I love these two videos we filmed with Maya’s Mom’s founder, Ann Crady. It’s a real Silicon Valley garage-based startup (it’s a parenting site, but it’s still cool to see that valley startups are still starting in garages — not too far either from another famous Palo Alto garage-based startup: Hewlett Packard).

Maryam and I both shared this interview, this was done before we knew we’d be parents too (our kid is due September 12).

These videos and others I’ve shot over on ScobleShow (RedFin and Jott are coming later today).

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/03/PID_010556/Podtech_MayasMom_interview.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1388/inside-a-real-silicon-valley-garage-startup-mayas-mom&totalTime=845000&breadcrumb=3F34K2L1]

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/03/PID_010557/Podtech_MayasMom_demo.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1389/tour-of-mayas-moms-garage-and-demo&totalTime=373000&breadcrumb=3F34K2L1]

Look at my last post. Now read this one over on LiveSide. It’s a short report that Microsoft executives are bragging to MVPs that “we’re in it to win.”

I don’t think Microsoft is. The words are empty. Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that’s “in it to win” then I don’t get it. I saw a bunch of posts similar to the one on LiveSide coming out of the MVP Summit. I didn’t post any of them to my link blog for a reason: All were air, no real demonstrations of how Microsoft is going to lead.

Microsoft isn’t going away. Don’t get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn’t winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where’s the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo’s Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That’s how you win.

Oh, and Ballmer, if I ran Google your speech at Stanford yesterday would be plastered on every door on every campus Google has. Why? It’ll motivate Google employees the same way a coach will motivate an opposing team during the Superbowl by taking trash in the press. You’re up against a formidable competitor and one you’ve never seen before that has some real, significant weapons that you can’t deal with (and YouTube isn’t even close to it). Google’s secret weapon? It controls the entire stack in the datacenter. Google writes its own hard disk drivers. It has its datacenter hardware built to its spec. Ever wonder why Live.com is slower than Google? Hint: it’s cause Google is out executing Microsoft in the datacenter.

This isn’t Netscape you’re talking trash to, Steve. Have you really studied Google? It doesn’t sound like you have.

Again, Microsofties, you’d be better served not to talk trash until you have something YOU CAN SHIP!

I sure hope they don’t show up at Mix07 with this kind of “we’re in it to win” talk. The MVPs might be easy to talk into doing some cheerleading but the rest of us are over that now. We’re looking for signs of leadership and so far we don’t see it.

Sigh.

We all know Google is cleaning up in the search space, but every so often I’ll check out what the other folks are doing just to see if they are getting close. Today I needed a notary. I work in Palo Alto, so I typed:

Palo Alto notary

into Google, Live.com, Ask, and Yahoo.

Only Google gave me the correct answer along with a map.

For this search Google is so far ahead of the others it isn’t even funny. And people wonder why Google continues getting market share? It’s no secret. Just ask the Palo Alto notary (I used the one at the UPS Store on Middlefield today and she was awesome).

UPDATE: Look at the ads on each of these searches. Google is kicking ass there too! It’s the only search that ONLY brought back Notary ads in that search. In fact, Live.com brought back NO ads for “notaries.” How freaking lame! I don’t want to see hotels when I am looking for a notary.

Are you seeing the same results for your local searches?