Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

I've done a lot of talking this week about changes in media and PR. From a big meeting with the largest Redmond based corporation, to Shift Communications in SF, to a delegation of corporate communications directors from large Japanese companies such as Toyota, at Ogilvy PR offices in San Francisco. Luca Penati MD of Ogilvy's Global Technology Practice led the conversation. Here's a clip:

From my Japanese contacts . . .

Tom Sonoda, Ph.D writes to tell me of his social networking site that recently launched a public beta. Please take a look it's pretty cool: http://live.utagoe.com/

Google co-founder Sergey Brin starts to blog . . .

. . . about his family DNA.

http://too.blogspot.com/

Stop doing what you hate . . .

Need a pep talk? Watch Gary Vaynerchuk from the recent Web2Expo. (Hat tip Jeff Slobotski @jjsync and http://www.siliconprairienews.com/ )

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Cern powers up its Large Hadron Collider . . .

[Hat tip Max Levchin] It's a catchy refrain in Digital Underground style:

LHCb sees where the antimatter's gone

ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions

CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind

They're looking for whatever new particles they can find

Smack my pitch up . . .

That got my vote for the worst name for an anti-pitch contest and what was even worse was that it was organized by TechCrunch50. That's TechCrunch poking fun at itself at the House of Shields. Which is like having the Republican Party hosting a heroin and abortion party to poke fun at itself and show how humble it is. It would have been better if it had come from somewhere else...

Craigslist founder needs help . . .

Craig Newmark needs help. I ran into Craig last night and he tells me he is very concerned about hurricane Ike and if we have the resources to deal with the damage that it will cause. He's looking for help in getting the word out and pressuring agencies such as Homeland Security to stand ready. He says that Craigslist has been used to great effect during disasters such as Katrina and Gustav. "We just try to stay out of the way."

There is also a Craigslist widget for Hurricane Ike

Craig now charges for speeches so that he can continue to fund his philanthropic activities. Look for a major announcement very soon on this subject.

Other news:

Chris Heuer has left the building . . .

Coming soon . . . to a Friday near you!

Please contact Alex Ross for sponsor opportunities: alex @ SiliconValleyWatcher.com

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

The slow days of August haven't been that slow. And September will blow in like a hurricane with a slew of events, with Office 2.0 the first week in September.

. . .

Vote early, vote often . . .

The PR Week awards for best PR blogs has been interesting to watch. PR bloggers have been asking their supporters to vote, and to vote often, which brings up some interesting ethical issues.

How good is a PR blogger if that PR blogger can't pull together the PR to get out the vote? Is it OK to do that or should votes happen in an organic way, without cheerleading the way?

What about all the other type of "vote for best Web 2.0 company" type awards? Is it OK to hire a PR company to help get out the vote or should it be a natural process?

This is why I think the best awards are those judged by a panel of peers, imho.

. . .

Sites I like . . .

Seeqpod: Interesting music service. What it does is it finds music you search for and then plays it via a streaming front end. You can save your playlists and share them. The music it finds is on other people's sites, so it isn't licensed. It finds the music files and plays the files without downloading the files and so it tries to avoid the licensing issue because the files are out there in the cloud and not on its servers.

Here is an example: Last night I went to see the legendary Lee Scratch Perry. I'm not a fan of reggae but this was an extraordinary experience (he is playing the Independent tonight (Friday). Here is a Seeqpod playlist of Lee Scratch Perry I put together: http://tinyurl.com/6n7tfu.

TubeMogul: I just signed up for this service and if it delivers on its promise I will be forever grateful. I'm launching "Fridays with Foremski" in September, a weekly video show featuring interviews with top CEOs, thought leaders, profiling startups, covering major events and conferences - plus a gang of pundits/pals discussing recent events. It'll be a round up of video work I'll be doing during the week. Video takes a lot of work and one part that is a pain, is uploading it to many sites and then tracking the views and other analytics.

With TubeMogul you upload it once and it does all the rest: uploading to multiple sites and doing any neccesary transcoding etc. This service will potentially save me a lot of time, which can be used to do more interviews, etc.

Fridays with Foremski is coming!

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Summer slowdown (not!) . . .

There's a recession going on and there is a summer going on--at least outside San Francisco/Silicon Valley. While other regions are taking it easy, it seems that little has slowed around here. There are slightly fewer events but it all feels like business-as-usual. I'm going to try and take some time off in August, if I can.

And there doesn't seem to be much sign of a recession around here. Companies are spending lots of money on promotion and PR. Most PR companies seem to be very busy and are hiring at a vigorous pace.

