Bill Gates: Blogs are good for business

Blogging is entering the mainstream – Bill Gates thinks they’re a useful business tool, so expect one of your directors to pop up with the idea of corporate blogs at your next board meeting.

Blogs are online diaries, usually collections of links, thoughts and illustrations kept by one person who wants to share information about themselves or their enthusiasms. They can be purely personal, or a day-to-day update on a business project.

Gates says that blogs are a good way to share information, both inside and outside of organisations and have considerable advantages over older forms of communication such as email (email is old now?). Emails can miss out the right people or be too imposing, and websites are too passive. People forget to visit websites, and get frustrated when they make the effort to go there and the site hasn’t been updated.

The solution? A blog with an RSS feed. Real Simple Syndication is a feed that allows stories to be pushed to other sources like news readers and even other websites. This way, changes and new information come to the reader, not the other way round.

Over 700 MS employees keep project blogs, to share information and keep others up to date on projects they are working on.

Microsoft doesn’t have a blogging tool yet – but it can’t be long before one appears, tied in with MSN, Messenger and quite possibly FrontPage and MS Project.

Blogging Platforms

Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder and chairman, Bill Gates received an honorary knighthood from ‘er Majesty the Queen today.

Bill Gates, 48 was dead chuffed to receive the award, saying it was “a great honour” to be recognised for his business skills and for his work on poverty reduction.

The entrepreneur - the richest man in the world worth an estimated £28bn. - was handed an insignia to make him a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honour that dates back to 1917 (although monarchs have been creating knights for centuries).

The ceremony took place amongst all the pomp and grandeur of the formal state-rooms at the palace, and involved Gates kneeling in front of the Queen, and getting a gentle tap on the shoulder with a sword.

Gates was granted a private audience with the Queen after the ceremony, and reported that they spoke about using computers (perhaps Her Majesty was having trouble with her Windows installation?)

As an American citizen, Gates can’t use the title “Sir” but he is entitled to put the letters KBE after his name.

Gates joins a select band of honorary knights including Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof, film director Steven Spielberg, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the mighty Spike Milligan.

Gates and his wife Melinda are well known for their charitable work, investing millions in research for an Aids vaccine and a scholarship scheme to enable the brightest students to go to Cambridge University.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently working on a global health programme in the developing world.

Not everyone loves old Billy though, and Microsoft have been convicted of anti-competitive behaviour in the USA and are currently being investigated in Europe.