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.

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."

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.