Egos

Who the fuck is this guy and can someone please stop him?

So says Henry Blodget of Alley Insider. (See here.) Henry views Facebook's decision to take on debt (leasing $100 million worth of servers) as a sign that it can't raise money at its much-vaunted $15 billion valuation, which wouldn't be surprising since that was always a ridiculous figure. Blodget's theory: Facebook "couldn't sell any more equity at $15 billion, and it didn't want to do a down round, so it turned to the debt markets." He also suspects Facebook will burn more cash this year than it previously said it would. Everyone said the Borg was crazy when it bought a tiny chunk of…

Much love to the good folks at Alley Insider for pointing out the incredible power I now wield in the music industry -- indeed, in all media. See their post here. Basically they're pointing out that I've now made huge stars out of an unknown British band, the Ting Tings, by using one of their songs in our new ads. And in case you want to see the Ting Tings live, go here. In case you want to see Ting Tong instead of the Ting Tings, go here.

Groan.

Much love to the many readers who sent in clips to this fine article which tells the story of a clever Apple retail employee who recovered his stolen Mac laptop by turning on its remote access feature and using it to snap a photo of the dumb bastard who stole it. Sweet.

Remember when I cried over seeing something very cool at Microsoft Research? Well now you can cry too, because the World Wide Telescope is now up. Still is stunning, even a few months later. Here’s the FastCompany interview where we meet the two guys who got this built and is what led me to declare I was crying.

I am playing with the new Google Reader for iPhone. Where am I playing with it? I’m sitting in the middle of Google’s campus. I’m still very disappointed. Here’s some of my disappointment: 1. Can’t share items from top level, like I can on Web page. 2. Can’t add notes to items, like I can on Web page. 3. I can’t see my friends, like I can on Web page. I won’t tell you what I’m using on my iPhone instead cause I’ve already hyped them up too much. UPDATE: see the comments here for an answer from the Reader Team (Mihai Parparita,…

BBC: Twitter and the China earthquake. I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. Now there’s lots of info over on Google News. How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk. Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!! Over the next two hours I pointed at anyone who had info about the quake on my Twitter account. It’s amazing the kind of news you can learn by being on Twitter and the connections you can…

David Risley this morning wrote about all the noise in all these systems like Twitter and FriendFeed. Of course that kicked off a whole discussion over on FriendFeed. Oh, the glorious noise! Everyone loves beating me up for causing the noise. No, I am not the cause. I pass it along. You should see my inbound streams. Every second or two a new Twitter is aimed at me. Every few seconds, a new blog post comes into Google Reader. Every few seconds, a new thing on FriendFeed. 24 hours a day of noise. And we’re not even counting the professional noise over on TechMeme and Google News. Buried…

I just visited the offices of Lefora, free forum hosting, who is making cool new forum software that goes in interesting new directions that I haven’t seen forum software or services do yet. Stuff like embeddable YouTube videos with just copying the URL. And I +love+ the color theme selector they have. You’ll see that in the video demo I just filmed with Vinnie Lauria, VP of product. Paul Bragiel, CEO, told me a lot more about the company and its plans in a separate video. An example of their new forums can be found on their “fun stuff forum.” UPDATE: In just a few…

From time to time people ask what the images in the margins of Scripting News mean. I don't think I've ever answered the question on the blog itself. There are many answers to the question because they mean whatever you want them to mean. The point is to stimulate creativity. If I wrote an article about Fidel Castro, for example, and put a fiery picture of Fidel next to the piece it would satisfy curiosity. "I wonder what he looks like?" Suspense eliminated. That kind of imagery serves to quell creativity, to push it down, stifle it. It answers questions as opposed to raising them. Lowers…

To every yin there's a yang. Here's a brilliant counterpoint to what I've been writing here about decentralizing Twitter. I've excerpted the last paragraph because it is some of the best tech writing I've ever read. Wonderful. Echovar: "The idea of building competitors to Twitter on the same platform, or redistributing Twitter to multiple players reminds me of the idea that New York City should be rebuilt in Ohio because it would be cheaper. Or perhaps we could distribute a little of New York City in every state of the Union. New York City is what it is because of the people who live and…

Oh the political debate is getting interesting! Assuming the Democratic nomination is actually decided, then what is Hillary Clinton's future role? Last night on Larry King I heard Carole Simpson, a black woman, supporter of HRC, say that it's white men calling for her to withdraw. (Transcript.) Stephanie Miller chimed in "I have ovaries." Even so, it seems to me that people of all genders are conspicuously not asking Clinton to withdraw out of respect for her power, which she has a lot of. What she does with that power now will have a lot to do with what happens next. I know that's pretty…

There's a game being played on Twitter that goes like this. "When Obama wins..." The game is to fill in the blank creatively. . Here are some examples. Here's my entry.

The tech industry is organized around the concept of wars. In recent memory, the browser wars, the Java wars, before that there were wars over email APIs, desktops, GUIs, networking standards, you name it, if there's money to be made in controlling users, there's been a war to lock those users in. It's been that way since the dawn of time, and it will always be that way. It's in human nature. It's also in human nature for the users to realize they're being used, get fed up, and create or discover the technology for themselves thereby routing around all the warring parties. It's as if the…

In 2006 I wrote about Vyew and asked the obvious question: “Does the world need another web conferencing product?” I guess the answer is "yes" because the company is now profitable and has 100,000 registered users. Vyew combines real-time (synchronous) conferencing and desktop sharing with always-on (asynchronous) collaboration such as highlighting, drawing, text and sidebar comments and sticky notes. This allows groups to have a live meeting and also carry on a contextual forum discussion over time at their convenience. It's a browser-only cross-platform tool without the need for…

A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card--which I just loved. For once, a business card that cuts to the chase and is readable. Hallelujah! So I asked him to make business cards for me. Take a look at your business card: Can people really read the 8 point type? If you want Justin to make business cards for you, his site is here.

