Heh, instead of going to events today I stayed home and am playing with event sites. It must have been because of my visit to Upcoming.org yesterday (that’s my photo of Upcoming.org co-founder Gordon Luk). Anyway, Webware today writes about Yelp’s new events functionality, which focused my attention even more on the event sites.

I’ve been going through the two sites (Yelp and Upcoming) comparing their approaches to event listings. If you don’t know about Yelp, it’s a site for reviewing restaurants while Upcoming is a site almost wholly focused around events and conferences.

But before we get back to the event sites we should talk about the newest Web term to be passed around: bacn.

You know, we have spam and now we have “bacon” without the “o”.

What is bacn? It’s the emails that get generated by all these social networking sites (and other sites) when you sign in, or get a notification, or when you try to add friends (that generates bacn for your friends). It’s all covered on Andy Quayle’s site. According to Chris Brogan he was the first to use it. Anyway, that term has been showing up in tons of conversations I’ve been having lately.

So, back to the events sites.

Upcoming.org definitely has the geek events down. Search for “Lunch 2.0″ and you find a ton. But what if you want to do something a bit more, say, entertaining? Say Opera in the Park (Yelp) in San Francisco? Here’s the same listing on Upcoming.org.

What do you notice?

For me, Upcoming is colder. Yelp has links to restauants and has a more pleasing design. At least to my eye.

So, why am I not switching all my event stuff off of Upcoming? Two reasons:

1. Facebook. Yeah, yeah, I know you’re getting sick of hearing me talk about Facebook but it is now the MUST HAVE portal for my digital life. If you don’t have a Facebook application I’m not going to be all that excited about you. So get one. Upcoming has it.
2. My “friends.” I have more than 200 friends that I’ve hand picked on Upcoming. I don’t have any friends on Yelp. Actually, that’s not true. I just added a couple of people I know who I trust to bring me to good restaurants and events. But, still, that’s almost zero. Truth is about these kinds of sites that they really work a lot better after you get a bunch of friends onto them. So, I’m not likely to leave a site where I’ve gotten it all setup and working well and where I have a good group of friends I trust.

Anyway, more on Yelp over on TechMeme. Which one are you going to use? And, yes, I’ll add anyone as a friend who asks me. I’m Scobleizer on Yelp and RobertScoble on Upcoming.

I’d love to know how you like these sites in comparison to Eventful which I haven’t tried much yet or Confabb? UPDATE: I forgot about ZVents, which I’ve had a good look at but forgot about over the past year. Any other event sites we should know about? Yeah, I know there’s one built into Facebook but we’ll leave that one off the table for now.

My column is up about microblogging services and Mansueto Digital President Ed Sussman interviewed me about all this stuff.

You’ve heard about it on TechMeme.

But here’s a video demo. I have a real video demo of Vtap coming out in about a week. This is killer stuff and works on a variety of cell phones — they demoed it to me on Windows Mobile, some Nokia phones, and the iPhone. Coming September 10th. I’ll let you know when the full interview and demo are up.

[kyte.tv 6118]

I had lunch with Dave Morin of Facebook today (he’s one of the key guys on the application platform) and that led to some brainstorming about what would happen if Facebook were to open up a hotel or casino. Watch my Kyte video for that (embedded on this post).

But, in other news, someone just attacked me for my use of Facebook. Says I treat it as a “one way” medium to push out content to my unsuspecting friends.

Such a claim isn’t worth a link or acknowledgement because it demonstrates a total misunderstanding of how Facebook works.

What do I mean? It’s impossible to treat Facebook as a one-way medium. Here’s why: when I sign into Facebook I don’t see the stuff I’ve published on my home page. No, instead I see a bunch of stuff my friends have published.

Here, try it yourself. Sign into Facebook and visit the “home page” which is where your News Feed is.

Do you see anything you published yourself? I don’t.

I see a link from Teresa Klein. I see Ryan Westrom writing on my wall. I see Eric Auchard backsliding onb his vacation. I see Scott Westerman posting Jeremiah Owyang’s White Paper. I see Jeremy Wagstaff and Walt Mossberg joining a group for the Wall Street Journal Online. Tom Conrad is attending Coda. Chris Messina posted a news story. Dave Davison joined the group Nobody for President. Dave Morin wrote on my wall. Ken Kaplan added “people” to his interests. Jeff Grosse commented on Kevin Dugan’s video. Andrew Bourland sent me a gift. And on and on and on.

I read this feed a lot more than I think about writing on my blog lately.

What’s even more interesting is how Facebook picks stuff from my 4,775 friends to put on my wall.

Dave told me there’s a set of algorithms that keep track of which friends of yours are closer friends to you than others. For instance, if you write on someone’s wall, you’ll get more of their items. I’ll do some other tests to reverse engineer the News Feed’s algorithm a bit.

Anyway, back to the idea of a Facebook Hotel.