I wonder how their media relations operations are handling the dwindling number of publications and journalists. I think the PR companies should pass the hat around and support some of the news and magazine sites to ensure that there are outlets for their client's stories.

Most PR companies believe they can bypass the journalists and go straight to the consumer/customer. But media provides a vendor-neutral platform which is much more valuable in terms of influence than messages that come straight from the company or its representatives. Readers aren't stupid, they take company generated content with a pinch of salt.

Looking for the new TV. . .

Following a Kiva.org event at 111 Minna, I went to my first NewTeeVee Pier screening on Thursday showcasing possible "pilot" episodes for the Internet. It was interesting but the "pilots" all looked extremely polished and professionally produced. They looked as if they had been made for short-film festivals and then repurposed for the event.

There is no way that the economics of the Internet could support a "series" based on most of the pilots that I saw because they were clearly produced with very large budgets. The economics of production are way out of line with the sponsorships or advertisement revenues available online. And the judges added very little insight or useful commentary.

The event didn't provide much networking--you have to be quiet during the long playback of the short movies, which are projected on a giant screen. Watching the "pilots" on a giant movie screen is not an Internet experience, it is a movie experience.

I'd love to see NewTeeVee have an evening showcasing short vids created in one-take instead of the multi-camera multi-special effects of the pilots which didn't ring true with the intent of showcasing content for our "new TV" - Internet connected devices.

However, it was good to bump into a few key people such as Jim Louderback, head of the "new TV" site Revision3 and a bunch of friends, and, of course, his Giga Omness, who is looking great, less giga and very slim, very 1.5 :-)

Acquiring disruptive technologies . . .

Congrats to Ribbit "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company" and its acquisition by BT, the British Telecom giant. Ribbit is an interesting company with disruptive techologies but if companies such as these are going to be snapped up by the encumbent companies then their disruptive potential is going to be lost.

I'm not a fan of the telcos--the US ones are acting as Luddites, keeping us in the dark ages, controlling which technologies we can use. It is stifling innovation. And if innovation can be bought--and if disruptive technologies can simply be acquired byt the telcos then we will be making little progress.

Please see: 2008Watch: Ribbit Spawns Its First Consumer Telephony App

Marshall merger plans . . .

Congrats to Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at ReadWriteWeb on his upcoming marriage to Mikalina.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Marshall on my recent trip to Japan, which was organized by Lunarr, a fascinating company based in Portland, Oregon, where Marshall lives.

Marshall writes:

Most important, I'm getting married to my partner Mikalina! Many of my work contacts here on the blog haven't met Mikalina but many of you have. She's wonderful and I love her very much. We've been together for more than 4 years already and she's studying to be an environmental engineer. Or a ceramicist - she's a rock star in both and hasn't decided what to do about it yet.

We're looking to get married pretty darned soon, I proposed to her last weekend when we were vacationing on the Oregon Coast.

Yay!

hi5 Adriana . . .

Congrats to Adriana Gascoigne in her new job at hi5, one of the largest social networks that you probably don't know about. I've worked with Adriana at FutureWorks and more recently at Ogilvy and I'm looking forward to working with her at hi5.

You might not know hi5 because it's success has been created outside of the US. Adrianna writes:

I’ve decided to join hi5 for the following three ‘main’ reasons and for about a million smaller reasons –

1.) World’s fastest growing social network among the top-10 global social networks

2.) Based on the June comScore Media Metrix worldwide figures released in June, hi5 grew 79% in the first half of 2008

3.) hi5’s monthly unique visitors increased from 31.4 million in December 2007 to 56.4 million in June 2008.

Also, hi5 is planning some exciting product launches this year that will make a HUGE impact and increase serious competition in the social networking space. So, if the timing is right, if your heart is in it, then you should embrace risk and pull the trigger.

I’d love your input and insights on hi5. If you are so compelled, I would be interested in getting one cool marketing idea from you on how hi5 could make a BIG splash in the US market.

Be my hi5 friend! http://www.hi5.com/friend/profile/displaySameProfile.do

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[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

We get it right the first time ... [correction]

At the Fortune Brainstorm conference Fortune writer Adam Lashinsky got a big laugh as moderator of "The Blogger Showdown" when the subject of bloggers making mistakes came up: "We like to get it right the first time!" he said.

Fortune's Techland ran a story about the blogger panel. Unfortunately, it had to update the story later to make a correction! This type of thing proves there is a god! Ironic design proves the hand of a supreme being more than any arguments around intelligent design.

