For those of you who want to believe that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has turned over a new leaf and left its monopolizing ways behind, I've got bad news. According to Robert Scoble, who was once Microsoft's "chief evangelizer," the company continues to display its signature combination of excess aggression and poor programming execution. Scoble recently used some choice words to describe the hulking giant, which is apparently no longer on his Christmas card list.

Responding to Steve Ballmer's recent claim that Windows Live would defeat all competitors -- including and especially Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) -- at Internet search and other online services, Scoble was quoted in the British newspaper The Sunday Times as saying, "The words are empty . . . Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on the whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks. If that's 'in it to win', then I don't get it."

Scoble writes a blog called Scobleizer. From 2003 to 2006, he was a "technology evangelist" at Microsoft. His job was to make people like the Big Softy, and some say that he was successful. His Wikipedia entry, quoting The Economist, states that while he worked at Microsoft, he convinced some people that Microsoft was "less evil." Quite a challenge, I know, but he seems to have pulled it off, at least for a little while.

But since leaving the company, he has lost his allegiance to the software giant. He now seems to believe that Microsoft's claims to be a better company are little more than hot air. Scoble's latest message to his former employer makes that clear in no uncertain terms: "Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative." Somehow I doubt that Steve Ballmer is listening.

Influential A-list (former) Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) blogger Robert Scoble last week wrote a comparison between the iPod and his former employer's much talked-about music player Zune, with is slated to launch November 14. In his blog, the Scobleizer uses his teenage son as a sounding board to see if this device will be culturally embraced as the iPod has been over the last five years. He and and his son both felt that although Zune may have some distinguishable characteristics, there is not a single killer feature that will blow the reigning king out of the water.

He reasons that nothing he showed his son Patrick about the Zune really interested him. If anything, it seems as if it deterred him, e.g., imagine being in grade school, with peer pressure and all, and showing up with Zune? As Robert put it, "Apple has set such a high bar (in marketing) that I doubt Microsoft can even get close."

As a college student, I see that the iPod has been so thoroughly integrated into our daily routines, e.,g., sports practice, parties and around the campus, it's a long shot that Zune will dethrone the iPod. Even Mr. Scoble, an ex-Microsofter admits that! Will it grab some market share? That's the hope in Redmond.

Apple's stock continued to slide today, down $2.43 to end at $64.78 as investors reacted to the lack of unexpected product releases at Apple's developer's conference with disappointment. As some pundits have pointed out, WWDC is a developers-oriented conference. This should not be a surprise. Announcing the expected and high-end Mac Pro made sense (and as American Technology Analyst Shaw Wu points out the Pro will likely sell well due to pent up demand from high-end users who've been waiting for it), consumer products in the line would make more sense to be announced closer to the back-to-school season.

Indications that consumer products and updates are still in the pipeline come from Robert Scoble, who apologizes for helping fuel the Apple rumor cycle, but maintains his sources say some exciting stuff is coming soon.

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

I love rumors. I love conspiracy theories, especially when they're about the inner workings of corporations. And I love blogging celebrities.

That's why I love this story: it has all three, with a special dash of Microsoft thrown in. Brent Strange of QAInsight.net is serving up six reasons why he thinks Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and formerly of Microsoft is Mini-Microsoft, the anonymous insider blogger. I wondered that several months ago, but discarded it due to what Scoble mentions himself: their very divergent writing styles.

I had fun observing Robert Scoble from not-very-afar at Blogher (he was chatting with folks in the lobby whilst I walked back and forth, trying to get my toddler to sleep), and after having stalked him up close and personal I highly doubt it: Scoble is eager, zany, a bit of a nut (in a nice way! really!), while Mini seems tortured, secretive, highly stressed. These personalities shine through their writing and it would be difficult to imagine Scoble -- whose talents definitely lie more in technology than the literary arts -- putting on that mantle.

Strange's reasons include a coincidence of timing (Mini-Microsoft started about a year after Scoble's blog began, about the right amount of time for burnout; and Mini didn't post while Scoble was distracted by the death of his mother), the lack of "insider" information on Mini's blog since Scoble left Microsoft, and the lack of duplication between the two blogs -- Strange deeply analyzes the news covered by both blogs and finds no overlap. I'm not convinced, but the blogosphere loves a rumor, a conspiracy theory, and a brush with blogerati all rolled into one ...

Sarah Gilbert has a Wharton MBA and worked in investment banking for several years, then at a series of increasingly edgy startups before finding her calling, producing blogs for AOL. She doesn't own stock in Microsoft.

Apple ended the day down 72 cents to close at $67.24 as rumors about an Apple phone made their way all across the internet. In Apple's last conference call the company all but admitted that it was working on an Apple phone. T3, a gadget mag, notices that Apple has tossed its hat in with the group that standardizes mobile phone applications, indicating Apple wants to have a say in those standards. Meaning Apple is getting very serious about the iPod/phone combination. T3 notes that the last time Apple did this it joined a Windows benchmarking group. Then just over a week later Apple announced Bootcamp, the software that allows Intel-based Apple machines to dual-boot Windows and OS-X.