I went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo this weekend. I had no idea these things are so popular--so much so that I gave up the first time and returned in the early evening when there was more parking and a shorter ticket line. Think: Macworld Expo meets Burning Man meets MythBusters meets Woodstock. Here are a mere fifty pictures to show you what you missed. One thing is for sure, the Faire could keep Stuff White People Like busy for a month or two. There was lots of bikes made up of various other vehicle parts. For example, this is a lawnmower bike. A skateboard/bike hybrid. And a…

Roger von Oech is the author a classic book about innovation called A Whack on the Side of the Head. Believe it or not, this is the twenty-fifth anniversay of the book. When I was young(er), this book was the rage for the personal-computer generation in Silicon Valley. Join me on Sun's site for an interview of Roger. In it he discusses twenty-five years of innovation and provides advice to today's newfangled Web 2.0 companies. Click here for the interview.

Launch: Silicon Valley 2008 is now accepting executive summaries. The deadline is May 9th. This conference is a very inexpensive way to get your startup in front of a highly-qualified audience of venture capitalists and journalists. It takes place on June 10th at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, California. For more information, click here.

This past Saturday night, BoomTown attended the tony San Francisco book party for Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It.” It was hosted by megablogger Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison, an old friend of Zittrain’s from high school, as it turned out. And BoomTown took our Flip video camera, of course. For one, it was held at Ellison’s stunning Pacific Heights home, with a lot of Internet and San Francisco wattage in attendance, including Melanie’s husband, Larry Ellison, and Mayor Gavin Newsom. By the way,…

Today, we debut our new redesign of the home screen of AllThingsD.com. It is, in fact, our second redesign since we launched the site in late April of 2007, although it is a much more drastic redesign, with a lot more elements added. Why did we do it? No, we are not hyperactive (OK, we are, but we are taking medication for that). Actually, it is because we in the ATD brain trust (that would be Walt Mossberg and me), along with our many much-more-intelligent staffers and advisers, wanted to bring even more digital news and analysis to our readers by making more stories available on the front…

Our good friends over at GeekCulture, whose very funny comics we publish regularly in Voices, sent us a link to this fine spoof picture of now-former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo, depicted as Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the classic sci-fi series “Star Trek.” It is an apt goodbye for the 23-year-old D’Angelo, who is leaving the social-networking site to boldly go where few other geeks have gone before (that would be away from one of Silicon Valley’s hottest start-ups before its much-anticipated IPO). D’Angelo, in a story broken by…

Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo will leave the company. BoomTown called Facebook PR last week about the rumor of D’Angelo’s departure, but did not get a response. The company confirmed the departure by D’Angelo (pictured here) tonight. The 23-year-old D’Angelo, the top tech exec for the social-networking site, will be leaving the company to take some time off. He has known Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since high school. D’Angelo wrote a letter to Facebook staff on Friday about the move. He said he wanted a break. But, according to sources close to…

Apparently, an Indian tech news site called TechGoss has its dander up about a visit Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here) has been making to that country. And, for information related to news of why the social-networking czar is in India, TechGoss is offering 10,000 rupees–or $240.17—specifically, 5,000 for exclusive photos of him there and 5,000 for a detailed story on his stay in India. Currently, Facebook is the No. 3 player in India, whose social-networking scene is dominated, incredibly, by Google’s Orkut. Asked the post: “What is Facebook…

If the world is really bigger, if you can find the best in the world to do what you want, no matter what it is you want, does that change things? If I need an animator, I can find the world's best animator. If I need a bond to insure my movie, I can find the best broker at selling completion bonds. If I need SEO help, get me the world's best SEO person. If I need braces, I can find the best orthodontist in my area. Not the second-best or someone who will try really hard or someone who is pretty good at that and also good at other things. Sure, there are occasional tasks where a diagnostician…

Torley points us to brand tags. It's a simple game where you pick one-word associations to go with major brands. The result pages are actually pretty inane, but the magical way each and every one of these brands compels you to think is fascinating. I saw the Harley logo and I immediately typed "macho". But it's just a motorcycle. A vehicle, no more macho than any other. Yet the word just popped into my head. And the same thing happened for the next brand and the next one as well. Superbrands have a mystical connection with people. Odds are, you can't own one, but there's no reason you can't…

Sixteen tips for getting your Mac or iPhone fixed: The contact number is (800) 275 2273 While you're on hold, go to Google and type: Troubleshoot Mac xxx, where xxx represents the error message you got or the sparsest description of what won't work. If those links don't help you, visit the Apple site and choose your product. Under each product is a discussion forum. Search for your problem. By now, someone has answered your call. Don't tell them your entire problem. Instead, politely identify yourself, give them the short version and then say, "would you please escalate this call to a yyy…

Three years ago, I published this list, which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. It has held up pretty well. Feel free to reprint or otherwise use, as long as you include a credit line. I've added a few at the bottom... What Every Good Marketer Knows: Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk. Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand. Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers. Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of…

Here's what happens when you rearrange YouTube to make it work. Architecture matters.

Walking by the train tracks on my way to work one day, I noticed a tiny tree sprouting from the rocks alongside the tracks.  Headphones on, and power walk in place, I saw it—but really didn't "see" it.  But a "whisper" told me to stop.  So I did.  Taking off my headphones, I knelt down and took this picture.  The whisper said "there's something here.  something to think about... How can tree grow in a place like this?". With the image captured I went about the rest of my day but couldn't stop thinking about it.  And it made…

  From my recent column in Adweek: "Some kid comes up with the next YouTube, Facebook or mobile platform, and most advertisers want to figure out how to market on it. Instead of designing and developing useful applications that could give brands the opportunity to insert themselves meaningfully into our lives, we get cutesy but useless "Sprite Sips" on Facebook, ubiquitous banners in all shapes and sizes and microsites that you won't likely return to. And I'm talking about digital advertising -- never mind traditional." Read the full article

| View | Upload your own So here's a presentation I gave recently to a client.  I'm thinking through the concepts of "Micro Interactions" and "Direct Engagement".  The slideshow (download PDF) includes both previous and new thoughts and was inspired by a quote I wrote for Inspire UX:“We live in a world where the little things really do matter.  Each encounter no matter how brief is a micro interaction which makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a…

