Huh?

Oh, you gotta read Hugh Macleod’s blog to get this one. But, there’s a lot of truth to this. Let’s say you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket. You have a lot of choices where to spend that money. It could go to an Xbox 360. But it could go to a case of wine too.

Hey, if you decide Stormhoek is a better investment than an Xbox 360, at least invite me over to drink some! ;-)

Michael Parekh is raving about Folder Share (he got a refund too!).

I want to meet the Folder Share team. I’ve seen a lot of people raving about their technology.

Rick Segal just posted his version of the New VC Handbook.

I’ll be honest. If I were starting a company I would try to do it without much VC, if any. Why? Cause I know some folks who’ve worked for VC-run startups. Ones where the investors made billions. Where the founders got maybe a hundred million. And where everyone else got literally bubkiss.

I hear these stories all the time. How the investors just don’t care about the developer. The folks who actually make the product work and make it pretty. Er useful.

Is there a new kind of VC that looks for a win-win-win? I’m not sure. But if there is one out there, I think that’s a selling point. Word does get around. Same for big companies. Are we looking out for everyone’s interest or just our own? Word does get around, you know.

Todd Cochrane just emailed me that the Podcaster News Network opened today. Looks great! I’ll show this to the podcasting expert in the family and see what he says tomorrow. That’s my son, not me. He knows a lot more about the podcasting world than I do.

By the way, I’m down to 383 emails. It’s amazing how many emails I can get banged out in two hours when there’s no Internet access to distract me. Heheh.

I’m demoing Flock to some people today. So if you see some weird posts you know what is going on. Drag-and-drop blogging.

Oh, and there’s a new Flock Extension. It adds a top-bar that displays Technorati results for the page you’re on. Interesting.

Dean Hachomovitch, head of the IE team, called me last night just raving about some of the people he had just met as part of the “start something amazing” awards that were handed out yesterday on campus.

Today I’ve been watching some of the videos and I think you’ll enjoy meeting some of these people and seeing what they are doing.

If that doesn’t work for you, check out the video I just put up - Dean Hachomovitch and Dave Leubbert have a chat that we filmed at Gnomedex. Dave worked on the Mac Word 1.0 team and they talk about some of the fun times in the 1980s working at Microsoft.

This one, by SXIP’s CEO Dick Hardt, is being passed around here as a fun presentation. Thanks to Pradeep U.N. for posting that.

You know it’s a slow news day when the thing at the top of Memeorandum is whether or not Google is copying Yahoo or not. Well, when I was at the Google Zeitgeist opening party I met John Doerr. Don’t know who he is? Check out his Wikipedia page. He (er, his firm) funded Amazon and Google.

When we talked he said something interesting “If you’d like to start a new Microsoft, give me a call.” Note that he didn’t say “give me a call when you have the next Google.” He also didn’t say “give me a call when you have the next Yahoo.” Or the next Amazon. Or the next Apple. Or the next General Motors.

Also, I have to remember not to forget just how many businesses Microsoft is involved in and just how big an impact we’re having all over the place. As an example Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, called me the other day from Mobiletrax, a cell phone industry conference (here’s his report) and he said that Microsoft SmartPhones were all over the place. I just got a look at some of the new phones that are coming out in the next few months. I thought the screen on my current Audiovox is nice, but the new ones are over the top.

Anyway, I’m so far behind on email it isn’t funny. I have 517 unanswered and they are coming in faster than I’m answering them. Sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you if you’ve sent me email. I’m going to slow down my blogging for the next week to try to catch up. The problem is that a lot of the email is about things that people want me to blog about. So, after I catch up with my email I will have a TON of things to blog.

By the way, if you guys think that Google is building a portal you’re smoking good crack. Why are they causing disruptions across the world? Cause they aren’t copying either Microsoft or Yahoo.

Heh, I was reading Mary Hodder’s post about the correct term to call people who generate content and thinking back to why I hate the term “user generated content.”

It’s because whenever I hear that term I always translate it to “slave generated content.” Here’s why: there’s a lot of companies who are expecting you to help out their business models (including the one I work for — I’m challenging everyone I talk to inside Microsoft to stop thinking about monetization — except for the teams who are building monetization systems — stop thinking about “user generated content” Those thoughts will lead you down a bad path).

Why do I hate those thoughts? It’s deeper than just being a content slave for someone to make a ton of money off of by putting ads next to my words. No, it’s an attitudinal thing. If you look at folks who make content as a partner then you’ll make better experiences for everyone. And, everyone is now able to create content — as I just demonstrated a few minutes ago to EUFA.

The problem is we don’t have good language. When I’m on Flickr I’m a photographer or a commenter. When I’m here I’m a writer or a blogger. When I’m on Craig’s List I’m a job seeker or a buyer or a seller. When I’m on MSN Search or Google I’m a “searcher.” When I’m on Memeorandum I’m a “reader.”

“User” just seems so unsatisfying. “Participant” is a lot closer. What do you think?

I’m speaking to some members/VP’s from UEFA in a few minutes. Don’t know who they are? I didn’t either. It’s the governing body of football on the continent of Europe. No, dummy, not THAT kind of football. It’s soccer! Interesting site and group, should be a fun conversation.

Update: it was a fun conversation I’m back in my office now. I didn’t get any game tickets (sigh) but they gave me a hat! I’m a swag whore, so that’ll do. What was fun was I showed them how anyone can blog about them and get discovered. My post took less than 30 minutes to show up on Feedster, for instance.

This was a very tech savvy group. Most use an RSS aggregator and they have RSS Feeds too. I am very impressed!