So, I was just playing around with Google’s new street side photos. Hmmm, sounds like something that Microsoft did more than a year ago back when I worked there. But, go to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View and you’ll see a bunch of people standing outside. I wonder who they are? Why are they holding shovels and rakes and other gardening tools? Why are they all wearing green shirts? What do those shirts say? What team do they belong to? So many questions.

I’ve been waiting for the PlayTable for quite a while. Mary Jo Foley (our favorite Microsoft Watcher) says it’s coming soon. The demos I saw at Microsoft’s TechFest a couple of years back were stunning. If the product is even 1/2 as good as the demo this one will catch everyone by surprise.

Oh, funny aside? Our favorite name for our new kid? It’s Milan. And I didn’t know until today that the code-name for the PlayTable is Milan.

Either way, a Milan is coming to you soon. Not sure if it’ll be a Scoble or a Microsoft. Heheh.

Zoho. Never heard of it? You will. They were just named to PC World’s top 100 products of 2007 list and on Tuesday they released Zoho Notebook, an app that lets you take notes, record audio, and interact with people during meetings. Anyway, I just put up an interview with the CEO.

UPDATE: here’s a separate video where I get a demo of Zoho Notebook.

On Monday I recorded a speech by Jeff Bell, Vice President of Global Marketing at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business. You know, the Xbox folks. He’s a good speaker, gets a little “salesy” but gives lots of good detail in how they are marketing Xbox.

Oh, and someone whispered in my ear that there will be a new Zune this year. I was told to “think widescreen.” Hmmm.

Scott Guthrie runs a bunch of developer tools teams at Microsoft. Why is he cool? Well, head over to Eirepreneur for the details. This is an advertisement. One that we’re passing around. Red vs. Blue (machinima video based on Halo) is so fun.

They do these little commercials and it’s pretty lucrative too. If I remember right they did one for the PDC a few years back when I worked at Microsoft and Microsoft paid quite a bit for them to do it.

Mary Jo Foley (she’s been covering Microsoft for a long time) has the news: Microsoft has postponed the PDC that it had planned for later this year.

The PDC stands for “Professional Developer’s Conference.” It happens only when Microsoft knows it’ll have a major new platform to announce. Usually a new version of Windows or a new Internet strategy.

So, this means a couple of things: no new Windows and no major new Internet strategy this year.

Contrast this to Google who is holding a huge developer day next week (it sold out, so I won’t even bother linking to it). Or Facebook, who held a big developer-centric shindig today.

Some other things I’m hearing about the next version of Windows? There still is a ban on .NET code in core parts of Windows. They aren’t getting enough performance yet from .NET to include code written in it inside major parts of Windows. This is a bummer, because .NET is a lot easier to write than C++ and letting Microsoft’s developers write .NET code for Windows would unleash a bunch of innovation.

The person who told me this (who works at Microsoft) told me .NET still takes too long to startup and load into memory and because Windows is now being compared to OSX they can’t afford to ship components that would slow down Windows.

Before every MVP jumps me in the alley yes, I know the .NET runtimes ship with Vista. But almost no Vista code was written in .NET (if any, actually). Microsoft tries to keep this secret because they know it gives a black eye to .NET. After all, if Microsoft is unwilling to use it to develop Windows or Office, why should the rest of us base our life on it? Easy, it’s a lot more productive for the rest of us to write code in .NET and now Silverlight, which uses .NET’s compiler and part of its framework at heart, than to fall back to C++. Pick the right tool for the job and all that.

It also means that Ray Ozzie’s team probably doesn’t have anything dramatic to announce yet and they aren’t willing to have live within the bounds of a forcing function like the PDC (PDC forces teams to get their acts together and finish off stuff enough to at least get some good demos together).

The last few PDCs haven’t exactly been huge successes, though. Hailstorm was announced at one and later was killed. Longhorn was announced at another and later was delayed and many things that were shown off were later killed too.

