Ahh, Steve Gillmor (who forgot Yahoo’s password, among other things) do you have any idea how many times I’ve forgotten my Yahoo password? Too many. Just today it is asking me to do something to start getting the Videoblog Mailing List emails working again. Sigh. And people wonder why Yahoo doesn’t have a better brand name when compared to Google.

Funny, I’ve never forgotten my Google password (even for things like Gmail). Look into it Yahoo and figure out why that is. There’s a reason: Yahoo forces its own passwords on me by default and I always forget them.

OK, OK, I’m partly at fault here. But, hear me out.

Last year at Gnomedex I had my son demonstrate Second Life up on stage while I was hosting a panel discussion. Someone from Linden Labs (the folks who make Second Life), Beth Goza (she now works at Microsoft), saw that, and told me and my son to knock it off. People under 18 aren’t allowed in Second Life.

So, what did I do? I just told Patrick never to go into Second Life and I didn’t go back into Second Life either.

Problem was, my credit card was being charged $9.95 per month by Linden Labs. I didn’t bother stopping it cause I thought I’d go back at some point.

Well, I just tried to get back into Second Life to cancel my credit card. Problem is, I can’t get in. Someone changed my password.

The other problem? I can’t get my password. I think I signed on with my Microsoft address.

I hate how hard it is to cancel accounts like these. Companies are perfectly willing to charge you forever, even if you don’t use the service one bit.

I think I’ll just call my credit card company and change my card number by saying I lost my card.

Sigh.

UPDATE: I guess banging on Second Life is in vogue this weekend. Valleywag did it too and has tons of comments.

What is Habari?

It’s a new group that’s building new blog software. Why do I care? Because it’ll be interesting to see what a new group comes up with and because I saw several blogs (especially on Chris Davis‘ blog) mention it today.

I’ve seen this happen several times and new companies almost always result out of the effort.

Interesting that at least some people feel that Automattic’s and Six Apart’s things aren’t good enough and want to run in a new direction. I wish them luck and will be watching them.

Alfred Thompson taught high school computer science for eight years and done other academic-related work (he now is in such a role at Microsoft).

I knew he’d have something to say about Steve Jobs’ advice for the school system and he didn’t disappoint. I don’t even mind the little “leave this to an expert” barb in his post aimed at me. He’s right, which is why you should read his post.

One of the best database minds in the world is still missing and his family has called off the search. We’re missing a great San Franciscan and my thoughts are with his family and friends and coworkers at Microsoft.

Tomorrow is President’s day here in the US, but today is Chinese New Year. How did I know that? Google has a fun logo today. Hope all my Chinese friends are having a blast. We might go to San Francisco where they have a big parade and lots of firecrackers. In the meantime, we’re heading to the beach. Have a good Sunday!

I have 469 followers on Twitter. Very amazing service growth. Many of the world’s technologists are on it. Interestingly enough, the guy who started the company (Obvious) that made Twitter only has 578 followers.

Twitter is like the weird offspring that would happen if blogging mated with IM. It lets me write very short blog entries to my friends, letting them know what I’m doing. It’s addictive, especially when you get friends of your own, cause then you can follow them.

Anyway, I have a few problems with Twitter. First, I’d like to add all my followers to my list so I can follow their lives. Instead I have to add them one-by-one, which, makes my job 469 times more difficult. I can understand that they don’t want to see n*n growth, though. Makes scalability a much worse problem than it is.

On the Followers Page, I can’t see which ones I’ve already added as friends. It would be really neat to put a little icon next to each of my followers saying “add as friend.”

Also, I keep forgetting to use Twitter. I set it to automatically SMS me if I forget for 24 hours, but I’d like a toolbar app or something that lets me enter right from the desktop. I know some developers have been working on such Twitter apps, anyone know which one is the best? Since I use Mac and PCs now, which is the best on either platform?

Anyway, I find I keep coming back to Twitter. It’s an interesting way to keep in touch with the lives of your friends, or followers, as it were.

The good news for PodTech keeps rolling along. For those of you who don’t know Eric Rice, he’s the one who got me into Second Life (haven’t been back since my son got kicked out, though) but his skillz are extreme (he has built entire islands of cool stuff including a conference center, a city that included my “very large and evil” software company, and islands for corporate clients.

