This is pretty interesting. I was just doing my link blog (reading my feeds) when I saw this item come through the river of news on Google’s Reader.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work on Wordpress.com. Sigh.

Congrats to JotSpot for selling to Google. (JotSpot is an online Office, er Wiki, suite).

One reason I have interviewed almost all the Wiki companies in my first five weeks of ScobleShow is because I sensed that the Wiki market was white hot. Why? Cause on a post a few months back my comments went crazy. Your interest predicted a deal like this. I predict others are coming.

My interview with Joe Kraus, just a couple of months ago, is here. Here is a demo of JotSpot that Joe did.

Google has definitely gotten over its “not invented here” syndrome with the purchase of YouTube and now JotSpot. They are buying audiences and best-of-breed technologies, which JotSpot definitely was.

Microsoft’s Office team should be looking at this acquisition this morning and wondering what Google is up to.

It’s pretty clear to me: Google is going where the money is.

“But I thought Sharepoint was already getting a wiki,” you might say after hearing the latest news that Socialtext (one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Wiki vendor) is bringing Socialtext to Microsoft’s Sharepoint platform. That might be true, but Socialtext is a lot more than what Microsoft is putting in, not to mention that Microsoft’s Wiki functionality hasn’t shipped yet. Anyway, congrats to Ross Mayfield, one of the truly nice guys in this business. He wrote more about this on his blog.

One of my favorite employees at Microsoft was David Caulton. His analysis of various things was always interesting. Here he responds to my post about Microsoft’s Zune. He was the guy who showed off Apple’s iPod in a meeting I was in.

What I mean by conversationality is “will someone who is sitting next to me in the Seattle Airport ask me what that cool new thing I’m wearing is all about?”

The white headphones caused those kinds of conversations. I saw them happen multiple times (I agree that they won’t happen anymore cause white headphones are so commonplace).

If a product causes conversations to happen, then it’ll see more adoption quicker.

Chuqui, who is was an Apple employee, has a point. Apple employees ARE allowed to blog. They just aren’t allowed to be spokespeople, as Chuqui admits. So, they don’t feel empowered to talk about anything that they are working on, as Chuqui admits. That’s completely different from what Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, IBM, and other tech companies tell their employees.

Lots of Apple employees have told me that they want to blog about work. He says the goal should be communication, not getting credit.

Absolutely!

But what he doesn’t admit is that Google has changed everything. Now I totally expect to be able to find an employee at a company running a product group. Here’s a test.

Go to Google. Type “OneNote blog.” You’ll find Chris Pratley. He runs the team. I can tell him his product sucks in his comments.

Now, go back to Google. Type “Apple MacBook blog.” Do you find an Apple employee? No. You find a corporate page. Send an email there. Does it go to the right person? I have no idea. Certainly bloggers who’ve tried that recently due to Apple’s rebooting problems are getting unstatisfactory answers.

Anyway, you can see the difference in how Apple treats online communication in Chuqui’s post. At Adobe I see tons of blogs. At Microsoft I see tons of blogs. At IBM I see tons of blogs. At Sun I see tons of blogs.

The difference is telling.

And the fact that Chuqui thinks it’s about credit is telling too.

Oh, well, it ain’t my company.

UPDATE: Chuqui doesn’t work at Apple anymore. He did for years. I am sorry for missing that he doesn’t work there any longer.

I’m here with Ben Constable and Sacha (she’s a math student and one of the top 10 Zuma players in the world and he is a developer on the Microsoft Max team) and he’s showing me all sorts of fun memes. Stuff like:

O RLY

I’d hit it!

Weird stuff people post on the Internets. They use “O RLY” to answer email and forum threads where someone makes an outrageous claim. You can post a picture from “O RLY” to answer that. “I’d hit it” is for anything you think is good.

And, we’re having lots of fun drinking wine and talking about “the Google.” Search Google for “The Google” and you’ll find the George Bush reference.

Hope you’re having a good Friday evening!

So, you’ve seen the Zune video. Here’s my thoughts about whether Microsoft is going to be successful.

I’ll come at it from a number of different angles:

THE FUNDAMENTALS

Box design: good. As good as iPod.
Look and feel and overall hardware quality: good. As good as iPod. I actually even liked the brown one a lot.
Screen: better than iPod.
Hard drive size: worse than iPod.
Features: mixed bag, we’ll get into that below.
Price: in the right neighborhood.
Marketing: unknown, but Apple has set such a high bar that I doubt Microsoft can even get close.
Software experience: unknown.
Updateability: better than iPod (if I were Apple I’d worry about this).
Conversationality: (Does it cause a conversation). Here Apple wins with the white headphones hands down.
Integration: beats the iPod cause it works with Xbox.

EDGE CASE

As an edge case, IE, someone who tries all the latest stuff and gets excited about a lot of it, the Zune abjectly fails. It does not have a killer feature. Sorry, Microsoft, sharing songs is not it.

Instead, the bleeding edge of the market cares about sharing cool videos, some of which they might have shot themselves, sharing cool podcasts (my son listens to many podcasts in addition to the music), and using their device to record their own content.

Zune doesn’t have a podcast client.
Zune doesn’t have a microphone.
Zune doesn’t have a way to subscribe to Rocketboom or ZeFrank or any other videoblog.

