Notes from around the Net 2/28/06 Steve Rubel comments on his first day on the job at Edelman PR. Sounds like it was a sleepless affair. His story will be interesting to watch: How a successful blogger adjusts to a major shift in work life and still keeps blogging. He says he's going to do it.

Nike has launched a new blog to promote its basketball shoes. But there's no commenting allowed. I wonder why?

Technorati's got a new feature (at least, I think it's new) that ranks blogs by the number of members who have voted them their favorites. It's a great idea and should work over time as the number of votes grows. Of course, it's also open to manipulation...

There's a lot of buzz about a new product from Microsoft code-name Origami. It's supposed to be some kind of mobile device. People are expecting big things. Tell me: when was the last time Microsoft surprised anyone with breakthrough technology?

Here's a challenge in opacity. Robert Scoble, Microsoft's #1 blogger, writes about the danger of concealing product plans from your internal blogforce. And he cites several third-party accounts that speculate about what Origami is. Now Scoble presumably knows what this mystery product is, yet he's writing about what people are speculating about it and not confirming or denying anything. Meanwhile, Microsoft's developers have the freedom to write about what they know as long as they're not covered by NDA, from what I understand of MS's blogging policy. It's an interesting exercise to keep a secret when you're openly encouraging blogging at the same time. I give credit to MS for even trying.  ¶ 8:03 AM