What’s funny with this headline that I see over on Memeorandum is that MSN has been doing pretty much the exact same thing for months now (and has not one, but more than 20 colleges/universities signed up according to Adam Sohn, director of PR guy for MSN). Why didn’t anyone write a headline like “MSN goes after Outlook?” Hmmmm? A little Google love going on in the blogosphere? What’s behind that love?

Oh, maybe we should talk about blogger ethics again? Remember those Google ads on Paul’s blog? How do we know they haven’t colored his judgment? Some of my blogging friends make more money off of Google ads than I am paid by Microsoft (you’ll note that lots of people in my comment regularly question my ability to report honestly about things Microsoft related, why don’t these same people raise heck when employees of Google — and that’s what you are when you put a Google ad on your blog — give Google better PR than it deserves?). I notice that the press loves to go into a tizzy everytime a company sends out a free product, or takes bloggers on a free trip, or signs them up for a director or advisory role. Why isn’t anyone looking into the effect of on-blog advertising on our belief systems and reporting quality?

Here’s a question: if Microsoft had announced that, wouldn’t everyone have also reported on what every other company in the marketplace is doing without just reprinting the Microsoft press release? (Every single blogger on that Memeorandum entry is sponsored by Google ads. Except one, which is the official Google blog.)

I wonder how many other ideas we have that Google will get credit for?

And, please go back through my postings for the past few years. I’ve given Google kudo after kudo. For instance, their new desktop is quite nice. But I’m seeing a trend here and it’s quite worrying. I’d expect bloggers not to just reprint my press releases either!

Update: now this entry is at the top of Memeorandum, which is very weird.

Oh, and if you wanted a potential Outlook killer, don’t look at the domains. Look at Morfik. It lets you put Gmail on a thumb drive. Damn, why does a Microsoft guy have to tell you the real story with one of our competitors?

Ralph Poole says he’s sick of Channel 9 and me and asks “when are you going to deliver?”

I’m not going to answer this question on my blog. Rather you’ll know this question has been answered when Ralph blogs and says “wow.”

So far this post means we have more work to do.

Congrats to my co-author Shel Israel for helping three companies bring home DemoGod awards. What’s funny is that a week ago Shel was telling me he was preparing for his worst Demo Conference ever. Seems that one of his companies (that won a prestigious DemoGod) had technology that just wasn’t working out. They got their act together (it worked for the first time hours before Demo). I love that!

It reminds me of when I was on TechTV (a live TV show) and was showing NetMeeting to the world for the first time (way before I was a Microsoft employee). We couldn’t make the network work, which is pretty much a requirement for VoIP technology (NetMeeting was the Skype of 1995). It literally started working 50 seconds before airtime. I recently went back and watched the tape and I had a huge smile on my face. What a relief!

Anyway, congrats to all the companies who won DemoGod awards. Giving a good Demo is hard. I’m gonna try to do one tomorrow at MooseCamp (part of the Northern Voice conference).

Um, I see an article in the Wall Street Journal about some bloggers who are getting compensated by Fon for being part of their board of directors or advisors or stuff like that. Their “hype” of Von is being called into question.

For the record, if I receive compensation (or free stuff) from a company other than Microsoft I will disclose that. I’ve been offered a lot of board seats and stuff lately and I’ve turned them down. Why? Cause I work for Microsoft. Getting approval to do those kinds of things just takes too much work and, anyway, it complicates my life too much at the moment and it’s hard enough to keep track of the bias that being a Microsoft employee places on me.

Anyway, I have not gotten any compensation by Fon. In fact, it is funded by competitors of Microsoft. So, when I say it’s an interesting idea and one that I wish we had funded too, you can see I’m being straight up.

That said, bloggers, we need to disclose our conflicts of interest up front (and I would put a disclaimer on everything you write about such a company). Next week I’ll be skiing for free at a Colorado Resort, for instance. I will disclose that and will remind you of my conflict if I write anything about that resort (Steve Broback of Blog Business Summit arranged a trip for several bloggers to try out the resort’s amenities).

