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It's amazing how many product pitches I've received in the past few days. Even in phone calls. Do they not read my blog? Do they have no clue what's happened in my life in the past five days?

Apparently not.

I'm sad I'm not going to Syndicate. I'd like to ask Richard Edelman about why PR folks are sometimes so clueless.

Now, keep in mind, not all are.

Frank Shaw, Vice President of Waggener Edstrom, demonstrated his clued-in behavior by sending me a very nice note. Not that he needed to demonstrate that again. He's proven that he is clued in many, many times before. I guess that's how you get to be vice president at a major PR firm instead of just a lackey paid to smile-and-dial.

But, in today's world of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Feedster, and others, it just isn't good to be clued out.

I don't know what to do about it. Other than to turn down free stuff. And not write about such jerks' products or companies. It's amazing how much free stuff I've been offered since I told the world I'm not going to accept it anymore.

The good PR folks can call me anytime. After all, I wrote a book with one. Oh, wait, he doesn't like being called a PR guy. Says he's retired from that business. Oh, yeah, Shel, you're the best, and you just don't wanna be associated with the bad ones. Me neither.

Boy, has PR changed since we have the ability to share our lives in real time with the world? You bet it has.

You also now understand how Microsoft got such bad PR. We forgot that PR is done one relationship at a time. I wonder now how many press releases we sent to journalists who were sitting with mothers who were dying?

How is blogging changing PR? One mother at a time. Heh!

At Microsoft we often talk about "the community." You know, when we have news to get out, or initatives to build, or conferences to attend.

Today Mark Cuban, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, among other things, says that blogging is personal.

Oh, yes it is, yes it is.

But I'm learning about community in a whole new way. Through firefighters who knew my mom through her store (and the same guys drove my mom on the three-hour-drive from Livingston to Billings and back again). Through church members who shared with me that part of my mom's life. Through customers in her store.

I've been forced to join a community I wouldn't otherwise join this week. It's interesting to see just what my mom meant to a community I didn't otherwise know.

The community of Livingston, Montana is an interesting one. When my mom arrived here in the late 1980s the community had been devastated by layoffs at the local rail yard. The community here was dying. People were moving away. Community members tell me that my mom's store helped spark a return of the community. Folks have been coming through here all day telling stories. (She owned a religious bookstore in Livingston).

As I looked around my mom's house this morning I realized that I got many of my values from her. The biggest thing in her home is a huge picture of the Statue of Liberty. This is no mistake. My mom loved her freedom. She wanted to live life the way she wanted to, damn the consequences.

It's why we drifted apart. I didn't get her community. She didn't get mine. Although we both respected each other's community (as I've learned this week, cause she was always bragging about me to her friends).

She also worked hard. She got that from her parents who ran a restaurant in Germany. She also cared about the people she served. Her sign in her store said "you are cherished." And it was obvious from the stories that her customers told me that she did, indeed, live those words.

It's something that I am thinking about a lot. I've been reading blogs while my mom is asleep and I realize just how much you all mean to me and what an interesting little community we've built.

It's also why I reject the whole "numbers game." It's screwed from the get go.

How do you get a million people to do business with you? One at a time.

Dave Winer is right. Saying that 53,651 don't matter is nutty. They are the ones that'll convince the rest of the world that something is worth paying attention to.

Already my blog has gained a whole bunch of people this week that didn't know what a blog was. Family members, friends, customers of my mom's.

Welcome to my community. I appreciate your friendship and support a lot.

And, if you wanna blog your thoughts, just ask how, we'll get you started.

To everyone else, what stunningly beautiful country it is up here. I'll try to post pictures but cell phone coverage is shaky at best (my mom's house is so remote that GPRS signals don't reach it). Update: my mom's house is the brown one in the picture here. The photo of Emigrant mountain is what greeted us out her windows this morning.

I've also decided not to go to Syndicate and really appreciate Eric Norlin and his team's support.

One of the nice calls I've received over the past couple of days came last night as my brothers and I were walking around downtown Billings. It was from Jake Savin. He told me he had just started working on the Live.com team at Microsoft and had just moved up to Seattle. Awesome. Jake and I worked together at UserLand (he was one of the developers on Radio UserLand, and is a pioneer in blogging and Internet software).

At the very moment I was talking to Jake on the phone, we came to Jake's restaurant here in Billings. I thought that was very weird, so I shot a photo and sent it up to Flickr.

