If I had like five computers and six ipods--let's say--and I need to get songs I *paid* for off one and on to the others what software could I buy to do this?

I can't believe that I've bought over 10 ipods in my life, and spents thousands on music, only to have to jump through hoops to move my music around--it's a disaster. This DRM stuff hurts the best paying cusomters most... I wish Steve Jobs would just un-DRM the whole darn thing and let me move my music around.

I just want to back stuff up and I'm finding when I turn off my old comuters and move my iPods around the whole library is out of synch. Ugh, ugh, ugh... I hate you ipod. Well, I love you when you work... I just hate you for all this DRM stuff!

This week I'm playing with Judy's Book... add me as a friend, and if you live in Santa Monica lets have some fun with this.

http://www.judysbook.com/members/39626/

I'm at the amazing D conference in SoCal this week. It's an amazing conference... you never know who you're going to bump into. Last night I was talking to a friend and bumped into someone and we both turned around it was Bill Gates. Sorry Bill! I didn't try to get any face time with Bill this year (last year we talked twice).

Gates was the opening interview last night and he demoed a very cool version of Office that had a very clean--but still packed--GUI. One thing I noticed while the demo was going on was that Gates was smiling like a kid on Christmas. As the audience oooed and ahhhhed you could see him get more excited and smile more. I thought to myself, "wow, this guys been building the same pieces of software for over 20 years and he is still excited about it--that's pretty cool."

Someone speculated to me that since Gates got married and started a family he's become less aggressive and happier. He does seem very happy and at peace. I think the world looking at him as the personification of Evil for so long has turned around. Microsoft is playing nice in the ecosystem, and when Walt and Kara dogged him about not gaining marketshare vs. iTunes and Google search he sort shruged and said "we'll get there." He's clearly not happy that search has not grown for them, but he said it was a five year race--which is true.

One attendee told me Gates seemed upset by every question Walt and Kara asked him, which was true. It wasn't that they asked bad questions, but Gates has this habit of shaking his head and rolling his eyes ever time they ask him a question. After he does that he rephrases their question, and admittedly, makes the question better. I guess that's what life is like when you're that brilliant.

My big takeaways:

1. He's defiantly building an iPod killer (sorry, viable co-exister) into the XBOX platform. Gates is very easy to read, unlike Jobs who last year told me to my face "Jason, no one wants to watch video on their iPod" only to annouce the product shortly after. When Gates is asked about a product he smiles and moves on, when Steve Jobs is asked a question he gets a kick out bluffing you. I'd love to play poker with one of them. BTW: are we playing poker tonight or what?!?

2. He sees the closed hardware system model (Apple's model) as attractive in some places--like XBOX. When Walt told him the XBOX group was more like Apple he responded by saying something to the effect of a "very, very big Apple." That got a laugh. I could see Microsoft doing more hardware based on what he said. Not a PC, but I could see him doing the iPod thing and maybe some other stuff (they do keyboards and they used to do routers I believe).

3. He dismissed the web-based office concept, which I thought was in-authentic. Clearly for some folks--perhaps most--a web-based solution is better. However, their earnings are based on Office so I can understand his position.
4. This was the big one for me: Microsoft is gonna built free and paid storage in the sky and synch them with their applications/OS.

Thanks to one of my readers for pointing our Microsoft's Live search beats every search engine out there in terms of the placement of the first organic result: 192 pixels from the top! That's about 20% better than Google for the iPod search.

Wow.... nice job Microsoft!

Check it out here: http://www.live.com/#q=ipod

Is there a tool to synch Google Calendar and my Blackberry out there yet?

Download Squad has been doing some great features recently... love this one on BootCamp!

[ For bonus point give it a DIGG here: http://www.digg.com/apple/Tips_for_Mac_users_who_boot_into_Windows yes I'm begging for a DIGG :-) ]

Just when you think the NYT is starting to get it they create a "Most Blogged" list *without* the back up data of who's blogging the stories!!!

Come on NYT... would it kill you to link to a blog!??!?!?!

Let me get this straight: you'll mine the data from the blogosphere to make your list, but you won't reward the blogosphere by linking back?!?!?!

That makes you a bunch of leeches--you take but you give nothing.