More commentary on this issue is linked to on Memeorandum.

You never knew we had an emotional side, huh? Well, we do and Jenny Lam is it.

She’s one of the most talented designers in the software industry and has already built lots of stuff you see from Microsoft. We recently had a conversation about designing experiences. Yes, we even talk about Apple. And branding. And the round start button in Windows Vista. And how geeks and designers work together to create software. Oh, all that emotional stuff that goes into what you feel when you use a product of ours.

She lists off the tools she uses. Hey, Adobe bloggers, you’ll like what you hear!

Can one person have an impact on the world? Jenny does and you will only need to look at the start button in Windows Vista to see how.

Is all of Microsoft watching the SuperBowl? This is the quietest my email has been in years. Damn, Pittsburgh just scored and are now in the lead.

This is an honor. Presentation Zen, er, Garr Reynolds, gives the good and bad of corporate presentations he’s seen and then gives me a compliment (while teaching us how to do better business presentations). I’m gonna pay him a compliment back: his blog is the best for those of us who need to give presentations. I wish more Microsoft employees would read it. I love the Darth Vader “evil” PowerPoint slide, too. You’ll notice that my slides don’t look like that.

You might have remembered that we forced our publisher to start a blog before we’d sign the contract to do Naked Conversations with Wiley. The resulting blog by Joe Wikert has been most impressive over the past year. I saw he linked to Juliana Aldous at Microsoft. She gave me a lot of advice before I started working on the book and I don’t know how I missed her blog for so long. It’s good too. What do these blogs do? They give you a place to start a relationship as an author. Get tips. Learn about how they see the industry. And, if you have an idea for a book you now have two people to talk with.

Any other great book publishers blogging out there? Here’s another one: Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. How about Tim O’Reilly? Gary Cornell of APress? Who is your favorite book publishing blogger?

Why do I read so many feeds? To catch stuff like this (Ed Bott is hearing conflicting information and isn’t sure what to do). There’s some confusion going around about the Office 12 NDA. So, I checked with the folks who know over on Office 12. Here’s the deal:

Press (which include bloggers) are allowed to write about client apps - specifically Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project, OneNote and InfoPath. Products still under NDA include Groove and all our server products.

MVPs might be getting other rules, but here’s the person in charge: Sandhya Thodla. sthodla@microsoft.com. Anyone else trying to make NDA rules up should be sent to Sandhya. If you aren’t clear on any of this, please ask Sandhya before writing about Office 12.
Is that clear enough?

By the way, Frank Shaw is president of Waggener Edstrom in charge of the Microsoft account. Translation: if he says something is OK, it’s OK.

UPDATE: February 7, 2006: It turns out that this isn’t quite the case. There are different NDAs given to different groups. Sorry for the confusion, but I need to be a little bit clearer about the Office 12 beta program. If you’re an MVP, in the Technical Beta or on the TAP program you’ll need to comply with the EULA of Beta1, which maintains confidentiality except in cases where the information is already public. If you’re a blogger and want to talk about Office 12 and you’re already on the beta, we recommend you learn what’s public and what’s not BEFORE you disclose anything new.

The Valleywag figured us out. We’re controlling bloggers just by flying them to Redmond. Your mind is under our control. (Insert evil laugh here). Oh, sorry, got a little out of control. Blame it on the payola I just got. Hanging out here with about 10 geeks. I’m well pickled. Sat in the hot tub for more than an hour. My fingers are all wrinkly.

Anyway, I’m under Laurent’s mind control. Oh, now Euan Semple, who works for the BBC is trying to control my mind (he’s sitting on the floor right in front of me and writes a blog titled “the obvious”). Resist! Resist! There is no way I’m gonna do the “four things” thing. No way. No how. Heh.

At least not until someone gives me some of that blog payola!! Heck, I even had to carry my own bag into this shindig. Heh. And while sitting in a hot tub in the moonlight with five other geeks is a spiritual experience you still gotta run across the snow back to the house. Damn that’s cold.