I've been going lightly on blogs these past few days, enjoying family and friends and working in ernest on the Red Couch Table of Contents.  I spoke with my new literary colleague Robert Scoble earlier today and found him a bit depressed for the the first time, since we started working together.  It seems he's taking a few days off from blogging while he absorbs the impact of a series of unsupportive comments he can find on his recent postings. Now, my taking a few days off goes almost as unnoticed as when I post 10 or 12 in a day, as I did last year.  But Robert taking a few days off to recharge his bettery--that's news, and a matter of concern for the thousands of us who look forward to his original, thoughtful, prolific and accurate postings.

One guy, Adrian takes him to task for being overly supportive of Microsoft.  What a shock.  Scoble is an evangelist for Microsoft and is totally enthused about its technology,  What is news is that Scoble, at times, is among Microsoft's toughest critics. He send his readers to competing sites, when he thinks they'll do better there. He may be a Microsoft enthusiast, but he's the most honest company evangelist you will find, anywhere.  Adrian.  Cut him some slack, or at least praise him for his intelligent even-handed commentary over the years.

I think the shot that hurt was in a comment accusing Robert of being insensitive to the horrors of the tsunamis that have killed--as of this moment-25,000 people.  Robert commented on how effective PubSub was as a news extraction aggregator and he got enthused.  He also noted with absolutely accuracy that the traditional news media has done a better job of reporting on events in the horror zone than has the Blogosphere.  People might note that the Scobleizer tagline is "Microsoft Geek Blogger."  "Geek" means that by his own admission, he's someone with a tendency to get caught up in the technology of things. This was probably not the best time or space to point out what a great job PubSub is doing.  But anyone who has read his frequent number of links and postings on what is happening, and anyone who reads Robert regularly, or like me, has the pleasure of personally knowing him will attest that he is both sensitive and thoughtful.

And by the way, once again, when it comes to breaking news--those that go out and cover it will do a much better job than those who either sit back and opine, or find themselves in a Thai shower, when the tsunami sweeps accross the beaches a few meters away, simply will not do the job that Reuters and the New York Times are doing.

As for all these shots at Scoble, it seems to me, they are particularly and unfairly harsh.  My advice to you critics is to go pick on somebody your own size, and I think that would be a lot smaller than Robert Scoble.

Related...

http://seems2shel.typepad.com/itseemstome/2004/12/getting_nasty_w.html