Scoble said that the difference between bloggers and traditional media like Fortune magazine is that the audience participation helps keep his blog honest. “This is written by the audience. People participate in fact-checking,” he said.

Lashinsky, however, got the last laugh. “In the old school, we like to get it right the first time.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington had been criticized for not disclosing investments from companies he covered. In fact, Arrington had been criticized for writing about companies he invested in. He disclosed those investments on TechCrunch.

FORTUNE: Techland Blogger showdown at Brainstorm Tech «

[Hat tip Bill Kircos]

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Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!

You need video services! Creation, Distribution, Attention. Contact Aron Pruiett at SF Media Collective- 415 533 4487 - Here is a demo reel.

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[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

First Rule of PR - READ . . .

I just got a call from a PR rep to ask if I needed more information about their client -- I had recently met with the company. These types of calls mean just one thing: Am I going to write about their client and when? I already did. That call was a waste of my time. I hope they aren't going to be billing the company for that call.

I get asked time and time again how should PR people pitch journalists and bloggers? I tell them again and again, make sure you read the publication to see what has been written.

I won't name the person or the PR company but maybe I should since they won't be reading this (let me know if you think I should...) I was there just last month doing one of my lunchtime talks with PR companies and I'm pretty sure I covered this one.

Here you go: Lunch with Applied Materials: Looking to the Sun for New Business

Kevin Maney and his briefs . . .

Portfolio magazine writer and blogger Kevin Maney was on stage at the Rockit Room in San Francisco earlier this week with his band. The turnout was small but spirited and it was a fun evening with many people coming up on stage. Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal joined Kevin on stage, among many others.

Kevin's repertoire includes:

Wouldn't Want to Be (Bill Gates)

New Router Blues

I Dream of Bangalore

I took some video to provide you with a taste of the evening:

Fortune's Brainstorm . . .

I'm looking forward to Fortune's invite-only Brainstorm conference next week in Half Moon Bay: FORTUNE Brainstorm: TECH

Fortune just added Neil Young and the CEOs of Verizon and Viacom to its roster of speakers.

Fortune's David Kirkpatrick is program director:

We'll put on the podium tech's leading thinkers and thinking leaders - Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg and Chris DeWolfe, Arianna Huffington and Gary Hamel, Marc Benioff and Jeff Weiner, Robert Scoble and Kevin Kelly, Larry Lessig and Danah Boyd, to name a few. Then we'll create opportunities for the entire group to discuss and debate what they've heard, in small settings, question and answer sessions, and what we're calling "lunch labs." A Brainstorm conference is a collective conversation. We aim to reduce the distinction between speaker and attendee, since everyone we invite to attend Brainstorm is accomplished enough to speak. Ideas flow in all directions.

To list all the eminences would require this entire column, but in the big-time CEO category, besides Bezos, Schmidt and Benioff, we have Viacom's Philippe Dauman, Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg, Activision's Bobby Kotick, Sybase's John Chen, Applied Materials' Mike Splinter and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz. And don't forget Peter Chernin, who runs most of the non-newspaper portion of News Corp. In the amazing thinker category we welcome robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks, virtual worlds pioneer Philip Rosedale, and investing pioneer Danny Rimer. We may even have a super-amazing special guest from outside the industry who we aren't yet able to announce. (Joining us at the original Brainstorms were Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres, Jordan's King Abdullah, and John McCain.) This visitor could make things really rock.

See you there!

- - -

Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!

You need video services! Creation, Distribution, Attention. Contact Aron Pruiett at SF Media Collective- 415 533 4487 - Here is a demo reel.

Silicon Valley Watcher Consulting services - call Tom at 415 336 7547

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Mark Adams COO Conversation Group . . .

Mark Adams, the co-founder of Text 100 and Next15 Communications is taking over as COO at the Conversation Group. He'll be spending about a week every 6 weeks here in San Francisco.

Last time I saw Mark he was over at Chris and Kristie Heuer's place figuring out how he could walk to SF airport the next day to catch his flight.

No amount of cajoling could dissuade an Englishman with a mission. Mark took a taxi the next day to Golden Gate bridge and walked all the way to SFO. How he got across a couple of highways I've no idea.

[Photo shows Mark planning his route!]

Tracking the ripples . . .

I always enjoy throwing a pebble into the mediasphere and tracking its ripples. More recently, I've been promoting the idea of "support the source." If you write about something I've written and would like to copy my content then you can voluntarily support the source with what I'm calling an "adtribution link." You would choose one of my text ad links at the end of every post and run it next to the content such as:

Support the source: Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!