Now that Google, Amazon, Apple, are shipping platforms that are more and more interesting to Microsoft’s developer community Microsoft has to play a different game. One where they can’t keep showing off stuff that never ships. The stakes are going up in the Internet game and Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a good answer to what’s coming next.

Some other things I’m hearing from the Windows team? That they are still planning out the next version of Windows. So, I don’t expect to see a beta until 2008 (probably second half of the year, if we see one at all) and I don’t expect to see a major new version of Windows to ship until 2009.

Anyway, this is sad cause I was hoping to see Microsoft make an all out push for developers this year.

What do you think it all means? Am I reading too much in between the lines?

Fear Of Google. FOG. It’s all over the blogs today. I just got done reading my feeds and here’s the posts that have FOG all over them:

Mary Jo Foley: Google is failing the Microsoft litmus test.
James Robertson: Is Google Big and Stupid Already?
Sebastien St-Laurent: Does Google Have a Double Standard?
Todd Cochrane: Google is Buying FeedBurner, this is pure Evil!
Philipp Lenssen: Is the Google Video PlusBox Fair?
Shelley Powers: Your Life, Googled.
Scott Karp: Google’s Video PlusBox May Be Its Most Disruptive Feature Ever.
Janet Driscoll Miller: What the Heck is Google’s Business Plan?
OpenDNS Blog: Google turns the page … in a bad way.
Danny Sullivan: Google & Dell’s Revenue-Generating URL Error Pages Drawing Fire.

More of the Dell and Google thing is being talked about over on TechMeme.

Actually, I think FOG is changing into DOG. Distrust/Disdain Of Google. What do you think?

Me? Google is too secretive. Too unwilling to engage. Too aloof. Oh, and Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has lost touch with how normal people think (if these quotes are correct, and that’s a big “if”). If they are correct I think it’s evidence that he’s been hanging around too many advertising execs lately. Their goal is to put impulses into your mind so you take certain actions (like buy Diet Coke instead of Diet Pepsi). Believe it or not advertising execs talk like that. So, when Eric is reported to have said, during a visit to Britain this week: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’” we all get a little freaked out. We don’t want Google to know that much about us.

Or do you?

Also, the secrecy at Google is rubbing off on its PR in other ways — when we meet Google employees at events like Maker Faire (I met several on Saturday) and many of them can’t tell me anything about what they do beyond “I work in networking.”

It’s these personal interactions that make us mistrust what’s going on inside Google. They are building the world’s most fantastic advertising engine but they won’t explain a little bit about who they are, and what they are doing to make our searches better? To be fair, I also met Matt Cutts there and he’s very open about what he’s doing, but Google really needs to open up a bit more.

If I were working in PR there, I’d invite in regular bloggers (not just A-List egoists like that Scoble guy) and let them talk to the engineers so they can see what the engineering intent is when they are doing things that are tracking us. And stop talking like an advertising executive. More and more of my friends are getting freaked out by just how much data Google (and other advertising based companies) are collecting and the inferences they are starting to make about the kind of people we are.

I saw lots of reactions to Feedburner’s purchase by Google decrying that Google will know what feeds they are subscribed to.

I think Google has to be very transparent, very warm, and very open when it comes to privacy and the data it’s collecting on all of us and to many of us it’s coming across as closed, cold, and opaque. That leads to bad PR. Bad PR — if continued unabated — leads to government action. Just ask my friends at Microsoft.

Is that what Google wants here?

Sometimes first impressions are better than they appear on a more measured look. Technorati is down right now and was for quite a while. UPDATE: It’s back up now. Why am I writing this? I don’t remember that Google’s Blogsearch EVER having been down (I use both quite often).

Why does Google’s main search have such a strong position in my head? It’s always fast and it always is up. I can remember only two times in the past eight years when I couldn’t get Google to come back and it almost always comes back really fast.

I bet there are more than a few people trying to get to Technorati right now cause of all the new discussion about its new design and features. Yet they are getting an ugly error message.

