Mogulus is a new streaming video network which has a ton of cool new features (uses multiple cameras and isn’t grainy like Ustream or Justin.tv). One problem, though, it’s been an unsatisfactory performance on my machine. It takes a TON of processor cycles. I’m getting lots of skips, especially when I use Google Reader on my XP box running Firefox.

But it’s pretty interesting to watch. The chat looks OK, but Kyte.tv’s chat is a lot nicer to look at.

I like this trend of not having to go to conferences, though. I’ll be at NewTeeVee this afternoon. See you then!

So, I’m watching the Android video and talking with my friends who are developers. Man, I thought my videos were boring, this one takes the cake.

Steve Jobs does NOT have to worry about losing his job to the folks from Google.

I didn’t see ONE feature that will get normal people to switch from the iPhone. This comes across like something developers developed for other developers without thought of how they were going to build a movement.

How do we know this developer API is uninspired? They are bribing developers with $10 million in prize money.

Compare to the iPhone. Steve Jobs treats developers like crap. Doesn’t give them an SDK. Makes them hack the phones simply to load apps. And they create hundreds of apps anyway. Now, Apple is getting is act together. Early next year an SDK is coming. So now developers will have both sexy hardware, a sexy OS (under iPhone is OSX, an OS that’s been in wide use for years now), AND a well-thought-out SDK.

But, here’s why Android is getting received with a yawn from me:

1. It was released without a personal approach. When Steve Jobs brings out new stuff he does it in front of people. Not in a cold video (as much as I love video it doesn’t inspire the way sitting in an audience does and getting to put my own hands on it).
2. This stuff is still vaporware. No phones are available with it. At Microsoft I learned DO NOT TRUST THINGS THAT THEY WON’T SHOW ME WORKING. Remember Longhorn? Er, Vista? The first time I saw it was largely in a format like this — it looked cool but it wasn’t running anywhere and they wouldn’t let me play with the cool demos. I’ll never make that mistake again. If you want my support for your platform I need to be able to use it and show it to my friends.
3. The UI looks confused. Too many metaphors. One reason the iPhone does so well is because the UI is fairly consistent. Fun, even. How do I know this? My ex-wife hates technology and she bought one and loves it. I try to imagine her getting a Google Android phone and getting very frustrated with a mixture of drop-down menus, clicking metaphors, and touch metaphors. At some point she’ll give it back and go back to the iPhone, which only presents a touch metaphor.
4. No real “love” for developers. Heck, I don’t know of a single developer who has had his/her hands on Android. And all we get is this cold video that just doesn’t inspire me to believe in the future of the platform. I know Dave Winer didn’t feel the love from the Open Social “campfire” event, but at least there we heard from quite a few third-party developers. That made me believe in the platform because I knew that they had already gotten at least SOME third-party developers on board. Heck, remember Facebook? Go back and see when I got excited by Facebook. It was two weeks after the F8 platform announcement. Why then? Because I saw that iLike got six million users in two weeks and was staying up. So, that communicated two things to me: 1. that the platform attracted interesting developers. 2. that Facebook was well enough architected to stay up, even under pretty dramatic load. Android is a LONG way from demonstrating either of these things to the market.
5. Google needs to get atomic videos. On an announcement like this there shouldn’t have been one long video, but rather 50 small ones, each demonstrating a separate API. Developers today are busy. Fully employed. They want easy to understand instructions for how to integrate platform stuff into their stuff. It’s amazing that Google itself doesn’t understand how its own search engine works. If it did, they would see the advantage of creating lots of video, not just one (because then they would be more likely to get found for a variety of search terms, not just a few — it’s one reason I create at least a video every day and it’s paid off very well for me). I’m giving Vic Gundotra the same advice — his long Open Social “campfire video” should have been cut up into the atoms that made up that video. Sure, put the long complete video up too (the molecule) but cut it up. Yes, yes, I know, I don’t take my own advice but then I have an excuse: it costs money, er time, to edit video and I don’t have a lot of it. Google doesn’t have that excuse.
6. Google’s PR comes across as “only caring about big bangs.” Last week I was in the Open Social press conference. Everyone else in the room worked for a big-name media outlet. Business Week. Wall Street Journal. Los Angeles Times. CNET. Barrons. etc. etc. Even TechCrunch was relegated to a phone-based seat and wasn’t in the room. That tells me that Google’s PR doesn’t get the value of small people. In fact, if you were tracking the mentions of that press call you’d have seen my use of Twitter during it got mentioned many times on blogs. Google’s PR didn’t seem to even understand why Twitter was important. They also kept me from using my video camera during the press call (the only reason I got video is cause I carried a cell phone with me — they asked me to leave my professional camera out in the car). Compare that to presidential candidate John Edwards who let me film, even on his plane during “off times.” And he has a Twitter account too.
7. It looks too much like a poor copy of the iPhone. They didn’t talk about ONE thing that the iPhone doesn’t do. Where’s the car integration? Why didn’t they focus a LOT on GPS, or video creation, or something else the iPhone doesn’t do. Do we really want to spin a Google earth map? Really? That doesn’t turn me on. Showing me Kyte.tv working on this thing would turn me on — that’s something the iPhone doesn’t do. Showing me killer podcasting-creation features would turn me on. That’s something the iPhone doesn’t do well. Instead we get some video game that we all played 10 years ago. Yawn. OK, OK, I know Android plays Quake and the iPhone doesn’t. But, come on, we all know a game API is coming for the iPhone and is that really going to get a lot of people to buy Android?

