It’s been fashionable for years to knock Microsoft for not being hip, cutting edge, innovative. Choose your dart. The folks at Redmond have heard it all. But, of course, the picture is more complex. In its most recent fiscal year, Microsoft spent $8.2 billion on research. That sum makes it one of the largest research organizations in the world.

So when I was offered the chance last month to chat with Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer, I jumped on it.

Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was in Silicon Valley this week. I got him on the phone for about 15 minutes to discuss a wide range of subjects. We covered the big move by the FCC this week to approve use of the so-called “white space” for wireless broadband. He also discussed some the initiatives he’s taken to expand access to broadband, and to encourage deployment of faster broadband speeds. And finally, we talked about some of the big issues and opportunities the new president will face in January 2009.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Craigslist.org, the online community and classifieds site that is one of the 10 most visited places on the Web. And its founder, Craig Newmark, is something of an Internet icon.

But less familiar is the Craigslist Foundation. Back when Craigslist started charging for job listings, it had to drop its non-profit status. But it created the foundation to continue giving back to the community. Specifically, the foundation focuses on advising, educating, and supporting non-profit start-ups.

On October 18, the foundation is holding a day-long Boot Camp in San Mateo for non-profits. I spoke with Darian Rodriguez Heyman, executive director of the foundation to learn more about the history of the organization and the boot camp this weekend.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to sit down with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor. If you haven’t heard of FriendFeed, well, it’s been getting tremendous buzz this year as the next Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. It hasn’t drawn a huge mainstream following, but like Twitter, it’s attracted a lot of hardcore, social media types.

What makes this (maybe) more than hype, though, is that the four co-founders all have strong pedigrees. Each spent time working at Google and made significant contributions. Taylor, for instance, was a product manager who helped launched Google Maps; Jim Norris was a software engineer who helped develop Google Maps; Paul Buchheit was one of the main engineers behind Gmail; and Sanjeev Singh also worked on Gmail.

FriendFeed launched a little less than a years ago. Essentially, it’s a place that aggregates all of your social media activity. As people join more and more social networks or Web 2.0 sites, they face a problem of tracking all their activity across all these platforms. FriendFeed tries to pull all of that together in one place. In a way, it’s like Facebook stripped of all the social networking tools (no profiles, for example). Instead, it solely focuses on the feed aspect.

What’s interesting though, is that users have decided its also a great spot to discuss their various pieces of content, a development that the founders had necessarily intended or expected.

“One thing we didn’t anticipate is that conversations would be a driver in the growth of our product,” Bret Taylor. “But it makes sense. One of the things you want to do when you discover something interesting is that you want to talk about it.”

I discussed the background of FriendFeed with Taylor and where he sees the service going next.

T. Boone Pickens has launched a national campaign to create support for his radical plan to solve the country’s short-term energy crisis. In short, Pickens wants to take much of the natural gas being used to generate electricity, and use it to power new fleets of natural gas vehicles, primarily buses, trucks, and government-owned vehicles. Then he wants to construct massive wind farms in the Midwest to generate enough electricity to replace what was being created by natural gas. More details on the “Pickens Plan” can be found at www.pickensplan.com. On Monday, Mercury News business columnist Chris O’Brien spoke with Pickens about his plan and the campaign.

Last week, the Associated Press reported that Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said he would recommend that the other four commissioners rule that cable giant Comcast had violated the agency’s principles regarding open access to the Internet. While the ruling is not final, the statement marks a major victory for Free Press, a non-profit advocacy group that filed the original complaint against Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company.

On Monday, I interviewed Marvin Ammori, general counsel for the Free Press. We talked about what happened last week, what happens next, and why we should all care.

For background, the original complaint is here. And more background on the history of the fight can be found here.

Going forward, Martin needs two more commissioners to sign on to his proposed decision within the next couple of weeks for it to become official. While the FCC is not recommending a fine, Ammori said his group would be satisfied with the ruling that Martin has proposed.

Earlier this month, I interviewed Mari Kuraishi, one of the founders of the GlobalGiving Fund. She and Dennis Whittle, chairman and CEO, left their jobs at the World Bank back in 2000. The idea was to create an online marketplace to connect donors with philanthropic projects around the world. The fund continues to grow, but not necessarily in the way originally planned. Kurishi and Whittle have had to make adjustments and do some rethinking along the way.

Andy Sternberg interviewed Wired editor and The Long Tail author Chris Anderson at the 2007 O’Reilly Tools of ChangeConference.

Anderson described the premise for his upcoming book project — titled “Free” — to be published in mid-2008 by Hyperion. He also discussed future plans for Wired’s Web site and introduced his new start-up, BookTour, which was launched at the conference.

(We apologize for the subpar audio quality. We had some technical problems.”

Nicole Wong, Google’s deputy general counsel in charge of compliance, is the point person for growing criticism of Google’s privacy practices. More than two dozen European privacy regulators have launched an inquiry into Google’s data protection practices. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission is probing Google’s pending $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company. Last week, Privacy International, a London group, ranked Google’s practices the worst among 23 top Internet services, including Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL. Wong spoke with the Mercury News about her job and Google’s approach to privacy.

We sit down with Technorati’s CEO to discuss why he’s stepping aside as founder, whether the company is for sale and what plans exist to grow the San Francisco blog search engine into a media powerhouse.