Why grown men should not be trolling MySpace for girls.

1.a) They might be underage AND rob you at gunpoint.

At some point MySpace is going to have to devise and enact measures to keep its users from lying about their age- both ways.

Here's my favorite quote from that article:

"He says he has since removed personal information from his MySpace profile, like his salary and the kind of car that he drives."

That's a shame. I know the first thing I want to do at every site I visit is to tell people what I drive and how much I make.

Is when a so-called artist threatens someone with a lawsuit and then calls their employer over the exercise of first amendment rights.

Here's my thing on this. In my opinion it is wrong to make little children cry and then photograph them for profit, as some sort of alleged protest, or otherwise. I would never let anyone do that to my kids, and I have no respect for anyone who would allow someone to do it to theirs.

In fact, I can't believe anyone is trying to argue that it's OK to do that.

This is just my constitutionally protected opinion, but I'm with Thomas on this one.

According to the New York Times, Microsoft has plans to change the telecommunications world the way it changed the computing world in the 1980's. And, I suppose, the way it tried and failed to change the telecommunications world the last time it made a newer, better phone- back in the nineties.

The trick seems to be that this time, instead of just linking your phone and your computer, Microsoft is going to link your phone, your computer AND your cell phone.

Wow.

John Markoff wrote the very thought that came to mind when I saw the headline:

"Microsoft's challenge is to convince corporate clients that they need to adopt a growing suite of the company's desktop and server-based software at a time when inexpensive and modular Web services are becoming increasingly popular."

It's not only that they are cheap, it's that most companies already have newish phones and big companies don't like to change their phone systems because they have to buy and install new equipment and, perhaps more importantly, retrain all of the end users.

The idea of putting another Microsoft (phone, this time) on every desktop will require people who are not risk takers to overcome their risk aversion. This is something that Scoble and I talked about earlier this year, and it is as big a hurdle as ever to making inroads into corporate IT departments.

Microsoft is touting the fact that their system will allow email to be read by the telephone. Why? Everyone and their cat have Blackberries, etc. and can get their mail anywhere. It's better to go the other way and have voicemail delivered via email- which I have been doing for many years via my firm's existing telephone system.

Not that there isn't room for vast improvement in office telecommunications.

Am I the only person who can't believe that in 2006 we still can't dial an office phone from within Outlook by clicking a button? That fact blows my mind almost as much as the fact that Hillary Clinton might be our next President.

Give me dialing from Outlook. Not all the other bells and whistles that no one will use.

Alec Saunders talks about Microsoft's 10-year plan for phones. Is it a 10-year plan or an every 10 year plan? What's different about this decade that gives Microsoft a better chance of success. Going for the corporate user? Maybe, but that seems like a tougher sell to me than the phone-hungry consumer browsing Circuit City.

As a gadget hound, I am intrigued by the prospect of a nifty new Microsoft phone. The chances of our IT department ever putting one on my desk, however, is between slim and none.

And slim just left the building.

I did a new podcast yesterday.

I played some gems by the Cranberries, the Smiths, the Cure and others. I ended the show with a great live rock jam by Humble Pie

I also talked a little about blogger conferences and digital photography.

Click here to listen or download.

Podzinger users can get it here.

Doc gives his thoughts about my blogger conference post and makes some good points.

I suspect that some of the unconference approaches will eventually bleed over to the nontech business world. It's not really the unconference approach that I have a hard time seeing in the nontech world, as much as it is the focus on blogging as a widely accepted business tool.

Doc echoes the point made by one of my Commenters that it's not blogging as the business, it's blogging as a part of a business- the idea that blogging can add value as an additional business tool.

I totally get that with respect to some industries. Certainly journalism (look at all the newspapers that have already embraced blogging to one extent or another), marketing, PR (Steve Rubel is the walking, talking embodiment of that), etc.

