Shipping is a feature. I keep getting reminded of that. Scientific American has a long article on the MyLifeBits research that Microsoft (er, Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell) is doing. You can see these two guys in a video series I did while back at Microsoft.

I wish I could play with their stuff — the research they are doing is interesting. But, I find it interesting that we’re using Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, MySpace, Flickr, and other things to record our lives and share them with either friends/family or the world.

This is the problem with the “boil the ocean” approach. Gordon and Jim might end up shipping something brilliant, but will we care when it finally comes out?

This is why I’m scared by what Ray Ozzie is doing. Clearly Ray has bought into the Steve Jobs’ school of “keep it secret, don’t talk, and ship something cool.”

I just don’t think that approach wins many friends in the Internet space. Why? Well, it’s the iteration of things that gets us involved.

I think back to how I got into Twitter. It wasn’t because Steven Levy or Walt Mossberg told me about it.

Yeah, I can hear you saying “Twitter is lame, it doesn’t do much.”

That’s the point. It started small, with a very constrained feature set (frustratingly small, at times when you want to tell your friends something more than a few hundred characters worth) but it works, it started in the grass roots, and it’s getting more interesting with every new user that joins it.

It’s a little puddle growing bigger. Meantime we’re waiting for Ray Ozzie to tell us something.

There’s a new conference coming March 23: Under the Radar | Why Office 2.0 Matters.

I’m seeing all sorts of new products and startups in this space. Everyone wants to bite off a little bit of Microsoft’s lunch here and it’s making for an interesting space to watch and participate in.

These folks just announced that 26 companies are coming to this one. If there’s anything that’s going to disrupt Microsoft’s Office business it probably will be at this show.

Funny enough, Microsoft is a sponsor of the organization that’s putting this on. I wonder if they are going to make moves into the online Office space before they get totally disrupted.

Ray Ozzie, where are you?

Edgeio just shipped its new Marketplaces board technology into beta so you can try it out. What is it? It lets you add classified ads and other board information to your blog. I sat down with Marketplaces’ product manager John Dowd to get the details. The press release and other details are up on Edgeio’s blog. TechCrunch’s job board functionality was built with this.

Heheh, Doc Searls takes 349 words to say that I’m full of it when I talk about what the term Social Media means. Well, actually, he didn’t even name me or link to me, but the gesture is the same when he says he avoids using terms like “Social Media” and “Web 2.0.” UPDATE: I should have noted that Doc is actually replying to Brian Solis post about “what’s wrong with ’social media’?”

Remember rule #10 on the Corporate Weblog Manifesto? That still applies.

But, since Doc didn’t give us a good name for this new media collection (blogs, wikis, Web 2.0 voting sites, etc) then I think we’ll just rename it all to “Doc Searls Media.”

I don’t care what you call it. Something is going on here and I’m a simpleton and love to have a name for the bag of things that are happening.

Tom Foremski reports that speaking is increasingly lucrative for authors/bloggers.

He says Tim O’Reilly gets paid $40,000. Chris Anderson gets $34,000. John Battelle gets $24,000.

I’ll talk to you out in the lobby for free. :-)

For the record, I’ve never been offered more than $2,500 for any speech (and, in the end, didn’t accept that) and almost all of my speeches to date have been done either for free or for just expenses (and, unlike many of the “big names” I don’t ask for business class tickets, which can run about $8,000 to get to Europe from USA).

I’m not being paid to go to Northern Voice and PodTech is picking up my expenses (I’m doing interviews in Seattle and Vancouver). I never charge anyone to be on ScobleShow. To sponsor my show, though, costs big bucks. Thank you Seagate!

Nick Hodge reports that Mike Arrington, of TechCrunch, will interview Ray Ozzie on stage at Mix07. I’ve verified with a contact at Microsoft that that’s true. Oh, and Dave Winer is going. Me too. Although I’m not going to be on stage. I’ll be out in the lobby looking to scoop Mike, like I did when I got a video “lobby” demo of UrbanSeeder.

Why out in the lobby? All the coolest stuff happens in the lobby. I bet even Ray’s stuff will look cooler out in the lobby than on stage.

I’ll be in Seattle on Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe I’ll camp out in Ray’s lobby until he gives me an interview. Heheh. Hey, it worked for that kid at Google. Why not for me at Microsoft?

For developers only: Scott Hanselman has the details on the new .NET Reflector. He says it’s good. Of course it’s good. Lutz Roeder wrote it.

Ahh, yes, I will jump on the bandwagon and talk about Sirius and XM merging. No, not so I too can get on the top of TechMeme (it’s too late to play that game, if you want to get to the top of TechMeme you’ve got to be early, or you’ve got to say something interesting about the news, like Doc Searls did).

Since I’m late and not interesting, we’ll give up on that game, OK? Heheh.

But, I’m probably one of the only bloggers who’s owned both a Sirius and an XM radio (my new Saturn has XM, my old Ford had Sirius). I can’t tell the difference between the two networks. Well, other than the channels’ numbers are different. So, I don’t see any great loss if these two systems merge.

Oh, great, I just pissed off all the NASCAR, Adam Curry, and Howard Stern fans who’ll write and remind me that those things are only on Sirius. OK, OK.

I love my satellite radio, but that AUX connector for iPods and Zunes on both of our cars has a strong calling too. I agree with Doc that listening to media you chose is a powerful thing. We have thousands of choices (maybe millions) and using an MP3 player we can listen to what we want, when we want it.

That said, I like the serendipity of listening to stuff I wouldn’t otherwise listen to. That, and podcasting won’t be able to compete with live news over CNBC or BBC or CNN.

Oh, on my Saturn I’ve already put 2,100 miles on the thing. Great car. Maryam’s mom likes riding in it better than she likes riding in the BMW (much more leg room in the back and softer ride). Oh, and the parking attendant at San Francisco’s Fairmont paid it a nice compliment. I’ve never gotten a compliment while driving the BMW. Of course, the fact that he probably parks a hundred BMWs in a day might have something to do with the compliment.

Me? Driving the BMW is more fun, but then I remind myself that I can buy two Saturns for the price of one BMW and all of a sudden the Saturn seems a lot better again.

Long and short of it? Neither system has that many subscribers. Most of my friends don’t have satellite radio. I doubt more than a small percentage of you do either. I bet more of you have HDTVs. Translation: this story doesn’t deserve the amount of pixels being killed for it. :-)

Oh, if this all wasn’t clear: I love my satellite radio and can’t imagine a car without it anymore. But, then, I spend a LOT of time driving lately and I live in a place where radio signals don’t reach very well.

Maryam, Patrick, and me, got a tour of Maya’s Mom’s workspace yesterday. It was the first Silicon Valley startup that actually is located inside a garage that we’ve done an interview of. Maya’s Mom was started by, well, Maya’s mom. AKA Ann Crady, formerly of Yahoo. We had a nice chat, the site is for parents. Anyway, in this little garage located behind a house on Alma Street in Palo Alto that you’ll see in the video when we get it up (probably in three weeks, I have that many videos in the can) there are actually four startups. This is one thing I love about video. I can actually show you the crazy working conditions. Text just doesn’t do it justice.

Oh, she found the head developer by using LinkedIn. I keep getting bugged by people to use LinkedIn. Sorry, I don’t do that. If you need me, my phone number and email are on the sidebar of my blog. But glad someone is getting value out of it.

No, I’m not driving (Maryam is) but that means I can Twitter from the Freeway. Heheh. We’ll be on the Golden Gate Bridge in 15 minutes. I’ll Twitter from there too. Maryam says hi, by the way.