Last week I noticed that the blurb along the right side of the Microsoft Monitor blog … er, research service from Jupiter Research no longer mentions Joe Wilcox, and his last post there was November 10.
Joe’s picture and by-line seem to be attached to recent posts at Microsoft Watch, which started on November 13.
Curiously, there’s no announcement at either location. When I googled used my favorite search engine to see if there’s any news, I found this post on Joe’s personal site:
My personal Weblog has been sorely neglected as of late. That’s because I’ve been wrapping up things at my current job. Tomorrow is my last day as an analyst with JupiterResearch. On Monday, I start at Ziff Davis as editor of Microsoft-Watch. I’m going back to journalism, which I increasingly missed in recent months. I clocked three-and-a-half years as an analyst. End of business tomorrow, that chapter of my work life closes.
I’m looking forward to seeing Joe take over Microsoft Watch, which has been in limbo since Mary Jo Foley left. But damn, Joe, you have got to fix the design on that personal site! That is truly painful.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
From my clippings file, it looks like things got quieter around the end of August and then Joe popped up on this radar screen: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/108735.asp?source=rss
I actually don’t track Todd Bishop. This piece showed up in “Robert’s shared items in Google Reader,” http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/14480565058256660224/state/com.google/broadcast (a little deep linking back-atcha, oh Mr. Google man).
I find Robert’s Google Reader has a pretty amazing level of relevance for me, almost more than Scobleizer’s own blog in terms of where his immediate focus is these days. It has me want to try it too, but I’m already finding too many ways to distract me from my current gig.
PS: I just started moving my e-mails to A2 also. Smooth as silk. The only bitter-sweet part of my move was finding out that Apache is case sensitive and none of my Microsoft-culture tools know from that.
You enticed me to visit Joe’s blog. You’re right: this might be The Ugliest Blog Ever. But don’t blame Joe. He apparently paid a “professional” designer for this masterpiece. Note the credit line at the bottom.
Wondering what else Weblog Design Studios could be blamed for, I found this gem in their portfolio.
Good spotting, Ed, on my whereabouts. Yes, I have returned to journalism, and, yes, I’m sure there will be a formal announcement. Holidays are part of the reason for delaying.
Also, thanks for that helpful comment yesterday.
As for my personal Website, don’t be so hard on the Web designers. The design rendered right in every browser on the planet, except Internet Explorer 7. There were issues with the main cascading stylesheet (which didn’t load at all) and IE 7. Yesterday, I switched to a holiday motif design that works fine with IE 7.
Joe
Joe, I was viewing your website in Firefox 2.0, so you can’t blame this one on IE7!
Ed Bott wrote: “Joe, I was viewing your website in Firefox 2.0, so you can’t blame this one on IE7!”
Really, Ed? Now I have to speak to the designer. On Monday night, she e-mailed to ask for site access. She said she could tweak the CSS code so it would render in IE 7. I’ll have to check the logs to see if she accessed the site. Because if she did, the IE 7 fix might have hosed Firefox 2.0. If you saw black text on brown, instead of white, then the stylesheet wasn’t loading. I can promise the site had worked fine in Firefox 2.0. It’s what I used because of the IE 7 problem. It’s all moot. There’s a new template, and it’s fine in both browsers. Thanks. Joe
Joe Wilcox has already made an impact in his new digs. I came close to removing RSS feed for “Microsoft Watch” from my daily reading. With the new life injected into the site, it will stay on my reading list. I particularly enjoyed the recent “Microsoft, Give Thanks”. Keep up the great work.