You might have noticed that I’ve slowed down my posting here. That’s cause I crammed a lot of family time into the past week. Gonna be away in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. Traveling today. I expect I’ll get lots of video up on Qik on my Qik channel. I also have a Nikon D3, so will try to post lots of photos. See ya tomorrow, got about 20 hours of traveling ahead of me.

My best birthday present? Dave Winer gave me a little tiny adapter for my MacMini. What does it do? It plugs into the audio-out port of the Mini and converts that port into an optical out one. So, now my optical cable plugs into that adapter instead of my headphone jack. My receiver has optical ports. If you have a recent receiver your receiver probably has optical ports too.

Man, what a difference that makes. My Mac Mini sounds a LOT better now. Dave Winer said it was the best thing he did to his Mac Mini too.

I wonder how many people have Mac Minis and don’t even know that it has optical out capabilities, but you gotta get that little adopter first.

Thanks Dave for making my system sound a lot better!

Why does this work? My theory? The digital-to-analog converters in the MacMini suck when compared to the ones in my Denon receiver.

Last night I took Patrick to the Crunchies, where we sat in the last row. Definitely the highlight of the show was when Apple won a Crunchie for the iPhone. Problem was that Mike Arrington doesn’t have any pull at Apple — they refused to send anyone to pick up the award.

So, who picked up the award? Fake Steve Jobs, of course, only he did it through a video. Beware of the language, if you’re going to play that around the kiddies this morning.

Oh, after the Crunchies? Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, came over and we had a really nice chat.

It’s my birthday today (I’m 43) and, as a gift, PodTech just put up a bunch of stuff I did. That means the last PodTech ScobleShow has just been posted. Some really killer stuff, too, including interviews with my first girlfriend, Xbox Live’s Larry Hryb, Doug Engelbart, a killer 3D search interface, and much more. Enjoy and can’t wait for March 3.

Next week at Davos, though, we’ll post videos to my Qik channel from the World Economic Forum.

I got slammed on some blogs for not writing about Kenya’s problems. Truth is I missed that story because I was busy with CES and MacWorld and Fast Company stuff. Ethan Zuckerman, who founded Global Voices Online (which +is+ the right blog to keep up with human rights blogging from around the world comes to my defense, which I greatly appreciate).

Guy Kawasaki had a great guest post from a blogger who was staying in Kenya and barely escaped.

But the question about why the tech blogosphere doesn’t write about these kinds of things isn’t really a fair one. I write about technology. Gadgets. Interview technologists (last night, for instance, I videoed from inside Yahoo’s Brickhouse on my Qik channel).

I don’t usually write about stuff that I don’t have first-hand knowledge of. I’m not in Kenya. The Kenya story, as awful as it is, really doesn’t impact the tech world that much (and if you read Global Voices Online, which you should, you’ll see that Kenya is far from the only place in the world where awful stuff is going on).

That said, if I hadn’t been so busy and hadn’t been keeping up with my feed reading I would have put more things about this story on my link blog.

But you should read Ethan’s blog post. He’s right. We write about things we know about through a personal connection. I’m hoping to expand my personal connections next week at the World Economic Forum where we’ll talk more about this, and other issues that don’t seem to — on the surface — affect the tech industry.

Last night one of my videos took down Qik.com. Why? It got onto Digg.

Which video was it? The one with Violet Blue, the sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, telling how Steve Jobs told her off for asking for a picture of him.

A perfect storm. A video with a sex angle. A Steve Jobs angle. A conflict angle. And short enough to keep a 14-year-old’s attention. Plus there’s a Google employee and a string of Apple Air computers in the video. Can I fit in any more?

The execs at Qik told me they saw more than 20,000 visits in one hour last night. Had to open up more bandwidth at their hosting company and all that. Everything is back online now. Violet has more details on her blog.

By the way, I’ve been getting a stream of interesting videos.