You don't have to run the adtribution link but it would be great if you did.

It's interesting some of the pushback I've received on this simple idea. Some have complained about having to copy and paste the link--it's extra work. Well, it's not extra work for them to copy and paste my content in the first place. And I can tell you, it's a lot of extra work to produce the content!

It's interesting tracking "adtribution" on Google. The first day I used the term there were about 8 search results, then the second day there were 230, two days ago 1200, and today Google shows 1960.

Walt Mossberg and drugs . . .

I was at the SDForum Visionary Awards 2008 earlier this week but I had problems with my camera and wasn't able to shoot any footage. So to make up for it, here is Kara Swisher introducing her colleague Walt Mossberg at the 2007 awards. It was a hilarious introduction.

Find out what that was in Walt's pocket, was it an iPhone or was he just pleased to see everyone...

Rooster club: where chicks have cojones . . .

Rooster Club last Friday at the de Young was fun with exactly the people I hoped would be there. My daughter Sarah and her 14 year old friends came with me to see The Minks (girls in boots, songs by the Kinks) Friday evening who were the featured act. Sarah (the tall one) and her friends were in town to catch an all day music festival on Saturday.

Hanging out with Sarah and her friends felt like I was a documentary maker for a new punk girl band :-)

WeekendWatcher coming up:

RollerSoccer world championships . . .

If you've been enjoying the Euro 2008 soccer games you will certainly like this event: Friday I got a chance to meet again with June Philips and her husband Zack who are organizing a new type of soccer world cup, using roller skates and it is happening here on Treasure Island in August 14 to 17. Zack has his hair cut in the shape of a soccer ball. He and June are both tireless promoters.

The Bay Area has a fantastic tradition of creating cutting edge cultural entities that have a global reach - this is a chance to see this in action.

The Official Rollersoccer International Federation Website

It takes several hundred twos to tango . . .

This looks fabulous this evening 6.30 p.m. at the de Young in Golden Gate Park and it is free:

¡Milonga en el museo!, a re-creation of the great Argentine tango dance halls that exist to this day in Buenos Aires. A few hundred couples will dance in this milonga, bringing the passion, intensity, and sensuality of Argentine tango to the de Young. Tango captivates the world, and the milonga en el museo will show you why.

de Young Calendar

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Support the source:

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For all video services! Creation, Distribution, Attention. Contact Aron Pruiett at SF Media Collective- 415 533 4487

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[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Demo alumni party . . .

I went to the Demo Alumni party earlier this week. It was a lot of fun and everyone was there.

Brian Solis from FutureWorks PR was there recording everyone for posterity, you can see his photos here: Flickr: Archive of b_d_solis' photostream: Taken on 17th June 2008

This is one of me taken by Brian Solis. I usually put my hand out to shield my face when confronted by cameras. I do it for two reasons:

1) I'm trying to create a mystique, after all, how many photos of Thomas Pynchon have you seen?

2) I'm trying to stop the camera stealing my soul (at least not before I've sold it first).

Voce party . . .

Voce is one of my favorite SIlicon Valley PR firms and they were celebrating their 9th anniversary. It was fun but it was boiling hot in Palo Alto.

It was great catching up with my favorite media architects Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla) and Josh Hallet (Hyku). These guys work at the cutting edge of new/social media and it's always great to hear about what they've been up to.

BTW, Josh is a great photographer and he took a lot of shots of Tim Russert at a conference last October. A number of news outlets used his photos from Flickr but did not give him the credit. I think the license should be modified that the photos are free to use with credit but cost $10,000 each if no credit is given.

It was also good to see Matthew Podboy and meet his lovely wife. Matthew is fond of retelling the story of when I got Peter North's autograph for him outside the W a couple or so years ago ;-).

Here is Techmeme's Gabe Rivera followed by John Furrier at the party, along with some of the talented Voce crew.

Lunch at Bite . . .

I enjoyed going over to Bite Communications earlier this week to talk to the team about some of the many changes in media and PR. It's also great to hear about what is happening with their clients. Here is Bite's blog Bite Marks.

SVW video services announcement . . .

Last year I was working with John Furrier and Steve Gillmor over at Podtech. We put together a great crew of video editors and videographers and although that project finished last year I'm still working with my video production team and also adding new specialists as part of the SF Media Collective. If you need any video work done of any type call Aron Pruiett at the SF Media Collective for a competitive bid: 415 533 4487.

