The pumpkins are back

I can’t believe it’s almost October. In the past week the pumpkins showed up in Half Moon Bay, so I took some shots. We should do a party at the pumpkin patch again. Anyone want to meet up next Saturday?

Piles o' pumpkins

Google is coming, Google is coming!

Mike Arrington says that Google has been showing around a new social networking tool that’s aimed at competing with Facebook.

Why is Google so concerned by Facebook?

Easy, Google is the world’s best intention concentration engine.

Think about it. If you intend to do something, like buy a car, where are you going to go? Google!

And, aren’t you concentrated into a community of other people who also intend to buy a car? Yes!

Name another system that does a better job of concentrating intention the way that Google does. I can’t.

Well, until Facebook came along.

Now Facebook has several ways to track intention. They have a great set of groups that you can join. If you were intending to do something, like buy a car, wouldn’t you want to talk with other people who’ve bought the car you’re looking at? Absolutely.

Did you know that if you click an interest that someone has put in that you can see all the other members on Facebook who also have that interest?

That’s a concentration effect that Google doesn’t have.

Or, do a search for “Saturn Aura.” I find a bunch of groups by Saturn car owners. That’s another way that people are concentrated.

Anyway, all this concentration of people into groups really pisses off Google. Why? Because THAT is what advertisers BUY on Google!

Google was getting used to having the only advertising story where some company like General Motors could buy audiences that were concentrated into little buckets. Now Facebook is coming on strong and, so, Google needed to jump in with an alternative.

Can’t wait to see it.

Dave Winer says I sound like a monkey

Hmmm, I used the words “social graph” in this interview with Randi Zuckerberg, director of business development at Facebook.

Dave Winer, yesterday, said that anyone
who uses that term sounds like a monkey.

She gave her definition of Social Graph at about 14:39. Everyone who is talking about this should listen to this part of the interview.

I disagree with Dave Winer. The Social Graph is NOT my social network.

My Social Network is my friends list.

But the Social Graph shows a LOT more than that.

For instance, did you know you can see everyone who is into skiing on Facebook?

Did you know you can see everyone who is into Daft Punk?

Those people are NOT in my social network. But they are part of the social graph that you can study on Facebook.

Interesting how we have disagreements about language.

So, what would you call what you can see in Facebook? It isn’t just my social network, though. Try again.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/09/PID_012533/Podtech_RandiZuckerberg2.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4118/the-first-sister-of-facebook &totalTime=2149000&breadcrumb=c7c2f1aff4a34b28932044e9ecd86abc]

Callwave will change your phone system

I love Callwave. Here you get to see what it does that makes your phone much more useful.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/09/PID_012601/Podtech_CallWave.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4188/a-much-better-kind-of-voicemail-callwave &totalTime=419000&breadcrumb=96943a894aa14232b2ed38f35244ce4f]

Shel Israel on preparing for Demo

Shel Israel, blog here, is the guy who coauthored Naked Conversations with me. I’ve never had him on my show before today. But, you might not know that Shel has helped launch countless Silicon Valley companies. He’s been to Demo (the conference coming up next week) more than anyone I know. The companies he’s helped have won “DemoGod” awards seven times. He wrote a newsletter about conferences, too, so knows what he is talking about.

Anyway, we talk about lots of stuff in this half hour conversation. Hope you enjoy it. If you’re a company going to Demo you should listen to his advice.

I love any conference that bans PowerPoint. I recently started out a speech saying “I used to work at Microsoft and sat through my share of boring PowerPoint presentations so I promised myself never to do that to an audience again.” That got me my biggest applause line.

Anyway, this conversation goes south a few times, but that’s just how Shel and I work together. Stick in there and there’s some good stuff.

I gotta go back and find out if you can win a DemoGod award with a crappy product. Shel’s dog interrupted his answer on that. I’ll try to get him to write the answer here.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/09/PID_012602/Podtech_ShelIsrael.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4189/getting-ready-for-demo-with-shel-israel &totalTime=2023000&breadcrumb=d357d005375740508abe6924afc23dc3]

Best sandwich in America

Award winning Lobster sandwich (according to MSNBC)

Ahh, now you have even more of a reason to come to Half Moon Bay to my house to get on the ScobleShow (I’ve done a couple of interviews today already here — tons of interesting stuff is coming out next week at Demo and I’ve been getting some sneak peaks this week). Now you can come and get the “one of the top five sandwiches in America,” according to MSNBC.

In fact, I think we’ll go there today. Want to meet at Sam’s Chowder House at 2:30 p.m.? Yummy!

UPDATE: that’s the photo I shot of my lunch today. It was definitely yummy. I like Salumi’s up in Seattle better, though. But maybe that’s just me.