I cannot believe I’ve never heard of the Konfabulator until tonight while I was reading through the latest Maximum PC.

Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

So that’s the official explanation. I used to run Desktop Sidebar but Konfabulator looks and feels a lot more polished. Definately worth checking out.

I think I’ve figured out why kids love McDonalds. I believe it’s because they can be as loud as they want for half an hour. We went to a birthday party at McDonalds this afternoon and my ears are still ringing. The Happy Meal is an afterthought for our kids when the play land is full of kids yelling at the top of their lungs. My two year old son wanted so badly to climb up the highest levels of the play land to be with his older sister and cousins. Kim and I watched as he’d slowly go up one level of stairs at a time. A few times it took his sister pushing him from behind to get to the next level. He eventually made it to the top and was ready to take the slide all the way down which he did. He got to the bottom and had a big grin on his face and said, “Wow!”

I was chatting with a friend who has worked at Microsoft for about 15 years about why the Tablet PC, Portable Media Center, and the Media Center PC haven’t taken off like Microsoft had hoped they would. This got me thinking about some of the less popular Microsoft products that are “best of breed” in my opinion. Here’s the list we came up with:

Microsoft Publisher – Why can’t all MS products be this polished and easy to use out of the box? I’ve used this product for five years and I’m still impressed with each version.

Photo Story 3 – A hidden gem. Taking photos and putting them in a nifty sideshow to music and narration has never been this easy. A fantastic product for everyone with a digital camera.

MSN Messenger – Ok, this doesn’t qualify as a less popular product because so many people use it but it doesn’t get much recognition for being a very simple, straight-forward product that even my technophobe mother can use. My only worry is that MS appears to be cramming this product full of additional features in the same manner as ICQ until it became a bloated piece of junk. Keep it simple!

Media Player 10 – iTunes gets all the press but Microsoft has slowly taken a very bland product and made it into a very easy to use media player. Again, I hope that MS keeps things simple and doesn’t try to push MSN Music in the same manner that made me discontinue using MusicMatch. I just want an mp3 player, not an online music store shoved in my face.

MSN Spaces – This product caught me by surprise. In a short period of time, Microsoft has put together a very nice blogging service that rivals those that have been around for years. For first time bloggers who don’t want to muck with code and configuration, this should be your first stop. MSN is back in the game.

Digital Image Suite 10 – No, it’s not as powerful as Photoshop. Doesn’t matter because for people like myself that don’t have weeks to learn the in and outs of the Adobe product, this is an excellent solution. I still use Photoshop for some tasks but features like “auto red-eye removal” make quick work of the problem compared with other products. I thought MS was going to kill this product a while back and I’m glad to see they didn’t.

What do all these products have in common? They are easy to use! Why haven’t the Media Center PC and Portable Media Center taken off? IMO, they are too difficult for the average person to setup and use.

Now that blogs have hit the mainstream companies are beginning to take notice. Just a few weeks ago I was in a company brainstorming meeting when someone made the suggestion of creating a company blog. The idea had been tossed around before, but this time it hit a nerve. I had just received my issue of Fortune Magazine with the group of bloggers on the cover, and so I passed around a few ideas and offered to help get things rolling.

A couple of days into the process I began to think if creating a blog for my employer was such a good thing. Like any employee, there are good and bad things about any job. There are great benefits in some areas while others are weaker. The whole nature of blogging entails writing openly and honestly. It’s the person’s opinion that should come through in any blog, and I wasn’t sure that would be possible or even desireable in this capacity. I eventually decided that tossing my name into the ring on this corporate blogging endeavor wasn’t a good idea for my career.

I was saddened to hear that Mark Jen from Google was fired for posts related to his blog. I read through much of his blog and was surprised he was so critical of Google’s benefits so early in his career there. There is some confusion on what grounds he was eventually fired, but from what I can gather, it had something to do with divulging company financial matters that should have been kept private. Mark was a former Microsoft employee and I’m left to wonder if Microsoft would have acted as quickly and harshly as Google did.

I’m sure many companies are quietly at work drafting up a blogging policy for employees. I wonder how soon it will be included in most employment contracts. The Age of Inocence is sadly over.  

Update: Mark Jen responds to his firing from Google

I moved to southern Utah this past summer, but had the chance to return to Seattle this past week to attend Cisco Business Solutions Workshop in Bellevue. It was a lot of fun to be back in the city. But the best part was having the opportunity to visit with friends at Microsoft and TSG. I realize how spoiled I was when it came to having access to the latest hardware, software and technology. I saw more Tablet PCs being hauled around by employees than I’ve seen anywhere else, even CompUSA or Best Buy.

But I was sort of bummed that I didn’t spot one iPod on the MS campus. Maybe next time.

Scoble brings up an interesting point about whether or not “small thing” actually make a difference in the computer industry or any industry for that matter. I definately agree with him that small things can and do make a very big difference. For example just look at how quickly Firefox has come from near obscurity to being featured in nearly ever business magazine from Business Week to Fortune to this month’s Wired where Firefox developer, Blake Ross, is featured on the cover. I’ve been running Firefox for about 6 months or so but even a couple of months ago very few of my friends had even heard of the program, and many of them work in the computer industry. Now, even my father has said goodbye to IE and is happily using Firefox.

My hope is that Firefox provides a much needed kick in the butt to Microsoft so they will begin to innovate again. Even with the millions of Firefox downloads Microsoft still controls over 90% of the browser market so I’m not holding my breath that they will see a need to put much effort into a product that doesn’t drive revenue. I’m still waiting for my copy of “Windows XP Reduced IE Edition”.

Napster is another small idea that caught fire in a very short period of time and the repercussions are still being felt even though the RIAA shut down the service. But it’s too late as the cat is out of the bag and people got a taste of how powerful P2P technology is. How about Bit Torrent? Seems like you can’t pickup a computer magazine without reading about Bram Cohen’s creation that’s reportedly using up a third of all internet traffic.

I’m excited to think about what small things will become part of our lives over the coming years.