Last weekend Dave Winer took my son and me to an Apple store. What was on the biggest sign in the store? Podcasting. Apple gets this trend, Microsoft doesn’t.

But let’s look deeper. The Zune has a wifi antenna. Can I use it to download music without hooking up to a computer? No.

Does it work with a Macintosh? No.

Does it free me from DRM? No.

Can I use my iPod music on it that I’ve purchased on iTunes? No.

Can I record off of the FM tuner? No.

The one thing that gets close to a killer feature is the subscription feature so that I can listen to unlimited music. If I buy a Zune this will probably be the reason.

THE KIDS’ VIEW

My son is a good gauge of whether Zune has a chance. Peer pressure is hyper strong to have an iPod. If you show up to school with something that isn’t an iPod you aren’t cool. Now, that’ll change if kids think there’s something cool or better. So far nothing I showed Patrick about Zune got him interested. Especially since he and his friends listen to lots of podcasts and because he’d rather have a huge amount of storage than be able to subscribe to a music service. Let’s be honest too, many of these kids have huge music collections: my son has hundreds of songs purchased off of iTunes and many many others. How do they trade songs? They trade iPods.

THE USER’S POINT OF VIEW

There’s not enough data here. The Zune team didn’t show us the OOBE (Out Of Box Experience). This is why the iPod got my attention years ago. Steve Jobs showed how much faster it was in transfering songs cause they used Firewire instead of a slower cable.

I remember being in a meeting at Microsoft where someone showed off how much better the iPod experience was than what other OEMs had produced. Little things like iTunes knows to put the matching icon up on the UI for the kind of iPod you use. Even the right color. It’s a little touch. But it’s the kind of thing that subliminally makes users feel good about the system.

Until Microsoft ships we won’t know how good these small details have been matched.

Also, several people have told me they didn’t like the round control surface on the Zune because they were used to the iPod wheel and the Zune didn’t work the same way. Once you get used to it, the Zune is just fine (and offers a couple of advantages, especially when watching movies or looking at photos, but that demonstrates just how deeply the iPod’s UI has been implanted into our brains).

THE PLATFORM/ECOSYSTEM

iPod has hundreds of accessories and has car manufacturers who make their cars “iPod compatible.” Zune won’t be able to match that out of the gate. Zune, on the other hand, integrates into Xbox and Media Center better than iPod.

And, the Zune has a better software updater. I’m already hearing that within a few days of release in mid-November that there will already be some new features released.

That’s something Apple should worry about. If Microsoft can upgrade all of its Zune players easily with new features and games and such, then they can build experiences that the iPod can’t easily get (and if third-party developers can play there, watch out. Remember 1989? I thought the Macintosh was superior to Windows. Which one ended up with more market share? The ones that the developers could extend the easiest.

CONCLUSION

It’s that last point that could turn into a killer feature. If software developers are enabled to build new experiences for the Zune, then we could see something killer come along that’ll get more people interested in the Zune.

But, for now, I’d stick with an iPod. Microsoft hasn’t given us a killer feature yet that is easily demonstratable for why we should buy a Zune instead of an iPod.

Do you agree or disagree?

One of the nicest developers I ever met at Microsoft, Steve Lacey, surprised me recently when he said he was working at Google. Great to see him today. He, like almost everyone at Google, refuses to tell me what he’s working on.

It’s gotta be cool, though. After all, he was an important developer on Flight Simulator. Why leave a job like that if you aren’t going to be working on something cool?

Oh, while we’re talking about Google, might as well talk about Kevin Laws’ rant over on VentureBeat: The Google Myth goes “pop.”

Kevin misses what Google is doing.

They are building moats around those two businesses that Google has proven successful.

By investing in everything else, Google’s search engine has gotten business defensibility. Microsoft and Yahoo have largely matched Google’s search quality. But they aren’t gonna steal search traffic (or, more importantly, advertising dollars) from Google because of the investment in other things.

Also, what gets rewarded by the stock market? Existing market share or growth?

Quick, who had most market share in 1977? IBM and DEC, right? Did that really matter? No.

What matters is how fast each service is growing.

I guarantee you that Google Talk doesn’t just have 44,000 users anymore. Those numbers are old. Makes for nice stories, but won’t hold up in the end.

He ends up wondering if Google can hold onto its workers. I predict that Google not only is holding onto its workers, but is getting a lot more out of each worker than most other companies.

I’ve never met such enthusiastic employees. Oh, and I did interview the chef today. He says he tells all his chef friends that he has the best job in the world. This company is — by far — the most interest to watch from a business perspective.

Part of the reason for that is they are breaking lots of rules.

And some of these weird experiments will pay off. Just stick around and see.

Ahh, Giovanni Rodriguez links to a “making of a Scoble video” video. Yes, the camera was aimed at the cameraguy. Me. Transparency all around.

Google and Microsoft were both wonderful today. I got so many videos to get up. And while I was out today another 134 emails came in. I’m so deep in email deficit that I’ll never catch up. Sorry if I haven’t answered you back.

Last time I was at Microsoft I met with the Zune team and got this in-depth look at Zune (the iPod competitor).

I have some strong thoughts on Zune, but I want to keep them to myself until tomorrow. It’s better for you to just watch the video and give your two cents first.

What do you think now that you’ve had a good chance to hear from the Zune team? I asked all the hard question in this interview.