I like the way Marc Fest thinks.  He not only thinks about similar problems as I do, he also likes simple solutions.  His Quickbrowse.com is a simple idea with simple benefits: replace page-flipping browser tedium with quick scan down a single page.  OnlineHomeBase.com is another simple yet effective idea: server-side PostIt notes.  Thanks to Scott Loftesness for mentioning Marc.  I got a smile out of the deal.

I am planning to be at Premier-Pizza at the Rivermark location at 7pm this Saturday to attend the blogger dinner there.  Dave, Marc, and Scoble will be there as well.  I think the guest of honor is Mimi who is probably the world's youngest multimedia guru.

Are you coming?

Recommended dress code: tacky Hawaiian shirt.  Camera around the neck is optional. <g> 

Tim's The Door Is Ajar post has some right and some wrong, but I have to say the goal is a worthy one.  Unfortunately, I don't think his proposal will go anywhere even if everyone does it.  Wearing buttons don't stop wars and "Use a Better Browser" button will not make much difference.

What we need to do is build a pipeline into every Windows desktop to deliver new software and updates just like Microsoft currently can.  There will be some technical and social infrastructure that needs to be built for security and payment processing, but this proposal can void much of Microsoft's advantages in the desktop software market. 

New browser?  It's already there and ready to go with a single-click from the user.  Need to use a 3D modelling software for a week?  One click to turn it on, one click to turn it off, and an aggregated bill will arrive once a month.  Crazy?  Microsoft already has most of the pieces there to do this for Microsoft products as well as third-party products.

I just read On Identity and Edits by Shelly Powers, author of Practical RDF, which talks about blog editing problems and policies.  It's a good post that examplifies how Shelly thinks.  The part that shocked me was this:

In an earlier version of the "Thanks for the E-Mails" posting, he wrote that the campaign against him was organized by "an alcoholic, a representative of BigCo and a 16 year old kid".

This excerpt from a response to Shelly's post illustrates how I felt:

"Now, I’ve heard that Dave Winer called Mark an alcoholic and Mark’s recent post about not drinking suddenly clicks into place. Oh Boy!  I’m actually quite annoyed by Dave Winer now."

Flash Mob phenomenon is still going strong.  There was one planned in SF last Wednesday at a bar near O'Farrell Theater, but I couldn't make it.  Anyway, I am wondering what a Flash Mob of shoppers would be like.  It seems silly to go to all that trouble without getting a discount.  Maybe, stores will start giving out Flash Mob Discount for publicity and profit.  This could be a way to help out small local stores too.  Stores can host their own Flash Mob event too with Flash Mob Sale RSS feeds.  Cool!

Once in a while, I would sit and think about why I keep associating women with food.

My mother fed me when I was young.  My wife feeds me now.  Women feed men.  When my son was a baby, he called his mother 'UmMa' and food 'MamMa'.  One connection there.

When I was a young man, whole world of restaurants and exotic food opened up to me.  Likewise, there was a whole world of women suddenly.  Discovering new food, exotic drinks and women was a weekly event then.  My mantra at the time was You are not trying hard enough if you don't get at least two No a week.  The mantra helped ease the pain of refusal.  The amazing part was where I found the mantra: in a fortune cookie.  When I cracked it open and read the paper, I said "Wow!": a hormone-loaded enlightenment.

As I aged, I learned to appreciate good food over new food and good women over new women.  Some looked good, but tasted bad.  Some look so so, but tasted good.  I started to appreciate the cost too.  I weaned off expensive food and women who demanded too much of my time.

These days, I eat at home mostly.  But occasionally, I feel like eating out.  Thankfully, my lazyness keeps those urges in check when they raise their head.  It takes a lot of energy to eat out you know.

I understand that being compared to food is degrading to most women.  If you feel offended, sorry about that.  If you like, you are welcome to compare me to food, pasta preferably.  I like pasta.

I am sure this post will upset a lot of people, but I have had this opinion for a while and I felt the time has come for me to let it out.  Even if you disagree with my opinion, it will at least improve your complexion.

.NET sucks as a whole currently.  ASP.NET is not bad but it is not quite up to Java yet in most aspects.  For writing GUI apps, .NET sucks some more.  Configuration, upgrade, and administration is still not smooth despite being designed in.  Most importantly, the world is not yet ready for .NET, meaning people are not yet disgusted enough with other technologies that they have already sunk money into.