Think about how a business would change if it knew every one of its customers had a Facebook account.

I was thinking of a hotel/casino where when I walked in the iPod in the room was playing the music that I had set as my favorite on my Facebook profile. The digital screens in my room had all my photos and some random photos from my friends. My favorite movies and TV shows were on the video device. The bar knew my favorite drink and how I liked it made.

That got me thinking about how I’d change my business after I knew everything about my customers.

Thought of the day.

Oh, one thing? In my Facebook Hotel anyone who just attacks me would be deleted. So, if that’s your idea of fun, hang out somewhere else cause I’m starting to delete comments from people who don’t add any value here. Get your own blog if all you want to do is attack me.

We’re about to watch a HD-DVD movie so I thought I’d bang out a little post about Kyte vs. PodTech, since that’s what I’ve been playing with lately.

Why mention the HD-DVD? Well, I am happy that I picked HD-DVD as my home format since today DreamWorks and Paramount said they’d support that format exclusively. I remember when Chris Coulter argued with me about this, saying the movie studios would go exclusively Blue-ray. I love it when he turns out to be wrong. It doesn’t happen that often.

Anyway, that takes me to what I’ve been doing at work. Playing with video. Heck, it’s my job.

UPDATE: Adobe just announced a new Flash player that lets you play H.264 files. Richard MacManus has the details on that announcement. Since Flash is used by both PodTech and Kyte (and many other video distributors like YouTube and Blip) this will probably have a big impact on the future of video on the Web. UPDATE2: Ryan Stewart links to the best reports on this topic and talks about what it means. Anyway, back to the comparison of Podtech vs. Kyte.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/08/PID_012261/Podtech_ElliottSoloway.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/3927/improving-education-with-teacher-of-the-year &totalTime=1653000&breadcrumb=ef97f164f2e64ca48a7206c042ae2119]

So, I did this interview a week ago in Seattle with Elliot Soloway. He’s the teacher who had Larry Page in his classroom. This is probably my best interview, at least according to my email. You really responded to this one, which is about how to improve the educational system. Anyway, today we put up the other recording of this interview and you get to see how I record my Kyte.tv shows. Which leads me to the point of this post:

Here’s a good place to compare Kyte.tv with PodTech.net.

First, here’s Soloway’s interview on PodTech. And here it is on Kyte. Actually the Kyte one was split into two parts cause you can’t put more than 20 minutes up on it. So here’s the second part.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you really can’t compare Kyte to PodTech. It’s like comparing Apples to Oranges. But why let that stand in the way? Heheh.

CAN YOU UPLOAD?

PodTech: no.
Kyte: yes.

This is an important distinction. Kyte is participatory while PodTech is solely a media distribution system. Do note that you can upload your own video to my Kyte channel, or you can open your own. Click “Produce on this Channel” to record your own video and start a conversation with me.

CAN YOU CHAT?

PodTech: no.
Kyte: yes.

Kyte’s real magic is in the chat room. It’s open 24 hours a day and you can say anything you want. But unlike the chat room on other places like on Justin.tv or Ustream.tv, you can not just type text, but can record audio and video to the chat room too. This is a HUGE reason why I am using Kyte instead of Ustream or Justin.tv.

CAN YOU WATCH ON APPLE TV/IPHONE/MEDIA CENTER/IPOD/ZUNE?

PodTech: yes.
Kyte: no.

A lot of you who watch my show do it by subscribing to my RSS feed and downloading my show in MPG4 format to your various devices. Since Kyte is Flash based and my show on PodTech is both Flash and MPG4 based you can only view PodTech stuff on your devices.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER QUALITY?

PodTech is, by far. Why? Because Rocky (my editor) brings my video into Final Cut Pro in near HD quality levels, edits it there, and then exports it to MPG4. This process takes a LOT longer than Kyte, but results in MUCH higher quality that you can see if you watch both videos. Oh, if you want to watch my ScobleShow videos in the best quality possible, you’ll want to download them. Look for the little “Download this” video. The “Video” file (here’s the one for Elliot Soloway’s interview) is much better quality than the one that plays in the player that’s embedded above.

WHICH ONE WORKS ON MY NOKIA N95?

Both do, but with Kyte you can also upload your own videos and you can chat. PodTech looks better, though, due to the higher quality compression and techniques that we use.

WHICH PLAYER LOOKS NICER ON YOUR BLOG?

Well, I think the Kyte one looks sort of goofy. They are redesigning it, Kyte’s CEO told me today. But for now PodTech wins.

CAN YOU USE EITHER ON FACEBOOK?

PodTech: No.
Kyte: Yes.

Kyte’s Facebook integration is quite nice. Gives you the exact same stuff that their Web client gives you. And integrates into your mini-feed on your profile page so your visitors know when you’ve done a new Kyte video.

CAN YOU UPLOAD WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF FINISHING A RECORDING?

PodTech: No.
Kyte: Yes.

