Seriously now... blogs are little more than personal home pages with built-in text editors.

People put up web pages for a number of reasons, but it's really all about a real or perceived notion that what they have to say is interesting to other people.  Blogs are all the rage now because they've cut through the painful overhead of setting up and maintaining a web page.  Here's what I say, they're nothing new, just a better implementation.

Bill Gates is now going to get a blog.  Doesn't he already have one right here?  Sure... it doesn't look like a blog, but it serves the same function.  So, if Bill Gates already has a web page that provides a forum for his views and news what is he really getting?

Perhaps it's not that simple.  Our society is continuing to evolve from a formal to informal society.  We don't wear ties to work anymore.  We don't like our neighbor's kids to call us “Mr. This” or “Mrs. That”.  We prefer instant messaging over e-mail.  Are blogs just an extension of that formal to casual transition our culture is making?

A formal home page is cold and corporate.  It has pretty graphics and structured layout.  A blog tends to have fewer static pictures and the content, while structured, tends to be shorter and come in fits and bursts (My posts range from a couple lines to long boring rants no one reads... are you still here?).

So what do you think?  Are blogs really something new?

While I was only joking about selling addresses (see comments) it appears the AOL workers are a little less loyal to their users.

A snippet of the whole article from Reuters:

US Charges AOL Worker Sold Customer List for Spam
Wed Jun 23, 2004 07:07 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. investigators said on Wednesday they had arrested an America Online employee and a Las Vegas marketer for stealing the Internet provider's customer list and selling it to a purveyor of "spam" e-mail.

AOL members were flooded with millions of unwanted messages because of the scheme, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court in New York.

Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was charged with stealing a list of 92 million AOL customer screen names and selling them to Internet marketer Sean Dunaway of Las Vegas.

[snip...]

Hoo boy, I bet this crew is fun a the local neighborhood fourth of July barbecue!

Lance Champion of McMinnville, Tennessee decided to pull over a local deputy for violating the speed limit (Note: Lance isn't a peace officer, he just plays one in his own mind).  The resultant conversation landed 23 year-old Champion in custody for disorderly conduct (um, duh!). 

Champion then did what any good local superhero would do, he called his mom.  Mom Champion next showed up at the scene with Champion's 17 year-old brother. Jr. Champion helped the situation by slapping the hand of a police officer who was supervising the towing of Lance Champion's car. 

Okay kids, what happens when you hit a police officer?  That's right, you get arrested.  Having her two sons arrested was obviously tough on Mom Champion who promptly got herself cuffed for disorderly conduct as well.  Wanna go for a royal flush?

The Champion patriarch, Hal Champion, was able to return from church just in time to help diffuse the situation by showing up and (like a good Christian) through peace, love and understanding promptly get himself taken down with a taser gun and arrested.

Some people shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Yeah, sounded crazy to me too, but it's real and happened on Tuesday, go get the official write up at CNN.

So, you're sitting at home thinking... “I had a Cesarean section with my first child and that means I'll have to have one for my second child.  I should just get a zipper installed for convenience.  But... what would that look like?”

Well, worry no longer, you can try on your own belly zipper navel piercing to be sure you like the look.

My Cousin Mark Robert (I can't remember a name for two seconds? Must be time to put me out to pasture) used to work for Nokia as a patent attorney, now it appears he spends his time blogging.  I guess I'll have to drop him an e-mail to find out else what he's up to.

The official press release is now available on MS Press Pass.  Enjoy!

In related news, Omar is also stoked about the change.

This, um... "enthusiastic" fellow was seen sitting in the front window of Jamba Juice in Downtown Disney:

 Click for big

Yep, it looks like the articles are starting to roll off the presses, even before any press releases are out from MS Press Pass.  How do they do it?

Here's what's important: we're not trying to have a "storage war" as some would say, we're tying to make storage not be "the issue".  We're putting in a lot of effort to make sure we have the features users really want and need.  In the rush to announce the storage bump the articles gloss over that we'll be doing things like improving security by changing the anti virus cleaning to be free for all users (we have had free anti virus scanning for all users for over five years).

I guess the basic thing is this: I want people to know that we love making cool software, we'll continue to do that.

Related news:

• Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage
• Microsoft to boost Hotmail storage capacity
• Microsoft to increase Hotmail storage, add virus protection
• Microsoft Boosts Storage Capacity in Email War