I just put up the video I shot a few weeks ago of Mark Richards, who just released a new coffee table picture book, Core Memory — he did the photography, John Alderman did the text. All photos of computers in the Computer History Museum. He spent two years working on the book. We filmed the interview in the museum, looking at the book, and talking about how he made the images. Photographers will love this one.

It’s a great book and one that any geek would love to have on their coffee table.

Non photographers will love my video and the book too, because both give you a really interesting look at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

UPDATE: wild, BoingBoing did a post on it today too with a lot more details and Mark Richards’ site is here.

Thanks to Shannon Clark for the picture of me holding the book — he’s in the video toward the end too.

I have brought my video camera to the Computer History Museum before back when I worked at Microsoft. Here I got a tour of the museum with famous technologist Gordon Bell (Part I and Part II)

UPDATE2: If you don’t have time for the long video, here’s a shorter “Editor’s Choice.”

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, lays down his business strategy in response to Microsoft’s legal rumblings over the weekend: “In essence, we decided to innovate, not litigate.”

I totally agree with Dave Winer’s post about Twitter being about the users, not the technology. I didn’t join Twitter because it was cool technology. Second Life +might+ be able to make that claim, but not Twitter. I joined Twitter because my friends were on it and were joining it at a very quick rate. B. Mann seems to think that someone could build a Twitter clone in Jabber.

He’s talking like a lot of engineers at Microsoft (and other companies, truth be told) would talk “my team could build that in 10 days.” That all might be true but you’ll never get the users to come and try your thing out. Also, correct me if I’m wrong but Jabber is an IM system. Twitter is closer to a blog service, where the posting length has been limited to 140 characters and the home page is an RSS aggregation of your friends posts. Yeah, there’s an SMS component (it’s not why I joined Twitter — I don’t use Twitter from my cell phone and really don’t care that you can). Yeah, there’s an IM component (it’s not why I joined Twitter — I don’t use Twitter from an IM client and really don’t care that you can).

It’s interesting that B. Mann wants to build a new Twitter. One that’s better engineered, ostensibly. Hey, I’m all for that too. But he forgets that it’s not the engineering that got me to join Twitter in the first place: it’s my friends.

Maybe we need to engineer better friends before we talk about engineering a better Twitter. Heheh.

Oh, and if you haven’t yet joined Twitter, my account is Twitter.com/Scobleizer.

Om Malik has a list of Twitter Tools. That’s another thing you’d need to recreate — all the little things that have been already created on top of Twitter.

There’s also a belief that I keep reading that Twitter is only a Silicon Valley “fan boy” kind of thing. That’s TOTALLY NOT TRUE. Watch TwitterVision for a few minutes and you’ll see an evenly-dispersed group of people all over the world.

Fortune Magazine has an in-depth article about Microsoft and its claim that free software infringes on 235 of its patents. I don’t know where the truth lies, but Microsoft has more than 800 lawyers and it looks like they are going to make sure that they remain relevant through legal action. This has deep implications for a whole sector of our economy because there are lots of companies that rely on free software (Google being the mindshare leader that I can think of, but most of the startups I interview use LAMP, Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP, to build their companies).

Microsoft up to this point has used patents defensively (i.e., only if sued themselves) but the gestures that the leadership is sending to the marketplace lately is that they are about to enter into a more offensive phase of using patents.

UPDATE: TechMeme has a lot more reactions on this issue.

A Wii showed up at PodTech recently and it flipped me around.

I used to be one of those guys who thought that Xbox or Sony’s Playstation 3 would take over the market due to the much better HD graphics. But after playing a while on the Wii I get why people think it’s so cool: casual gaming and game play.

I can’t really explain it, but after 10 seconds you forget that the graphics aren’t as good looking as on the Xbox. Who really cares when you’re playing all sorts of games that are somewhere between Zuma and Geometry Wars anyway?

This why I think Robbie Bach is full of it when he disrespected the Wii. This is the kind of stuff that Microsofties are taught to say after they are getting their butts handed to them in the marketplace. I remember Microsoft execs saying similar things about the iPod and iTunes two to three years ago.

Hey, I’m a total Xbox freak. But the Wii has me. I wish Microsoft did more innovation on the controller side of the house too, but that’s not all of why the Wii is getting so much hype (it’s still hard to find one).

I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs about Halo 3 and most of the bloggers aren’t giving it rave reviews. Here’s Blake Snow’s review over on GigaOm.

If I were Robbie I’d worry a little more about controller innovation, gameplay, and coming out with a few more killer games that keeps our attention on the Xbox system.

Another thing? Since I don’t get a lot of exercise I’m looking for some games that’ll encourage me (and my son) to get moving a bit and off of the couch. At least Wii gets you worked up playing tennis and other active games. That’s VERY appealing to not just me but most families I know with kids who tend to spend too much time looking at game screens.

Adrian Sutton saw I invited everyone to the Marriott and showed up. He’s a Java-using developer from Australia and was visiting for the JavaOne conference last week. Actually he’s a senior software engineer at Ephox. I love Twitter and it always amazes me when people show up because they see me Twittering about something.

Anyway, he told Tom and I that he was very impressed with JavaFX and what he saw at JavaOne this week. Although he doesn’t think JavaFX is a Flash killer. He thinks it is something else, but something that software developers will find useful.

Funny, I was wearing a Microsoft Silverlight hat that Jeff Sandquist gave me. On the elevator on the way down some guy gave me a dirty look and pulled out a Java hat and put it on. Ahh, this is how geek religions are displayed and fought.

The guy was John Penrose, principal architect in the enterprise group at Cablevision. After we had a laugh about the hat we talked briefly. He said he was very impressed with JavaFX and said the demos were absolutely killer, especially the mobile ones.

