by: bubba murarka 

This week has rapidly passed between work, life and blogging.  Not quite sure how Robert does it all, but maybe he has a time turner I should've asked to to borrow!  Here is another attempt at a "mini scoblepaper" style post…

Welcome to Steve Berkowitz who just joined Microsoft from IAC/Ask to head the Online Buisness Group. I met Steve a long time ago and loved his energy and vibe.

Evolution of the netflix envelope - make sure to click the link at the bottom for a visual history.

The original RAZR got me to get a second phone in addition to my smart phone…wonder what kind of silling thing v2 will make me do. Speaking of cellphones Kevin sent mail pointing to a mobile technology podcast that looks neat…it is added to my list of things to check out. 

Mark Harrision blogged a while back that 80-20 has built a free addition to sharepoint that adds record retention managment to sharepoint 2003.   

The waybackmachine at archive.org is a treasure trove of information. You can find all sorts cool data about the web.  I did a long time ago and ironically the only place to get the results now is on the waybackmachine.  Today folks posted of visual histories of Google and Yahoo homepages and it would be great to see one for the main microsoft or msn pages.  Unfortunately it looks like we disable archiving on live.com.  I'll try to find out why. 

If you are into grid computing and .Net you might want to check out Dan Ciruli's MSDN web cast on the 25th (my mom's birthday). 

Found out that the Long Tail book has a cover now by reading a post on the marketing.fm blog. 

Don Dodge, Mark Cuban (yeah that mark) and others are talking about click fraud.  Continued on Mark's blog too.

by: bubba murarka

David Weiss posted a great virtual tour of the Mac testing lab in Redmond.  You should read it because it has a great personal style and shows off a great side of Microsoft that is often missed.  Plus, where else can you see 150 mac mini's lined up so neatly. 

As noted in the comments earlier, Paul Thurrott recently posted a part five of his review of the February Vista CTP.  Boy, was it a candid and frank article about what he saw as shortcomings with Vista.  Over at Channel 9 a bunch of folks discussed it at length.  Reading it was an interesting emotional experience because parts of me have been frustrated with Vista and the challenges we have had getting it released.  At the same time, I had worked directly on a feature of Vista before my new gig and knew how hard so many people were working to make Vista the best possible OS it could be. 

With mixed emotions in tow I started to look around the net for stuff about Vista.  It was great to come across articles about why Vista won't suck.  Likewise, it was interesting to read Scott Berkun's perspecitve from the outside looking in.   Capping off the look around was a read of the other four part's of Paul's write up on the Vista February CTP.  [1]  [2]  [3]  [4]

Quick point to stress - this is Bubba Murarka speaking, not Robert Scoble.  Why say that?  Robert is a great ambassador for Microsoft because he is honest, open and knows how to articulate his thoughts and engage through blogging.  

So what do I think? 

First is that Paul Thurrott really loves Windows and wants to see it be the best it can be.  By being blunt he has given us concrete feedback that we can try to act upon.  Feedback is why we have CTPs. 

Second is that people inside Microsoft read, think, and talk about articles & feedback like Paul's.  That leads to positive action and change.  This was loud and clear from the numerous emails and IMs sent my way asking if the article was going to get posted to here. 

Third is that Microsoft is going to learn a lot from shipping Vista.  The dedication to changing and improving things is tangiable.  Changes are happening because people are taking accountability and really want to make Microsoft the best it can be. 

Will people say this sounds just like a fanboy trying to spin a negative article?  Sure.  Do I truly believe the three points I just typed above?  100%

by: bubba murarka

Since asking for posts and putting up my email address I've gotten a ton of emails!  Thanks to everyone for their responses.  I'm still reading but here is what caught my eye so far…

Andy Edmonds, a great guy from the search team, sent a link to install Phlat! Phlat is a diffrent UI for Windows Desktop Search (read about beta wds apis here) and is up for an award at CHI next week!  You can read more about Phlat at MSR's site.  This is why it is great to build platforms!

A post from brian clark you should read because it might help you be a better writer/blogger.

Alex Barnett has all sorts of cool stuf on his blog including that Visusal Studio Express will remain free…very cool.