But when will the phone be announced? No one is sure, that's half the mystique around Apple when it comes to announcements. But something interesting is coming at WWDC. Robert Scoble, previously blogging as a Microsoft evangelist at his site Scobleizer, drops an awfully interesting hint in a post about delayed Vistas ship dates. He talks about an Apple product announcement there that makes him wish he could "camp out at an Apple store on August 7th." Color me more intrigued than usual. Scoble is more plugged in than most Apple rumormills, is this a reference to an iPod/phone, or to other Apple equipment? We'll find out in seven days.

Yesterday, Bloggingstock's Brian White wrote about the impact Robert Scoble has had on corporate America. Once considered something of a fringe activity, blogging is increasingly becoming mainstream as major media organizations jump on board, as well as major corporations.

Although, Scoble's move from Microsoft to PodTech.net has another message: the importance of video blogging (or vlogging).   You see, Scoble will help develop video content – mostly interviews. 

As seen with the YouTube.com phenomenon, there is an incredible demand for video content.  What's more, it is very easy to create and distribute this type of content. 

I interviewed Mark Stevens, who is the author of the book Your Marketing Sucks.  He has this to say about the future of video:  "Not only is the future video, it is the now. The less people have to read, the more they will absorb. If I can quickly show you a picture, a schematic, a powerful visual of any kind, I have a greater opportunity to command your attention. The key is the word powerful. Whether a blog is in text or video, unless it strikes the heart or the brain with a dagger, it is quickly old fish." 

Robert Scoble, the corporate blogger who agreed with Microsoft CEO Steve Blogger to "put a human face on the company", is leaving the world's largest software company for a Silicon Valley startup, PodTech.net. In a world where Scoble was given free reign to both laud Microsoft's apparent successes and harshly criticize Microsoft's failures and product gaffes, the Redmond giant will be losing the most vocal and visible employee they have. Well, besides Bill Gates, anyway.

Scoble's blog here was and will continue to be a beacon to many in the blogging, journalism and media world as a rate glimpse into the Microsoft culture as well as what goes on behind the doors of Microsoft the global software company. Scoble often chastised the Windows Vista team for delaying the new operating system so long, and he also pumped the xbox 360 for being first-to-market and for being a superior product. Investors in MSFT would have been wise to have paid attention to Scoble's musing at his blog, as it was open and telling unlike many corporate blogs today, which are PR windscreens more than anything.

Astute media knows this and generally disregards the windpipe blogs, but Scoble's was quite different. Alongside Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz -- who is the only CEO blogger in the Fortune 500 -- this new way of communicating with customers and the media with all guards down was an exceedingly pleasant breath of fresh air. Global corporations who seemingly fail to move at the speed of the internet could take a serious communications note from these two examples. This is a new day, and communicating with customers and the media in this fashion -- blogging, unplugged from marketing filters -- is a grand way to one-up your competitors.

[Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 6-12-06]

The Ultra-Mobile PC is so ... last week. Microsoft is heading even slimmer (and, more importantly: cheaper) with plans for a tiny computer code-named the Haiku -- about the size of a paperback book.

The Ultra-Mobile started out with the code name Origami (does Origami sound bigger than a Haiku to you? What a strange mix of Japanese metaphors) and, when it was finally released, many industry watchers thought the Haiku was history. Robert Scoble made a point of complaining about the $1000+ pricetag.

With a price of $500-$700, the Haiku eerily fits right in to Scoble's strategy (either he's just smart about these things, or someone in Microsoft is paying keen attention to his criticisms). Via Technologies will provide assistance on the project and it should be available in the next few years. The question is: where does the useful vs. cool tradeoff take place? Is it a pricepoint ($500 seemed to be Scoble's argument, where coolness could outweigh utility), or a functionality? Does it require billions of dollars of customer education, or will the market eventually catch up to the technology? Investors seem to be saying no, as Microsoft's stock goes ever-lower. I think the cool factor -- at MSFT's current bargain-basement price -- is worth betting on.

[Photo Francis]

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).

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis feels "pretty good -- not great, but pretty good" about AOL's results, as reported Wednesday. He'd feel better, of course, if the street wasn't a little peeved about the too-rapid decrease in subscribers. He doesn't mention why he doesn't feel great, instead focusing on the positive, the ad revenue growth: "the businesses we get compared to most often are Yahoo! and MSN, and we grew nearly as fast as the former and nearly four times faster than the latter."

He's also wonderfully pleased with the company's decision to take the content out from behind the subscriber-only wall and offer it to everyone (along with free e-mail). "Customers like our products," he says, pointing out AOL's 107 million unique visitors, a number that's stable despite the subscriber loss.

Meanwhile, over at the Yahoo! Publisher Network blog, we finally have a response to their unceremonious boot-age of many MySpace publishers.

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

Matt Cutts at Gadgets, Google and SEO talks about the difficult interaction between Google and the webmasters of companies who are assessed penalties for their non-compliant SEO behavior. But what's more interesting is this quote: "The responsibility of picking 'Don’t be evil' as an informal motto is that everybody compares Google against perfection, not to our competitors," Cutts writes. I want to laugh but I think he's right, a bit.

The Scobleizer is excited about a little company called Eye-Fi, which adds a little wifi radio transmitter to your digital camera. He's a Microsoft guy, so of course he'd use it to transmit the photos to his Xbox and play them on his plasma screen (they must pay Scoble a lot! Boy he's got some nice toys). I'd use it to send my photos to flickr. Something tells me that Microsoft doesn't win from this technology, you tell me.