Is it to teach commercial skills (like how to run Adobe InDesign) or is it to push people to explore their fields and themselves?

Steve Sloan is asking for feedback about his innovative podcasting class because the university wants to change it to be just a pure skills class.

Sigh.

You can learn InDesign from a book. You can’t have a small group interaction with speakers like Steve Sergeant, host of Wildebeat, David Weinberger, author of Cluetrain Manifesto, Aaron Uhrmacher, Second Life expert, Phil Wolff, SkypeJournal author, or students talking about their own podcasts. I spoke to the class as well. Notice how all those link to podcasts of the actual class sessions!

It’s a shame, because San Jose State University needs more innovative classes like these, not fewer.

Steve is hosting a meeting Thursday evening to discuss the situation and see if they can do anything.

Hey, I’m not using my cell phone here in Europe, but this will prove to be very cool for blog and news fiends like me: MiniTechMeme.

I love this quote from Dave Winer: “Wes Felter says that “most people” don’t want to connect their computers to a TV. Well, most people, in the day in horses and buggies, didn’t want to ride in an internal combustion engine-driven mobility device, but today it’s impossible to live in modern society without using the darned things.”

Dave Winer’s comments yesterday sure got a lot of commentary. I put some of them over on my link blog. But, I liked Thomas Hawk’s points the best.

One thing about this new world. You can certainly see when there are divergent opinions and we’re far more cautious this time around. I still remember having to lay myself off in the bust last time and that wasn’t fun at all.

I’d rather have it this way than the old way where all the “professional” hype was up, up, up.

Ahh, the BBC reports a UK Press Complaints Commissioner told a conference this week that there should be a voluntary code of practice for blogs. Hmm, nice thought, but never will happen. Why? Cause a large percentage of bloggers don’t type their goods in the UK. So, who is going to regulate us? And, heck, we can’t agree on anything, including the definition of the word “blog” so you think you’re going to get us all to agree to a code of practice? Yeah, right.

But, then he gets started “on the internet ‘there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress.’”

Oh, that’s poppycock. If someone throws you under the bus on the Internet YOU CAN RESPOND ON YOUR OWN BLOG! And then the readers can decide the truth for themselves. That’s what I just did.

Libel and slander laws still apply here, if you want to go that route. But I’ll take this world over the “professional only” world anyday of the week.

Me thinks this guy senses the end of his job and is grasping at ropes trying to keep it.

Damn, I love when something I write in email gets taken out of context and put on blogs. Here’s such a context.

The PodCamp folks asked me if I wanted to come and speak at PodCamp.

I email back and ask them if they can cover any of my expenses in getting there. That’s what I always do. Why? Because most of the time conferences WILL cover expenses to bring in outside speakers.

It’s my responsibility to make PodTech make a profit. IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO PUT AS FEW RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS ON MY BUSINESS AS POSSIBLE. And, yes, if there is money available to cover my expenses it IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO ASK FOR THEM!

I didn’t ask for hotel money. I have friends in New York that I’ll stay with. In fact, I didn’t ask for anything in particular. I just asked if there were any expense funds available.

But, I guess this group just wants to embarrass me. They could have simply said “no” and then I would have had to decide whether or not it was a good investment for PodTech to be there (it probably is).

Instead they took a private email, which hadn’t yet reached a conclusion, and took it into public. Wow.

Future speakers watch out when dealing with this group.

UPDATE: since my words, said in private, have now been taken public, here’s the email string in full. Please note that I was perfectly willing to fund the trip, but that THEY OFFERED THE EXPENSES AND ADMITTED THEY HAD SPONSORS!!! Read my thread. I said “I take it there’s no budget to cover travel expenses, right?”

And, here’s the thread that is in public view where they were talking about the issue.

UPDATE: Jason Van Orden, in my comments, says that Rob Safuto was not involved in the planning and the committee that was planning this doesn’t agree with him. My view? Unfortunately when you have negotiations in public view, these kinds of problems happen. It is unprofessional to be treated this way, but the blame for that lies mostly at Rob’s feet. He should have reported the facts, rather than just attacked. I hate it when people attack without even calling, or trying to get the point of view of the person who is being attacked. There’s a reason my email address and phone number are on my blog.

Hey, I know he’s a billionaire. Owns the Dallas Mavericks. And invested in an HD movie company.