Creating great video quickly and professionally is challenging but we do it all the time. But these days creating a great video is just part of the job, you need to get it distributed through the right channels. And you need to get attention for that video. We offer distribution and attention services that can get your video above the white noise.

Here is a demo reel:

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Meeting Neil Young . . .

Tim Cooper, music writer for the Sunday Times was in town earlier this week to interview the rock legend Neil Young. I took the opportunity to drive Tim down to the backside of Woodside where Neil Young has his ranch so that I could get the chance to meet the man.

Neil Young spent much of the interview talking about his electric car project. He is financing the development of a special type of battery developed by Jonathan Goodwin, based in Wichita.

Rocker Young working with Wichita mechanic on electric car

. . .

Talking about media . . .

I spent part of Thursday over at Sterling Communications in San Francisco helping out with one of their internal training sessions. I spoke about the changes in media, bloggers, journalists and some of the old and new rules of engagement. Later, I helped judge a blog writing competition in which they had to write a blog post in 20 minutes, include links to at least three sites, add trackbacks, Technorati tags, etc. Everyone did very well and it was difficult to pick an outright winner. It was a good way to get a bunch of blog posts in the pipeline!

Here is the Sterling Communications blog: Gearheads.

Next week I'm off to Bite PR in San Francisco for a lunchtime talk on similar subjects. Contact me if you are interested in me coming to chat with your teams. I do quite a few of these types of events, with PR firms and also the marketing and comms teams at larger companies.

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

Congrats to Ulysses King, who recently joined Kyte.com from Outcast Communications. Ulysses used to work on the Salesforce account - a challenge for anyone. . .

. . .

It was great to see Sabrina Horn and her top class team at a Horn Group event promoting Charlene Li's book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

I'm a big fan of Charlene's work at Forrester Research and I look forward to reading beyond the dust jacket. Horn Group was also celebrating its 17th anniversary. . .

. . .

Also at the event, it was good to catch up with Jamie Lerner, CEO of Cittio (in middle) and Kym McNicholas, Forbes video journalist.

Kym tells me she's been doing a lot more reporting on sports news, which she loves. Here is an interview with Troy Aikman . . .

. . .

My daughter Sarah graduated from Forestville middle school and celebrates her 14th birthday today. She can't wait for high school!

She loved the bag of Japanese manga and t-shirts and other cultural artifacts I picked up from my recent visit to Japan...

. . .

Weekend Watcher: Next Friday evening is the opening reception for the Frida Kahlo exhibit at SF MOMA celebrating her life and birth 100 years ago.

This is going to be a stunning event get a membership, it's worth it.

Did you know that Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera in San Francisco? There is a wealth of information about her connection to San Francisco at Amy Kweskin's blog:

Frida Kahlo in San Francisco: SFMOMA 2008 Kahlo Exhibition

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

How Venturebeat got it's beat on . . .

Matt Marshall, founder of VentureBeat talks about how his online publication got started and how it transitioned from a blog to a media company. He is talking at the Innovation Journalism conference 2008 at Stanford University.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=648584396342126970&hl=en

. . .

Reading the tea leaves in Silicon Valley car parks . . .

I've had the great pleasure of meeting Stephen Quinn, a journalism professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. We've met at a couple of conferences during his six week visit to the US and now he is heading back on Monday. He says the time passed in the wink of an eye. He says he has been inspired by Silicon Valley and his time at Stanford University--and how people are so willing to share information and ideas. "Back home the academic life is more monastic, people retreat into their offices behind closed doors."

He was telling me about a recent visit to Yahoo with a friend. His friend is a car buff and he was awed by the large number of very new and very expensive cars in the parking lot. $85k plus BMWs seemed to be a popular choice.

I said that was interesting because I had recently visited the Googleplex and I noticed the rather pedestrian collection of cars in the GOOG HQ car park: Hondas, Toyotas, etc, it could have been the car park at a K-Mart -- nothing special caught my eye.

I'm wondering if some Yahoo employees might have spent their Microsoft retention bonuses a little prematurely?

. . .

Reinventing Michael Kannelos . . .

I ran into Michael Kanellos and didn't realize that he is now the former editor-at-large at CNET News.com and is now working as an analyst at Greentech Media.

"After many years at News.com people kept telling me that it was time to reinvent myself," he said. I joked that he shouldn't pay attention to what his wife says (!)

For the growing numbers of PR people out there, it is one less journalist to pitch.

Good luck to Michael in his new gig.

. . .

Shel Israel sock puppet interviews Dan Farber . . .

The unstoppable Loren Feldman :-)... (Hat tip: Accman Dennis Howlett)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIYy3jddnG4

. . .