What I'm still not buying is blogging as a tool for traditional businesses that sell traditional products and services. The people who manage these companies are going to have to cover a lot of ground to get from content blockers that don't let you visit ESPN to employees blogging on the clock. Not to mention all the corporate policies about what is and isn't fair game for blogging about that would have to be written and enforced. And then there are all the labor and lawyer problems that would arise if an employee got disciplined or fired for unacceptable content, etc.

In sum, most businesses don't trust their employees enough to allow them to blog.

Which means (and I'd love to hear Steve's thoughts on this) that even if a traditional business has a blog, it will likely be written by a trusted insider and carefully designed to promote the company line. It would end up being nothing more than an alternate form of a company brochure and press release page. It would look like a blog, but it wouldn't really be one.

Is that better than no blog at all? I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe blogging as a corporate self-promotion tool is perfectly OK.

Maybe I'm still missing something.

What do you think?

I did a new podcast this afternoon, which will be up later tonight or tomorrow. I talked a little more about my questions involving these blogger conferences.

Here's the Techcerpt

It has been a long time since I have looked forward to a movie like I am this one. If this preview is any indication, it may be one of the funniest movies ever made.



Link

There are two blogs that day in and day out find and present more fun and interesting stuff than any others in my blogroll:

Randy Charles Morin (iBLOGthere4iM)

Robert Gale (A Welsh View)

Along with my morning paper (Techmeme and Tom Morris), they are becoming the first feeds I read every morning.

Take today for example (no links here, go to their sites to see this stuff)...

Randy has a link to an interview with the guy who tried and failed to cancel his AOL account, a bat eating centipede, a huge sandstorm in Iraq and a bike mishap you have to see to believe.

Robert has a guy with a javelin through his head, alive and talking about it, a sales call gone bad, and Prince Phillip letting one rip at a birthday party.

Links like these are why I love the internet.

It wasn't all that long ago that I didn't get the big deal about Firefox. Eventually, I saw the light and it has been my favorite browser for many months.

So when my inclination is to dismiss Opera as a non-factor in the browser race, I have to look past it and take a closer look.

Will Langford has a great post comparing Firefox 1.5 with Opera 9. Using his post as a roadmap, let's see what Opera might have to offer.

Here's a sceenshot of the Opera interface. Tabs, with Google-like simplicity. OK, but I don't buy the car for the color so let's keep going.

Opera is easy as pie to download and install (after I shut down Zone Alarm, which frustratingly prevents the Windows installer from operating). It automatically found and added my bookmarks, but not my home page- it used an Opera page instead.

Things look the same in Opera. In fact, my personal portal looks prettier and cleaner in Opera. It took me a second to figure out where the "Home" link is- you click in the address bar and a menu pops up. This seems unnecessary to me. I like the X-delete button in the tabs. Firefox should do this, without the need for an extension.

Opera has built-in BitTorrent support. I have tried these applications before and I always end up uninstalling them. So for heavy BitTorrent users I can see how this might be a nice feature, but I don't need or want it.

It also has built-in chat (IRC) support. I guess people still use IRC, but I haven't for many years- ever since the infamous RanchoRoom days of the mid-nineties. So here is another feature that I don't really want.

You can select your favorite search engine, which is nothing new, but Opera includes eBay and Download.Com. Cool. I like the way that feature works. I would love an easy way to add custom searches (IMDB, AllMusic, etc.) to this list.

There is a content blocker, but there are extensions for Firefox that do that too.

Like Will, I am impressed by the thumbnail preview that pops up when you hover over a tab. Another nice feature that is better then any Firefox extensions that I know of.

Another feature that I really like is the built-in Notes feature. It works much like the Notes feature in Outlook, but it would be more useful since it is more proximate when you need to write a note while browsing, researching, etc.

The sessions feature works a lot like Google Browser Sync, which sounds better in theory than practice. I am about ready to uninstall it from this computer.

I like the Tools>Delete Private Data function.

Will ran some numbers and concluded that Opera uses less RAM and has less memory leakage problems than Firefox. There is nothing more frustrating than writing a long blog post, only to have Firefox crash before you publish it. This is a big advantage for Opera.