George Moore, a GM on the Windows Live Platform, sent a note saying Danny Thrope joined Microsoft!  He is in SVC and sounds like a neat guy.

Gogogic builds casual games (my favorite type now a days) using .NET and SQL and their CEO has a blog where he is trying to connect with users!

Hank is mixing up location, blogging and maps in his latest project.

by: bubba murarka

I just read John B's interview with Jim Lazone from Ask about relevance, google relationship and askmail.  Jim is a really neat guy I met a few years back and sounds like he's having fun.  Maybe not the same "quotability" as Gary Flake's interview, but a good read nonetheless.

Updated: added by-line!

by: bubba murarka 

I was iming with a friend (couldn't confirm he was okay with me naming him) and he noted that scoble and I are pretty different types of bloggers.  Not a bad or a good thing, just sort of a fact.  I think he best said it with the following:

Scoble is a like a mini-newspaper. That's why many folks read his blog. Links to interesting stuff going in tech mixed with some MSFT propaganda

I like being me, but thought it was a good point and I decided to try and post some more links in addition to my long stories.  Got any?  Send them to me at bubbam@microsoft.com.  I won't post everything, but I'll try to read it all! 

Oh, if you work for MSFT in the valley and have a blog, let me know…I want to post links to them as a follow up to last night's long post. 

Updated: added by-line.

by: bubba murarka

Fortune has a really long article about "the ozzie effect" at msft.  I've talked to Ray a couple of times and I really like him. 

Updated: added by-line.

by: bubba murarka 

Just kidding…but he did hang out with John Kerry in the Boston Airport today.

Updated: added by-line

by: bubba murarka

John C. Welch is interviewing the macbu's "word developer god" tonight!  Tune in to hear John and Rick Schaut talk about Xcode and Intel Macs. 

Updated: added by-line!

by: bubba murarka 

I once had dinner in New Mexico with Marc Orchant and I really enjoyed our evening talking, geeking and bonding.  He gave me some cool geek shirts and I gave him a book.  One of the downsides of my info management is I never really got into the habit of reading his blog.  I randomly went over there today and found a link to some advice for microsoft modeled after federal tourism advice.  It was an intresting  set of ideas on how to approach the partner conversations differently.  I'm not sure agree with it 100%, but I thought it was a good read. 

But what I really identified with is what Marc said about being at MSFT in redmond:

Many times when I've spoken with Microsoft employees, they talk about how living and working in Redmond is like being in a different world. That can be a blessing and a curse.

I tried to work this in to my post last night about why I like working at SVC. I feel exactly like his aggregate msft redmond based employees during my trips there.  However it is tempered with a different space and vibe while i'm home at SVC that is refreshingly contrasting/invigorating. 

I couldn't quite find the words to explain it last night.  Luckily Marc did and I appreciate it! 

Now if only the comments on zdnet didn't ask for much info to post one!

Updated: added a by-line.

by: bubba murarka

I really digg working at Microsoft while living in the Silicon Valley.  Telling people I work for MSFT in the valley is the second biggest double take generator in my bag of tricks (behind my name and right before my hair without gel in it).  I often hear "you guys have an office down here?" and "I thought it was a sales office".   We do have a sales and research office if SF, but there are also a bunch of product development and research teams down here in Mountain View as well. 

The campus is commonly referred to as "SVC" which stands for silicon valley campus.  There isn't a birds-eye view available of the campus, but here is a zoomed in aerial shot of campus.  Here are the product teams that have people down here: 

• Toolbar (+ more)
• Sidebar Gadgets
• Hotmail (mail, contacts, calendars + more)
• Powerpoint and Office Art
• MacBu (entourage & vpc for sure + more)
• Windows (not sure what though)
• MSN TV (the msn service and hardware)
• MS TV TV Services (ip based tv technology)
• Xbox Hardware (design + more I think)
• Search (labs + more I think)
• The company formally known as Messagecast  Alerts

There is also Niall's new rss team (or at least niall), and of course my new team dealing with information management.  In fact, I'm pretty sure there are several more product teams down here that I just haven't met someone from.  On top of product teams there are biz dev, evangelist, recruiting, general HR, administrative, sales and of course Microsoft Research peeps.  If you work at SVC and your team or role is not listed add a comment and I'll update the list(s)!