Anyway, so far I’m disappointed in Android. Maybe they’ll get it together, but until then I’ll remember the Russian Government official’s cell phone. He’s running Windows Mobile. Why? Cause developers in his community are building stuff for it. I’ll keep checking in with him to see if Android has gotten any traction.

Are you sensing that Google is just not very good at technology evangelism? After all, look at how successful Google has been outside of search. It hasn’t really had a good home run that we can point to outside of that. I think that’s because Google is coming across as too arrogant, too interested in only “important developers and people,” and doesn’t understand how to pitch end users and developers at the same time (developers only really come after end users do anyway, look again at the iPhone).

But what do I know, I’m just a blogger, right?

UPDATE: Patrick, on TwitterGram, says “it looks like a ripoff of the iPhone.”

UPDATE2: other responses are rolling in from around the Internet. Engadget. GigaOm.

Lots of people are asking me if I am going to next week’s Blog World Expo. No, cause I have a six-week-old baby at home. Plus, I hang around a lot of these speakers all the time anyway. That said, I’m actually pretty surprised by the quality of speakers that this new conference has been able to put together. I’m actually sad I won’t be there, even though I’m not really THAT sad.

But what really looks interesting? The Chinese Bloggercon. BlognationChina is there.

Rebecca McKinnon is too. John Kennedy is live blogging and doing an awesome job. I feel like I’m sitting in the hall. I know it’s lunch time right now on Saturday.

That stuff is all in English, but the official blog is in Chinese.

Next year I want to do a BloggerCon here at the same time and build a video bridge so we could talk about the same issues. Heck, let’s do it. Why don’t you all show up on my Kyte.tv channel. It’s open to ANYONE who wants to post some video.

Some topics that I wish were being discussed internationally:

1. How do we get great Chinese blogs translated to English (and vice versa)?
2. Who is the “Michael Arrington” of China?
3. What’s happening in the Chinese blogosphere that’s different than the English one?

From John Kennedy’s blog I already learned that there’s a Chinese knockoff of Twitter already and I already found some cool new blogs. Really great stuff.

UPDATE: There’s some photos of the BloggerCon on Flickr. Oh, and check out the Chinese Facebook knock off.

More details on Open Social was just released here.