I have been surfing around with Opera a little today. It seems as fast as Firefox (though I miss the status bar at the bottom of the screen that tells me if the target page is loading or stalled).

Conclusion

There's not enough here for me to switch from Firefox, but Opera is definitely a player in the browser race, and that's a good thing for consumers. Competition will make all of the browsers better.

OK, let me begin by saying that I am not trying to be critical. I am trying to understand.

But I still don't get it. I have been loosely following Dave Winer's reports from BloggerCon, as I have loosely followed reports from previous conferences.

I give around 12-20 speeches a year, usually at either legal or real estate conferences. These conferences are attended by real estate lawyers, brokers and business people, during the work week and at the expense of their companies. Why? Because the attendees get continuing education credit, which is required to keep their law or broker license. And because other people in the business will be there and you can network and even make some deals. For example, after one of my speeches a month or so ago, the general counsel of a big real estate company walked up, introduced himself and hired me on the spot to do some legal work for his company. That doesn't happen every time, but it doesn't take too many encounters like that for my firm to conclude that conferences are good places to fish for business.

Business. That's the word that I keep thinking about.

Now, back to the blogger conferences.

I'm sure they are fun for those who are really into blogging. I'd love to go to one, but I would have to travel a great distance on my own nickel and burn precious vacation time. Don't a lot of the attendees have real jobs? Are their employers letting them go to these conferences on company time? At company expense?

What is the benefit to a company of an employee attending a blogging conference?

Do these conferences provide continuing education credits and if so for who? If not, how do they attract a business audience?

Since most of these conferences are on the west coast, do most of the attendees come from nearby, or far away? I speak on the west coast 2-3 times a year, but if I started attending conferences out there (as an attendee), my firm would quickly tell me to find somewhere closer and cheaper to get my continuing education hours.

Who decides the topics? I like Doc Searls a lot, but I have to say that it would be a little hard for bloggers to change the world, since 99% of the world either doesn't know what a blog is or considers it an online diary.

I could see a business use for these conference if vendors/potential sponsors had something to sell to companies, or even to a large base of consumers. But almost all of the blogging-related tools and applications are free. So there's nothing to be sold (other than ads, and I won't go there today).

It seems to me (and again I am not being critical) that a lot of the conference buzz begins with some smart and lucky people who got rich in tech, don't have to work at a traditional job and are looking for something to do. Sort of an alternative to fishing or playing golf. In other words, people with time to kill are trying to dress blogging up as something serious and business related. So far, I'm not buying it.

All of this is not to say that I don't value blogging. Obviously I do. I just think some folks are trying to make it more, or at least different, that it is.

I think blogging is pretty worthwhile as it is, without the need to dress it up like something else.

For example, one commenter at the BloggerCon Emotional Life sessions described one of the great beauties of blogging:

"Something I've found is that I'm shy and not quick to walk up to people, so blogging was very helpful as an ice-breaker. I now come to a place like this where i know people already, with common things we can talk about."

Exactly.

One of the things I like about my blog is that it allows me to converse with and become friends with people all over the world I would otherwise never have met. From Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble to Phil Sim, Tom Morris and Mathew Ingram to Rick Mahn and OmegaMom. It's not about how many readers you have. It's about what you have to say, and so many of the people on my blogroll are profoundly interesting. I am blessed by knowing them.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, I know in the real world is the least bit interested in tech. I am, and my blog provides me with a large, diverse and knowledgeable group of people to talk with and learn from about tech-related topics. That's a wonderful thing.

But it's still not a business.

Another thing I use my blog for is a learning aid. Right now Darren Rowse, Richard Querin, Thomas Hawk and others are helping me learn about my newest passion, photography. I am reading a great book on photography right now that someone suggested to me in a Comment. I really need somebody to tell me how to use the light meter on my camera. I don't know anyone to ask in the real world. But I just asked hundreds of people and I suspect I will soon get a kind and patient answer.

Beautiful. Fun. But not a business.