I see that the New York Times is putting us in the middle of a talent war with Google. Alright Jake, this war is all on your shoulders now. Heheh.

Jake's (the restaurant) is already demonstrating one way that search could be made better. Search for "Jake's Billings MT" and you only get reviews and intermediaries and noise. Does this restaurant have a Web site? We don't know for sure unless we dig through page after page of reviews and do several different searches. Here's the results:

On Live.com. On Google. I like the infinite scroll on Live.com, by the way. One thing we learned from our research with users is that most people don't click on the "next page" link. So, we got rid of it. We're now finding that people who use Live.com look at more search results than they used to.

This is one of those times when I'm not sure what to write. The size of my audience is causing me to wonder. Most of you are probably here to read about my insider thoughts about Microsoft or the tech industry, or because I find cool links to various tech industry things.

But, life is intruding here and it's my personal blog, not a PR vehicle, so gotta push those worries to the background and just write about what's going on in my life and let the chips fall where they may.

We saw my mom yesterday (all three of the Scoble kids arrived at the Billings airport at the same time, which was pretty weird considering we were flying from three separate cities).

When we first saw her, she opened her eyes, stared strongly at us, and had a tear in her eye. She vigorously squeezed our hands. That comforted all of us. A little.

Well, I won't bore you with the emotions I'm feeling. Or the decisions that are going to start coming at us (we're meeting with her doctors today).

I did want to thank everyone for the very kind notes. About 150 comments, all of which were very kind. Many phone calls. Many emails (including emails from people who work for our biggest competitors). This stuff really makes times like this a lot easier. I'm going to read them to my mom (finding what to say to her is really tough).

Needless to say that the next 48 hours probably won't see much blogging.

A little technology note (you know I couldn't resist) the machines that are keeping track of her vitals and helping her breathe are running Windows. Yet another demonstration of just how many machines Microsoft's software is running on.

Shel Israel starts out a new book, titled "Global Neighborhoods," by interviewing Ireland's Tom Raftery (he runs an IT conference there, among other things).

Speaking of Global Neighborhoods, Lenn Pryor (my former boss, who now works at Ebay) and I are trying to put together a SkypeCast for the next week or two.

He's in London. I'm in San Francisco, flying back tonight to Seattle.

Last week I met an employee who lives in India. He reads my blog and told me all about what he sees as Microsoft's problems from his perspective.

Has our technology changed how we relate to each other? Damn straight it has. Can't wait to see what Shel learns in this next project.

Two posts caught my eye this morning:

1) Warner Crocker wrote: "When Success Breeds Contempt: The UMPC Fiasco."
2) Sam Purtill wrote me an email and also posted this in my comments: "Most of the Web developers out there utterly hate Microsoft." and "However, you guys need to win back the developers if you want [Windows Live] to succeed." In an email to me he asked "Does Microsoft have a plan or an initiative to win back web developers? Everyone hates you guys in our industry, and MS doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. You guys come across as cocky, monopolistic, and I've even heard some people call your company a form of communism. Please don't disregard my email, I will definitely regard what you have to say in a reply."

This stuff hurts, but if we don't pay attention shame on us.

One huge advantage? These guys are still talking with us. Someone who is willing to engage usually is looking for some response that tells them that we're listening and looking for a conversation (yeah, there are exceptions, but in life I've found they are actually pretty rare).

This morning I spoke with Shel Israel to the MeshForum in San Francisco and we talked about just these kinds of issues. That corporations now have the ability to listen and learn that they never had before. From a global audience.

I showed off how I use NewsGator to watch what anyone in the world says about "geek" "software" "Linux" "Apple" "Microsoft" among a variety of other topics. You don't need to be a famous blogger to be found anymore.

That's my plan.

Now, what's Microsoft's plan? How about listen to the customers and make better products for them?

Business isn't rocket science. Do that and eventually people who hate your products, think your company sucks, will start to notice.

Oh, and Sam, there's something else we can do to help win your love: help YOU win. My wife taught me this one. If I'm always selfish and don't think of her needs she eventually turns cold and obstinate. Bring her flowers and take out the trash (really small things if you think about it) she notices and warms up.

Is business that simple? Yes, it is.

Sam is just telling us we haven't been paying attention to him. Shame on us if we don't get the message.