• On the heals of YouTube cleaning up its act, MySpace will delete 200,000 objectionable profiles. Ross comments on making the Space more advertiser friendly--very, very smart move.
  
• The PVR is the network--wow.
• Apple *desktop* marketshare has been cut in half since Jobs became CEO... misleading headline since Apple is doing better than ever in terms of the overall health of the company. In related note, how would you like to be the CEO of Disney and have Steve Jobs show up at the next board meeting?!?! Oh to be a fly on that wall.
  
• John Battelle begs the founders of Facebook to take the money--spoken like a true vet who got hit hard when the bubbles popped. JBAT was at WIRED which had an IPO killed twice, and at the Industry Standard which he says turned down a similar offer (so that means the Standard got a ~1B offer and they didn't take it.... ouch!). I hear ya buddy... I've had three phone calls with entrepreneurs who've been offered 5-30M for their startups in the past month. My advice to all of them: sell now, Internet winter is coming. Here is how the conversation went with one of my friends:
  

Me: "Have you ever sold a company?"

Friend with offer: "No."

Me: "Do you TKTK million in you bank account right now?"

FWO: "No."

Me: "Are your parents going to put TKTK million in your bank account any time soon? Do you have a trust fund?"

FWO: "Uhhh... no."

Me: "Take the money."

FWO: "But what if I sell to early?"

Me: "Then you've done your job. You have three options in life: sell too early, sell exactly at the right moment, or sell too late. You want to be part of the first two groups--not the last group. And, history is the only thing that can tell you if you're in group 1 or 2. Trust me, I spent my life in group 3, now I'm part of group 1, and maybe some day I'll be able to join Mark Cuban in group 2. Heck, folks may look back at the blogging movement and say that we were in group #2. It's a process, and if you're a first time entrepreneur you take the money and hope the distance between group 1 and 2 isn't that big. Risk, reward."

Me (still going): "Trust me, get one under your belt--it changes everything. I get 10 calls a week from VCs asking me to invest in my next company... it's like the movie business: once you've made one movie your chances of doing a second movie go up exponentially."

[ Note: Mark had a solid sale before he had Broadcast.com, so when Microsoft offered him ~$100 for Broadcast.com he could walk away from it. That's the position you want to be in. Having a win under your belt changes *everything.* ]

Yesterday we had a good time playing with Newsvine. What did we learn?

1. Newsvine's interface is really complicated--it takes a good hour or two of playing to figure it out.
   
2. It takes 3-5 votes to get a story to land on a category page.
3. It takes 5-10 votes to get on the TOS page (TOS = top of service for those of you who don't work for a major portal :-)
4. You don't add friends on Newsvine, you "watch" people. Not sure I like that term--feels like being a stalker.
   
5. The fact that they have a license to the AP is really cool because they can run really nice, big photos--DIGG/Delicious ain't got no photos
6. 
7. The Conversation Tracker (image one, right) is a neat feature that allows you to quickly popup an AJAX box that shows you activity on stories you've submitted (i.e. if someone comments or votes on your story).
   
8. The Read Article button is a good innovation since most folks on DIGG don't know when they click on a headline or comment link if they are leaving the site or not. On Newsvine you're not leaving the site *unless* you hit that button.
9. Featured Writers is a good box because it rewards folks for being active, and let's face it people are driven by two things in this space: recognition and affiliation (their ain't no compensation).
   
10. Newsvine has a really bizarre MLM (multi-level marketing) scheme where they will split revenue with you for your articles and your friends articles. It's really complicated and it will never work. They will drop it I'm sure.
11. Overall I give the site a B. They've added some nice features to the socail bookmarking space, and if they can clean up the site a little bit they will have a real winner on their hands.

Questions to folks in yesterday's Newsvine UFG (Unauthorized Focus Group):

1. How long do you think it will take an average user to understand what is going on at the site?
2. What do you think are the best 2-3 features of the site?
3. How would you compare the Newsvine experience to DIGG, Delicious, and/or Ma.gnolia.com?
4. What would you change about the site?
5. What are the worst features/biggest issues with the site?
   