Here’s a list:

Esther Dyson (famous technologist) who demonstrates 23-and-me (a DNA mapping service that she’s on the board of directors of).
Adobe’s Mark Anders, Sr. Principal Scientist, who tells me about Thermo, a developer tool his team is working on. I met him in the street while walking through San Francisco.
A tour through the Nikon D3, a $5,000 professional photojournalist camera (they loaned me one for the next month). Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.
An interview with Qik’s executives, who tell me what’s coming on their service.
Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati. We were on a panel discussion at MacWorld. I was trying to get him to talk about the new thing he’s working on, but he wouldn’t crack. He also told me he ordered an Apple Air.
Leo Laporte, famous podcaster, who we ran into in the hallway at MacWorld. He does This Week in Tech, among other tech shows.
Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv dropped in for a chat in the MacWorld hallway.
Ryan Block of Engadget. I try to get him to talk shit about his competitors, but he wouldn’t take the bait. Which is why Engadget is the #1 gadget blog in the world.
Pete Cashmore founder of Mashable. It’s the first time I’ve met him. He told me that he tried to get a ticket to TechCrunch’s Crunchies and got refused. Ahh, the competitive drama you hear about on the floor of MacWorld. I’ll be at the Crunchies (that’s tomorrow).
A first look at NEC’s new curved screen. I’d rather just have a 30-inch screen.
A look at a new Sprint wifi hub that’ll integrate with EVDO modems. I want one of these. Part I. Part II.
MacWorld vendor, Equilibrium, shows off a video distribution system. Might come in useful at Fast Company.tv.
A look at ProClip, which lets you put cell phones onto the dashboard of your car. Pretty neat.
My son’s first review of Apple’s Air.
First look at Apple’s new Air computer in the Apple booth at MacWorld. Part I, Part II.

This stuff is from CES:

Part of a Jason Calacanis interview I did at the BlogHaus.
A tour of Garmin’s booth where I saw some of their new GPS devices and got the details. Part I, Part II.
A tour of the “in-car-technology hall” at the Consumer Electronics’ show. Part I. Part II, Part III. Some monster cars and trucks!
Interview of Chad and Steve, founders of YouTube.
Interview of Bruce Howard, CEO of LightGlove, which is a wireless mouse that you wear on your hand. Really cool new toy.
First look at the Asus Eee-PC, a super small PC.
First look at iTunes Tuneup Companion. Fixes up a ton of stuff on iTunes, really neat. Get it at Tuneup Media.
First look at SplashTop, a laptop that starts up almost instantly.
A tour of the ShowStoppers hall at CES (which has hundreds of small companies demoing to media types). I almost got punched out by a Los Angeles Times reporter there.
A look at Drobo’s booth at Showstoppers. It’s like a personal RAID, makes using hard drives safer.
A quick chat with Bob Frankston, one of the co-inventors of the spreadsheet.
Rocky, my producer, checks out some custom guitars for Guitar Hero on the show floor at CES.
A quick interview with Dean Kamen, inventor of Segway, among tons of other things. We met him on the show floor at CES.
A tour of Sling Media’s booth. Part I. Part II.
Watch me get makeup for being on CNBC.
An interview with Bug Labs’ Jeremy Toeman. BugLabs won CNET’s Best of Show award in the emerging technology category.
Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal in the line for press badges at CES.
A tour of the Nokia booth at CES. Part I. Part II.
A fun series of interviews after Microsoft’s keynote in the BlogHaus.
Doc Searls tells a story about how Google came up with AdWords.
A different take on what PETA means. Funny T-shirt. We met this guy at Harris Ranch, famous steak house in California.
Marc Canter sings Opera on the Microsoft BlogBus on the way to CES.

We also have a bunch of professional videos over on PodTech.

Nitzan Shaer, COO of Mobivox, shows us how to make low-cost calls at CES.
The Frag Dolls kick the boys’ behinds at CES.
I interviewed the head of HP’s notebook design team at CES. Interesting interview where he gives us insights into HP’s design process.
Interview with Seagate’s CEO, Bill Watkins, in the CES BlogHaus.
We tour AMD’s booth at CES.
The first Retrevo Gang is up. Fun discussion after the first day at CES.

And there’s still more to come and we’re only two weeks through one month of 2008. Whew!