A couple of days ago Shel Israel announced that he was joining FastCompany.tv — the online business and technology video network that I’m heading.

The announcement is true, and I’m excited by what Shel brings to the table. We’re working on several other shows, my goal is to have half a dozen shows by the end of the year, but that’ll depend on getting sponsors, which may be tough in this year of economic turmoil.

Anyway, Shel is the guy who co-authored Naked Conversations (our corporate blogging book — we interviewed 188 businesses about how they were using blogs) with me. Which brings to mind that photo above. Let’s clear this up. We were NOT naked. Just took our shirts off. And that photo was taken in Mike Arrington’s backyard during a TechCrunch party held in honor of our book’s launch.

Some other stories? We argued for at least a month over the book before finding a way we could work together. I still remember pacing around building 119 at Microsoft while getting chewed out by Shel for something or another. One thing I learned from that process, though, is that having people around me who didn’t agree with me made me a better person and brought a lot more value out of me than if I had yes men or women around.

I can’t wait to start work with Shel and get into a good argument with him. Only difference this time? We’ll try to do that on camera since it is pretty entertaining.

If you don’t know who Shel is he’s helped dozens of companies start up in Silicon Valley and used to own his own PR firm. Recently he consulted with tons of startups. Nine of them went onto win Demo God awards (he’s down at Demo right now covering that for Fast Company).

His show will be called “GlobalNeighborhoods TV” and it’ll be interesting to see the conversations he starts on his show and the insights he finds about the new business that’s happening. Welcome Shel!

UPDATE: I should have credited the photo to JD Lasica.

At Davos last week I met some remarkable technologists. But one guy who I had never heard of before had an interesting story: his firm turns methane gas into diamonds. Hence my sensationalistic headline of turning farts to diamonds (farts contain mostly methane gas).

The guy is Neil Kane, President of Advanced Diamond Technologies, and that’s him above showing his diamond film that was deposited on a bed of silicon to Sun Microsystems’ lead researcher John Gage.

On the bus ride home from Davos to Zurich he sat next to me and told me how the process works and just how useful it is.

Turns out methane has one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. If you burn methane you’ll probably get a little soot, which is those carbon atoms showing up. But if you remove the oxygen, throw in a cocktail of a few other secret gasses, and heat it all up you can deposit those carbon items on a starter bed of diamond.

Now, why would they do that?

Well, turns out that diamond has a few interesting properties. We all know it’s the hardest substance around, right? Well, I didn’t know that if you have diamond on two surfaces that it’s among the lowest friction coefficient around, too. Translation: if you coat bearing surfaces with diamond you’ll save energy and the bearings will last a lot longer.

What else are they doing with it? Well, did you know your cell phone has several quartz crystals in it? Why? The crystals vibrate and keep the clock rates all synchronized. Diamond, he tells me, is even better than quartz for that use because it is more highly tunable and energy efficient and can be made to fit in a smaller space than quartz can.

Anyway, it’s great to hear about good old American innovation that’s happening in the midwest (the company is located near Chicago).

And if you think I’m being original with my headline here, I’m not. As they say “farts are a girl’s best friend!”

No, you’re right, that won’t go over well if I try it on Maryam.

Enough said. I saw the movie last night with the Kyte.tv team who are hard at work at a ton of new stuff for that video network. The movie is a great use of 3D and Imax technology. Make sure you see it at an Imax theater. If you don’t like U2 or Bono, though, stay home cause this is a 3D concert experience.

Yossi Vardi has made my time here in Davos simply incredible. I am in deeply in his debt for what he’s personally done for me. The Shabbat dinner he took me to last night was simply incredible. I filmed an intimate traditional ceremony there. It is the one video I’m keeping for myself and I will treasure those moments more than my walk with Mark Zuckerberg.

How special was that? Well, Klaus Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, told me that it is his favorite event of the whole week. You can’t get in without a private invite and it was one of those things that you just can’t believe you’re part of. I was pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Who is Yossi? You can read about him here but that really doesn’t do it justice. He has the ear of the Israeli president and is very influential in Davos. If you ever get a chance to go to Davos and Yossi wants you to go somewhere you go. Yesterday I had paid about $80 for a lunch and he walked up and told me “you aren’t going to go to that.” He then said “follow me” where he brought me to a lunch where there I got a lot of the photos on my Flickr stream. When Queen Rania of Jordan walks into lunch (she’s talking to the head of Columbia University in this photo) you KNOW you are in an interesting lunch.

Thank you Yossi for your friendship and mentorship. It’s not many people who’ve had such a deep impact on the future of my life as you’ve had. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yossi has been a friend of mine for 12 years now. We met after I started one of the first Web sites to support and evangelize ICQ (his kids started that, which they sold for $407 million to AOL after 18 months in business). Everytime he meets me he greets me with a good joke, a big hug, and a warm personality. He treats everyone the same, by the way, from world leaders to everyday people he meets. He’s really an incredible person and someone I feel very blessed in knowing.

UPDATE: I just filmed Yossi Vardi who talked about this morning’s breakfast he hosted.

I’m attending a concert tonight, then going skiing tomorrow. On Monday I’m traveling. So, probably won’t see you for 48 hours. Which is just fine cause I put up 48 videos from the World Economic Forum you can watch.

UPDATE: Thanks Shel for pointing out that my photo stream on Flickr is quite active. I have a bunch of photos I’ll have to wait to upload. My photo stream is here. More to come when I get home on Monday night.