At least when Twitter was down recently there was some humor in its error message — pictures of cats poking around inside a server with a funny headline.

Engtech says goodbye to Technorati too.

I’m sorry for getting all hyped up. Last night Technorati looked very cool and it impressed me. That first impression has been getting worse and worse all day long.

I remember how Microsoft gathered market share in the 1980s and 1990s: they just executed well enough and waited for their competitors to stumble.

I hope Technorati will be back tomorrow. I was trying to do a more in-depth review of the new Technorati.

But first on my quality checklist is “are you always up and always fast?” How about yours?

The newly-relaunched Technorati exposes a weakness in Google’s armor. I just tried a bunch of searches. Technorati does “Live” search MUCH MUCH better than Microsoft and even better than Google’s Blog Search.

I predict that, with this update, Technorati will become a quick takeover target. If I were at Microsoft I’d be spending a few corporate hours wining and dining Dave Sifry.

Technorati is so superior to all the other blog search engines now that it isn’t even funny. Why can 45 people at Technorati beat Google yet Microsoft, with its billions of dollars, can’t get any traction?

The answer? Technorati is a small idea. It takes one tiny little niche away from Google. It doesn’t try to compete with the main Google engine.

On Monday I sat next to a developer on Microsoft’s Popfly team. He didn’t like that I called Popfly a “small” idea. I told him that was a term of endearment, not of derision. The most interesting things on the Internet are done by small teams. Not “boil the ocean and try to kill Google” teams.

Microsoft should be cheered that Technorati, a small company of 45 people, can take on Google and can build a successful SEARCH brand and experience that beats Google.

Google, on the other hand, with its billions in revenue and thousands of PhD’s should be ashamed that it isn’t as good as Technorati.

Oh, and didn’t Blinkx go public yesterday? Yeah, and their stock went up! Amazing that two little companies are making businesses in Google’s backyard. If I were at Google I’d worry about that and remember Google’s history. It was, what, eight years ago that Google was the little upstart and companies like Yahoo and AltaVista owned the search space.

Microsoft: why haven’t you changed your search strategy yet? Look at your search on Live.com. Now compare to Technorati. Which one is more “live?” Technorati by a mile. Maybe this is what we mean when we say Microsoft is “dead.”

I bet some people/companies are wishing they acquired Technorati last week. I have a feeling that their valuation just went up about $500 million. At least.

UPDATE: Another example of how Microsoft’s Internet strategy is lacking? Check out the new Pageflakes, TechCrunch just wrote about that. Now compare to anything Microsoft has put out there. In fact, compare to Google’s “iGoogle” page. How does Pageflakes measure up? Smaller is better!

I’ve had onstage conversations with Andrew Keen twice in the past week. He’s the author of “Cult of the Amateur,” a polemic about how bad the Internet (and particularly blogs, who he writes are written by “monkeys”) is making nearly everything suck. This is a marketing strategy wrapped in the clothing of a book. Brilliant one too, as I’ve written before.

I hate writing about it cause I’m playing into his publisher’s hands. If I say “don’t buy it, it’s a crappy book” many of you will rush out and buy it just so you can see what I’m talking about. So, I won’t say that. Go and buy it. Make Andrew rich! That way he’ll be a professional author and we can all then write a polemic about that. Heheh.

Anyway, Dan Farber reports on the Sunday debate. So does Scott Roseberg. So does Renee Blodget.

Actually, for being such a polemic, it did engender some interesting conversations at both events.

Well, that’s enough from “your monkey.”

Oh, wait, it’s time to drive John Welch nuts with my evening’s post of my link blog’s headlines! Heheh. If you don’t want to wade through page after page of full text items on my link blog, just the headlines and links to items are on the Twitter Feed for my Link blog here.

