I've been subscribing to Scoble's feed since shortly before NorthernVoice2005. He's been an interesting source of info and opinion, but he's also afflicted with a strong case of braggadocio regarding "secrets" that he's privy to [1, 2, 3]. That pisses me off. If you know a "secret", even just acknowledging that there is a secret is betraying that trust. Like it or not, Robert, when you signed on with MS, that was part of the deal. And you re-up every time you cash a cheque from Redmond.
The latest round of secret-bragging was related to the still-unreleased MSN Virtual Earth "google killer" - Robert was basically marking the secret as "his", in a misguided attempt to generate buzz.
So, I checked out MSN Virtual Earth (it was up this morning, it's down now - wonder why...), and it sucked badly. Maps wouldn't completely load. I couldn't zoom in more than three notches. The "Locate Me" button requested a FREAKING ACTIVEX CONTROL to do its job (and the non-ActiveX version failed to do anything). So, based on Robert's pre-release pimping of Virtual Earth, I can only conclude that MSN Virtual Earth SUCKS BADLY and will be no challenge for Google to deal with.
See, Robert, that's another reason why "secrets" are embargoed until a certain date - the software may not have been fully cooked before you started pimping it. But, the buggy steaming POS that I saw is how I'll remember it.
I've been trying to call Scoble out on this, but it's bouncing off... I left this as a comment on his blog:
...buzz is more than "I know a secret! neener neener! You'll know too, on Monday!" Buzz is getting a community to give two shits about what you are evangelizing about. Playing the "my secret is bigger than yours, so I'm more important" game is kinda anti-buzz...
So, thanks to the wonders of RSS and blogosphere triangulation, I'll still pick up anything important that Scoble talks about, without having the distraction of the lower signal:noise(brag) ratio.