Today he announced that he’s doing a video show, named “Rezzing,” for PodTech. Virtual Worlds and Gaming won’t be the same.

Oh, and someone asked what the business model of PodTech is. I’ll work on a more complete and in-depth post on that with my management, but really it’s the same business model that content businesses around the world have. Build audiences and introduce those audiences to corporate clients. You can call it advertising. A Second Life interactive world. Or sponsorship. Or BlogHausing. Corporate blogging. ScobleShow. Or a number of other things.

Basically we’re just copying everything that Jason Calacanis does (he proved that networks of social media sites, er blogs, podcasts, etc, have value when he sold Weblogsinc to AOL). Oh, wait, he does a podcast for PodTech too.

My coworker Jeremiah Owyang says he’s not switching from Google Reader until at least a few other people in his trusted network switch too. In reaction to news that Adobe has entered the feed reader race with “myFeedz”. I briefly checked out the Adobe Reader. It’s missing three things that I find addictive about Google’s Reader: well-thought-out keyboard commands, “read-all-feed-items-at-once in a ‘River of News’” and ability to share feed items with others. If your feed reader has those three things, then I want to hear about it and try it out and see how it compares with Google’s Reader.

By the way, I’m using Google Reader right now to build my link blog. If you haven’t checked out my link blog, I think you’ll find it unique. I go through 541 feeds. In the last month I’ve read 21,991 items and shared 1,169 items. You’ll find that it’s totally different from Digg (cause the only one voting here is me, so you get to see what interested me in the feeds) and TechMeme (which only shows you the most popular stuff — I pick technology items. Really I’m doing this for programmers like Chris Messina and Dori Smith, and busy executives, like my boss who don’t have time to dig through thousands of items trying to find what’s good to read).

How do I do my link blog? I set Google Reader to automatically open in the “All Items” view. That’s the “River of News” view. Then I use the keyboard commands to go through my feed items one-by-one. “J” key goes forward. “K” key goes back. “Shift-S” shares an item.

I wish there were a directory of other people’s Link Blogs. Anyone want to start one on a Wiki?

UPDATE: ironically enough, today Google’s servers are misbehaving and aren’t accepting my shared items. Will try again later.

Steve Jobs is right that unions are corrosive on the quality of our schools. Our schools are bad because we can’t get rid of bad teachers. But, it’s worse than that — Steve Jobs’ fix wouldn’t fix the total problem. Patrick’s Mom was a teacher for a while. She left for a variety of reasons, but partly because the pay is so bad for the work you put into that job.

If you want better schools, pay teachers $80,000 a year or more, AND give the staff power to get rid of bad apples (bad pun, given the cause of today’s post, I know) and you’ll see school quality turn around in an instant.

The problem is that the political system here won’t allow politicians to increase taxes to pay for higher school wages and the unions won’t allow reforms to get rid of bad teachers. Instead we get stupid patches to the system like the “no child left behind” initiative which tries to improve results by mandating tests (most teachers I talk with say that initiative is a disaster).

Translation: the school system is just going to keep getting worse and worse. It’s so bad in my neighborhood that people openly talk about how bad it is and most parents here drive their kids 30 to 50 minutes to private schools in Silicon Valley.

We all know the school systems here (especially in California, where per-school spending is behind most other states) sucks. We just aren’t willing to do the things that need to be done to correct the problem.

Steve Jobs deserves praise for at least speaking half the truth.

Aside: he also says that he expects to lose some business because of his stance. I think he’s being disingenous there. I was on the technology committee at my son’s school. The teachers had almost all the power. If the school bought technology they didn’t like (hint: it almost always was Apple tech) they rebelled against it and caused the school management a lot of trouble.

Teachers don’t like this system either, which is why they cheered Steve Jobs’ remarks. Think about it. If you worked with someone dragging your profession down (or, worse, ill preparing kids in a grade before yours) wouldn’t you want to get rid of them too?

UPDATE: Dan Farber says pretty much the same thing I do too. So does Don Dodge, who then goes further and says the problem is a lack of incentive. I totally agree with that too. I know many college professors who are teaching the same class they did years ago. There’s no incentive to innovate, even when the world is changing around them.