Insider blogging: Microsoft blogger won't, but AOL blogger will

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information." And Jason Calacanis, my boss and one of the subjects of today's look inside, loves this feature!

We've quoted Mini-Microsoft, famous for his anonymous look behind the silicon curtain, but it seems that this time will be one of our last (until, Robert Scoble-like, he rises from anonymity and keeps his criticisms to the immaterial). He didn't say we were the reason he stopped blogging -- actually, it's his wife, who he never told about the secretive blog (so she would avoid the stress), or maybe his too-honest talk with Seattle Times reporter Danny Westneat (Mini was "weary," said Danny, and Mini realized: it's true!).

But wait! He's not totally stopped blogging. We're just going to see a mini-Mini-Microsoft from now on. I truly have no idea what that means.

Maybe it was encouragement from Jason Calacanis, the insider blogger who dares to (a) speak his name and (b) criticize his own company. Earlier this week he took AOL Search to task, offering some criticism for "too many ads and too much collateral" that fills the screen. AOL should love its users more than Google, Yahoo! and MSN, he says, but only including one ad before the search results. Jim Kukral gives him some "credit" for his analysis and finally tells him: "good advice."

So which is more valuable: employees who are too stressed to blog critically in secret, or those who boldly take their brethren to task in a web site that bears their own last name? I won't opine, but I will point out that Microsoft was down 50 cents today, to $22.65 (flirting again with a several-year low), whereas Time Warner was down just a penny to $17.21 (comfortably in the middle of its 52-week range).