Jesper Johansson is a senior security strategist in the security technology unit at Microsoft. Translation: he is someone worth listening to on the WMF issue. Hint: I am not. He covers the important stuff in a post called “Conscientious Risk Management and WMF.”

Memeorandum has more from blogs on this issue. I really love how a hot issue gets covered on the blogs.

I just got home from a day of traveling. I followed Memeorandum all day on my cell phone. It is real interesting how much stuff shows up on Memeorandum and how it reduces being bored in airports.

Update, Stephen Toulouse, Microsoft’s Security Response Center’s official communications guy, comes over to Channel 9 for a conversation on the WMF issue and what is appropriate for blogging and not.

The Channel 9′ers are taking Microsoft’s bloggers to task for not doing enough about the latest security exploit. But, a deeper conversation about what corporations should do during a product problem or crisis is evolving there.

Now, you have to remember the history that Russell Beattie and I (and Microsoft) have had. He thought Microsoft was evil incarnate. But, in the last year, something has changed. Russell Beattie is coming back to Windows.

Russell: we should get you Windows Vista. I’m running it on a Tablet PC and it’s getting to be pretty interesting. Everyone I’ve shown it to says they are gonna get it. Well, except my son. He still is a Mac fan. He did say “cool” though after playing with Vista.

I see that Sven saw that Windows machines are running some of the transactions at the Apple store he went into. Oh, Sven, that’s cool, but the truth is Microsoft relies on Apple stuff too. Remember the Xbox developer kits? Yeah, they were all Macs.

I remember talking to Virginia Howlett, who did the UI work on Windows 3.0. She said she used a Mac. By the way, she’s now an artist in Seattle. Here’s an interview with her. She also did a lot of the UI on Windows 95.

So, thank you Apple!

Dana Epp is a security expert and founder of a small software company. Yesterday he wrote a post introducing us to LAMM. Tells Microsoft to wake up to what Novell is doing with Mono.

It’s 1:28 a.m. I’m awake. Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be sleeping. I work at Microsoft.

Thanks Dana for the warning. Oh, and happy New Years! You gonna come to Mix06?

We often don’t realize what we have until it’s gone. Today Patrick and I were reading books in Silicon Valley’s Barnes and Noble bookstore. The big one on Stevens Creek. Anyway, while I was looking through a Tom Peters book the lights went out. Total, complete blackness.

“Shit!” a woman next to me said. She wasn’t the only one. There were cheers around the store when the lights came back on after a few very long seconds. People do love their books!

Anyway, I spent most of the time in the business book section. Since our own book is coming out in a few days I wanted to see what the state of business books are.

They mostly suck.

I hate the trend of treating everyone like an idiot. Here’s a book that even teaches you to sell to an idiot. Why would you want to do business with an idiot? They might take their business elsewhere even though you’re better.

And what’s up with the trend that says you have to be a jerk to succeed in business? Here’s a book that tells women that nice girls don’t get the corner office. Has everyone gone all Donald Trump?

What’s the point of getting a corner office if you have no friends and people don’t like you?

I looked through dozens of books and I still love Tom Peters’ books the best. He’s one guy who challenges your assumptions.

Here’s one: he tells Microsoft that we should pay attention to senior citizens in his book “trends.” Huh? They’ll never use a computer, right? Screw that! Actually, he doesn’t specifically point out Microsoft, but talks to all businesses. Why are seniors important? Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, told me a while back that seniors have trillions (and will pass on trillions in wealth over the next couple of decades).

Anyway, another trend in business books is the war metaphors. Winning. And all that. Oh, and branding. Geesh, if all you learn about business is learned from these bookshelves you’d just do Superbowl commercials.

I want books that tell me how to convince people to do strategic acquisitions (Tom Peters says that businesses must do weird acquisitions and not kill the weirdness that is in the new company). I want books that tell how to help a team make a great product. After all, at the end of the day that’s all that matters. To be able to build a great brand like the one Apple, or Google, or the Xbox has (yes, there were Xbox 360s there and, you couldn’t play one without waiting in line cause the machines were constantly busy) you first need a great product. Or a great store. Or a great service. Only then does the brand really matter.