Here's a quick breakdown of events I'll be attending/participating at over the next few months: May 22-23 Strategy 08I will be covering one of my favorite events of the year via Twitter. Speakers include AG Lafley, Roger Martin, Bill Buxton, Bruce Nussbaum, and Claudia Kotchka among others.  Follow me on Twitter here. May 29th: Tech Cocktail I'll be speaking on a panel titled "Creating A Brand & Leveraging New/Social Media For Your Business".  Tech Cocktail is taking place in Chicago and will include Jason Fried of 37 Signals, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Frank Gruber among…

"Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane -- they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about "micro-interactions" and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a "lovemark" in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair."Read The Full Article at Advertising Age (Digital…

I realize that this is completely off topic from the Web Strategy blog, but I’ve a loud voice, and there’s many well to do readers of this blog, so this is one of the best ways I can apply my resources. I’ve got earthquake supplies in my closet and garage, I know the ‘big one’ is going to hit us someday in Silicon Valley and it’s going to be pretty bad, I’m expecting at least a week without proper aid or food. I’m sure that things are much worse in Burma and China, so I’m somewhat sensitive to this disaster. There’s quite a few…

My background is with corporate web teams, and this is a topic that is just starting to get explored. Channel and Partner Marketing often largest revenue stream At a previous job I was the Web Marketing Manager for the Channel Extranet site at Hitachi Data Systems, called PartnerXchange, a website that dedicated to helping our partners resell our products. This was a high-tech B2B sale which accounted for 60% of the overall revenue of the company. One of the largest networking companies recently told me that the channel accounts for 80% of the overall revenue of the company. [While Social…

Last week, I wish I had more time to be a bit more appreciative. I had a quite a few meetings on one of the days yesterday, and started to have issues with Outlook. I sent an email to Helpdesk, and they immediately responded and helped solved my issue –all while I was on the phone helping clients. I forgot to thank them properly, so sent over a quick appreciation note this morning, it’s really important to remember those that are fighting for you behind the scenes, that don’t get the public eye. So be sure to be thankful and appreciative to your tech support folks this week (and…

I’m starting this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: Patricia Mayo has moved from being an editor at MasterNewMedia.org to a Social Media Strategist with NowSourcing, congrats! Her duties will include: handle their twittering, and do quite a bit of SMO blogging and SEO / PPC. Vanina Delobelle (who I interviewed in a recent post) is the Product Director Social Media by Monster, she recently earned her PhD in Social Media. Marina Martin is the the…

In the late 1990s the CMS invaders deployed their systems at large corporations, as managing web pages using HTML editors wasn’t scalable and non-technical folks needed to publish. In many cases after the invader left, the company’s business teams and technical web teams were stuck cleaning, fixing, enhancing, for years to come. Unplugging web publishing systems (and community platforms) ain’t easy. Publishing from Word Docs, ouch. I was a web manager at a very large corporations, as such, I was the business sponsor for the website, and therefore the tools that were used to…

The New York Times published a great article yesterday that covered the many ways that Senator Obama may have gained — rather than lost, as some pundits contend — strength as a candidate from his protracted battle with Senator Clinton: But there is a competing view that says that Mrs. Clinton, rather than being a spoiler, has in fact been an unwitting mentor to Mr. Obama, a teaching adversary who made him better. Could competing against Mrs. Clinton have improved Mr. Obama as a candidate in the same way that competing against Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s made Isiah…

Not that I think super delegates should matter or even exist, but they are trickling in for Obama. Hopefully he will reach 2,025 on May 20th. Since that is the “winning number” both candidates have quoted for over a year, I can’t see Hillary sticking around after that. Also, I would like add that, for all those who are saying Hillary should stay in, I would agree fully, if, IF, she was not a) trying to change the rules by seating and MI and FL, and pretending like Obama is trying to disenfranchise them b) attacking Obama c) willing to have the super delegates overturn the…

I know I said that my disgust with Hillary Clinton is softening somewhat, but it hasn’t disappeared altogether. Andy did a pretty good job of encapsulating the appropriate level of outrage regarding Hillary Clinton’s comments about white Americans preferring her to Senator Obama, but I have something to add. Clinton’s comment goes like this: “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working,…

I’m not a big fan of tarring people with a broad brush based on who they associate with. Lots of people keep company and even spiritual fellowship with those whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to their own. That said, the comments made about Islam by John McCain’s “spiritual guide,” the Rev. Rod Parsley have certainly thrown a worrisome light on McCain’s candidacy: Unlike Senator Obama — who never brought Jeremiah Wright onstage at a campaign event — Senator McCain has chosen to refer to Parsley as a “moral compass” during one of his…

Anyone who has been around me the past few weeks can attest to the vibrancy of my disgust with Hillary Clinton. Her attacks on Senator Obama have been inexcusably harsh given that they are supposed to be on the same side. Her sense of entitlement and her complete divorcal from reality are maddening. But now, as she begins to soften her rhetoric, saying “if” instead of “when” in her references to taking the White House this November, my disgust has softened as well and found — around the edges — a tinge of empathy. This is a person who has done what she…

Viddler is a very cool video player that let's you post comments on videos. Someone made a viddler player with the first six episodes of us trying to find a new host for Mahalo Daily. Watch as we go from 20 down to five contestants. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Oh boy.... I guess I have to confirm the 1,000+ friends of mine in the queue! :-)Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

We're doubling the size of our technical staff here in Los Angeles to keep up with the growth of Mahalo (see Compete chart comparing **US-only** visitors for Mahalo and two other search startups Hakia and Wikia).We're looking for a really killer Systems Engineer here in Los Angeles to work at our very cool factory in Santa Monica where they will make their own hours (provided they at least make it in for the free staff lunch every day at noon :-), get whatever equipment they want, soak in stock options in the next big thing, and work with a team of totally kick-ass no BS developers who are…

This page is on the way to becoming the most loaded page on Mahalo.... ever. Sheyla Hershey has had eight breast enlargement surgeries, but is being limited by the state law in Texas which says implants are limited to 1,000 CCs. Once again, the Bush Administration destroying our society and standing in the world! Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Hey there, Tyler here with a fun little update on the search for the next host of Mahalo Daily.....Today's episode was MD117 - The Bachelon, Episode 2 and tomorrow will reveal who will be the final group of lovely hosts who will each make their very own episode of Mahalo Daily for you all to judge on.We started with the American Idol parody, now it's a fun twist on the Bachelon, any guess what fabulous reality game show we'll be spoofing on for the final round? Hint: We're saving the best for last.In any case, we've decided to open up the voting on the web for the next round starting next…

Sumner Redstone thinks posting a clip on YouTube is the same as pirating a movie on BitTorrent. He's wrong.

