On10.net there's a cool school that uses Tablet PCs and requires all the fifth graders to have one. Obviously a private school (and expensive) but cool nontheless.

Alfred Thompson, who works with schools as part of his job at Microsoft, blogs more about it.

John Phillips, director of education at the school, has a blog and talks about the project too.

By the way, we're looking for other educators who are using technology in interesting ways in their schools. Do you know someone?

You might think that the trick to good speaking is speaking well. Being confident. Having interesting content. And all that.

Now that I've given a bunch of speeches (four in the past two days), I'm learning that the real skill a speaker needs is listening. Can you take a question during a talk and turn that into something useful? Can you do it from Amazon's CTO? It's hard.

What was interesting was how different all four audiences are. The Chamber of Commerce audience asked lots of questions that showed they were hungry for ANYTHING that could help them get their business more exposure. Guerrilla marketers. The government audience asked lots of questions about how to get approval to do a blog. They pointed out that there are lots of rules inside governmental organizations about how to, and when to, share information with the public. Made me realize why the government took a couple of days to really start to deal with Katrina.

The Amazon audience told us that they like to let their product do the talking and that then they'll listen to the feedback and participate in their forums. This matches the kind of stuff I heard at Target and Google.

Doc Searls, in 2004, noted that great brands won't get blogging. It's too bad, too, there are so many passionate people inside Amazon who are just waiting to share their passion about online shopping and books. I took pictures of them so I could remember them. To me the people who work at Amazon are Amazon (yes, I can still hear Jeff Bezo's laugh in my head — I remembered that he hung out with everyone else at O'Reilly's FooCamp all night long — that drive to find a better idea is why they have such a great company).

One thing I learned, though, at Amazon is the deep love of their customers. That resonated with me a lot. Appreciate the people who pay your paychecks and reward them with killer stuff and listen to them when they talk with you. I love that culture.

I guess that's why I'm different than a "consumer." I wanna know what's on the minds of the people creating products and services, and, I'd love to have conversations with them about their products and learn some stories so that I can better evangelize their work. Ben Hollis asked "what about Apple?" during our talk at Amazon today (and, I missed, that he asked the same thing on his blog earlier). Yeah, maybe Amazon, Google, Apple, and Target don't need that — this quarter.

But, long term? Most people I know like doing business with people and companies 1) that they know and 2) that they like 3) that listen to them when they ask for something better/different. I was reminded of this the other night when Shel and I were out to dinner. He got a piece of duck that simply was not worth the $28 he was paying for it. He complained, nicely, but the woman serving us didn't do anything and just said "I don't make the prices here." It isn't lost on me that he's not gonna go back there (and neither will I, to tell the truth cause it was damn tiny).

Aren't you more likely to be a happy customer when you're listened to? Maybe if the chef came out and explained why the price was so high and gave us a good story things would have been different "that duck is a very rare one hunted in an exclusive area in Canada and air-flown straight here so it's really fresh." Heheh. I'm reminded of that every time I look at Microsoft's Product Feedback Wiki. You do realize that Microsoft didn't create this, right? Our customers did. Allmost everything there is written by a customer. Why in heck would they do that if we weren't gonna listen? And, if we don't listen, do you think people will keep doing it?

Other things I learned? Everyone is proud of what they do. I met people from FEMA (Michael Howard, PIO is someone I wish I could go on disaster drills with — he told me that there's a 25% chance of a major earthquake sometime in the next 30 years here, so his team is working to try to get ready for that kind of disaster), from the Red Cross, from universities (hi Kathy Gill, nice tech blog by the way), from small businesses (if you ever need a DJ to host a wedding in Seattle, check out Susan McKee), to Ann Marshall, director of public relations for Cingular Wireless (I thanked her for my great phone). All authorities on their business, their communities, their competition, their marketplace.

I keep asking myself this week after my big blow up last week. "Are you listening?"

Update: Steve Rowe wrote, on his blog, about our session at Microsoft yesterday. I hear that the video will soon be made available publicly from that session.

Chrono Tron is moving up fast on WordPress.com (he's the #2 blog there out of thousands of blogs — WordPress is seeing more than 1,000 new blogs everyday started).

So, click on his link and you'll help him get into the #1 spot.

OK, that's a little funny, but seriously he (I assume it's a he) is a fun tech blog to read. I hope this helps more techies to start blogging. You can get noticed and move up the list.

Have you started a new tech blog in the past year? Leave your URL here so we can check you out. I haven't seen many good code blogs, by the way.

Coding Horror is one that stands out in my aggregator. Any other great code blogs?

Whew, lots of speaking this morning. Talked with the Seattle Chamber of Commerce already, am meeting with information officers from all sorts of government branches in 20 minutes, talking at Amazon around noon.

What's interesting about speaking is what you learn. I love talking with business people who are trying to learn how to make their businesses work better. People are still trying to figure out how search engines work and how that's disrupting their businesses. There were lots of scribbling when Shel and I talked about search engine optimization.

On another topic. I've been getting some very nice emails and phone calls from you all. I got one from Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, today that's going to keep a smile on my face for days. I won't tell you what he said, but this journey has been quite remarkable.

It's the relationships that are magical. It's the small things in life. It's getting more people onto the Web and into using technology to connect with other people who care about what they care about. It's about listening. I haven't done enough of that. I'm gonna listen to Dave's voice mail again. And again. And again. Anytime I need a smile.

We need more smiles. Hope you have one today.

Reading Rebecca MacKinnon's blog today gave me perspective. If the worst that can happen is people calling me a few names, that is OK. I'm happy to see Hu Jia was released from Chinese jail today. I'm also happy to see MSN Spaces hosted his wife's blog.

I hope the Chinese government can see that they can put up with all sorts of people saying all sorts of things. Some will be nice (thanks Don Dodge!) Some won't be. Speaking of which, Scott Koon wins my little flame contest. He not only made me feel bad for not bringing him anything of value, but he flamed all my readers at the same time. Welcome to the "cult of Scoble!"

Anyway, onward.

Mini-Microsoft, an anonymous but popular blogger who writes from inside Microsoft has turned on comment moderation. Interesting. That means he's gotten tired of the anonymous commenters who are griping about things. Ironic. But, I understand. Boy, do I understand. Mentally it's hard to separate out the personal attacks (and, boy, they have been getting personal lately — things that you wouldn't hear in even the worst bar fight) and keep them from hurting you. These things are designed to hurt. They aren't designed to help anyone or help anything.

The venom is flowing. I figure there's no way to control it, so might as well encourage it. Who can write the best anti-Scoble flame? What's the nastiest thing you can say to me? Let's get it all out on the table so you can get all your venom out of your system and we can go on with life together.

Here, let's practice: Scoble, you are the evilest, fattest, rudest, stupidest, most egotistical, corporate shill that I've ever seen. Even poo is better than you.

I'm sure you can think up better. It's 2:44 a.m. Shoot me for not having good flaming skills this late in the evening.

There's a good example over on Rick Segal's blog. I bet Rick will pull it down, but it says "I am so sick of that fat retard….he is like a overgrown child and looks so stupid trying to defend MS as their press turns to shit around them!"

That's getting into the spirit.

There's a couple of good examples over on Shelley Powers' blog: (Ken Camp) "he’s become a drone without new insight and is such a boring read any more than i don’t bother most of the time." (Scott Koon) "I just …. feel smarter since I stopped reading him. I filled my aggreagor with more do-ers and less talkers like him."

Or, how about Comic Strip Blogger? He goes even further with his comic about me. First panel? "That swine Robert Scoble."

Oh, ouch, keep it coming! Who can flame better?