OK, today's UFG is Ma.gnolia.com. My user account is:

http://ma.gnolia.com/people/jasoncalacanis

OK, a bunch of us are hanging out in the Tech and Entertainment sections of Newsvine right now. I added my YouTube story and it has five votes and I've been promoted to the featured Writers box.

Here are the folks I've found in the system already:
http://alexander.newsvine.com
http://jmc.newsvine.com
http://cafemama.newsvine.com
http://nonsensor.newsvine.com
http://modulo26.newsvine.com
http://meskill.newsvine.com
http://toddwc.newsvine.com
http://wilwheaton.newsvine.com
http://jairob.newsvine.com/
http://albertob.newsvine.com/
http://peterrojas.newsvine.com/
http://jandrade.newsvine.com/
http://dcharti.newsvine.com/
http://willyvolk.newsvine.com/
http://doctorparadox.newsvine.com/
http://joannelutynec.newsvine.com/

• RB beaks down the Web 2.0 meme: "The worst thing about all the Web 2.0 hype is the complete loss of business perspective. There's a few companies out there that seem to get it but just about every other new website I've seen lately is nothing but features parading as businesses. Sure, these guys get to be entered in the "Flip It Quick Acquisition Lottery", but beyond that, none seem to be creating anything of any real value." I gotta agree with Russ... there are a lot of folks out there burning through a lot of angel money thinking they are the "Flickr of..." or "Weblogs, Inc. of.." but they don't seem to have any focus on the bottom line. At this point I've officially upgraded my Bubble Indicator(TM) from "frothy" to "bubbly."
• Feel better buddy.
• Gotham Gal hit Sun Valley for the first time... and loved it. Spent some time there a couple of years ago and loved it. Hey Slashfood and Gadling... get her some link love!
• The Palace web 2.0 style--somewhere Mark Jeffrey is smiling (Hive7). I built something like this for AOL's Greenhouse/GNN called "Restaurant City" with Barry Wine. We used Udi Shapiro's Virtual Places software. VP was an amazing piece of technology... you could put 10 people in a bus and go surf the web together, taking turns driving. It was sick... AOL turned it off, Udi bought it back, and it was never seen again.

(PS - What do you guys think of these short, quick hit posts I've been doing. I'm enjoying doing them because it gives me the ability to touch on a lot of things without having to write a huge essay... and yes, I'm ripping off Dave Winer's style :-).

I'm playing with Newsvine today... trying to figure out how it works.

If anyone wants to come play with me my account:
http://jmc.newsvine.com/

some news I've posted (post some comments/votes!!!)

http://jmc.newsvine.com/_news/2006/03/30/151226-youtube-cleaning-up-its-actsome-free-advice
http://jmc.newsvine.com/_news/2006/03/30/151243-time-to-start-a-business-or-not-the-jason-calacanis-weblog

What do you guys think of Newsvine?
Please post your thoughts and account names in the comments so we can all hook up over there.

Google has been working on Google Finance for a while now and today the wrapper came off and it's great. They Google Mapped the charts, as we all expected, and they are even leveraging some Flash (still trying to figure out why Flash is getting beaten by AJAX--cost? ease of use?)

JBAT makes note that they will have paid moderators, which he sees as the first sign that Google is getting into the editorial business. Google, of course, has taken a hard line from inception that they are not in competition with their content providers who run Google Adsense. However, Google Finance will certainly give pause to finance partners who run Adsense. Those partners have to now ask themselves "by running adsense are we supporting our competitor?"

This will of course push Yahoo more in the content business--look for Yahoo Finance to keep increasing their origional content offering. Yahoo has backed off claims they are not in the origional content business over the past year, and it's pretty obvious they are moments away from taking on Marketwatch, ThStreet.com, and WSJ: http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/allbios

Om Malik thinks it's OK at best.

I have to say the charts are very impressive, in the same way GMAIL and Google Maps were impressive when they came out, but I'm sure everyone will update their charts in the next three to six months to catch up. For me the best part is that Google has included a Blog Posts section (image right)--wow, blogs as an information source for finance informtion--that's kind of bold, I wonder if Yahoo will do the same?

Update: They have a Weblogs, Inc. profile... neat. I wonder who put this together?

Update2: Jeff points out the Google, for the first time, has licensed content--something is happening here, and we all know what it is.