Could there be a bigger threat than Linux to Microsoft's OS dominance?

Yahoo! is not worth $44 billion. Period. You could buy General Motors lock, stock, and barrel for $14 billion, name all the cars "Google Sucks," and get more bang for the buck.

Guess what? That online community you belong to isn't real and will likely be either imploded or irrelevant before long.

From poor marketing to missing components, here are my reasons why Vista will forever fail.

(Updated with correct URL for MASS TLC Breakfast) We continue our relentless drive to bring Groundswell ideas to you, whatever event you're attending. In May you can meet us at: Thursday, May 1, 12:00 pm (eastern)Young Presidents Organization Teleseminar Half Moon Bay, CaliforniaWednesday, May 7, 10:45 am (pacific) Ziff Davis CIO Summit Charlene is on a panel "Web 2.0 and the CIO - Raising the Collaborative Intellect of Your Enterprise" Beverly Hills, CaliforniaThursday, May 8, 10:00 am (pacific) INMA World Congress Charlene is giving a speech "Social Networking and Digital…

by Charlene Li Josh and I will be giving a series of four teleconferences over the next few weeks, examining various topics discussed in the book. These are deeper dives into the topics, and will also feature plenty of time for questions and discussions. (Please note that these Webinars are part of Forrester's client offerings, so you will need to be a client to attend or pay a fee.) Here are the dates and descriptions for each of the teleconferences -- click on the title links to get more information and to register. We hope you can join us! Thursday, May 15th: Social Technographics:…

by Charlene Li Google announced that it would be releasing Google Friend Connect this evening (link won't work until Monday evening.) The idea behind Friend Connect is to give Web masters the tools to easily add social features to their sites. This is what Google announced: "With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening's Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming -- picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration,…

by Josh Bernoff This week we'll look at a group that gets less attention online, seniors. (If you're new to this weekly data chart or the Social Technographics Profile, check out the previous weekly data charts.) This chart is from Chapter 3 of Groundswell. This chart raises an interesting question. Let's say your product is aimed at seniors -- like Flomax, or retirement communities. Obviously, your market isn't nearly as active in social applications, with less than 10% Creators and under 40% Spectators. Should you give up on the idea? Not necessarily, but you'd better proceed with caution.

by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li Our Webinar was a big party -- over 700 people joined us! Of course, that made it difficult to answer all of your questions, but they were so interesting we've answered them all right here. Every question here came from someone who attended the Webinar. We learned an awful lot from your questions. In these answers, where we refer to a Forrester report, the executive summary is available to everyone, but the full report is available on to Forrester clients (or you can buy it). In the comments, let us know if you'd like to see us do another one, and on what…

Some stuff I’m reading this week… Ladies Who Launch: Network for Women Entrepreneurs, Business Magazine, & More Very cool community for women entrepreneurs. They even have an incubator. Noice. Why not make a Change? » Blog Archive » Twitter as Customer Relations? So I figured, that if people voiced out against some of the things these companies were doing with their updates, and how their sites were working, as long as these companies actually listen and use the influence that many of these big time bloggers have, they could make incredible progress. Jeffio - The Whuffie…

I had the chance to sit down with the awesome people at Threadless in December in a very snowy Chicago. They are so brilliant. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. ShareThis

RedMonk likes to think its pretty cool company, with plenty of smart women in its community. So when it was planning for RedMonk’s unconference this year May 5th at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, it wanted to make sure it had t-shirts specially made for women. T-shirt driven development is very important in community building. The t-shirts are pretty cool, and RedMonk had 25 printed for women. But then the company realized maybe its not so cool and inclusive after all. What if only guys showed up? The unconference will be a little dorky, with a fair amount of developer and open source…

I heart Zappos.com muchly and Rachael and Tony made me heart it even more. I really enjoyed talking with them about the core values that makes Zappos rock so much. (p.s. Sorry Rachael for my misspelling in the video. I’ll get Alyssa to fix it asap!) Oh…and btw…I finished my book. Yay me! ShareThis

Some stuff I’m reading this week… Navajo Dolphin Necklace hahahahahahahaha - Kind of an ‘in’ joke with me and my gals, but the basic premise is that we call white people who tweet Navajo proverbs and other similarly non-reflective stuff ‘Navajo Dolphins’. Kind of like BoBos (Bourgeoisie Bohemians), but younger and less affluent. Women speakers at Web 2.0 expo SF? Interesting is that of those 20 women, at least 10 still need to submit their bio (10 days before the actual conference), while of the male speakers about 99% have their bio submitted. Come on…

Starting today, this blog is moving to http://dilbert.com/blog/. There you will be able to vote on comments, and the best ones will float to the top. Scott

My jaw dropped when I heard that presidential candidate Clinton dismissed the unified opinion of every economist on the planet and supported the gas tax rebate. The rebate is John McCain’s proposal. I think that proves both of them are unqualified to be president. Obama isn’t much better when it comes to sorting out economic policy from pandering, although he did avoid that particular landmine. So I decided to start my own political party. I call it the Economics Party. There’s no paperwork involved, and you don’t even have to stop being a Democrat or Republican or whatever to join.