Mike over at Techdirt posts today about the death or not of dialup as an onramp to the internet. He talks about two reports, one from Nielsen/NetRatings that says dialup is dying and one from Fox that says it is not.

It's not, and here's why.

A lot of folks, including the myopic commenter to the Techdirt post who exclaimed "I would rather not have the internet at all than to use dialup ever again," seem to think dialup versus broadband is a choice. For a whole lot of people, including my sister, dialup is the only choice, because they live in rural areas and small towns where broadband is simply not available.

A more thoughtful commenter replied that his or her only real choice was dialup, even though he or she lives very close to a major urban area:

"You learn to adjust--For instance, I get my podcasts by chipping away at them for an hour in the morning and an hour at night--so as not to tie up the phone line. MIght take 2-3 days to get a big one, but eventually the job gets done."

While digital downloads and other fat pipe stuff are a lot harder, you can get a lot done via dialup when it's your only choice. We all did a lot of stuff over the net via dialup back in the day, and some folks still have to.

Mark Cuban has removed the ability to Comment from his blog. I think that is a mistake and I hope he reconsiders. Here's why.

Comments are not primarily about the reading. They are primarily about the writing- letting your readers know that you care what they have to say and, more importantly, giving your readers a place to share, debate, vent and, yes, even call you names if they want. Most of the time, the ensuing discussion is fun and interesting. Sometimes it's not.

If you decide for a while, or even forever, that you don't like what people are saying, just ignore the comments. Just because a comment is on your blog doesn't mean you are bound to respond. The conversations between the commenters create a sense of community- even if not always a positive one.

More importantly in Mark's case, turning off comments is inconsistent with his persona as the new, improved, accessible CEO. It's less blog maverick and more blog conformist.

It's old school masquerading as new school. In sum, it just isn't cool.

What makes Mark so popular (and, granted, somewhat of a target for the discontent fringe) is the very accessibility that his blog comments permit. That and the fact that he refuses to be silenced by the NBA powers that be.

Let people have their say. The goodwill and positive buzz will far outpace the temporary buzz kill of a few bad names.

And while you're at it Mark, go sign Josh Howard to a long term deal. That guy is a player.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, my cousin Janet was visiting me in Houston. During her stay, we spent a lot of time with a friend of mine (who, incidentally, is one of the characters in my long forgotten and half written novel that became the Mr. Happy stories). Anyway, one night my friend was trying to convince Janet to go home with him. He was getting nowhere and finally she blurted out "Look, I just met you," to which my friend responded without missing a beat, "Oh, that time thing again."

That's sort of the way a lot of these Web 2.0 companies seem to approach their business plans and the obvious, at least to some of us, need to actually turn their nifty science projects into some cash. I have talked until I'm blue in the face about the faulty logic inherent in the ad dollars as a sole revenue source approach. Yet every day we read about another social bookmarking service and another social networking service who plan to take over the world, one ad click at a time.

The lawyers are about the do some damage to those who believe they can toss up a system, let the inmates run wild and sit back and get rich and famous.

Joe over at Techdirt posts today about a new MySpace angle designed to disguise the fact that it's just more advertising and a new Facebook angle designed to disguise more ad sales as some sort of a joint venture by giving the advertiser some equity.

If I were a VC, I would ask only one question to every startup that I came across:

What is your revenue model, exclusive of selling ads and getting bought by Yahoo.

If I got an unsatisfactory answer, I would thank them and tell them I'm not interested.

It's that money thing again. In the business world, you simply have to make it. Otherwise, you're not a business, you're a hobby.

On a related note, I still want to know, exactly, who clicks on online ads. I have never once (never, not even one time) clicked on an ad on a web site I didn't own. If you regularly click on online ads, please leave a comment and tell me about it. I'll devote an entire post or two to this if I get enough takers.

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

After waiting on hold for 15 minutes to talk to a live person so he could cancel his account, an AOL account holder was basically told no by a now unemployed customer service rep. There is a video available on the page linked above that contains a recording of this memorable conversation.

