Ted Pattison was one of the highest rated speakers at the VSLive's that I used to help plan back in the 1990s. Nice to see that he's moved his work to the Web with a new Office 2007 show on Channel 9 — new screencasts will be released soon, most of which are centered on Office 2007.

When I was in Montana I kept hearing about RightNow. Everyone there is proud of the company and its success, particularly at the TechRanch where I had lunch on Thursday. Now I see Tom Foremski writing about Greg Gianforte, RightNow's CEO, and his new book. Added to my reading list.

I'd love to meet Greg too. Sounds like a real interesting guy. It's hard enough to make a successful startup happen in Silicon Valley where there's lots of entrepreneurial support around (and a deep geek culture) but it's gotta be 10x harder to make happen in Montana (fewer people live in the entire state than live in San Jose, for instance).

You'll be hearing a lot more about RightNow Technologies, I predict.

I saw a good example of why I knew I was in Silicon Valley this weekend. This car, in front of me, had a bumper sticker that said, simply:

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

What's worse, is I knew just what it meant.

I'm still trying to figure out, though, why a Gnome was in Montana. Maybe they'll come to Gnomedex? (This was shot on a car outside the hospital in Billings, MT, where my mom was staying).

I love Lifehacker.

What do I love about it? It gives you all kinds of cool tips about how to live life better. Sometimes deep stuff, mostly not, but always cool and useful. Like this, Gina, who does Lifehacker, links to the Photojojo blog, which shows you how to do photo blocks.

Here's another entry that shows you how to upload video from your cell phone.

Wow, I missed the first Virtual BARcamp, hosted by Eric Rice. Luckily Scott Beale was there with his virtual camera. Inside joke, Scott can always be seen at Silicon Valley geek events with his very cool Canon camera.

Trivia? What does "BAR" stand for? Bay Area Rejects. The whole BARcamp movement started after a few geeks in the Bay Area didn't get invites to Tim O'Reilly's FOOcamp (FOO stands for "Friends Of O'Reilly").

Me? I'm having an AFD-BBQ on July 2 after Gnomedex. What does that stand for? Alimony Freedom Day. I can't get everyone in, but if you wanna come, drop me an email.

Update: there's even a Flickr feed for the virtual BARcamp.

One thing I notice? Way too clean. The real BARcamps have sleeping bags, pizza boxes, T-Shirt boxes, and lots of other geek detritous lying around.

I'm seeing all this news about a French video sharing startup, named vpod.tv, and thought it sounded familiar. Then I see that Rodrigo Schulz is behind it. Oh, yeah, he hosted me for dinner when I was in Paris! Congrats dude, can't wait to see what your new startup brings.