I've learned a few cool things about campus since starting here.  Perhaps my favorite factoid is that the four main buildings of SVC are each "themed" after a color of MSFT's logos (Blue, Green, Red, & Yellow - colors are featured in all msft logos…well except for xbox).  The themes are water, land, fire, and wind. 

We have our own company store to buy msft products from, a library, a technology showcase, cafeteria, a wells fargo atm, and sports facilities (volleyball and basketball courts). 

My dirty little SVC secert: In building five on the second there is an illy coffee machine that I sometimes hit up when our coffee counter is closed.  It is run by MSR and I probably need to out by who exactly and give them some replacement coffee. 

I don't know the exact number of people working on the campus, but it feels like a mid-size high school.  This is really perfect because you end up making random connections with people based on familiarity and common use patterns.  You also end up seeing people you sort of recognize on flights to Redmond and have people to eat with when your flight is late or carpool to redmond campus with in order to beat the traffic. 

Speaking of random connections, I just found a post by Dennis (from toolbar team) about SVC on the jobsblog. Here is a map of the companies Dennis mentioned to help visualize where we are located in context to some other valley based companies. 

Hopefully that gave the flavor of SVC. I wanted to share a little bit further on why I like working for msft down here.

The diversity in people, ideas, and culture of technologists in the bay area is phenomenal.  It is the silicon valley for a reason, but it is incredible the number of new ideas that are discussed and cross pollinated here.  Also, having people work at big, small, and medium companies that all have different review cycles, reward structures, and product spaces helps drive better conversations and good entropy.  Personally, I've found many amazing people at MSFT (like mc who is visiting SVC this week) but I also like meeting people with completely different frames of reference and ideas. 

It is really cool to be an MSFT ambassador in the valley.  Getting to attend, share and connect with people at things like Lunch 2.0 (well soon!), SDForum Sigs, and Computer History events is just plain old awesome.  I love the personal connections that end up in lunches with new friends from competitors and partners alike where we compare notes on cafeteria food, culture, and development approaches. 

Being close to world class universities, top tier venture capitalists and enthusiasts results in all sorts of cool events to attend - like startup school. 

I hate to cite the weather especially since the last 2 months down here haven't been all that wonderful.  But nothing beats a beautiful December day drive with the top down! 

That's probably enough about SVC & the bay area for one night.  If you have questions about the campus or life down here as a microsofter I'd love to answer them! 

Updated: Corrected some team names per comments & added some more types of peeps that live here in SVC!

Robert passed along an email from the Veterans Foundation about the upcoming Military Blogging Conference.  It is on April 22nd in Washington, DC.  They are going to stream the entire conference live to the net too!

I'm on a train, with my T60 (two thumbs up), next to a friend (chris butler from the toolbar team who used to write for orange magazine) using a cell modem (verizon - only okay data rates, heard cingular is better) to post this.  i love technology.

I also love living and working the bay area.  Next to me on the train were some people talking about a new google maps idea.  On the platform while we were waiting for the train, I saw yahoo, google, and microsoft badges (more, but those were the ones I recognized).  Think I'm gonna write more about this and what's like to work on SVC campus of MSFT tonight. 

Today is a big historical day for the bay area - the 100th anniversy of the 1906 SF earthquake/fire.  The San Francisco MOMA has an indepth photo collection of before and after the earthquake on display.  I checked it out a few weeks back and it was pretty amazing.  They have a really cool handout that has pictures, info and stories for the day that is 100% free to take home. 

Some folks are talking about the Boston Globe article on blogging being essential to a good career.

Between Tim Bray and Jeremiah Owyang I think the list is expanded pretty darn well and the "challenges" of blogging are also touched on.  I'd add that another downside is information leakage.  Sometimes, personal info you don't intend to share gets inferred, shared, or found and known to others in awkward manners.  Not a huge deal given how much better that aspect is understood by folks now a days, but I remember how my friend posted pictures a long time ago that came back to haunt someone else in a job search. 