Remember yesterday when I was recording the HP Garage? That video was available for you to watch within five minutes of me hitting “stop” on the recorder. The same video on PodTech? Will take hours. Why? I have to hook my camera up to my computer. I have to rewind the tape. That takes a few minutes. Then I have to open up Final Cut Pro on my Mac. Then I have to hit record, which starts the tape playing. Now I have to wait an hour, if I recorded for an hour. Now I need to edit. PodTech puts a couple of things onto the beginning and ending of a video. Even if I don’t do any other editing that process still takes a few minutes. Now I need to save/export/compress the video. That takes more than an hour. Sometimes more than two hours. Even on a really expensive Mac Pro with lots of RAM and the fastest hard drives and processors available. So, fastest possible turnaround time for PodTech is more than two hours and probably more. Kyte? Less than five minutes. Just hit “stop.” Write a headline. Write a few tags. Hit “broadcast.” If you’re on a fast network it goes even faster. Often I’m up and running within one minute of hitting “stop.”

WHAT ABOUT CONTROL FOR ADVERTISERS

PodTech: yes.
Kyte: no.

This is a major reason to build your own media distribution system like we have at PodTech. Inserting an advertisement? Possible on PodTech but not easily doable on Kyte. Keeping track of every little referer? Possible on PodTech, but Kyte gives very little detail and what it does give you is open to the public to see (like you can tell how many people are watching now, how many referering URLs there are).

CAN YOU USE IT ON A MOBILE PHONE

PodTech: you can watch, not share.
Kyte: yes (but only on some phones, iPhones, for instance, can’t record video).

This is the reason I kept my Nokia N95. If you load the Kyte mobile app you can upload video, watch video, participate in the chat (using text/audio/or video) and more.

CAN YOU EMBED EITHER ON WORDPRESS.COM?

PodTech: yes.
Kyte: yes.

Embedding stuff makes it more likely other bloggers will use it because it doesn’t require sending your users off to another site. Lately I’ve noticed that bloggers are being selfish with their traffic and are linking to things a lot less often.

CONCLUSION

I’ll continue using both, but thought you’d find the comparison interesting because Kyte just got funded by Nokia and is doing some of the most interesting stuff out there.

I love Kyte and will keep using it for the reasons above. I’m still on blog vacation, so maybe at a future time I’ll compare Kyte to YouTube and the really nice Facebook video app, among others.

What do you think? Which video system is getting your attention? Why?

Any others out there that should get my attention?

OK, Maryam, let’s start the movie now. Who wants some popcorn? Yummy!

This is not a blog.

Heh. I’m SO enjoying the blog break. I think I’ll keep it going for a few more days cause I’m not ready to come back. More on that when I get back.

Tonight, though, I dropped by BarCamp Block and got some historical video so wanted to point that out. Historical in that I aimed my Mac’s camera at a few of the people who started the BarCamp movement. Tantek Celik, Jeff Lindsay, and Ross Mayfield, among others. If you don’t know about Kyte.tv it lets me turn on my Mac’s camera and record conversations without special equipment and without getting people to be TOO goofy. Although Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText (where the first BarCamp was held) gets a bit goofy for my Mac. Yes, this was AFTER the BarCamp party where free drinks were liberally handed out.

If you are missing the BarCampBlock that’s going on now you really are missing something special. I didn’t attend Saturday’s sessions because Maryam and I were at a birthing class having our own educational experience. When I arrived tons of people told me I had missed the best BarCamp ever. That’s saying something because there’s been more than 200 BarCamps all over the world and it all started here. Read Brian Solis’ account to see just how special it is. He writes “The second anniversary of Barcamp was nothing short of extraordinary.”

Speaking of BarCamp, thank you to HP. HP really tried to come through and open up the garage but they have agreements with the neighbors that they can’t break. I know that my blog earlier last week was sent all over the company. That said, watch my Kyte channel tomorrow for more news about the HP garage. I’m quite honored by what they did — they got 12 of my Facebook friends into see the garage, which, of course, we’ll film and share with you.

Oh, and don’t miss the video we put up last week on ScobleShow.

Scott Klemmer, assistant professor in the computer science department at Stanford. Could you get into Stanford and have a chat with a professor who works across the hall from where Google was started. 48 minutes with tons of info on the latest computer science research.

Marc Canter, founder of Macromedia. Among other things. An hour with Marc. Marc links to the things we talk about which are as varied as Jewish food to digital lifestyle aggregation. Don’t miss this one.

New companies: Palore and Magnify and more over on ScobleShow.com too.

Anyway, keep watching my Kyte.tv channel cause I’m having a lot of fun putting stuff up there.

More on BarCamp on Google Blog Search — there are several BarCamps going on right now around the world.

Anyway, see you in a few more days.

Oh, and tomorrow come and join us in Alameda for a Photowalking. Thomas Hawk has more details on that.