In the video here is Vic Gundotra, vice president at Google, who gave a little talk to developers last night — they demo how to build an Open Social application. Vic told me last week that he’s planning a whole raft of CampFires where they’ll bring out a bunch of new developer-focused technologies.

UPDATE: In this video a raft of developers show off what they’ve built on top of Open Social.

Vic is the guy who hired me at Microsoft and it’s fun to watch him build a developer network at Google now.

Some things I’d like to see in future CampFires?

1. Do the videos live and streaming.
2. Open up the discussion to microblogging tools like Twitter and Pownce. Today I brought people into the Google press conference via Twitter and it really rocked. Here’s reactions from around the web from Rob Lagesse. From James D. Kirk. From Jay Meattle, who calls Twitter the next generation of journalism. From ZDNet’s Michael Krigsman, who called this “the hidden OpenSocial press conference.”

Saran Chari is on my video channel talking about what today’s announcement with MySpace and Google means to developers like Flixter (they make a popular Facebook application).

I recorded this today after the Google/MySpace press conference.

I asked “does it let you build the same kinds of apps you build on Facebook?”

Answer “absolutely.”

I ask about limitations that he sees.

So, the conversation in the hallway here at the Nokia conference that I’m now at is “what will Yahoo and Microsoft do?” Followed quickly by “what will Facebook do?” Or, “is Zuckerberg scared?”

During the last panel, which funny enough was about developers and social networks, they asked the audience which social networks people used. Facebook? Nearly every hand went up. MySpace? 1/3rd of the hands went up? The rest? Very few hands went up.

So, Facebook is STILL in the driver’s seat. Or, as Erick Schonfield says over on TechCrunch: “Not so fast Mike.”

What is the best answer for what Zuckerberg will do that I’ve heard? “Embrace and extend.” Facebook should come out and say “we’re supporting Open Social too.” But then they should say “but we have a new ‘version 2.0′ platform to announce today that goes a LOT further than Open Social goes.”

That would take all the wind out of these sails.

As to Yahoo and Microsoft? Well, I talked with an executive from Yahoo today and he said he had nothing to announce. Translation: we have no clue. If they had a clue they would have had all guns blazing today. Now their choice is to join up. The industry support is too strong behind Open Social. Or, they could make a deal with Facebook on their “embrace and extend” strategy.

What will Microsoft do? Who cares. They bought the inventory on Facebook. They are safe for now by NOT having a developer strategy. I think that’s stupid long term, but heck, my Microsoft stock is going up so who cares?

I was asking questions in the press conference that are coming from Twitter. You can see my answers.

TechCrunch and others are reporting that Google and MySpace are joining forces on the open social platform that Google has developed.

Let’s just say this is HUGE and totally validates what I said in my social media starfish talk yesterday.

UPDATE: I’m at Google right now in the press conference and this is confirmed.

I’m sitting in a press conference with TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and many other press.

More in a few minutes.

UPDATE: Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, says “This will create the new defacto standard.”

The last couple of days have been interesting.

Thursday ended with an interesting dinner with Google’s PR team and my old boss, Vic Gundotra, who now is an executive at Google.

At the dinner he announced that Google was “gearing up” for releasing a raft of open technologies which would be gifted to Web developers. Much like Google Gears is. Dan Farber was at the dinner too and wrote up a lengthy post on the details and what this all means.

But, this post isn’t named “Micromedia” for nothing.

Here’s a bunch of short videos (since so many of you claim you like short videos) for you to watch.

Earlier this week we went to the CTIA show and met several cool companies (many more to come next week, these are just the first three).