The man behind the sock puppet revealed!

Wow! Mike Arrington needs constant attention!!!

http://www.1938media.com/this-is-what-i-have-to-deal-with-or-why-mike-arrington-is-an-ass/

Monday I'm off to Japan. I'm going as a guest of Lunarr and I'll be blogging as much as I can, visits with Japanese ministry officials and Japanese startups, plus a deep dive into Tokyo with my expert guide Hideshi Hamaguchi. I can't wait!

. . . Smalltowns everywhere. I recently spoke with Hal Rucker, CEO and founder of Smalltown, a site that helps local businesses publish an online presence. The last time we spoke was in October 2006 and I really liked Smalltown's "webcards" approach to publishing information about a local merchant using a tabbed cards metaphor.

Since then, the company has extended the webcard approach by adding widget-like qualities, and launching Webcard universal business listings. Each webcard is no longer tethered to a smalltown site, such as San Mateo. Each webcard is discoverable and can be published on a wide variety of platforms such as Facebook, yellow pages and other directories without having to change formats or anything. And any changes to the content are mirrored automatically on all platforms.

The webcard makes for a very good container for many-media: text, images, podcasts, vidcasts, etc. With a little tweak here and there it would make for a great template for a new/social media release.

. . .I ran into Harry McCracken, PC World's Editor-in-Chief this week and congratulated him on deciding to leave and publish his own web site. I asked if there was anything that prompted that decision. He said no, there wasn't, he just felt that the time was right and he said that I was an inspiration in that decision. I thanked him and said I was happy to help in any way.

When I started a local newspaper in 1987, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, I got a lot of great advice from my friend Richard Gaikowski, who had published newspapers in San Francisco. He was encouraging and also judicious in warning me about the challenges ahead. That was great because I learned a lot from that venture and I might not have launched it if I had known what Richard knew.

But that is the nature of all new businesses and it is essential to have a naivety about what is ahead otherwise we might not do anything.

I'm not saying Harry should think twice because he pretty much knows what he is getting into, at least most of it, and the rest is all gravy.

. . . Bill O'Reilly remixed. Bill O'Reilly is always able to weather the worst publicity and to keep on going. (Hat tip Marc Andreessen.)<

. . . Tchotchkes that suck. Usually I get a lot of t-shirts, pens and backpacks. Most of this stuff I leave on street corners in my neighborhood, especially the backpacks which kids like.

Lately though, companies are becoming a lot more generous. I was at Outcast's media launch party for Jawbone's latest bluetooth headset and as we left we were given one. I'm not an expert on these headsets but it seems to work very well and with California's new law that bans use of cell phones in cars without headsets it should prove to be very useful.

Earlier this year at a MySpace event inside the usual backpack given to media and developers, were pens, a t-shirt and a Flip video camera. The Flip is a very fun device, it makes it very easy to create YouTube videos.

Occasionally I will get a tchotchke that sucks--literally. A couple of years ago I was given a USB-powered mini vacuum designed to suck the dirt from keyboards.

. . . Coming up: I have been writing about my bad experience with Wells Fargo and wondering why nothing from Wells Fargo?! As I pointed out, I'll get over my rant but the search engines will continue to throw up my complaint and there is nothing in the comments section putting Well's Fargo side. Sure enough, every few weeks someone finds my post and shares their bad story about Wells Fargo.

I recently met the head of Wells Fargo's social media team...find out about the bank's policy and how it deals with blogging and tough government regulations on disclosure of information.

. . . SVW PeopleToWatch: I meet a lot of people and they are all very smart and very good looking. Some people have a couple of extra qualities that help them stand out, I call these people RooStars, (a play on chickens and cojones :-) and I'll be drawing attention to them in future posts as part of a regular feature.

Here are some RooStars:

Alicia Nieva-Woodgate - Profile
Jen McClure - Society for New Communications Research
Giovanni Rodriguez - The Conversation Group
Tara Hunt - Citizen Agency
Cathy Brooks - Seesmic
Tim Ferriss - Four Hour Work Week
Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells - Social Media Club
Brian Solis - FutureWorks
Jared Kopf - Adroll
Kathleen Shanahan - Boca Communications
Vanessa Camones - The Mix Agency Heddi Cundle and Kathy Johnson - Consort Partners
Julie Crabill - Shift Communications
I know plenty more...!

Social media and IT . . .

