Friday, November 04, 2005

The 3-hour audio of Microsoft's Tuesday press briefing, with comment from Dan Farber, Steve Gillmor and myself. 

Press release: "By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq." 

Let's meet for lunch at Google on Tuesday.  

This is a good idea and one I saw coming. My thought was to put video games in bars that optimized traffic lights in a city for maximum flow to route around tie-ups. Plugging human intelligence into software systems is a very neat possibility. Now let's hope Amazon didn't try and patent it.  

TechCrunch: "Last week Odeo did get its studio product out. It's visually appealing. But it is so feature poor that it's effectively a non product." 

Microsoft: "We will only support feeds that are well-formed XML." 

This keyboard is the worst thing ever. 

Seattle Mind Camp starts tomorrow. The blogroll makes interesting reading. 

Something really stupid. When people disagree with you, they can't just disagree, they have to say you're a bad person, or you're lying or you're flaming or whatever. Microsoft has a bunch of people these days who relate this way. It used to be possible to discuss software with Microsoft people, in public even, without the ad hominems. It's a sure way to change the subject. To me it's a sign of intellectual weakness. Okay you don't like me, I'll survive. Now let's get back to how to be more competitive, or make the software work better, or support developers who want to use your platform. The good news is there are still some people left over from the old days, I ran into one of them on Tuesday. I couldn't believe he was still there. Reminds me that Microsoft used to want to win. Maybe there's an element that still does? 

Postscript: I should have known that this would confuse the good people I work with at MS and perhaps elsewhere. Basically if I haven't said something to you, I'm not talking about you. I don't like to point to flames because that encourages people to flame. I don't want to give them the flow. Now here is a big deal. I got a new keyboard, and it works! Happy at last.  

Bob Perez writes that I won't remember him, but how could I forget. He was one of the true believers in Apple Evangelism in the 80s, and most effective. I didn't know he went to Harvard Law School. I wonder if he knows that I was at Berkman. Loops keep closing. Mike Arrington forwarded an email from a guy who was bothering him. Small world. The guy used to work for me, at Living Videotext, at the same time as Bob Perez was at Apple. I used to tell Scoble that he reminded me of him (in the best way). Arrington cc'd me too. Both were the outstanding smart true believer marketing guys at their respective companies. I hope they meet someday. Sparks would fly. (Not sure if he wants me to mention his name, so I'll err on the side of caution.) 

Bonus: Bob is developer #4 in this picture of Apple developers circa 1989. 

Scoble: " I like this disruption game a lot!" 

Josh Ledgard thinks Mini-MSFT could be Steve Ballmer. Interesting, but not true. I am Steve Ballmer. Wait, no, I'm Mini. No, I'm confused.