That pesky msnbot/1.0 is a pretty busy bot today. That's MSN Search's spidering robot. I've had more than 10,000 hits from it today, and a friend with another blog has had about 4,000. These numbers are way larger than normal.

Hmmm... Something coming soon from MSN Search maybe? We'll see!

UPDATE: Looking at my web server log details, it looks like the spidering that's going on is touching mainly a whole lot of RSS content. Main feeds and category feeds are being pulled frequently. Is MSN Search pushing the RSS envelope? With RSS going native to the OS, this might make some real sense?

ANOTHER UPDATE: A member of the MSNBot Team (who, by the way, responded post-haste to a question I sent through, uh, channels) asked me to volunteer some of my web server logs earlier today and the traffic's dropped off since. Maybe it was just a little behavior problem (that happens). Interesting!

I have a request for makers of Tablet PC hardware - one that I think would be totally feasible, and would greatly simplify my Tablet PC ownership.

The one thing about using a Tablet PC that regularly haunts me, as an adult male approaching midlife crisis age (and with all the associate baggage in areas like memory, concentration, etc), is the fact that the pen/stylus I love to use with the Tablet is really, really, reaaaaally easy to misplace. It's a problem.

Cuz ya know, there's nothing quite like having a fancy-dancy convertible notebook Tablet PC without a pen. Heh.

Just ask the IT guys at my company who loses the most styluses (styluses? stylii? hmmm). They'll just roll their eyes, laugh and point at me.

So, here is my idea, recorded here for posterity: Build in a proximity device that I can turn on that will make the pen chirp or something if it's more than, say, about 15 feet away from it's home (the Tablet PC, that is) for some extended period of time.

Heck, it might even be worth enabling the pen to speak out loud and say something like, "That dork Greg Hughes at 503-629-xxxx left me sitting here all alone. Please call him and tell him to come pick me up, and that he needs to go put a quarter in the jar."

Or something like that. I'd settle for just the chirping alarm.

Any other bright ideas?

If you're responsible for (or just into) computer security - at a fairly involved level - check out (IN)SECURE Magazine, a PDF distribution, at http://www.insecuremag.com/.

Issue 3 is out. It's 67 pages. Serious stuff. Lots of great, practical, useful stuff.

Check it out.

In the August issue:

• Security vulnerabilities, exploits and patches
• PDA attacks: palm sized devices - PC sized threats
• Adding service signatures to Nmap
• CSO and CISO - perception vs. reality in the security kingdom
• Unified threat management: IT security's silver bullet?
• The reality of SQL injection
• 12 months of progress for the Microsoft Security Response Centre
• Interview with Michal Zalewski, security researcher
• OpenSSH for Macintosh
• Method for forensic validation of backup tapes

(via Scoble)

His weblog may not be an official Microsoft site - it's his own site, a place to publish his own opinions - but the fact is, Robert Scoble's a Microsoft blogger, albeit "unofficial."

And one Microsoft site - Microsoft for Business and Organizations - has published an article called "Agent of Transformation," where Robert is interviewed about corporate blogging.

Good read. It's also linked from Microsoft's Executive Circle. Interesting, really - Robert's an insider, of course, but he speaks his mind from time to time - He's been known to express opinions critical of Microsoft's products and positions if that's where he stands. So, it's also interesting to see Microsoft publishing interviews with Robert to talk about how corporate blogging benefits business.

"So there are times when we are having an online conversation out in public, which is fascinating and scary. It's like living naked. Sometimes it's not all that pleasant. We both believe very strongly in transparency and believe that it makes you make better decisions overall."

He also talks about being a smart business blogger. It's worth a look for anyone interested in the blogging world, and for anyone who blogs about - or for - work. Read the interview here.

And... Coming up in September, Scoble's gonna be webcasting:

Robert Scoble on Blogging - September 21, 11:30 AM Pacific Time. Catch this webcast with Microsoft's most well-known blogger, Robert Scoble, and learn how to build your own blog presence, brand, and traffic.

We interrupt this IT/tech blog for the following random cult video interlude....

Flashbacks of Deliverance run through your mind. Be afraid.

This, my friends, has to be the greatest video ever on the Intarweb. I am so glad someone sent this:

Whatever you do, DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK!

Ok, just kidding. Click it. No, really. Enjoy. Know a better one? Leave a comment.

Update: Apparently this video is a party promotion for a local (Portland, Oregon) media firm, Borders Perrin Norrander, Inc. Cool. Also, a lower bandwidth version is here: http://www.bpninc.com/evideo/video_mac_lo.mov

Bil Simser has taken the lead in creating a place for the community to create and share SharePoint templates. This is terrific - one of the more difficult things about getting people using SharePoint has always been the lack of templates and general resources available to get people started building the custom apps people dream of (but can't necessarily create themselves).

Link: The SharePoint Template Project on SourceForge

Now that we have the place to do this, all we need are participants. Microsoft recently released a set of 30 great site templates, and there are a few others out there as well, but this has the potential to be much bigger.

Bil's own words describe the SharePoint Template Project perfectly:

Not having custom solutions has been one of the larger gaps in SharePoint but demonstrates that you can accomplish a lot with just a little configuration and some creative thought. On numerous occasions I find myself in the newsgroups seeing people asking if they can build a Help Desk with SharePoint, or an Expense Tracking System, or a Call Board. The answer is of course yes. Always has been and always will. The problem however is that you don't get a lot of business solutions delivered without some work. Enter the SharePoint Template Project.

I created a new project site on SourceForge (yes, I'm not a big fan of GotDotNet and we haven't created my utopia of SharePointForge just yet) to accomodate this. The project provides an outlet for the SharePoint community to contribute and share list and site templates for the products under the Microsoft SharePoint technology banner (SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services).

These templates come in the form of binary .stp files or plain text xml schema files (along with any additional files like images, etc.). Users create the templates either using SharePoint itself (saving them in .stp format) or with whatever xml/text editor they prefer. The templates are uploaded to a SharePoint server and used as a boilerplate by SharePoint during site creation.

Templates in this project will be created by the community and packaged in a common installer format (MSI) so that end-users need only download the MSI and run it on their SharePoint server. A template MSI will be provided for contributors to the project which includes the template installer, full or custom selections for installation (users will be able to choose what templates they want to install), graphical preview for each template (if the developer includes them) and option to create sample sites based on the templates chosen.