If you missed my panel on social media at Intel Developer Forum, you can watch it here. You can find out how Intel has been using blogs and wikis. It is always interesting to see how a very large and established company such as Intel (Intel is a sponsor of SVW) is able to change and embrace social media - it is not an easy process. We also had an Intel lawyer on the podium.

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iPhone religion . . .

I meet a lot of people and many of them like to talk about their cell phones and then go on to tell me why they don't have an iPhone, and/or don't need one. This is interesting because these are unsolicited and unprovoked comments. It is as if just the presence of my iPhone stirs some pangs of guilt or justification.

Let me say this: I like my iPhone, but I'm not religious about it, but many people are religious about their non-iPhones. Which is interesting.

My response is this: think of the opportunity cost to you in your business and professional life. Waiting for another price reduction or until your contract comes up for renewal makes sense if you are the average consumer. It makes no sense if you live and work in Silicon Valley, if you are in media, in PR, or are a developer, or an investor. Saving a hundred or few hundred later, will cost you bigtime now because you will be behind in experiencing and being experienced with this platform.

The iPhone is a media delivery platform of a unique kind. My colleague at TechOne Steve Gillmor, says this:

The iPhone has effectively replaced my laptop for much of my working day. The extent to which I can create the necessary metadata to do my various jobs determines what applications I use.

The iPhone does have problem spots but they are mostly software fixes--it will get better very quickly. What is the cost to you in not having experience with this platform? It is far more than saving a few bucks.

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Blue moon . . .

Lunarr invitations. Let me know on Facebook (send me a friend request) if you'd like to check out this unique collaborative platform created by two Japanese entrepreneurs based in Portland, Oregon.

Lunarr: A Once in a Blue Moon Company with a Unique Collaborative App

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Gaia hackers . . .

My 13 year old daughter Sarah is very sad this week, someone hacked into her Gaia Online account and stole all the things she had collected from over a year's worth of work, and erased all her friend info and other malicious damage. I did some searching and there are several sites that teach others how to hack Gaia user accounts.

I sent Sarah this to cheer her up . . .

Technorati Tags: gaia online, IDF, iphone, lunarr, social media

. . . Bad Sinatra II

Steve Gilmor and gang:



http://www.podtech.net/home/3694/bad-sinatra-ii




. . .KISS and tell about the "connected life"

John Earnhardt shares a video:

Wilson Craig of Cisco's PR team interviews the iconic members of KISS about what the "connected life" means to each of them.  They both give surprisingly good answers.  And, of course, they are in FULL MAKE-UP!!!  At one point it looks like Gene will poke one of Wilson's eyes out with his spikey costume.

Contrast ;John Wayne" Whitacre's career with that of BT's CEO Ben Verwaayen. Say what you will about Ben-Hur, he's the one who will leave the legacy of a truly transformed incumbent carrier.

A friend of mine wrote a cook book for start ups. One of the authors, Nick DeMonner, is a serial entrepreneur.  While working on his latest venture, BzzyBee, he and his colleagues were faced with the typical start up scenario: limited money, no time and no budget for eating out.  So they began to write down recipes they developed along the way. 

The book is a short, fun summertime read about one aspect of life inside a start up. Nick (the author) and the Bzzybee team are using the book proceeds to generate money for the company….or as I like to say, “To help keep a good idea from starving.”

The book was announced this week and can be purchased (hard copy or download) at http://www.lulu.com/content/1019008

Updated weekly with approximately 35,000 new records from over 1,000 counties, the Foreclosure List identifies properties in all stages of foreclosure (both pre and active foreclosure, and real estate owned to scheduled for auction)

Be Square or be at the Palo Alto Apple Store...

I was just going to do a drive by the Apple store in Palo Alto, around&nbsp;6pm, on Thursday, a day before the Apple iPhone launch and&nbsp;shoot some&nbsp;video&nbsp;but ended staying until way past midnight. It was a fun street scene.

The cops turned up at one point but nothing rowdy was happening so they went away. Lots of blogerati were there, of course. Zoomr had some labels and everyone got a number. My number was 66. Fortunately it wasn't 666 because the rumor was there were 500 iPhones per store. (Ben Wing would have been out of luck...)

The Apple security guy said that the Apple Store would honor first come first served, that the numbers were nothing to do with them. Two guys told me they were going to start a rival line and hand out their own numbers.

At the top of the line was my Podtech colleague Robert Scoble. What's your number Robert &nbsp;I asked? Number 2 he said, and pointed at his son Patrick, who carried the number 1 tag. Very classy...

The Real Fake Steve Jobs...