I ran into a friend the other day who is a home builder. He had been planning to build several homes that would be extra-green, both because he wants to help the environment, and because he figured buyers would want that. After much research he abandoned the extra-green approach because he was assured by people in the know that no one would pay extra for an extra-green home. Buyers look at the location, square footage, kitchens, and all the usual stuff. No one even asks about the energy efficiency or indoor air quality. The next time you go to buy an existing home, ask the real estate agent…

Yesterday I was updating my retirement plan through age 110 and wondered if it was long enough. It seems to me that medical science is progressing so quickly I have a good shot at reaching 140. This got me thinking. What will happen when medical science can keep almost anyone alive indefinitely, albeit looking like a peach that has been left in the sun for a month? Isn’t it inevitable that assisted suicide will be legal? There’s no way the global economic system can keep several billion people alive over the age of 100. And if we assume most of those people can vote, and most of them will…

Regarding my previous post, how much water would a typical home have to pump into its own virtual dam in order to provide energy during a typical night while the water flows back out and through a generator? Are we talking swimming pool size? How big a container would you need to store the compressed air for the same purpose? Refrigerator size? Garage size? I have the smartest readers in the world. Someone can probably answer that question on the back of an envelope.

One of the worst effects of the Reagan Revolution was a near-complete loss of conscious caring about public infrastructure in the U.S. Most capital-intensive essentially public projects with no Wall Street box office were neglected. For decades. I’m reminded of this by On the pot-holed highway to hell, by John Gapper in the Financial Times. It begins,   If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a…

VRM is starting to pick up steam just in time for IIW this week. For details, follow the links from Mine! and A nice unpacking of VRM. And thanks to Adriana Lukas, Eve Maler, Alec Muffett, Ben Laurie and Joe Andrieu (along with currently uncredited others) for getting many conversational as well as developmental box cars packed and rolling. It’s great to see what I saw coming in 2003 finally start to take off.

I’ve long believed that the crossover from the Industrial Age to the Information Age will be marked by an awakening to the need by customers to control their own selves, rather than to remain subordinated to the controlling interests of companies. Same thing with citizens and governments. Cluetrain, for me at least, was about that. So now user freedom is at issue again, this time in the context of “social networking”, which in the current popular sense happens almost entirely inside company walled gardens. Some companies are larger than others, and some gardens have openings…

This morning I got a request from a friend to connect through Reunion.com. Seemed innocent enough, and I fell for it. Which is to say, they got one of my email addresses. Nothing more. Far as I know. But somehow they put X and N together and began spamming people I know. Now I have five emails from friends, so far, plus one each from my wife and my sister, each with copies of spams from Reunion.com. The reunion.com emailings go like this: Hi, I looked for you on Reunion.com, but you weren’t there. I use Reunion.com to search for lost friends and contacts, and to stay connected with…

Back when Bush the Elder was running for President, campaign strategist Lee Atwater said he was going to make Willie Horton into Michael Dukakis‘ running mate. He did, and it was a lesson that has been applied to great effect ever since. Now in Wright Controversy Deepens Voter Divide, the Washington Post says,   Religious voters in Indiana and North Carolina held to familiar patterns in Democratic primary balloting Tuesday, with the controversy over Sen. Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor deepening the divide. Exit polling sought associations between votes,…

Longtime readers know how much value this blog has gotten out of mybloglog (now owned by Yahoo!). I've had the mybloglog faceroll widget on this blog for several years and there are 2,613 members in the AVC community on mybloglog. You can see the faceroll widget on the left siedbar just a little bit below the fold. Today, Google has announced a service called Friend Connect. I spent a bit of time looking at Friend Connect this morning and this screen shot was the one I found most interesting. I'll have to play around with Friend Connect and understand how it fits between mybloglog and ning…

My daughter Emily was passed down the iPhone I bought when it first came out. It didn't work for me so I gave it to her. That phone developed a small crack in the screen last fall but she kept using it. The crack got worse, propagated, and yesterday she dropped it again. Now it's shattered, it's brains have been battered, splattered all over manhattan. Sorry about that, just couldn't resist a little Stones lyrics fun. So I asked her if she wanted another iPhone. Surprisingly, the answer was no. She wants the new crimson red Blackberry Curve. Fortunately, it looks like I can get an unlocked…

Happy Mothers Day to all moms out there, particularly my wife the superhero known as Gotham Gal and my mom who reads this blog religiously so I know she'll read this post. Tom Friedman has an oped piece in the Times today titled Call Your Mother. It's about his mom who passed away this past year at the age of 89. He ends it with the following line: So on this Mother’s Day, if you take one thing away from this column, take this: Call your mother. I sure wish I could call mine.After reading that how could you not call your mom? I'll be making my call this morning once I am sure she's up. The…

First, I'd like to be perfectly clear that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Disqus. So I am clearly biased about what I am about to say. Second, I'd like to point out that the reason we made the investment is largely based on my experience as a Disqus user for the past 10 months and the result it has had on my blog/community. Sometimes seeing is believing and it certainly was in this case. So, with that disclosure out of the way, here are three reasons I think every blogger, certainly every serious blogger, should consider switching to Disqus. 1) Threaded discussions - When…

I am fond of saying that what happened in the US in the second half of the 20th century will take place in much of the rest of the world in the first half of the 21st century. The end result will be vastly more geographic balance of wealth and prosperity than we had at the beginning of this millennium. Today, in a NY Times article on Toyota (TM)'s annual profit guidance to wall street, I came across this comment by Toyota's President Katsuaki Watanabe:“Our profit structure has become more geographically balanced, with growing contributions from resource-rich countries and emerging…

Maybe only when it has to create products in response to market demand (ie new features for enterprise Google Apps), as opposed to engineer delight. Philipp has an interesting post/thread here.