But, building a great product isn’t something that many people know how to do. And, what isn’t often talked about is that building a great product is a messy process. Have you ever talked with someone that Steve Jobs fired from Apple when he got back? Neither have I, but I know they are out there (a former boss used to work with one of those guys).

Anyway, if you want a good business book I’d look to Tom Peters’ new Trends book. It won’t teach you how to be a jerk. Or how to fight a military battle. But, it got me to think in new ways, and that’s just what I needed to go into 2006.

Happy New Years, hope your new year sees great success in life!

Oh, and Tom, I know you love pushing PowerPoint to the edge. Wait until I show you PowerPoint 12. Wow.

Disclaimer, Tom wrote the forward for our new book. Oh, and thanks Andrew Watson for the very nice review!

Everyone expects Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google to come out with new calendar initiatives in 2006, but I sat with Narendra Rocherolle who told me about his company’s new product that’s coming out (named 30 Boxes). You can sign up to get on a beta. Should start hitting the Web in the next month or so. I’ve signed up. The way he described it it’ll be a lot more useful for family-style calendars than anything out there. We’ll see. Don’t know who Narendra is? He was CEO of Webshots that got sold to CNET.

Toby Bloomberg over on the Diva marketing blog has a wish list from a bunch of bloggers about what they’d like to see in 2006 on blogs.

Me?

I’d like to see good information make a comeback. Reviews anyone? DPreview.com has awesome ones on cameras. What if we had a review site like that for software?

And, where’s Christopher Brumme? His 11,000-word posts used to have the developers swooning like mad everytime he posted. It’d be great to see people actually sharing more of what they know in 2006. Yeah, I wish I was better on both of these counts.

Here’s a good example: Clemens Vasters has a lengthy series of posts on teaching Indigo to do REST/POX. Clemens is the author of Das Blog, the blogging tool my boss uses (and loves). His knowledge impressed someone, cause he’s joining Microsoft in February.

Want to own the 1990 Lexus that Bill Gates used to drive? Well, here’s your chance!

Jeremy Pepper notes that Alaska Airlines employees are aledgedly posting nasty comments in that guy-who-experienced-airplane-decompression-and-wrote-about-it’s blog. I say aledgedly because I’m still not sure an Alaska Airlines employee wrote those comments (it does look like it, though, which presents a PR problem either way).

Pepper renews his stance that companies should have a blogging policy.

Personally, if I were in charge of Alaska I’d publicly reprimand these employees and force them to go through PR training.

Huh? A blogger saying to reprimand employees for mouthing off on the Internet? (I almost recommended firing these employees, but that’d cause Alaska even more bad publicity, so I wouldn’t do that).

Yes.

Again. If you are a company employee you must be professional in your dealings with the public. Even when you think you’re being anonymous. Even when you’re posting on what you think is your own time.

These people were not smart. And, worse of all, they used company equipment to post (if the facts are what they seem).

At Microsoft we have a blogging policy. It’s simply “be smart.” Or, if that isn’t clear enough: “don’t be stupid.”

These comments are clearly covered by this policy.

I highly recommend to our employees to always be transparent about who they work for and to always behave in a way that’ll look great on the front page of the New York Times cause that’s probably where these will end up (they’ve already been in USA Today, among other places).

That’s a major part of being smart when posting on the Internet.

Oh, and if Alaska had a few “real” blogs of their own, we’d be able to see what “real” employees think about this kind of behavior and they might have been able to head this off. Instead, it’s just growing and growing (and getting worse cause Alaska doesn’t seem like they are doing anything about it).

Aside, but since we’re talking about Alaska Airlines. Why does Alaska put religious literature on my meal plate everytime I fly? I thought they were a public company? Is that something a public company should do? I can understand a private company like In-N-Out doing that (they put bible verse identifiers underneath their softdrink cups) but I think it’s inappropriate for Alaska to do, especially since Alaska isn’t profitable — they should take the printing costs and try to reduce their budget deficits. My own opinion, of course.