I wonder what Mark Jen thinks of this discussion?  He's been on both sides of the fence.  He works down the street from me now, and we get together from time to time.  I really like him, his peers and the space his company is working on!

FWIW, personally blogging did help me get a job.  It also helped get me my master's degree. 

by: bubba murarka

I don't know Kathy, but she has an good read about happiness initiated by Robert's recent announcement and goals to hang with happy folks.  The mirror neurons + emotional contagion that Kathy explains are fascinating, and made me wonder how they promote/impact group think and the power of groups.  Adding it to the list to read up on. 

Personally, I've trying to be content because I think it's a path to happiness.  I figure once I'm content, things won't bother (as much) and I can focus on happiness.  One of the ways I found to be content is to find people that are happy where they are, but trying to become better in what they do (career or life).  That delicate balance lets them absorb success and failure with an even keel. 

Robert, I think surrounding yourself with people that are happy is a good idea.

by: bubba murarka

During the day I work on new features for Windows Live.  I used to work on the toolbar and windows desktop search which resulted in an interest around information retrieval.  Lately I've been thinking about information management and more loosely the proactive side of desktop search.  I'm pretty sure a lot of really smart people have been thinking about this - Susan Dumais, Ed Cutrell, and Eric Horvitz jump to mind (also some of my favorite people in Research), but I'm sure they are only the tip of the iceberg. 

A brief conversation occurred over the comments today and I wanted to think and write some more about it.  It also came up in another conversation with Robert. So, here we are. 

I used to love finding new information.  I got a buzz out of being the first to know about new things, try them out, and tell my friends about them.  This hasn't really changed, but I've found that the amount of time I have to do so has shrunk.  Luckily there are a ton of people out there trying things, blogging about them, and people sharing links to other's exploits. 

Soon enough though, I found I had to make choices about trying vs. reading about things.  And then it morphed into doing one vs. spending time doing my job, hanging out with friends, and keeping up with life (just got another few late fees). 

Like most fluid decisions with no right or wrong I've found myself to be a swinging pendulum.  Sometimes I get engrossed and spend hours trying or reading about new things and others I find myself avoiding new information completely.  I was living "rational ignorance" and iteratively learning how to tweak my experience just like Billy said today. 

More recently I've tried two ways dealing with info overload.  Ones I never thought I'd try. 

The first was un-subscribing from almost all e-newsletters, internal microsoft distribution lists, and setting up very strict email rules that filter away other sources of bulk mail.   I went from a lot of mail, to very little mail.  This was cool because I found myself walking around my office more, having more face to face conversations and just generally connecting with people at a deeper level.  On the flip side, I was the last to know about things like the new google calendar launch.  But, I still found out about it relatively quickly - the day it launched.  The interesting thing was that I my "virtual" relationships actually got better because I had (made?) the time to really engage people that weren't geographically co-located with me. 

The other method was to stop using an rss reader.  I know this is like blasphemy here on Scoble's blog and I'm kind of scared to admit it.  My logic was that I my brain would only remember a handful of sites and thus regulate how much time I spent absorbing information.  The weird thing is that it actually works pretty much like un-subscribing from bulk email sources.  The really important stuff found its way to me anyway (like bootcamp) and I spent more time out in the world. 

Going out and reading about new stuff is invigorating.  I mean, how else would I find out about the new G35's hard drive based audio system or an answer from dare to my random question on david sifry's blog growth post. 

Hanging out here, on Scoble's blog, has reminded me that there is no one answer to this.  Scoble's is trying something different and so are others.  I will too because of this week.

by: bubba murarka

A few people were talking about the recently posted techcrunch comparison of Ask Maps, Google Maps, MapQuest, Windows Live Local and Yahoo Maps today.  The comments on their post have a good bit of back and forth and I really liked how Frank engaged in the comment discussion (scoble and steve lombardi both provided some WLL feature data points). 

I was bummed that there wasn't any mention of the wacky/cool new preview feature that the WLL team released a while ago.  It enables you to drive (or walk!) down the street and get a street side view of Seattle or San Francisco.  It also lets you move via the keyboard. 