Via Ars, news of a new BBerry 3G phone. I want one. I love my Curve, except...it chokes on all the mail (about 750 a day) and calendar items (about 60 changes a day) that it has to synch over the air. The phone is unusable for one to five minutes each time it wakes up from an extended period of non-use - the very same time that I need it most (like when I get into my car, have a conference call in two minutes, but have to wait for the little spinning hourglass icon to resolve). I sure hope the BBerry Bold fixes that. But, no matter. When it comes to phones, the BBerry is my Mac - I love to…

Great news developing over the weekend around data portability, though it remains to be seen how the implementations go. Facebook Connect: Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook. MySpace Data Portability: MySpace, the world’s most popular…

Something going on here. And here. Always like to see Steve pondering things. And then the search driven queries in Matthew's post are great: love: working with Canadians margaritas for lunch when i know exactly what to do buttered popcorn jelly beans Trent Reznor’s lyrics having lunch with my mom the rain my foster parents Twitter hate: nitrogen talking to my insurance company airports when i’m all itchy and stuff those robotic voices my work computer deja vu the Red Wings Twitter feel: so lost like i am cramming for a final like i am being followed bad but not guilty extremely safe old…

I was at my 25th High School reunion last night at Polytechnic School. I always knew that place was special, filled with wicked smart people and amazing faculty. I was lucky to have gone there. Seeing so many old friends, swapping stories of glories past, it does get one into quite a melancholy place, in a good way. Hence the early morning Pasadena gloom out the window feels just about right to illustrate the sentiment. Thanks, Poly, for putting on such a nice night. The map below shows the middle school, but scroll down a block to see the high school and the field where we played soccer and…

Every few years I actually make a television show for PBS and one of those rare occurrences is coming this month with "The Transformation Age: Surviving a Technology Revolution with Robert X. Cringely." Because of PBS scheduling anarchy you'll have to check your local listings to see when the show is on. It is about the obvious realization that as Moore's Law changes technology, technology in turn changes society in ways that are not always predictable. We look into the past and then into the future and put things in a perspective that a general audience can understand. AND it's probably the…

There was a game we used to play in the office, years ago, casting a movie of our own lives. What well-known actor or actress would play you? Who would play your friends? The game eventually faded, as games always do, but at the time it was great fun. So let's try it again: who would you cast to play Steve Jobs of Apple? Certainly not Noah Wyle, the only actor to actually play the Apple CEO. I've always thought there were elements of Jack Nicholson in Jobs, but Nicholson is too old for the role. But now it is clear the role should go to Robert Downey Jr. based on his turn this week as the…

Apple this week bought a fabless chip company called PA Semiconductor and pundits far and wide are trying to explain the deal with broadly varying ideas, some of which are close but none seem to really understand what the deal is about. In the short term this acquisition means precisely nothing to Apple users. In the long term it could be quite significant, however, and gives a number of tantalizing hints about Apple's hardware strategy. Why would Apple, having already jumped from PowerPC to Intel, spend $278 million to buy a company that is best known for designing PowerPC chips? Are they…

These days everyone in IT is a consultant, employs a consultant, or both. I'm a consultant, aren't you? Outsourcing, offshoring, LEAN management, a lousy economy, and covering one's IT butt have led organizations of every type and at every level to look outside for answers to their IT questions and often even to ask those questions in the first place. This has led to the greatest disconnect I have seen between job requirements and apparent internal capability in the 30 years I've been around IT. It's scary. Hardly any organization can get by without using consultants and -- here's the bad…

If you use Microsoft's Windows or Apple's OS X and for some reason an application crashes, you know the drill. A dialog box opens automatically ready to report what just happened back to Redmond or Cupertino. It is an opt-in procedure so you can decide not to send the report, which is what I tend to do the third or fourth time the same crash happens. For an Apple or a Microsoft this capability of seeing, immediately and automatically, what went wrong is invaluable for planning that next service pack or security update. Alas, this kind of diagnostic capability hasn't been available to those…

Innovation requires a fascination with wonder “Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.” Larger design businesses don’t allow good design to happen “The problem is that the structures of most larger design businesses cannot effectively facilitate the transmittal…

More ammunition for why you should fire the workaholics: They don’t actually get more done. Q: Do workaholics accomplish more than people who work fewer hours? A: Often, they don’t. That is because, as perfectionists, they may become so fixated on inconsequential details that they find it hard to move on to the next task, [Psychiatrist Bryan] Robinson said. As Gayle Porter [a professor who has studied workaholism] put it: “They’re not looking for ways to be more efficient; they’re just looking for ways to always have more work to do.” Good advice for anyone…

The Park Inn Hotel (and attached City National Bank building) in Mason City Iowa is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in the world. It’s in desperate need of financial support to save the building. On March 12, Wright on the Park (WOTP) received a Vision Iowa grant of $7,500,000 from the Iowa Department of Economic Development for the continuation of the rehabilitation of both building segments. Along with the Vision Iowa grant, the sale of Historic Preservation Tax Credits is expected to yield another 67% of the total funding. For the first time, Mason City residents…

Facebook Sean Iams writes: Very cool feature on Facebook: When you’re typing a message, and you happen to include a valid link (i.e. http://www.37signals.com) in the body, Facebook automatically looks up the site and pulls back a description and a list of images that help explain the site. You then have the option to send the message with the image + description as an attachment or send the message without any attachment. It drastically clarifies the message with no additional effort whatsoever. Quick, simple, and easy :) MyPunchBowl Matt Douglas at MyPunchBowl writes: Thought you would…

One way to stay pertinent is to scan, learn, absorb, reflect, and synthesize relevant information faster than the others in your space. Play the cards you’re given, but if it takes you almost a week to report into the space something that a hundred other people have already weighed in on, your insight had best be earth shattering, because otherwise, it’s just another log on the fire someone else started. Social media is a pulse-driven network of fast. The problem becomes learning how to sort and synthesize what’s important instead of just reading everything that comes along.

Donald Trump. Who’d have thought I’d be in a bookstore last night and see a book by Donald Trump, and that I’d pick it up, and at random flip to a chapter with that title? The Target Is Not The Weapon. It’s a simple lesson, and yet profound in how it changes one’s focus. In social media, the tools aren’t the same thing as reaching a goal. If you’re a marketer looking to use these tools, then make the first goal to learn how the community moves, listen to its ebbs and flows, and then make the next goal to try starting conversations. But don’t…

Kirtsy is the new name for Sk*rt, who skirted into waters that weren’t as comfy for a moment there. It’s a pretty cool site. Mix the wisdom of the crowds with 22 engaged and passionate editors and you get a fabulous hybrid of social news meets curated content. Kirtsy is a site where women point out the cool stuff. Is that simple enough? There’s obviously a lot more at play here, but after looking around the site, I think you’ll figure it out pretty quickly, as well, and so I won’t dig in too deeply. What I will say, however, is that Kirtsy has some neat features…