What I would like to see is a copy of the script/instructions that AOL gives its customer service reps to use when someone calls to cancel their account. Granted, this guy went a little overboard, but I suspect the reps were told to try to dissuade people from leaving.

When I saw the headline, I was happy. I am a shareholder and thought it meant blow up as in take off. You know, similar to bad like Shaft and all that.

As it turns out, it really blew up- as in exploded.

It seems that at some conference in Japan a Dell laptop suddenly exploded into flames. Granted, my Dell laptop sometimes feels like its on fire when sitting on my lap, but thus far I haven't been able to cook over it.

I suspect a faulty battery was to blame.

This is not the first time Dells began to spontaneously combust.

But don't look for another fire sale.

For many reasons, this seems like an appropriate Father's Day video.



It also demonstrates why YouTube is such a fantastic resource.

Link for feed readers that don't embed the video.

I was about to turn on tonight's Sci-Fi Channel offering of Lou Diamond Phillips dealing with genetically altered bats (which sounds like a movie designed specifically to my tastes), when I came across something better. Engadget either getting owned or owning others (I'm not really sure which) over a dog brain in a dish.

According to this Engadget story, some cat (the human kind, but keep reading and you may begin to wonder) has grown a dog brain in a dish. Now we could make a Sci-Fi Channel offering out of that alone- but there's more.

What, you might ask, is the highest and best use of a dog brain in a dish?

To play video games, of course. It sort of takes "man's best friend" to a whole new level.

Now all we need is for the Sci-Fi Channel and Lou Diamond to team up and bring us a movie about the dog brain's entry into and domination of the pro video game circuit. After the dog brains start winning all of the teens of dollars of prize money, Lou Diamond could play a human gamer who unseats them and returns mankind to its rightful place at the top of the couch potato chain.

Possible sequels could involve squirrel brains that needlepoint, whale brains that rap and turtle brains that play fart football.

I have been reading with interest the recent discussion about Wikipedia, that great collaborative, free, online and hopefully accurate, encyclopedia. Let me begin by saying that I use Wikipedia all the time and that I think the idea of a collaborative encyclopedia is a great idea- in theory and, perhaps, in practice.

The recent discussion revolves around the issue of editorial checks and balances.

I am convinced the issues arise out of differing views of the meaning of collaboration. You see, when you agree to collaborate, you must collaborate. Which means that, in theory, everyone is free to add to and edit entries on topics that, presumably, they know something about. Some people, however, seem to be taking the term collaborate a bit too literally, thinking that any restriction on a user's desire to have his or her way with an entry taints the process and constitutes some sort of undesired censorship. This is wrong, and here's why.

In any online collaborative venture, be it an encyclopedia, a message board or blog comments, there are several kinds of potential content providers:

First and best, there are the knowledgeable and helpful people who try to play by the rules and make an effort to be objective. Objective matters not on a message board which, by design, is to be filled with opinions. It matters greatly when the goal is a shared resource. Even subconsciously, opinion and emotion often creep into writing disguised as facts. There must be some checks and balances, other than the emotional reactions of those who emotionally disagree, to preserve the required amount of objectivity.

So even with people who are trying to play fair, there is a need for oversight.

Then there are the people who don't know what they don't know. On a blog, I can talk about politics, curling, why I like David Gilmour better that Steve Gillmor, and anything else I want ramble on about- and if it turns out that I am foolish, wrong or mistaken, my readers will simply vote with their subscription buttons. But if I decide all of the sudden that I am an expert on curling, am I really the right guy to rewrite the Wikipedia page on curling? Of course not.

So again, there must be checks and balances in case people start believing they know more than they do.

Then there are the people who have genuine but differing opinions of how a site should be run. The best example of this at Wikipedia are the people who either enter or edit entries about themselves. If unchecked, everybody and their dog would have an entry. On the other hand if you see something about yourself that is factually incorrect, why shouldn't you be able to correct it. Again, checks and balances are needed. (As an aside, while I read and like Fred's blog, Wikipedia is not limited to online or VC matters, so if Fred is suitable for an entry, so are a ton of other educators, business persons, doctors, lawyers, firemen, soldiers etc. who do a lot of good here in the real world).

