Mark my words, the popularity of Microsoft’s “points” system (aka “Xbox 360 achievements”) is going to be how Microsoft comes back against Google and Yahoo. Those Xbox wackos (I’m one) will look to get a leg up on their friends by using other Microsoft services.

Imagine if you earn an achievement for doing 100 Windows Live searches, or doing a search that has no results for it, or doing a search that’ll return a Microsoft.com page in the #1 spot.

Don’t think this matters? Every Xbox’er I know keeps track of how many achievements they’ve gotten. I still remember how Chris Pirillo got excited when I was over his house and he earned an achievement.

They are addictive. Watch for Microsoft to expand the points system.

We’ve got more John Edwards videos (one of him talking to bloggers in Iowa, among other things — I interview a few of the bloggers first who were invited in to talk with him — another of him talking with bloggers in New Hampshire, both are useful in seeing how a candidate is using bloggers to help get the word out). These two videos are good for those who want to study how a campaign is using bloggers to start conversations on the Internet. In the Iowa video you’ll see geek Jake Ludington, who helps out on Chris Pirillo’s’ Lockergnome site.

My favorite guy I met on the trip last week was Larry Knight. His house was destroyed in Katrina in New Orleans. In the video of him I shot you can see how high the water got. What you can’t see on the video is his great attitude. He has no money, but he’s rebuilding his house anyway with help from his friends. Anytime I’m feeling down, I’ll just replay this video and remember meeting Larry.

You thought I forgot the geeky stuff too, didn’t ya? Too much politics? Well, here you’ll meet two of my favorite tech bloggers, Don Dodge and Alfred Thompson, both work at Microsoft. We have a fun talk about New Hampshire politics and a little bit of geeky stuff too.

If you really want to avoid politics all together, then watch the videos I got of Me.dium. This is a really cool app that lets you share your Web surfing with your friends. It sounds lame, but watch the demo of Me.dium and you’ll get a sense that this is an app that we haven’t seen before. Impressed me, anyway. I have an interview with Me.dium’s founders and get more behind the scenes of what they are trying to do. This is an app you’ll see more of this year, I predict it’ll be a pretty hot one.

UPDATE: Chuck Olsen posts his video reporting on the reporters done for Rocketboom (he interviews me).

Oh, and that’s the last of the John Edwards stuff. Thanks for putting up with the political stuff. Do you have any other questions about what I experienced on John Edwards’ trip last week? Leave them in the comments here and I’ll try to answer them.