While I’m traipsing around the US the ScobleShow must go on. Today there’s a fun set of videos (demo, interview) with Maxthon’s CEO, Nathaniel Jacobson. That’s Chris Pirillo’s favorite Web browser. The demo shows off some great features that IE7 and Firefox don’t yet have.

We’re in Iowa.

Weird, I just ran into Jake Ludington. He’s a geek that works with Chris Pirillo on Lockergnome and is home for the holidays (home being Des Moines) so thought he’d drop by and see what all the hoopla is about.

I’m still sitting next to Dan Balz, of the Washington Post. I turn my computer around and tell him “Wall Street Journal kicked your butt on Memeorandum.”

“What?” he responded.

But, the Washington Post has the top post with Bob Woodward’s tapes with Gerald Ford who disagreed with George Bush about invading Iraq. Dan said “that’s as it should be, Bob has the biggest story.”

One of the campaign aides asked me “what time did you go to sleep?” I answered “around 2 a.m.”

He said something like “you couldn’t turn off the RSS tap either, huh?”

Another key moment for me? Being in a small New Orleans house with John Edwards, his campaign staff checking their Blackberries for news reports. Yes, they read TechMeme and Memeorandum. Gabe will like that. Oh, and Technorati and IceRocket.

They’ve discovered that by using “the RSS tap” they can listen and talk about what people say, even when they are getting called idiots for various things.

If I were on a campaign I’d start a blog called “the idiotic thing” which would display the idiotic thing they did and either apologize for it, or answer it.

I’d add a blog of idiotic things to my RSS tap.

Heck, I might start one. Or Maryam might start one for me.

I’m sitting with Dan Balz, political journalist for the Washington Post. He wrote this story of the events this morning.

I am getting back to looking at how technology is changing campaigns. Getting back to my geek roots, as it were.

He’s been at the Post since 1978.

Technology is radically changing campaigns, he says. First he’s no longer writing just for paper. Dan told me he’s updated his story several times in the past few hours, plus he’s been on radio and TV interviews. The Post wants him to produce podcasts and video blogs too, or look for opportunities in bringing other media onto the Post’s pages.

He’s typing furiously into a Dell laptop — is now rewriting his article for the newspaper that everyone will get in the morning — and has a Verizon Wireless card.

The world of politics is changing, he told me, because now a candidate must give dozens of interviews to tons of different people with small audiences. The age of talking to one guy who had a massive audience is probably over. Even if you leave blogs out of the story even the mainstream press is seeing its audiences split up into smaller and smaller niches with more and more pieces. I remember back to journalism school where I saw pictures of the Presidential press corps back in the 1960s: there were only a handful of journalists. Today, even for news like today, dozens of different camera crews show up, along with dozens more of print journalists, photographers, everyday citizens, and radio journalists.

One other thing that we chatted about is business models. He knows his organization is under pressure to not only grow audience (he says the Washington Post is read now more than ever, but increasingly only online) but also figure out how to make money with its increasingly online audience. He’s not the only journalist to talk with me about that lately — seems the entire industry is focused on how to make money to continue to fund content.

Anyway, I’ll try to get back to tech a little bit. Ahh, Apple’s in trouble over stock option back dating. That’s a tough issue to chew on, but then ripping off investors isn’t exactly sexy.

I’ve been link blogging a bunch of stuff and keeping it relatively politics free.

But, I’m not going to write a lot about John Edwards. If you care about what happened here today he’s been doing a different interview every 15 minutes, just follow the reports on Google News, and just stood on the lawn next to a destroyed Ninth Ward home in New Orleans and talked with dozens of press here (I counted 20 video cameras). Translation: you can read a ton about what he said, with a lot more coming soon.

Some notes: Fox News actually gave him the best interview and asked the most insightful questions.

Matt Lauer, of Today Show, asked him if he was going to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate, which drew the biggest laugh from Edwards.

I’ve been getting access to everything. Even back stage stuff when he comes into one of the rebuilt New Orleans homes to get warm. Well, we’re off to Iowa now.

The one consistent theme that resonates with me is that Edwards is asking people to get involved to fix America. The taxi driver yesterday who drove me from the airport said he thought Edwards sounded a lot like John Kennedy. I hear that on the front lawn today.

I just got a look at the schedule. Every minute of the day is accounted for. It’s 5 a.m. and in front of me is a bank of TV cameras, satellite trucks, and a devastated neighorhood.

Watching mainstream media work is interesting. There are six camera crews here. Edwards will be on the Today show with Matt Lauer.

Today we’ll be going to Iowa, then to New Hampshire. In Iowa he’ll be meeting with a group of bloggers and doing a town-hall meeting.

I’m wearing my ConvergeSouth shirt in honor of Sue Polinsky, who really is responsible for getting us in a position for me to get here.

Regarding the neighborhoods here, it’s dark, so I can’t see the full extent of the devastation, but the little bit I can see is simply horrific. Driving along I saw boarded up homes and buildings. Many of which still have spray-paint messages left by rescuers that say whether or not there were any bodies inside.

I’m in the front yard of a home that still is ripped apart. Most of the neighborhood is living in white trailers brought here by FEMA.

None of my words, nor any of the video or pictures you’ll eventually see, will really bring you how bad it really is.