Finally, there are the troublemakers. I remember the night Mike Arrington posted about a test chat room that had been set up by 3Bubbles to show their new chat application. I wondered over to check it out, and the signal to noise ration was beyond horrible thanks to quite a few chatters who were there purely to disrupt things and create chaos. I can tell you from vast experience developing and operating interactive web sites that disrupters and troublemakers are a constant problem that require constant diligence. Left unchecked, the vandalism that Jimmy Wales calls "a minimal problem, a dull roar in the background," would eventually overwhelm the legitimate content the way unpulled weeds will overwhelm a yard.

The New York Times article sums up the Wikipedia problem nicely:

"At its core, Wikipedia is not just a reference work but also an online community that has built itself a bureaucracy of sorts- one that, in response to well-publicized problems with some entries, has recently grown more elaborate. It has a clear power structure that gives volunteer administrators the authority to exercise editorial control, delete unsuitable articles and protect those that are vulnerable to vandalism."

and

"While these measures may appear to undermine the site's democratic principles, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, notes that protection is usually temporary and affects a tiny fraction of the 1.2 million entries on the English-language site."

All of which leads me to my conclusion.

We shouldn't be worried about the fact that someone gets to decide what is acceptable at Wikipedia. Instead, we should focus on who decides who decides what is acceptable at Wikipedia.

As long as there is built-in fairness to the answer to that question, the other problems, both from an inclusive and an exclusive perspective, will take care of themselves.

In fact, when people argue about limitations of any kind, they are often not arguing about the limitation so much as they are about who controls the limitation. If we focus narrowly on the real problem at hand, it is easier to understand the problem and to craft a solution that work for everyone.

It's all about the correct checks and balances.

Cassidy and Evie and Delaney and Aidan on a roller coaster

We spent all day today at Sea World.

We saw Shamu, a dolphin show and the shark exhibit. We rode the big waterslide and played in the wave pool.

The kids got to pet and feed dolphins.

More photos here.

Perhaps unable to go on after Elvis left the building, Bill Gates is stepping down at Microsoft, to devote more time to his charitable foundation. The foundation has donated $10.5 billion in 12 years of operation.

Meanwhile, Kinky Friedman continues to slap around the other candidates, proving that if he were to somehow get elected Governor of Texas, we'd be in for an interesting time. His camp had this to say recently about candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn asking to be listed on the November ballot as Carole Keeton "Grandma" Strayhorn:

"Strayhorn's demand that her political slogan be put on the ballot is completely absurd and reveals a politician fast becoming irrelevant," said spokesman Robert Black. "Kinky Friedman may tell jokes, but the Strayhorn campaign is teetering on the edge of becoming one."

Maybe Bill should fund Kinky who should hire Scoble as the official Texas evangelist and podcaster. We already have a state bird and a state flower.

This would keep the band together and be good for Texas at the same time.

Technorati Tags:
scoble, gates, kinky friedman

Luke chilling by the pool

We did a whole lot of tubing today. Later we hung out by the pool and swam.

At night they have a campfire where the kids can make smores. Last night there was a huge game of flashlight tag, where one kid has a flashlight and the last kid to get tagged by the flashlight wins. Cassidy won one of the games and Delaney did great too.

Tomorrow we're off to Seaworld to see Shamu.

Henry says that maybe eBay will buy Fed Ex and Verizon, so it can add a "Mail Me" and a "Call Me" (perhaps Al Green could be their marketing spokesman) to the "Skype Me" buttons on its auctions.

Henry likes Skype fine, but says correctly that a Yahoo purchase would have created greater synergy. Amen. I love eBay, but I haven't the foggiest idea why it bought Skype- other than the old bubble inflating standby. Because it could.

