Microsoft disproves rumors about its moves to acquire Yahoo!. Microsoft executive says they’ve got everything they need to be successful advertising business. While I’m ok with Microsoft side, there is something that concerns me on Yahoo! side. Unfortunately, I’m not that much familiar Yahoo! and their services, but I do not think Yahoo!’s only value is its position in online advertising.

Evaluation period of my copy of BlogJet approaches its end. While I like the tool in general I’m still not sure if I want to spend another $40 on it. I got used to BlogJet as it has all of the features you need for effective blogging, but there are issues that really irritate me:

• I did not manage to get it to work through authentication-protected proxy.
• I did not manage to get image upload to work properly. Somehow it tries to recreate the folder where I want to upload images and naturally fails.
• It does not work with tags on Blogger.

Still have 3 days to think.

I’ve come across a picture of Al Gore in his office. This immediately reminded me a story about Bill Gates – he also uses 3 monitors.

How many monitors do you have on your desktop?

While listening to Department of Defensiveness podcast by Jim and Michele McCarthy I’ve heard about GeekLeaders.com. Among other things you can find transcripts of some Jim’s podcasts. One of the most recent transcripts has very eye-catching title:

billg: Where did you get this date? jimmc: Out of my ass?

In general the most interesting part of this site to me at this moment is Geek Leader Competencies. Good reading for week-end.

Everybody (well, almost everybody) around is talking about Seth Godin’s new book The Dip. It amusing to see that different people from different industries share very similar comments about this book:

• Guy Kawasaki (venture capitalist): The Big Dip: Ten Questions with Seth Godin
• Chris Busse (IT specialist): REVIEW: The Dip by Seth Godin
• Hal Macomber @ Reforming Project Management (project manager): Seth Spreads the Idea of Mastery
• Bob Walsh (micro-ISV developer): Time for a hiatus

Have you ordered a copy of the book at Amazon? I did.

Breaking news from mathematical congress! One of the scientists provided indisputable proof that 101 is the most important number in the Universe. Look yourself: 57+44=101, 188–87=101, 1212/12=101!

Old joke

Today is certainly a day of 101. I happened to spot 2 post related to blogging and the most important number in the Universe:

• 101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger
• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle

What your the most important number in the Universe today? Can you prove it?

Browsing Reforming Project Management feed I came across the post about the importance of saying “No” when feel you can not say “Yes”. Truth be told I fully agree with the idea that No is equally as good response to a request as Yes. But it requires some courage to say No when are asked to do something because, I believe, somehow we always think that the person who asks wants to hear yes. Especially, if you are kind of subordinated to her. Be it your boss or your customer.

One of the things I try to teach new PMs is to have courage to say “No” when they really want to do so and not to try to finding a way to say “Yes”. In communication with them I try to make them feel comfortable with saying “No”. When I ask something I try to show that what I really need is a decision and not necessarily positive.

So make sure you say “Yes” when you really mean it. And say “No” when you don’t.

Researching topic of working efficiently with your mail I came across two more articles definitely forth attention:

• Inbox Master: Get all your inboxes to zero, and have fewer inboxes
• Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox

I’m now trying to come up with schema that will work best for me as my e-mail processing workflow quite often differs from traditional read-do-reply/delete cycle.

With growing number of staff in my department I found my self being interrupted more often than I would like to efficiently do what I have to. As e-mail is the main source of information that requires attention for time enough to completely get you away from what you were currently doing I decided to deal with that first. The first thing (probably, not the most obvious one) I did I visited ToDoOrElse blog by Bob Walsh. I came to know about this blog through his another blog and book ClearBlogging. I found his recommendations for bloggers very valuable so it was natural to assay his ideas on Getting Things Done. And I was rewarded for that by link to “Clearing Your Inbox with Minimal Pain” at Web Worker Daily. Going to try this approach in practice.

New York Post reiterated a year-old rumors that Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo!. In the light of the “Microsoft is dead” essay by Paul Graham. In the web space Microsoft to my mind was always challenger trying to overtake leadership of innovations by others. It will be interesting to see how this story will end.

By the way, Russian translation of Paul Graham’s essay is available here.