Those hoping that Steve Jobs would appear, because he lives a few blocks&nbsp;away,&nbsp;were disappointed but Fake Steve Jobs did stop by.

He's looking for a caption.

Fake Steve tagged his post titled "I don't want the iPhone, just the attention."&nbsp;

with: Filthy hacks, iPhone, Media whores

Seems to me like it could be the real Steve Jobs...

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If you really love your employees you'd get them an iPhone...

In the line at the Apple Store in Palo Alto I ran into Don MacAskill CEO of Smugmug, an online photo site with a fiercely loyal customer base of about 120,000. Don, and six other employees were willing to stay up all night to bring back iPhones for themselves and their 15 colleagues.

"Will it make&nbsp; your business more productive?" I asked him. Silly question.

Did your boss stay up all night to bring you back an iPhone? You should ask...

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I have so much I want&nbsp;to write about but I've been busy working with Podtech.net, working on some interesting projects projects that will appear very soon.

The main thing I like about Podtech.net is that we all speak the same language, we don't have to convince each other that we should be doing what we are doing. At other media companies we would be in committees for six months before we made a decision on anything.

Podtech.net is full of the most media savvy people I know. Yes, we might still crash and burn but it won't be because we needed to convince each other on where the future is heading...

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3 Years Ago...

It was 3 years ago that I left the Financial Times to become a "journalist blogger." I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. My friends Dave Galbraith and Om Malik had always encouraged me to start blogging.

But I ignored them, I thought I knew what blogging was about because I wrote all day long--even though I had never blogged. It is the way my colleagues at other newspapers and magazines thought about blogging. (Dave and Om were right and I was clueless.)

I took the summer off and then September came around and I realized I had to start "blogging." I looked at a blank screen and realized I really didn't know what I was doing. What is "blogging?"

I had no choice but to jump in and start doing it. And it has been an incredible 3 year journey and I'm still learning about blogging. My friends were right--I should have started earlier.

And I'm so glad I left the oldstream media to be in the newstream media. During such times it is always better to be on the disruptive side of the equation--even if the business models are still being invented--than on the sharp pointy end of the disruption...

Please see:

June 25, 2004: Media Guerilla (aka Mike Manuel) from Voce Communications runs the results of an informal poll asking which leading tech journalists would leave for the blogging world first.

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Sibling Revelry...

Hats off to Connecting Point Communications for their super-fun charity event last week. Don Clark's band played and they were incredibly good.

It was good to run into Anastasia Marin, and the wonderful Voce crew, and many other industry contacts. Everyone was having fun and supporting a worthy cause. We should have more of these types of things...

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Startups Get Younger...

All those people that proclaim that our younger generations are driving us to hell in a hand basket are wrong, dead wrong. Kids today are incredibly media savvy and business savvy, I have full confidence in&nbsp;their abilities to disregard our nonsense (and clean up after us.)

I say this as a father of Sarah, who just turned 13, and Matthew, who is now 19, and seeing them and their friends over many years. For example, the things Matt and his friends are doing on the Internet, the business models they are playing with, is fascinating to see. There is a lot of innovation going on here.

Ben Casnocha is a young entrepreneur and now, also a young author. His book "My Start-Up Life"&nbsp;was recently published.

My son Matt has been reading the book and he says it is pretty good, which is a great recommendation because he doesn't hand out compliments as easily as the New York&nbsp;Times, which said it was pretty good too...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/business/yourmoney/17shelf.html

Additional Info:
Ben Casnocha
- Author of "My Start-Up Life" (Jossey-Bass, 2007)
- Book web site: http://www.mystartuplife.com
- Buy it on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Start-Up-Life-Learned-Journey/dp/0787996130/
-Blog: http://ben.casnocha.com

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Muckrackers and Master Baiters...

I was thrilled this week to be able to meet and hang out with Andrew Keen and Nicholas Carr. They are among the more original thinkers on the Internet and also natural journalists in that they know how to push those buttons, how to get people riled up and thinking.

Wednesday they were on a panel in a local Barnes & Noble, along with Steve Gillmor and Keith Teare from Edgio, moderated by Dan Farber. It was an excellent evening and I have it on video (coming soon).

(Tim Ferriss, the author of the "The Four Hour Week" was there too, in the audience.&nbsp;I have a video interview with Tim coming very soon. Tim is an excellent case study in how to use new media to promote a book.)

Nick Carr first made a splash with his essay and book&nbsp;on why IT doesn't matter anymore. And he is right, when every company has installed an ERP system what becomes the distinguishing, competitive characteristic?

Andrew Keen is doing very well with his book, "