Reading the blog’s reactions to JavaFX (on Google’s blog search) (and same search on Technorati) it seems most of them are very positive. How about you? What do you think?

I’m here at the Apple store in San Francisco. Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora, and I have been walking around town sharing stories and having lots of fun. The line to the concert is about a mile long so we’re not going to go. Too many people makes for not a fun experience.

Anyway, he used to work at Apple “BJ2″ (Before Jobs 2.0) on the finder team and he told me about a joke that Apple engineers used to tell:

If it’s 999 engineers who say “yes” to an idea vs. one who says “no” they’d score it as a tie and kill the idea. It wasn’t a funny joke. Apple before Jobs came back was paralysed and couldn’t get stuff done. I told him it sounded a lot like many groups at Microsoft. He explained why the joke was true. After all, the one engineer who said no was freaking smart. Probably had some degree from MIT and probably had invented something really killer.

He explained why Apple is so good now that Jobs is back. He was the tie breaker. All votes went his way. Heheh.

Does your company call 999 to 1 a tie? How do you break those kinds of ties and get things done?

Adobe Illustrator is one of the hardest applications I ever taught myself. Why? Cause you create imagery by manipulating little wires. I learned it back in 1988 and it’s sure gotten a lot more powerful since then. Recently I had a chance to sit down with a few Adobe teams (Photoshop and Premiere are coming soon) to catch up on what Adobe’s been doing lately. Here Phil Guindi product manager on the Illustrator team demonstrates to me and talks me through a bunch of the newest stuff. It’s long, but if you’re a graphic designer you’ll probably see a few new things. Even if you’re not you’ll learn a lot about how this app is used to create much of the imagery you see all around you (most billboards, for instance, are created in Illustrator and so are many Flash and Silverlight animations — the design folks at Microsoft still used Adobe Illustrator a lot when I worked there because it’s such a powerful tool — of course Microsoft is trying to switch everyone over to its Expression Suite).

Sorry for taking the week off with my show. Rocky’s mom died on Sunday which put us behind. Thanks to Ryanne Hodson for filling in while Rocky’s tending to family affairs.

Have you ever tried to call someone at Microsoft or Google? I have. I’ve even memorized Microsoft’s number but won’t give it here cause I’d hate for Jeff Sandquist to get a ton of crank calls. Anyway, both Microsoft and Google have switchboard numbers. Today I called someone (or tried to, anyway) at Google and found the experience to be far less useful than when you try to call someone at Microsoft. By the way, at both companies all you need is someone’s name. Yeah, calling Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt probably won’t prove fruitful, but try someone deep down in the bowels of the company and you’ll probably get right through.

Anyway, Microsoft has a really cool voice-controlled system. You dial the number, an electronic voice answers and asks you for the person’s name you’re trying to reach. You SAY it. “Jeff Sandquist” and then it comes back with a recording of Jeff Sandquist so you know you’re going to the right place. “Are you looking for ‘Jeff Sandquist, Channel 9′”? Why yes I am! The call goes right through. If it doesn’t, or you hacked Jeff’s name, it prompts you for a whole lot of other things. “Do you know the email address of the person you are trying to reach?” Etc. Etc.

But compare that to Google’s switchboard. When it answers it immediately prompts you for that person’s extension. That’s not nearly as human as Microsoft’s approach to “Welcome to Microsoft. To reach a specific person just say their name at any time.”

I didn’t know the extension of the person I was trying to reach. So, the voice on the phone says to push 8 to reach someone by their name. I entered in the first few digits of the person’s last name I was trying to reach. It immediately sent me to the voice mail box of someone completely different without prompting the way Microsoft’s system does to make sure I entered the person’s name right.

Why is Microsoft’s system so good? Because they’ve been working on speech stuff for a long time. It’s also why the acquisition of TellMe was so interesting. Imagine if Microsoft just focused its search efforts on voice and gave up the attempt to clone Google.com. Now THAT would be a winning strategy.

Imagine calling a number and saying “Starbucks, San Francisco” and getting routed to the right answer.

Maybe Microsoft’s search engineers should call the switchboard to see just how to beat Google and move the goalposts to a new game?

UPDATE: Richard Sprague, who runs the speech team at Microsoft, says Google can buy its solution if it wants to improve its switchboard.

I was just reading catching up on feed reading (I read 31,000 items a month so you don’t have to) and see that Microsoft’s Mich Mathews (she runs marketing at Microsoft) admits to making a “happy mistake” that went viral. Ahh, that’s why you need to try lots of weird things!

On page two of my link blog you’ll find this item by Jeff Jarvis. Talking about Andrew Keen and his new book. I’m going to debate Keen a couple of times in the next few weeks. Why? Cause I think he’s brilliant. Let’s go through the strategy:

1) Piss off all the “amateurs” by saying shit about them in your book. Of course they’ll link. We’re suckers for that. Aside: hi Nick Denton of Gawker Media!
2) Take the side of journalists who are getting laid off in droves. Of course they’ll write about your book. They are suckers for that.
3) Get invited to speak on a bunch of panels. There’s nothing more exciting than a fight on a panel. I know, I was involved in a panel that devolved into a fight just a week ago. Everyone thought it was a great panel, maybe even the best of the conference.
4) Laugh all the way to the bank.

It’s brilliant I tell you. Oh, I agree with Jeff that it’s not a very good book but it sure appeals to a lot of people.

Me? I’m just a sucker for going along with this game.

There’s dozens of other interesting things on my link blog including the top 10 photo widgets, Guy Kawasaki with proof that bloggers are egotists (who knew?), Chris Messina with a bunch of ideas for Mozilla Foundation, new Zune detail leaks.