On a minor note, Frank noted that WLL doesn't put a route line on the map for driving directions.  When I mapped my daily commute I got one, so I'm not sure if I'm missing what he meant or if this was missed. 

One thing the techcrunch review prompted me to do was go back to Mapquest.  I hadn't been there in a very long time, and was surprised to see how different its interface was from the other big mapping services.  Since they are the lions share of map traffic I wasn't sure how to interpret that.  In the end, traffic will tell, but I couldn't help and wonder if there is more then one formula for mapping UIs.

Being candid - I had never thought much about maps until the last 6 months, but now I'm blown away by what is out there and eager to see what is to come.  I'm really glad there are so many passionate cartographer out there!  FWIW, my favorite map related thing is going by birds eye tourism to see shamu and the like. 

by: bubba murarka

When Scoble was hanging out on Monday he mentioned an idea that would incorporate Wikipedia entries for people. I thought that was cool, wondered what social norms ruled edits for biopages, and then promptly forgot about it as we jumped to the next new topic. 

On memeorandum, I ended up reading Danah Boyd's post on her experiences of having a Wikipedia page.  Needless to say, it was fascinating to read about something I'm not sure I would have ever taken the time to learn about on my own. 

My thoughts after reading it? 

Wow, it sure is easy to spend a lot of time lost on the web.  How do people avoid information overload?  I realized I had by ignorning lots of it. 

by: bubba murarka 

Thanks Scoble for the chance to guest blog!  

I thought I’d start off by telling the story behind my nickname Bubba. 

My real name is Neel Ishwar Murarka, but for the last 15 years my friends have called me Bubba.  I got the name in high school right before my freshmen year.  I played football and was a constant smart mouth to one of the coaches.  Not a great idea since he made me run lots of extra laps during every practice.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t pronounce my last name.  I think it was the second “r” that got him.  Anyhow, since I was the biggest guy on the freshmen team he started to call me Bubba.  I was new to the area and didn’t know anyone, so when the first day of school came around (football practice started 2 weeks before school) I rolled in with the name Bubba.   I guess I could have made a point and asked to be called Neel, but I thought Bubba was fun and wouldn’t last that long.  Ironically, I only played football my freshmen year, but I still have the nickname Bubba! 

In college I kind of took the name and ran with it…literally. 

My first stint at Microsoft was as an intern on the Macintosh Office team.  Like most companies, Microsoft issues a login id that is a variant of your first and last name.  Traditionally, it was the first name plus the first letter of the last name (e.g. blake irving got blakei – btw, Blake gave a great grad speech at my alma mater).  As the company grew collisions started to happen and so people started getting first name and first two letters of their last names.  Eventually the collisions happened so much that people got first letter of their first name and seven letters of their last name…just like good old unix login names. 

Neel is the Indian spelling of the name Niall which my parents told me means Sky Blue, but wikipedia thinks differently (well, sort of).  13 zeros isn't all that bad…

How are the last two paragraphs related to the name Bubba? 

When I got to Redmond on a sunny day in June of 2000 I was granted the glorious login id of “t-neelmu”.  The “t-“ signified I was an intern.  The “neelmu” was there because Neel Malik (now a PM on the Spaces team) already had gotten first dibs on “neelm”. 

By the end of my summer internship I realized people tended to refer to others by their alias.  A ton!  I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be called “neelmu” day in and day out if I came back to MSFT full time.  So when I decided to join the threedegrees team in 2001 I asked if I could get something other then neelmu as my alias.  My recruiter and new team all knew me as Bubba, and so I got bubbam as my Microsoft alias.  It is still pretty funny to see the quick double take people do when I introduce myself in professional settings! 

I love my nickname, but my Mom still calls me Neel whenever we talk. Whew…that was a lot to write about a nickname.  Hopefully I didn’t scare anyone away! 

updated: added a by-line to identify myself as the author & added slight bit of correction on the text/link to wikipedia. 

Whew, Wordpress.com was down for most of the day. Matt says we’re back up on a much better infrastructure so hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Lucky it happened on Easter when things were pretty slow anyway.

But, that gives us an opportunity to again welcome Bubba Murarka. He’ll be guest blogging here for the next week. Take it away Bubba!

