Microsoft has announced the ability to use your friends and networks in some social networks to invite them to Live, in particular to instant messenger. I like this in theory, but in practice I'm not sure how this helps the majority of people. The initial implementation (which is only for Facebook) is a bulk invite option that downloads your friends addresses into the Live framework and send out invite emails.

This could be useful if you are new to IM, or have a lot of new friends to add, but it seems like a lot of effort to go to if you already have a lot of your friends on IM.

What would be more useful would be if they put together an applet for Facebook that allowed me to select an IM invitation from my "my friends" page or when I am sending or accepting a friends request.

Its early days with the product and alliance so we will see what happens over time. For now it seems more like a good way for Microsoft to see who your FB friends are than anything useful. Some other commentary on Techcrunch.

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First time in a long time I had a live audience at the same time I recorded the show. Will do a live show again on Thursday, hope you will join me, watch announcement for it here and on Twitter.

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Link to the Complete Show Notes and all article Links

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First impressions, much faster, smaller memory foot print, websites look much crisper. Overall A+ and as in comparison to IE there is simply no comparison.

Although Firefox 3 is still a beta, they have really hit a home run here. As of today I will use the beta version. Drawback to doing this is that most of my plugins don’t work. But the lower memory footprint really convinces me this will be the browser to use for a very long time. PcWorld/Reuters

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Why is Apple shoving Safari down our throat. If I had wanted to install that worthless browser on my Windows box I would have simply have downloaded it. The last thing I want is a half functional browser cluttering up my hard drive.

Apple is trying to be slick here in offering Safari via a iTunes update. Nothing like trying to have world domination through some back door way of getting the worthless browser on my windows machine.

Next time you get a iTunes update notice be real careful or you will end up getting Safari installed even when you don’t have it installed. Gizmodo

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Show is back to normal time line, Congratulations Jeffery Thomas and Tom Watt you are the two OLPC Laptop Winners. Thanks for all the feedback on the last show!!.

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Full Podcast Show Notes Linked Here

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On my last show I went into some details of things we have been doing at RawVoice. I made a comment in that dialogue about how I think many times we have been marginalized and second guessed in the space.

The feedback I have received has been incredible. Everyone that has responded have all been on the same page, and I have confirmed a couple of things that I knew deep down.

The main response and consensus was that RawVoice has been able to do what other companies with millions of dollars in funding have not been able to do and the connotations that come with that. While each listed a point or two on our accomplishments it did my heart good it really did.

While some will contest anything I say. I will say this, our goal from the beginning was to represent podcaster to the best of our ability and give everyone an opportunity to get exposure and make some money from their shows and to bring tools to market that helped them grow their shows.

The laundry list of things we have been able to launch and put in work with no budget and with a team spread across 5 states is nothing short of amazing in my personal opinion.

One thing has been interesting though is watching companies adopt many principles of the business model we have had from the beginning.

While I know we have made mistakes from time to time. One thing I can say with confidence is that everything we have done has been with a lot of love and passion and has kept us cash positive and moving forward.

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I find it very hard to believe that the music industry would even consider allowing Apple to bundle into the price of an iPod unlimited music downloads for the life of the iPod. If they do pull this off though, the price of an iPod will go way up.

While it appears a lot of people buy music for their iPods I know that the three iPods we have here at our home have less than $150.00 word of iTunes purchased music on them.  The single Zune my daughter uses is full of music she is able to download via the Zune Marketplace subscription.

Being I am older I have stacks of CD’s I burned to MP3 years ago, and that is my primary library. My kids are the only ones consuming new music. although the few tracks I have purchased were to complete music libraries I did not have already.

But if Apple gets the music industry to buy into this they will forever change the music industries business model. Arstechnica

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