Update: TDavid says that Amazon’s new program isn’t a true blog pointing program, but rather something else. He gives details on his blog (no comments and no RSS feeds are allowed, for instance, sigh).

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Brendan Eich, NASDAQ

Georgeo off to Afghanistan

December 29, 2005 By

Hey, Georgeo, it’s quiet here in Microsoft’s Silicon Valley cafeteria too (he wrote it’s quiet at headquarters), but people are working and the Starbucks is open. I’ll be here all day trying to catch up on Channel 9 tasks and email. 131 waiting, better get to it.

Anyway, Georgeo Pulikkathara is the guy who runs MSDN Webcasts (he’s the one who hires my wife’s firm, if I remember right). On his blog he wrote that he’s about to ship off to Afghanistan. It’s yet a reminder of the price we all are paying due to military actions overseas. I can’t imagine being forced to move overseas and leave my job and my family. Our wishes are with you Georgeo, come back safely!

Filed Under: Blog Tips, IBM, Microsoft Office

Silicon Valley geek dinner tomorrow night

December 29, 2005 By

Shel Israel says he never comes to my dinners cause he doesn’t think he’s a geek. Let’s see, he helped launch companies from Creative Labs to Riya and he’s not a geek? Yeah, right. Anyway, here’s a dirty little secret. Our dinners are always open to everyone. Even PR people! :-)

While I was in Europe I learned that people around the world are jealous of Silicon Valley and Seattle cause we have so many geeks in those two places. Hey, I’m jealous of Europe. You have Anina the geek model! And decent beer!

But, please feel free to tell us about your geek meetups here too!

Anyway, here’s the details (Maryam and Patrick are coming too, so the whole family is welcome). Meet at Palo Alto’s Cheesecake Factory (on University Ave. in downtown Palo Alto) at 6 p.m. Bring cash so you can pay for your part. Feel free to show off your geek toys that you got for Christmas!

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Geeks

Juniper suing trolls

December 29, 2005 By

Jeremiah Owyang, the blogger who works at Hitachi Datasystems, told me about this yesterday during lunch. Juniper Networks is suing anonymous users who allegedly defamed Juniper in a Web forum. He points to the relevant sources.

This just seems a really great way to draw more attention to the trolls. I would never have paid attention to them, but now I’m reading all about them and the Juniper lawsuit.

Filed Under: Blog Tips

Lists about Microsoft

December 28, 2005 By

I think I’ll start a list of 10 lists about Microsoft done in the past few days. Here’s a couple:

Bink has “what can we expect from Microsoft in 2006.”
Mary Jo has “The 10 Biggest Microsoft Surprises of 2005.”

Any others?

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Microsoft Office
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