I actually installed Skype for the first time ever last week. And I have to admit it's pretty cool. But I can't conceive a situation in which I would want to "Skype" a buyer or seller of an auction. In fact, I would probably consider it an intrusion if I got "Skyped" by someone based on an eBay auction.

Sometimes the strategic plans of internet companies are a lot like the movie Momento. They start at what should be the end and then make things needlessly complicated after that.

Technorati Tags:
skype, ebay

The priority challenged RIAA has now decided that those bad YouTube videos of teenagers lip synching their favorite songs is somehow a business plan for record labels.

Project Opus reports that some YouTube users have reportedly received cease and desist letters from the RIAA, demanding that their amateur videos be taken down.

Here's a news flash RIAA. These kids are not ever going to get a freaking synch license so they can lip synch and make funny videos, some of which are the best possible viral marketing for a song. All you are accomplishing by harassing these kids is to once again look greedy and clueless. That and nipping some good marketing in the bud.

It would be so nice if the record label cartel would stop trying to turn back the clock and embrace the technology that is going to thrive with or without them.

Technorati Tags:
riaa, youtube

Cassidy and Delaney in the Alamo

We are on the first day of a vacation in the Texas hill country. We spent part of the day in San Antonio. We took the kids to the Alamo and had lunch on the San Antonio Riverwalk.

Afterwards, we came to the Hill Country Hyatt, where we checked in and then went tubing on its man made "lazy river." We're going to do some more tubing tomorrow. We're going to Seaworld on Friday.

Big fun so far.

It's the simple things that solve real problems that have the most potential to make a difference. When I saw those little power strip savers a year or two ago, I couldn't believe someone hadn't thought of that years ago.



I feel the same way about Joe's Goals, which I read about today at Lifehacker.

Joe's Goals is a straight forward, simple to use and seriously useful online goal tracking application. You sign up, set goals (both things to accomplish and to avoid) and track your progress. A neat feature is that you get one point for every goal you meet each day and lose a point for every one you miss. If you think in math like I do, you could average your weekly scores and create a trend line (integrated charts and trend lines would be a really cool feature for a future release).

I set up a few goals in about 2 minutes and now have a little tangible incentive to eat healthy, work hard, etc.

Check out Joe's Goals- you'll be glad you did.

Mathew Ingram is reporting that Om Malik is quitting his job too (or at least going from senior writer to a contributing editor), having received some "funding" (where can I sign up for some of that?) and elected to blog full-time. Paul Kedrosky mentions this as well. Steve Rubel offers some marketing advice for Om's new venture.

The way I figure it, anyone who can make hell freeze over can certainly make a go at blogging for a living. Like every other blog reader in the world, I read Om regularly and find him to be a thoughtful and reliable voice in an often chaotic blogosphere. In fact, I often look to Om to confirm rumors I read about first elsewhere. Credibility goes a long way in business, particularly media, and Om has plenty of it.

Best of luck to Om.

Now I'm off to see my VC guy at the corner market to see about a little funding for me. The Texas lottery is up to $17M.

At least not in the way Scoble means.

I have no doubt that a lot of bloggers got it wrong when reporting Scoble's move. I also have no doubt that all of the blogging frenzy that went on comes with the territory when you're popular and in the public eye.

In my semi-humble opinion, the biggest thing holding the blogging movement back today is a complete failure to reach any consensus on what a blog is and what a blog isn't.

The fact is that blogs are many things. Fun, hard, happy, sad, serious, frivolous. The beauty of a blog is mostly in the eyes and fingers of the blog-holder.

To some, it is a podium to express their views.

To some it is a natural part of their larger purpose.

To some it is a way to explore their passions.

To some it is a living Christmas letter (and I mean no disrespect- that is a beautiful and worthy purpose).

To some it is an evolution in traditional journalism.

To some it is a way to entertain.

To some it is a way to grieve.

To some it is a way to have conversations with people about topics of mutual interest.

To many it is some combination of the above.

Granted, that is no excuse for posting irresponsibly. And it does not exempt bloggers from some of the good practices of traditional journalism.