I’m passionate about how certain strategies married to certain technologies allow individuals and companies to build things: reputation, trust, personal brand, community, relationships, and even marketplaces. My efforts to cover larger stories, tools, strategies, and more over the last several months have given you quite a bit to consider. But blogs are a tricky method for learning and reflecting. They’re like a running stream, and if you step out for a moment, a certain point in the stream will pass you by. To that end, I’ve collected some links to the posts that I think…

Who’s making a business from social media? Audio and video producers are, for the most part, scraping by, give or take a few notables (several of who are being paid from VC money). Bloggers are making money in varying degrees, depending on their advertising opportunities, or their opportunity for consulting. I’m going to leave the “entertainment” category out of this discussion for that reason (though you’re welcome to argue it back in). So, who’s really making a business out of social media? Early Adopters: Advertising, PR and Marketing First to market…

It was seven years ago today when everybody was getting excited about Microsoft's bombastic announcement of Hailstorm, promising that "Hailstorm makes the technology in your life work together on your behalf and under your control." What was it, really? The idea that the future operating system was on the net, on Microsoft's cloud, and you would log onto everything with Windows Passport and all your stuff would be up there. It turns out: nobody needed this place for all their stuff. And nobody trusted Microsoft with all their stuff. And Hailstorm went away. I tried to coin a term for the kind…

The next podcast is up. Today we talked about why we're doing a podcast in the first place, took some questions/suggestions from listeners, and got into a fight over whether programmers should learn C. Guess which side I took. There are some improvements, already. First, there's an RSS feed, so you can subscribe and get each weekly podcast pushed to you. Here's how you would subscribe using Apple iTunes, for example: Run iTunes Choose Advanced | Subscribe to Podcast Paste in this URL: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/index.php?feed=podcast There is no step 4. Now, depending on your settings…

What is stackoverflow.com? Nothing, yet. But here's the concept: Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers. Instead, they happily program away, using trial-and-error. When they can't figure something out, they type a question into Google. And sometimes, the first result looks like it's going to have the answer to their exact question, and they are excited, until they click on the link, and discover that it's a pay site, and the answer is cloaked or hidden or behind a pay-wall, and you…

Registration is now open for Business of Software 2008 (the first ever Joel on Software conference). Neil has lined up great speakers: Seth Godin, Business Week's "Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age", is the best-selling author of 7 books (including Permission Marketing and Purple Cow) as well as the most popular eBook of all time. Eric Sink, founder of SourceGear, author of "Eric Sink on the Business of Software" and the person who coined the term "Micro ISV" Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing and winner of last year's Software Idol competition Richard Stallman launched the…

“If the flight attendants on the JAL 747 from Tokyo I'm on right now were to, in a remarkable lapse of Japanese standards of service, throw me off the plane with a parachute, I could do a pretty nice roll when I hit the ground.” From my Inc. Magazine column for April (subscribe here). And with that, I promise to stop telling shaggy dog stories about my days in the army. Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Just got a call from the producer at ABC who said that the Nightline piece they filmed here a couple of weeks ago is running tonight. Don't know whether or not they are going to run any footage of it on Good Morning America tomorrow morning like they originally planned to do, but I cannot wait to see how this one turned out. It's always interesting to see how things are edited and sometimes cobbled together, like the teaser the local Fox station ran with the menacing voiceover that said DOOCE ON THE LOOSE! THE VICIOUSLY VULGAR MOM! And it totally made viewers think that if they watched the…

Jon and I got home last night at about midnight after an endless day of navigating the avenues and streets of New York City. There has been quite an uproar over what happened (and didn't happen) during my "Today" show segment, and I have a few things to say about it including some behind the scenes shots and commentary. Including the part where my husband and I suddenly and inexplicably switched roles, and he became the one in the room going HOW CAN I MAKE EVERYONE UNCOMFORTABLE and I was the one going PLEASE KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN, ALSO YOUR CLEAVAGE IS INAPPROPRIATE. I became the Victorian…

Leta is staying with my father for a couple of days, and the other night we drove out to his house to drop her off and have dinner together. My stepmother is a fabulous Southern cook and had prepared fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and corn. I thought we'd pour Leta a bowl of Cheerios and call her dinner a success when she suddenly asked for a piece of my stepmother's fried chicken. I had little faith that she would even be able to look at a piece of that chicken and not immediately try to claw her face off as this chicken did not look at all similar to the chicken she has eaten…

Just got word that the "Today" show segment has been bumped to the 10 o'clock hour tomorrow morning, and I'll most likely be on at 10:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time, although when they run it in syndication it still airs at 10:30 Utah time, don't know what that means for the rest of the country) with Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. Hoo boy! This interview will be a total disappointment if I fail to get Kathy Lee to talk about Al Roker's nipples. © Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved.by dooce in Nubbin

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday May 7) I'm going to be on the "Today" show to discuss the business of (insert ominous voice of death) MOMMY BLOGGING. They tell me my segment will air at 8:30 AM, and that I'll either be talking with Matt Lauer or Meredith Viera, and I love those guys, don't get me wrong, but back when I was eight months pregnant and I'd been reading about techniques I could use to induce labor, I had a particularly vivid dream that involved Al Roker. Here's what I wrote about it in 2004: Last night I had a dream that Al Roker was demonstrating proper breastfeeding techniques to me…

If you didn’t attend Web 2.0, you can watch my ten-minute keynote about “What Google Knows About Spam” (and several other keynotes) on blip.tv. I’ll embed the keynote below as well. The only thing I don’t like about conference speaking is preparing slides. When I use slides at a talk, I almost always make a custom presentation. That’s why I prefer Q&A sessions; making slides is too much work. To make the process easier this time, I tried using Google Docs to create the presentation, and then saving my Docs presentation in PowerPoint (PPT) so that the…

Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) just announced that they now power AdSense for Search. Another nice new change is that if you provide a Sitemap, Google will use that to improve the coverage of the custom search engine. Now let me nip one idea in the bud, because I can already feel a few people thinking it: this is not a backdoor way to get more pages in Google’s index or to improve your search ranking. The official blog post mentions that. But I think this is a win for webmasters all around. If you use AdSense for search, the product is now better and more tweakable. And if you…

