Is April Fools starting a day early over on MSN? Check out this fun search for my name. Of course Chris Pirillo has been hit too. Chris, I didn't realize you'd been bitten by a radioactive shrew! Oh, Dave Winer, look what your searches say!

Update: I got some emails asking how to do this for other people. Oh, if you clicked through any of those search results you would have seen that you can do the same thing for your friends. Thanks to Sean Carver who did this and have a good April Fools!

I just saw this over on the BrandToBeDetermined blog — that Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson are talking about are bloggers an authoritative source at big companies? Turns out the answer, at least here at Microsoft, is "maybe." (They asked our PR department and I got involved in the conversation internally that happened).

• Executives like Ray Ozzie who blog? Absolutely. Any executive is almost always on the record for the company.
• Team blogs like the IE team blog or the Xbox team blog? Yes with an asterisk, because what goes on those blogs is usually vetted by other people on the team and they discuss it (which explains why those blogs are generally a bit more reserved than individual blogs. I put an asterisk there because some teams might not require pre-vetting, but up to today team blogs are generally good sources of information on those products).
• Individual bloggers like me? Depends (the PR team says to always call and verify facts, just to be safe). For me, it depends what I'm writing about and the tone I'm taking in my writing. If it's about the team I'm on (which does On10.net and Channel 9) and I say something you can assume I'm pretty authoritative and the facts I'm giving you are pretty accurate. If I interview, say, the head of the Internet Explorer team or Bill Gates or someone else, you can be pretty sure that's an authoritative piece of content that reflects the company's opinion pretty well. But most of the other writings I do? I'm not vetted. I don't check with others before I write my opinions. So, you should "fact check my a**" as they say around the blogosphere. On the other hand, I am on the record and you can quote me in press and blogs and other stuff (and I often do). If I say something about Microsoft I work very hard to make sure it's accurate (and if it isn't, you see that within minutes as my readers jump on me in my comments which are open and unmoderated).

That said, if you're a journalist writing a story it's best to check in with our PR teams (if you don't know how to get ahold of them, see the "Press" link on the right side of my blog, or drop me a line and I'll get you with them). They will be happy to give you the "official" story as well as they know who the official spokespeople are from each team and can put you in touch with them.

I do expect blogs to be used to get both the official and unofficial story out about things, just as the Security Team is communicating about Internet Explorer fixes on its blog.

This came up a few times in speeches today. Many PR departments are really struggling with this. They don't like the fact that employees at the edge of a company can get quoted in news media. This is a grand experiment that still is playing out in corporate America today.

What do you think?

I just spent a few minutes talking with Max Skibinsky, founder and main developer behind Hive 7. Wow, he's a total JavaScript God or something. He's done stuff in the browser that I didn't expect. They just released a beta preview of Hive 7 today.

Anyway, Om Malik got the same tour a few hours earlier so I'll just link to him and go back to working on stuff here at Microsoft (yeah, working late again, damn email is just flowing faster and faster).

Om, this isn't real full 3D yet. Your camera position can't move and you can't spin things like you can in Second Life (objects are flat, but look 3D because of opacity). That isn't taking away from what Max did at all. It's awesome.

Also, it does both Second Life and Hive 7 a disservice to compare the two. Second Life is a downloadable application. That means it'll be far richer than a browser-based application. But Hive 7 will get more users quicker because most people aren't willing to download an app and install it, especially if they perceive there isn't much value there (and for most people there isn't much value in these things — yet).

In Hive7 I was brought into a room with lots of objects in it. Chairs. Tables. Curtains. Each thing was an object that I could drag around. Each was programmable via JavaScript. Max inserted a chess board in the middle of the room and we were playing chess. He inserted a picture of my son and put it on the wall. He inserted a video and started playing it. He inserted a Web browser and we browsed the Web together. Very cool stuff. All in a browser Window. All with no plugins or other installs.

Oh, and the backend? It's running on Windows Server 2003 64-bit. I'm noticing a trend lately — more and more cool stuff on the Web is running with Windows as a backend (MySpace announced last week that they were running on the same). Max says he can't yet afford to build out a huge datacenter so if too many people show up all at once they might not be able to get in.

If you get an opportunity to play with it, do, it's a lot of fun and even if you don't end up a long-term user you'll appreciate what a browser can do a whole lot more. Works on IE and Firefox.