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.

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."

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.