Ahh, there’s those Google Maps again in another online business.

This time Gary Price writes about Kayak Buzz. This is COOOOL.

You put in a starting city. It shows you where the deals are on the map.

Yes, those are Google ads at the bottom of that site too. Ahh, the attention!

Liz Lawley, on misbehaving, notices that women in technology aren’t being given a good rep in media reports and that to get more women participating in the tech field we need more positive representations of the women who are already here and takes on a Seattle PI reporter who quoted Tara Hunt. Update: I fixed this paragraph to properly reflect the right publication.

Tara and Liz are both gifted with far more intellectual horsepower than I am. Tara is starting up her own company (actually she’s doing marketing for Riya, not quite starting it up herself) and Liz teaches college and is on sabattical working with Microsoft Research and Microsoft Search.

John’s blog post does seem to present a one-sided view of Tara, as she points out on her blog. She’s very impressive (I’ve talked with her several times) and her company and product (Riya) are getting lots of attention. I had lengthy conversations with both Liz and Tara yesterday and came away from both thinking “I wish I were smart like them.”

But, this is what’s great about blogs. If someone provides only one side of the story, others can provide more.

Update: John replied on his original blog post as to what his intention was.

There’s changes afoot inside Microsoft. Bill and Steve have been repeating in the press that Microsoft needs to ship software faster. At Mind Camp this weekend a couple of people asked me what that meant. To me it means “don’t take big dependencies.”

See, SQL Server hasn’t shipped in several years. Why not? Because they added the .NET Framework deep inside SQL Server. Now, these aren’t two small teams that met once over pizza and beer and decided to do this. No, these are two HUGE businesses. It’d be like if GM and Toyota got together and decided to do a new project together with each other’s technology.

It is that sizeable and that important.

So, is this one of Microsoft’s last “big launches?” Looks like it will be for quite a while.

That said, tomorrow’s events will be on video on either the Launch Tour 2005 Knowledge Center or the Microsoft Speeches and Keynotes page.