But all the pieces are coming together despite all the animosities, suspicions, and alliances against Microsoft and its habit of shooting itself in the foot.  People will get the clue when .NET 2.0 is released and they will be rocked when .NET 3.0 is unleashed.  People talk about IE standing still and emergence of rich clients but most of them don't seem to realize that .NET is the future of IE as well as the ultimate foundation for rich clients.

Tim's post about sharecropping is interesting, but .NET is the equivalent of Industrial Revolution.  Just think about the dam that is holding us all back, the dam called Client Distribution Problem.  Look behind you and see how many amazing technologies and startups ended up as roadkills simply because they couldn't get their software to the desktop.

.NET will solve all that, in time.  When it does, everyone will suddenly recognize that IE is the platform and Windows is IE.  Distinction between applications and IE will start to blur.  Ultimately, IE will be the Universal Document Viewer.  But guess who is going to be standing at the bridge to the desktop with its hand out?

Meanwhile, Java will disappear from desktops.  Flash will be decimated and casted aside like yesterday's manga when innovators jump in with competing tools and players.  Why attack the strong when there are weaker preys?  Chaos will rein in the application market and no one will be safe except Microsoft.  Bloody it will be, but anything is better than now.

Of course, I am assuming that Microsoft knows what it is doing.  If not, never mind.

Update #1: I have just posted a substantial comment to interesting points other commenters made.  Please be sure to read through the comments.

Macromedia is making babysteps toward a collision course with Adobe.  Upcoming Macromedia Contribute 2 has a feature called FlashPaper which captures any printable documents into a Flash animation.  Sounds familiar?  Yup, it works just like Acrobat does, through a printer driver.

There are some third party tools that convert PDF (Acrobat file format) into SWF (Flash file format), but FlashPaper is a whole new ball game straight up Adobe's alley.  Flash is faster at rendering these pages and each FlashPaper comes with the viewer inside it so you can view FlashPaper on most computers.

It does have some seemingly needless limitations:

• FlashPaper documents can only be viewed in a web page, so you can’t email FlashPaper documents directly to others.
• The text in FlashPaper documents cannot be searched or selected by website visitors.
• FlashPaper does not support digital signatures, annotations and a host of other features of enterprise document sharing technologies like PDF.
• FlashPaper is only available on Windows 2000 and XP, although Macromedia does have plans to support Mac OS X in the next release of Contribute.

Don't you think the list of limitations point straight at Acrobat?  While they might deny it, I think this is the first shot of a long war.  With Microsoft's ongoing efforts in this area, I think we got some excitement coming our way.

[I erased my little pseudo-rap.  It sucked.]

Blogs of executives are starting to appear and at least some of them seems to be using ghost-bloggers according to a comment by Elwyn Jenkins (aka Microdoc) to my Blogs will fade away post is of any indication.  Elwyn wrote:

"I would have to disagree that most of the writing can now go in-house for most corporations. People within corporations do not have the time to 'blog' for their company, and few feel that they can write. Already, I write three blogs for large companies and have a growing list of clientele. I will soon be putting writers on to handle the volume of writing. The task is to listen to what is going on within a company, learn the voice of a key person and blog for that person. The client ultimately publishes today's blog, but a professional writer, thinks up the ideas, and puts a spin on today's blog to match in with a series of events within the corporation."

My initial response was "Whoa!  That's cheating."  But I thought about it some more and tried to think about it from the perspective of businesses and executives.  It made sense.  While writing style matters, it is the message that matters more.  How we think and how we write also make a lot of noise that seeps into our blogs and interefere with the message we are trying to convey.

Still, I thought ghost-blogging is a topic others might want to think about.  One blogging lessons I have learned recently is that I should write, not only about what I want to write about, but also what my readers want to write about in response to my post.  Participation is a big component of blogging after all.  So tell me what you think of ghost-blogging.

If you are a forward-looking executive for a large corporation who wants to see how blogging can help you do your job better, but have either terrible writing skills or leaky-temper problems, give Elywin a call.  I have both problems, but I don't have much of an *ss to cover.  You do.

Update #1: I have created a Ghost-Blogger Directory for people to offer their services.  Until a better directory is created elsewhere, this will have to do.  Send me a note if you want to be included.