Thank you Werner Vogels!

By kicking our behinds when we visited Amazon for a book reading an executive review on corporate blogging, he taught us a valuable lesson: "always be prepared."

So, this week when we spoke to BA Venture Partners (one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capital firms, the "BA" stands for "Bank of America" which is one of the world's largest banks) we were prepared with all the ROI answers that came up. Not only were BA Venture Partners there, but a bunch of CEOs and other Entrepreneurs were there too. They recorded it and we won over some very tough customers. Hopefully they'll have the recording out as a podcast soon.

Meeting Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life, at that talk, was a major "cool meeting" for me. Next week I'm gonna spend a lot of time in Second Life helping my son, Patrick, build out his house, so it was good to have a conversation about where Second Life is going. Can you imagine a world where your blog or RSS feed will be painted on any 3D object? Philip can. And is. I told Philip about Eric Rice's new record label in Second Life.

But, mostly, this past week was about change.

Some things I've changed? 1) No more coffee. 2) No more soda. 3) Xercising. 4) No more unhappy people in my life. 5) Get balance back in my own life.

Thanks to all the interesting people I've had conversations with this week. More than 100 people by last count. Some, who, Gent Hito, showed me some killer technology (it's called RSSBus, and takes RSS into places I never really thought about. In other words, things that aren't blogs or news feeds. If you're a developer you should get a demo from Gent).

One of my most memeorable conversations, though, was with Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords and a good friend. He told me to hang around people who are happy. And I realized I had been listening to too many people who were deeply unhappy and not bringing any value into my life. He told me to listen to this recording on NPR about "finding happiness in a Harvard Classroom." He also told me about the four agreements, which are Don Miguel Ruiz's code for life. Good stuff.

It was that moment that I decided to moderate my comments here. Yes, I am now approving every comment here. And I will delete any that don't add value to either my life or the lives of my readers.

This is a huge change for me. I wanted a free speech area, but after having a week off I realize that I need to make a change. That, I'm sure, will lead to attacks of "censorship" and all that hooey. Too bad. I'm instituting a "family room" rule here. If I don't like it, it gets deleted and deleted without warning — just the same as if you said something abusive in my family room I'd kick you out of my house. If you don't like that new rule, there are plenty of other places on the Internet to write your thoughts. Start a blog and link here. Etc. Etc.

Anyway, another conversation that I had on Monday, with Bubba Murarka, lead program manager on the Windows Live search team, led me to say to him "why don't you guest blog my blog next week?" He said "yes" so starting tomorrow he'll be guest blogging here.

Now, that might sound strange, but Bubba is one of those guys who is a connector. Everyone I know loves him. He works at our campus in Silicon Valley and was one of the first Microsoft employees to buy a MacBook and put Windows on it. Translation? He likes trying new things and is someone I trust and feel good around.

His attitude is life changing.

Plus, he knows a lot about the tech industry. He can tell you how many shares of stock you'll likely get offered at Google, for instance, if you're gonna take a new job there. And he has not only a new MacBook, but a new Lenovo T60 that he says is a "rocking machine" on his desk too. And, he's one of those guys who ships software. He was on the desktop search team. When I visited him he was showing me some software that blew my mind, too. I doubt he'll tell you about that, but, that gets to the other part of my philosophy.

Help developers ship great software. Bubba has, so he's earned his way onto my blog.

See ya April 23!

Oh, and if that wasn't a good enough post for you? Here's some quickies:

Steve Rubel, senior vice president at Edelman, had dinner with me on Monday night and gave me a bunch of fun stuff (these are his favorite sites):

Ask a Ninja is Hillarious!
Hop Stop is a cool guide for city travelers, not many cities, yet, but shows off public transit. Here's the Hop Stop for San Francisco, for instance.
With Meebo, a Web 2.0 Instant Messaging service, you can sign into four accounts at once.
Want to see if there's a domain available on the Web? Instant Domain Search rocks for that.
Want to see popular sites in the Del.icio.us service (which lets people share their favorite Web sites) then use Populicio.us.
Or, maybe you want to see what a combination of Digg, Slashdot, or Del.icio.us looks like? Well, that would be Diggdot.
PopURLS is his favorite aggregation site. Shows off popular news from popular sites. This rocks.
Steve was praising NewsVine, which is a news site that combines news from both pros and amateurs.
The memetrackers that Steve uses include Memeorandum/Tech, TailRank, but also include Cloudee, a site I hadn't tried before. I've been using that and it's a good way to find what people are talking about too.