But to say that bloggers are journalists is to miscast both the nature and the beauty of a blog.

Unless, of course, by journalist, you mean someone who keeps a journal.

That would be pretty accurate.

Here's my question.

If you're a happily married, middle aged man who likes to build things but is not big on chatting with strangers, what, exactly, do you do in Second Life after you've built your castle?

I can't believe I'm about to write this, but I think I've lost my jones for Second Life. I have built a fine castle from scratch, with good music and lots of gadgets. Now on those rare occasions when I log onto Second Life, all I do is wander around my ghost-town of a region and ask myself "what now?"

I'm not much of a computer gamer, so the casinos hold little attraction. I'm not too interested in chatting up random strangers. I have explored about as much as I want to.

In sum, I'm bored.

Second Life is fantastic from a technological perspective and I am still sold on the business plan, primarily because of its appeal to young people. I'm just not sure what there is to do there that will keep my attention.

Any ideas?

Unless I come up with a plan, I think I'm going to bag it.

Dave Winer wrote today a post that is a second cousin of a post that has been rolling around inside my head since we learned that Scoble gave Microsoft the Mississippi half-step uptown toodleoo for startup Podtech.

Dave talks about how big Scoble's presence in the blogosphere and beyond has become- and rightly so, given all the work he has done to make Microsoft relevant in the blogging/RSS space. Dave calls Scoble an "evangelist" in the Guy Kawasaki mode. Evangelist is a word that I have used with approval in a similar context that means someone with an agenda who is smart, well liked and has a strong personality. Evangelists are fishers of men and motivators of people. But sometimes, by doing what they do so well, evangelist types tend to overwhelm the systems within which they work and, while perhaps not in Scoble's case, but definitely in others, can sometime face resistance and resentment from the coat and tie establishment. Or as I have said to colleagues, they too often are rightly loved downstream and wrongly despised upstream.

My thinking over the last couple of days is more along the lines of what Scoble's departure tells us about corporate America and the blogging movement. I can't help but think this is a stormy forecast for company acceptance of the blogosphere as a legitimate marketing and information distribution channel. Scoble and others have made it clear that Microsoft did right by Scoble. But if a huge tech company with billions of dollars in the bank hasn't embraced the blogosphere enough to keep the single biggest personality in the blogosphere on its payroll, can we assume that maybe Microsoft (and likely other big companies) believes that the blogosphere is little more than an online geekfest full of people who are either already customers or not likely to become customers.

Stated another way, is the blogosphere where the customers aren't?

Sure, there is an army of bloggers at Microsoft, but no one will deny that Scoble was the commander and chief. The successful move to keep Scoble in Redmond would have started months ago, not days or weeks, ago. I don't know if this is just a big coincidence or tea leaves demanding to be read, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't more evidence of the marginalization of the blogosphere by big business.

As far as Scoble's new gig goes, I had never heard of Podtech until the Scoble news broke- which means that he is already doing his job. I started out thinking podcasts were too hard and that nobody listened to them. Now I think they are too hard and I do one every couple of weeks. I don't mind hard because I am interested in technology, but a whole potential podcastees do and aren't.

Do I think podcasting will take hold in mainstream America. No, not as long as the RIAA is still circling around to make sure nobody puts anything on a podcast that mainstream America really wants to hear. But is it a growth area? Of course.

And of course I note that podcasting, unlike software, is one industry that is joined at the hip with blogging and RSS. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Whether he's promoting software, podcasts, religion, apples or bass-o-matics, an evangelist's job is to take the message to the people. I have no doubt that Scoble's new message will soon be heard loud and clear.

It's the other message I'm thinking about.

SiliconValleyWatcher just posted an article stating that everybody's favorite blogger and the guy who has done more to bring blogging to the mainstream than any other person is leaving Microsoft and joining Podtech.net.

I don't know all the facts surrounding Robert's alleged departure, but I will say that this is a huge loss for Microsoft. Scoble gave Microsoft the sort of blogosphere credibility and influence that simp