How to be a Demo God

Guy Kawasaki: “[Y]ou have about one minute to captivate your audience, so don’t try building to a crescendo. Start with “shock and aweâ€?–the absolute coolest stuff that your product can do. The goal is to blow people’s minds.”

Joe Wikert on relationships in publishing

Joe Wikert: “Before you sign with an agency, be sure to ask yourself whether you’d still want to write the book through the agency if your particular agent happens to leave. Also, before any of you agents out there start coming down on me for this observation, let me also say that every bit of [...]

What is Friendship?

Dave Winer: “The world isn’t divided into two parts — friends and enemies. I choose to think of friend as a very strong word, representing a very close relationship. I think this may be in part due to what I do, because I need a good solid line separating my public life from my personal. [...]

Evangelism at Amazon

This looks like a very interesting job opportunity with Amazon doing Web Services evangelism. [Via Jeffrey McManus]

Listen Up Search Engines- I Want “Opt-Out” for Relevance

I noticed today that the search terms synchronize blackberry yahoo calendar were bringing users to this site. I laughed, because this is clearly NOT the site that you’d want to visit if you want to use a Blackberry to synchronize a Yahoo calendaring service. First, I don’t even own a Blackberry (Windows Mobile rocks!). Second, [...]

Great Design

Joel Spolsky: “Design, for my purposes, is about making tradeoffs.”

CTP vs. Beta and Windows Vista

Mary Jo says that Microsoft is not going to be releasing a Vista “Beta 2″ but rather a series of CTP (Community Technology Preview) releases. I expect to see this become the trend across all products over time.

Another blogger dinner with Jim Allchin

It is very cool that Jim Allchin had another dinner with bloggers to discuss Microsoft’s direction. The last one was early in 2005.
These dinners sound great, but I think it would be cooler to do it outside of San Francisco. How about tech bloggers on the East Coast or the Midwest? I can think of at [...]

Fun with RFID

Here’s a fun (and scary) commentary on RFID.

Google in China- Striking a Nerve

Google has really struck a nerve with the news of their censorship in China. I’m not bashing them or in any way commenting on Microsoft’s approach to doing business with China. I am however a bit surprised at how quickly Google has become “evil” in the minds of so many.