Man, I love Maker Faire. It’s almost as if Burning Man mated with Slashdot. Here are afew of the fun things I saw today. In the Craft area someone showed the credit cards that they accepted, but the credit card sign was hand-made: Also in the Craft zone was a “postcard machine.” It was a person sitting inside a booth pretending to be a machine. You could select the postcard you wanted and push two dollars through the slot. The person in the booth would make beeping and booping noises and then slip a custom postcard into your hand: Outside, several people were driving around…

I’m heading to Maker Faire today. It’s a fun event if you like robots, crafts, art cars, flame throwers, Coke ‘n’ Mentos shows, building your own electronics kits, knitting weird hats, Lego creations, plush monsters, power tool racing, or walking around outdoors in the California sunshine. Highly recommended if you’re in the Bay Area today.

Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo I decided to walk the exhibition floor. Niall Kennedy and I checked out the inflatable Google booth, we gave feedback to the WordPress folks, and we came to rest in the Yahoo booth, where it was nice to see Jeremy Zawodny and catch up a little bit. After a few minutes of talking, I noticed the O’Reilly booth just a few yards away. I’m a sucker for O’Reilly books, so I moseyed over to check out the selection. Lo and behold, they had the new Google Apps Hacks book by Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped! I had pre-ordered the book on Amazon a…

This study is courtesy of the BPS Research Digest blog, which as I have written here before, does a lovely job of summarizing psychological research from peer review journals.  They describe an experiment which found that, when people cross their arms, they persisted twice as long when presented with anagrams that were impossible to solve, and when presented with anagrams that had multiple solutions, subjects who crossed their arms generated more solutions than subjects who kept their arms at their sides.  The researchers speculate that this happens because "over many years,…

n I put-up a post a few months back about the long list of successful Stanford dropouts, from Tiger Woods to the founders of Yahoo! and Google.  I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, and was amused to see one of the most successful VC's in the valley seems to actively seek dropouts, with an added twist. I quote: Doerr likes to invest in "white male nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford, and they have absolutely no social life." That's why he backed Netscape, Amazon, Yahoo and Google. I do wish Doerr would have left out the "white male"…

The Stanford d.school and Stanford Business School have joined together to offer a new executive program for people who want to immerse themselves in the design thinking process. This program, called Design Thinking Boot Camp: From Insights to Innovation is the next logical step after the Customer-Focused Innovation class that Huggy Rao and I teach every November, which combines traditional lectures and case studies with hands-on d.school type experience – as you can see in earlier posts here, here, and here. Bootcamp is mostly hands-on. The pictures are from the hands-on experiences that…

I just got an email from Emily over at Electric Pulp indicating that the ARSE test -- the Asshole Rating Self-Exam -- recently surpassed over 150,000 completions (152, 234, with a mean of score of 6.4).  So the self-examination continues. A lot of people continue to take the test for themselves and others, as over 5000 people a month are still taking it. I also have a number of other "ARSE Tools" out there, although none are nearly as successful as the original ARSE Test. The next most popular is the ACHE, the Asshole Client from Hell Exam, for determining if your client is a…

Ronny Kohavi is the General Manager of the Experimentation Platform at Microsoft, his group has developed and is spreading the use of  tools that allow people within Microsoft and external developers to do controlled experiments with users, and that way, potentially develop better and more usable software . You can read about this EXP Platform here. Clearly, Ronny is someone who cares about and understands the power of evidence-based practices, and as such, we have been exchanging emails about the work that Jeff Pfeffer and I have done on evidence-based management in our book and our…

Remember Gandhi's steps of a revolution? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." For as long as I've known the term, ubiquitous computing has been largely ignored, written off as a scifi pipedream from the people who promised you AI and cars that would run on water. That's beginning to change, as hardware such as the Arduino and programmable mobile phone handsets enabling artists, researchers, and makers like Eric Paulos, Elizabeth Goodman, and Julian Bleecker to join the digital and physical worlds in new and interesting ways. Now that it's harder…

Today Yahoo launched a preview of the Yahoo! Internet Location Platform. It essentially creates an ID (a Where On Earth ID aka WOEID)for each place on earth and provides the API calls to geocode to and from that ID. It's very similar to Geonames IDs. It's based on the dataset acquired with the acquisition of Whereonearth Limited. The company was created primarily for use on the backend of One its most visible uses was in the creation of the Places feature on Flickr (Radar posts 1 & 2). Here are some details and examples from the overview page: The API is accessed via HTTP GET; the…

If you can't make it to Where 2.0 you can watch it live-ish via two different video streams. For tonight's Ignite and Launchpad event you can watch via UStream.TV. This stream will get audio directly from the soundboard. Seero, a geo-broadcasting portal that is focused on events is going to be live-streaming the entire event. You can watch it on their site or via the embed below. They will also be doing interviews throughout the day. Just in case you don't have time to watch the stream we will be releasing video clips of Where over the next couple of days.

Tonight we are opening the Where 2.0 Conference with Ignite Where and Launchpad. It's going to be a mixture of 5-minute demo and presentations. The event is open to all-comers (as will the cash-bar). The schedule for the evening is below (full descriptions are after the jump). First Set: Starting at 7PM Ignite: Building Personalized Slices of the GeoWeb - Andrew Turner (Mapufacture) Ignite: Health In the Real World - Steven Hammond Launchpad The Future of Location-Based Gaming - Georg Broxtermann (Orbster GmbH) Launchpad: Introducing Whrrl: Real-Time Personalization for the Real World - Blake…

Later today Google is going to preview Friend Connect (it's not live yet at http://www.google.com/friendconnect), a product that lets any website host OpenSocial applications. These applications will enable a site's user to interact with their social network from other sites (assuming they are logged in). Initially users will be able to see their networks from Facebook (using their APIs), Google Talk, and Orkut. Future participants will include hi5 and plaxo. Initially Google will be letting websites in slowly. Upon acceptance webmasters will be able to submit their website (URL and name) and…