Category: Uncategorized

Dare Obasanjo started singing the praises of RSS Bandit yesterday. [here]
I tried it. I’m hooked. Get it.
Sorry Nick.

Jeremy Wright, one the main dudes in my blogosphere, hits this one out of the park.

Scoble nailed it: Microsoft simply isnÂ’t thrilling me anymore. They used to. IÂ’ll still happily defend Microsoft when the time is right, will evangelize dozens of products to the right people and so forth. But itÂ’s less joyful, and slightly more forced, than it used to be.

Bingo! This is how I feel. Although I have been antagonistic towards Microsoft over my professional career, there was still something cool happening there.
Scoble says that there are cool things and strategic hires still occurring. [here]
But Scoble…how will you thrill us?
Hugh has some comments on this… [here]
TDavid weighs in here.

NY Post: DOUBLECLICK DEAL
This is an interesting rumour/bit-o-news. Would be interested to see what happens here, as I have been following DoubleClick for a while.
Via alarm:clock.
C|Net chimes in…a day late and a dollar short.

Heh. Indeed.
Read this and enjoy.
Via Tim Bray.

John Robb:

While I was away, the Republicans have continued their push to create a neo-Victorian America with:

• the anti-entrepreneurial “Indentured Servitude” law
• the “American Aristocracy” tax reduction
• and a crackdown on moral turpitude in the media

Of course, Victorianization wouldn’t be complete without a good dash of hypocrisy. More signs that are becoming a rentier state with abandon…

I like John. Of course, he helped found the company I work for, so I do owe him a debt of gratitude.
Do you accept PayPal, John?

Jeff Nolan and I have had our differences, mainly over Prop. 13. But his posting that links to an article listing the reasons why people are fleeing California cities (or the state entirely) is heartening.
Not for California. But for those of us who decided that we couldn’t stay there and live in one of the world’s richest economies, and tolerate a third-world public infrastructure.

The cadre at Geek News Central links to an article called simply Craig Who?
Classifieds are dead to me. I never look at them. My wife wants to have a latin inscription above our door that reads: This home furnished by Craig’s List (in Italian: Questa sede ammobiliata da List del Craig).
Yet another sign that newspapers and media companies may not be getting the message quite yet.

Hey! More on this happy story here!

Wayne Berry and the crew at XCache Technologies is still kicking, with their interesting mix of software and hardware HTTP compression solutions.
The software is designed for IIS/ISA, while the hardware is a front-end for Web servers.
I had a chance to meet Wayne a few years ago, and was impressed by his dedication to Web performance. He also encouraged me to write some of the articles that you see at WebPerformance.ORG.
Check them out if you are looking for an IIS compression solution.

Disclaimer:
I am not paid or compensated in any way to promote the products of XCache Technologies.

I really try to stay away from political issues, as I am considered an enemy alien living in the US at the will of the DHS.
But if ANYTHING stated in this article is even remotely true, Microsoft has shown that it is morally bankrupt.
I would love to hear some comments from Scoble, Mini-Microsoft, Charlie Kindel, or Dare Obasanjo.
If this is a true reflection of Microsoft’s approach to openess and acceptance, I take back any positive things I said yesterday.
I want this to not be true. Please tell me this is not true.

Scoble says he is definitely not going to be happy if this is true.
Mini-Microsoft agrees with Scoble and me. This in and of itself is worthy of a comment: that the three of us agree on anything means that a plague of locusts is likely to descend on my garden.
Although I want to hear what BGates and SBallmer have to say on this.

Cliff Atkinson points out how the PowerPoint Nazis rule corporate life. [here]
Cliff’s message in Beyond Bullets is simple: escape the drudgery of a point-by-point breakdown your ideas. Tell a story. May it evocative, descriptive, invigorating, or even scary. If the audience hears a story, it is far more likely that they will remember what you said, rather than the quality of your PowerPoint Template.
I personally hate PowerPoint. I use it; but I hate it. I get most passionate when I can take a real-world example and explain it to my audience, and link it back to the core concept I am talking about. When I do that, I never look at the slide, I look at the audience.
If you spend more time looking at your own slides, or even the printed handouts you have in front of you, you might as well not be there. Your audience needs to feel that you are the one speaking to them, not Faceless Corporation, Inc.
Beyond Bullets ties directly into the concepts you can read at Scott Jones’ blog. As a member of the SalesBuilders team, they have helped moved solution and consultative selling to a new level. But the trick to this is that you have to develop a relationship with the person you are selling to (Parts 1, 2, and 3).
For introverted geek types, like myself, the hardest part of relationships is the relating part. But if you have a compelling story, and a means to show how compelling the story is, then the difficulties simply melt away.
Find the one topic you can talk to hours on, and live that message.