Tomorrow I'll be attending the Metaverse conference in Silicon Valley. Attending me will be my 12-year-old son. I'm thinking a lot about virtual worlds and the kinds of impacts they'll have on my son's life. For instance, right now I'm typing to you from a Southwest Airlines jet traveling between Seattle, Washington to Oakland, California and I'm reading "Synthetic Worlds" by Edward Castronova. Just a little light reading about the virtual economies (he's an economist and the book illuminates the new virtual worlds for newbies) and how they will impact what I'll do with my career. For instance, I can see building a job just out of tending an island in Second Life and hosting memeorable experiences there. If blogging can go from nothing to 145 million hits a month at Microsoft in less than three years, why can't a Second Life experience do the same?

But, anyway, this leads into another discussion I had with Linden Labs recently at the Maker Faire.When my son and I first got to Maker Faire we met Beth Goza. She was quite excited by having Second Life be the cover story in BusinessWeek that week. The whole company was abuzz, it was good news after having to fight through financial tough times. Boy, does that bring back memories of when I worked at UserLand and ran the books there. It's not easy getting a company off the ground.

Anyway, Beth, who is their community ambassador, pulled me and Patrick aside and said something like "we can't let you let Patrick play Second Life."I knew this conversation was coming because I knew the rules and I was explicitly breaking them.

First, what are the rules? No one under 18 in the regular Second Life. There's a "Teen" version of Second Life that's a separate world and only 13 to 17-year-olds are allowed in there. No adults. No one under 13.

I was letting Patrick run around Second Life. The adult version. He's only 12. Turns out they aren't even going to let him come into the Teen version of Second Life until he's 13.

Now, why do these rules exist? Lawyers, for one. They are afraid of getting sued by some parent who finds out there's, shock, sex, gambling, and violence in Second Life. There are areas of Second Life that would earn an X-rating if they were films.

And, in the kids area they want to make sure that there isn't predatory behavior going on.

Both rules are understandable, right?

I understand them. My son understands them. We knew we were breaking the rules. Eric Rice told us so. That's how virtual culture gets communicated. Because I was seen as influential (I was quoted in the BusinessWeek article, and had talked about our experiences on popular technology shows like TWiT) so Beth told me that people inside Second Life weren't happy that I was publicly breaking the rules.

My son and I were outlaws and we must be stopped. Heheh.

The thing is, I don't necessarily buy into the rules of society, or the rules of Linden Labs. If I don't mind my son getting into a Poker game, or seeing a virtual sex act, isn't that my right as a parent to let my son experience those things?

No. Our puritanical society has set up rules and regulations about such things. If you enter a Las Vegas casino you aren't allowed to let your kids sit down and play backjack. At least not until they are 21.

In Second Life the same rules and regulations exist.

End result? I decided not to fight cause I want to remain in Second Life. My son no longer has my password to Second Life.

I do think the rules suck, though. This is a virtual world. Why do we need to live with first-world rules?

Oh, and Patrick and I will be interviewed tomorrow by John Swords who records the Second Cast.

Nick Bradbury brings up a bunch of great issues now that Microsoft is looking to get more into the advertising business.

Trust. Privacy. Ugliness. Appropriateness. Context.

I'm with Nick. The idea of pasting advertising on everything is vile. Vile. Hmm. Evil. Vile. Evil. Vile. Live. Anagram time!

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. Heheh.

But Nick is right. Microsoft can destroy value by doing advertising people hate.

Funny, I just sat next to a guy in the Seattle Airport. He delivers RVs for a living. He told me he threw out his TV cause he was sick of getting interrupted by advertising.

He told me he loves the Web because most of the time advertising is constrained and doesn't interrupt him.

We'd do well to listen to both him and Nick.

One thing in our corner? We have great user testing and feedback labs. Executives and engineers alike can even watch people as they try out our products and services and listen to what they say.

If anything Google taught us there's a way to do advertising that adds value to everyone involved. I hope it's a lesson we continue taking to heart. The Windows Live Mail team gets it. Who's next?

Hey, Doc, I think it's bizarre everytime I hear you and Steve Gillmor on Sirius too!

But what really blew my mind is when John Dvorak was on CNBC the other day mouthing off about Microsoft. They ended the interview by wondering if anyone from Microsoft was listening. Yes, there was. Yes, there was. Heheh.