1. Facebook Platform: The Road to IPO?
2. Pandora bringing Internet Radio to Cell Phones
3. Google CEO on Education: Google Search is key
4. VMIX to Power Traditional Media Social Networking Components
5. Follow Up To My Sky Is Falling Post
6. Will DRM-free tunes turbocharge music sales?
7. Interview: Howard Rheingold
8. Interview: David Weinberger
9. Memo to Entrepreneurs: Advertising isn’t a strong business model
10. Rocky
11. Sonos announces new bundle, Pandora integration
12. your library is delicious
13. Netvibes Revisited
14. Pandora Goes Mobile, and Sonos, and More
15. What thoughts should I think?
16. Rootly Relaunces: Design Much Improved
17. Google Calls for Real-Time Spectrum Allocation
18. Seventeen year Cicadas and other stuff
19. Justin.TV Network Launches: More Shows to Come
20. The West Coast Whining Continues … AD NAUSEUM
21. You Have the Choice
22. World of Warcraft Patch 2.1.0 Out Now
23. DigitalKatie — getting her SecondLife
24. No-Frills Videos 101
25. Scoble’s Malaise and Arrington’s Wish for a Downturn usher in a new Silicon Valley Phase
26. Being John Heinricy
27. Maker Faire Video
28. May 22nd Links: ASP.NET, Visual Studio, SIlverlight, WPF, and .NET
29. The Unblogosphere
30. How Microsoft beats Google in ad agency battle
31. 7+7 Reasons Why GOogle Buying FeedBurner is a Match Made in Heaven and Hell
32. Resource hunt heating up
33. Adobe and Microsoft’s Different Approaches to the Development Platform
34. The Future of Ask.com: Search? How About Advertising
35. The Web as Enterprise Productivity Tool
36. Kill the Cash Cow Before Your Competitors Do. Really?
37. Why I Don’t Like Video — My Brain is a Mini-Google, Yours is Too
38. Silicon Valley BUZZ Dilemma
39. GMail Attachments Double to 20MB
40. Roundups: EcoModo - The Best of TreeHugger
41. Every good domain is taken. Here’s why
42. Down and Out on the Internet
43. A community launch: Zooomr Mark III
44. Launch: Zoho Notebook beta launches
45. Maker Faire videos!
46. World Golf Tour launches, worth a round
47. The Sad State of Online Advertising
48. Five principles of blogging
49. Yet more on Panorama
50. Could Ask.com Ever Topple Google? Wait, Let Me Stop Laughing First
51. Authenticity in Social Media
52. Video search company, Blinkx, blows bubble with IPO
53. How to Get Out of Your Funk A-Listers: Stop Thinking About Money
54. Begginer’s Mind for the A List Blogger
55. Live Innovation Journalism Conference Notes: Private equity is biggest threat to journalism in Silicon Valley
56. TweetVolume Shows How Many Times Your Name is On Twitter
57. Apps I’m trying out
58. Second Brain: Organizing Your Information Chaos
59. Tribler Combines YouTube, BitTorrent, and Last.fm
60. CDN Sector Heats up with Level 3 in the Game
61. Keith Thompson: Totally Off the Grid
62. Pandora Still Hates Foreigners, But is Now on Sprint and Sonos
63. Your Invited to a Stanford symposium: How will we pay for the journalism we need?
64. Photojournalism: American Diversity Project
65. Not All Notebooks are Created Equal
66. Message to Michael: Just Say, Well, No.
67. Google Maps Mania links for 2007-05-22
68. Why Microsoft will Never Succeed In Search
69. On2 buys Finnish mobile video company
70. How to Download YouTube videos
71. Sun’s Schwartz Pledges to Use Patents to Protect Red Hat and Ubuntu
72. No more fun in the Valley
73. Another Way to Blog
74. N95 Chronicles: Real Rhapsody (almost) Rocks
75. Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user
76. Dreamliner: Boeing 787LEGO-like Building Begins, Kicks Airbus’ Nuts
77. Watercam: Sanyo Xacti E1, World’s First Waterproof Camcorder
78. Like, Totally WIred
79. Research: Future of Online Advertising
80. Broadband Enterprises’ Digital Upfront
81. Mashup Summit