From elsewhere in my email and/or aggregator:

Orrin, of itsjerrytime.com, wrote to thank me for being the first site to link to their funny animations. He was proud that they were nominated for the first Internet Emmy's. That so rocks! Orrin and Jerry, you're welcome in my living room anytime! I watch your stuff anytime I need a smile!

Sarah in Tampa says to check out this unbelieveable geeked-out office. Oh, that's Larry Larsen's office and it made me drool. You might need to open this URL: http://www.greenjem.com/office/Cribs.wmv in Windows Media Player to see the video.

Allen Bush, of Sharpcast, gave me a demo of their new photo organization tool. It rocks. Instantly synchs your photos among multiple devices, multiple platforms, and multiple browsers. Not sure it's good enough for normal people, but there's a direction here that I really like. They blog too.

This week I'll be on stage with Matt Cutts of Google and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo (we're doing a keynote at the Webmaster World conference) and to help me prepare Andy Edmonds of the Windows Live Search team (we gotta get you a shorter and cooler name Andy if you're gonna compete with "Google" and "Yahoo") put together a demo of their new macro language.

Do you lend stuff to your friends? BillMonk lets you keep track of who's borrowing and not giving back.

Technology Rock Stars are hiring on here at Microsoft at a rapid pace, Ken Levy notices.

Wow, every attendee at the TED Conference (about 1,000) got a free copy of our book, Naked Conversations. That's a huge honor.

Do you know who this is? It's the 12-year-old daughter of Amazon Web Services evangelist Jeff Barr. She's doing a cooking video blog called "BiancaVision." That rocks! Do you know of other kids of geeks who are doing podcasts or video blogs?

Speaking of Jeff Barr, he's built a master list of ways to put RSS feeds on Web pages.

And speaking of video blogs, there's a Vloggercon coming up June 10 and 11 in San Francisco.

I heard some other company announced a calendaring service this week. Oh, OK, it was Google with its calendar. But did you check out Kiko too? They have a bunch of things that Google doesn't do like it can send alerts via any IM and lets you get RSS feeds off of your appointments. But, does it really have a hope of competing against the big guys? As I watch people use calendars, I sense that they are swimming upstream. As Steve Gillmor said in his podcast with Mike Arrington the other day, he wants Google and everything else can go to heck. What I thought was fun was here at Microsoft employees were sending around instructions on how to get Office 2007 to work with Google Calendar.

Greg Hughes is not just my brother's boss, but he's a security expert too, and he wrote a good blog on phishing scams and asks can it really be stopped? IE 7 is gonna try Greg, but it will be interesting to see the new anti-phishing technology will change the game.

The next London Girl Geek dinner is coming up on April 24. Some of my coworkers will be there.

Microsoft this week shipped Academic Search, so of course I read Gary Price for his reactions. Gary's a librarian. A search expert. And very influential.

Think the Easter Bunny hates you? He just might! (video).

Are you a TWiT'er? There's a LOT of geeks who are. I was getting emails and IM's all week after being on the show on Sunday.

And with that I'm off for another week of Xbox playing. Oh, regarding Xbox, my readers warned me not to let Maryam play Zuma. They were right. She's addicted. Even is waking up early now to play Zuma. And what do I mean by "Xercising?" Well, you get on your exercise equipment and start playing Xbox. Chris Pirillo lost 15 lbs by doing that. I find I can play half an hour of Geometry Wars while Xercising. Heheh, and I see the "Get Naked" meme continues with Xbox Live team member Larry Hryb being challenged to a fun video game of "how well do you know your Xbox?" Heheh! Larry's such a good sport.

Oh, and thanks to Hugh Macleod for the continued wonderful cartoons on your blog. Thanks for letting me borrow one for this post. They make me smile. And that's really all that matters, isn't it?