1. Utterz. I tried to hate it at first. Do we really need something else to come along that looks like a blog but that lets you call your blog with your cell phone and leave some audio there? Do we need another Twitter competitor? Turns out we do, and I underestimated this service. Eric Rice slapped me over on Twitter several times for that. I redeemed myself by interviewing one of Utterz’ founders. I’ll call Utterz a “micromedia community service” for now until I have a chance to drink some great wine and come up with a better name. Five minutes long.
2. I get too focused on Silicon Valley’s tech hipness, but Edioma has a fun service that helps Spanish-speaking people learn English. Larry Upton, an executive there, tells me why that matters and gives me a demo. Five minutes.
3. I’m preparing to go to Paris in December with Milan and Maryam for the LeWeb3 Conference. So, anyone who shows me cool travel services will catch my attention. WorldMate is such a service and Eyran Blumberg, VP there, showed me how the service might help me out on my travels. Seven minutes long.

But those are my official “ScobleShow” things. How about over on my Kyte.tv channel?

1. Milan Scoble smiling at his older half brother Patrick. Hey, that brightens my day, hope it does you too.
2. Facebook, on November 6, will announce Social Ads — the AllFacebook Blog has the details. Here’s my thoughts on what those will be.
3. Last night, after I picked Patrick up in Santa Rosa (Patrick lives with his mom up in Petaluma, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge) we talked about what we were going to do on the way home: pick up our copy of Leopard.
4. Patrick celebrates getting to level 70 in World of Warcraft. I have no idea what he is saying anymore. I need a parent’s guide to WoW.
5. Here’s what it looks like inside the San Francisco Apple Store last night buying Leopard. Of course getting INTO the Apple store should have counted for hazard pay — we had to cross through thousands of bicycle riders who were doing the usual “Critical Mass” protest against cars by riding their bikes through traffic and generally causing mayhem.
6. At the Apple store last night Loic Le Meur was there too (founder of Seesmic). So I get him on video inside the Apple store.

All those videos were done using my Nokia N95 cell phone. I love that thing and Kyte.tv’s service, because I can get video to you within minutes of me filming it.

Anyway, after we got home we switched to Seesmic and installed Leopard.

1. Loading OSX Leopard. “Goodbye Tiger,” Patrick says. We also talked about how we met Lynn Fox, director of PR at Apple.
2. Leopard almost finished installing (it took Patrick about 45 minutes).
3. Patrick’s first boot into Leopard.
4. “A reflection on the freaking dock,” Patrick says in his first impression of Leopard.
5. A really cool feature is Webclips. You can highlight a piece of a Web page and then make a widget out of it. Patrick demonstrates. Milan cries. Heh.
6. @geraldb28 Twittered us last night and said “wannt do some screen sharing?” This video is what resulted.

What’s really fun is that on Seesmic, Utterz, and Kyte there’s TONS of micromedia being produced.

Will anyone watch? Wrong question: for most of this it’s about the conversation that happens and the communication we can do with each other.

I got a TV station in my pocket. What are you going to do with yours?

Last night I was hanging around at the Ritz near my house. That’s where Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo spoke yesterday, and where the Right Media conference is going on right now.

I talked with several people who didn’t want to go on the record, but who are executives at Microsoft’s competitors. They told me to “watch out for Brian McAndrews, former CEO of aQuantive.”

That’s the company that sold recently to Microsoft for a very large sum of money (around $6 billion).

They say he now is working for Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft and is expected to make major moves on Microsoft’s behalf to get Microsoft a major position into the advertising industry.

So, what’s the rumor this morning? Microsoft wins the Facebook bid.

If this is all true, then Steve Ballmer’s promise to buy 50 companies in the advertising and Web 2.0 spaces in the next year is off to a roaring start.

Since I don’t think Steve Ballmer understands the advertising world, it sure looks like someone else is behind this move. I’d love to interview Brian McAndrews.

UPDATE: if this rumor is true, it means big revenues for Facebook. Microsoft has a world-class advertising sales team. I bet they could promise more revenues than Google could, particularly because Microsoft’s sales team is much more focused on banner advertising than Google’s team is.

UPDATE2: Microsoft’s Hank Vigil was in Palo Alto yesterday, so maybe he’s behind this. Me?