I can still teach him something.

Today he said that it’ll be a long time before your PC will connect to an HDTV because your PC doesn’t have the right connections.

I say that’s poppycock.

Here’s how I hooked mine up: Ethernet. Your PC has one of those connectors, right?

My Media Center-run PC hooks up to my Ethernet jack, which hooks up to a Wifi router. My Wifi router sprays its packets down (via 802.11a) to a Wifi antenna on my Xbox 360. Those packets get decoded, and sent from my Xbox 360 over its HD component cables to my Sony 60-inch HDTV. Which displays them for me to watch.

I hear Microsoft is selling something like 15,000 Xbox 360s every day.

Mark, if you want to fly me down to your house I’ll be happy to connect a similar system for you. It’s easy and it ROCKS.

Once you do that, you can play Rocketboom (or ScobleShow, if you like long and boring videos about the tech industry) from your PC to your HD screen. Plus music. Plus photos.

It’s the best way to hook a PC up to an HD screen and has the added benefit of being “wife approved.” Why? Cause the ugly PC doesn’t sit in your living room with your TV. Just ask Maryam how important this is to getting along with women. You don’t want to look like a billionaire geek who has no sense of style, do you?

But Thomas Hawk bought a Mac.

Hmmm, I bought two so far this year. And my wife’s makes three. I still use my Windows machine more, though. Mostly cause of Outlook. Unlearning hundreds of thousands of emails answered (and tons of calendar items stored) is proving to be very tough. Since leaving SFO I’ve answered more than 600 emails. Whew.

What’s worse, is I received 48 new ones between Newport, Wales, and London.

Sigh.

Jason Calacanis has nothing to do, so he figured he’d get “pissed as newts” too, albeit in New York instead of flying over to London and joining us. Heh!

Ahh, but he doesn’t have a Firefox party to visit on his little tour through New York’s fine drinking establishments! Not to mention there’s not a bloody Queen in New York.

Can you tell I’ve been in London for a few hours already?

Oh, and happy birthday Jason! We’ll drink to you, your birthday, and the bloody Queen, over on this side of the pond.

Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma. Zuma.

That’s about how fast Kim Sacha is — she’s one of the top 10 players in the world. Watch the video and learn how to play Zuma (one of the top Xbox 360 and iPod video games). Oh, and if you’re in the video game business, this is free customer research into the casual gamer market. Hint: those women control a lot of Xbox purchases! Wake up Tom Peters! She has a Wordpress blog all about Zuma 360 too.

Oh, and if you want something a bit more geeky, watch Liz Lawley, the social software professor. She has forgotten more about social software than we know. Seriously, if you’re into Web 2.0 and World of Warcraft and all that, she’s done some of the best thinking. Yes, she has a blog too (doesn’t update it enough, we think she’s off in WoW or over in Vox too much), and is an instructor at Rochester Institute of Technology and just finished a stint at Microsoft Research.

Dave Winer says we’ll know Web 2.0’s bubble is popped when Google’s stock crashes.

So, what’s the chances of that happening? Well, here in Wales, I see hundreds of businesses, nearly none of them are on Google. Despite the fact that the local population says they use Google.

Translation: Google’s growth isn’t close to being done yet. Particularly internationally.

Will Barons prove right? I don’t know. I still remember all the pundits saying “Apple is dead.” Or, talk to Robert Hess. When he started working at Microsoft about 18 years ago his coworkers told him to sell Microsoft, thinking there was no possible way for the stock to go up more than it already had (remember, back in the 1980s Microsoft was in the same place that Google is today).

I see nothing that’ll stop Google. Do you?

Or, if you do think Google is overrated, what do you think will pop its bubble?

Some things we’ll watch for: growth slowing. That’ll tell us that Google doesn’t have what it takes to get all these businesses on board.

Hey, begging for things you want on your blog sometimes works. This guy begged to drive an Aston Martin on his blog and got his wish taken care of.

So, Steve, what about it? Or do you only give exclusives to big-name magazines?

Consolation prize? I’ll take a ride in an Aston Martin too!

Robert Gale told me how much he makes every month from Google ads on his blogs, but I don’t know if it’s my place to tell you. Let’s just say he makes more per month than Russian Cosmonauts do, according to BoingBoing.

One UK report says that watching video on the Web leads to less TV watching. True, in my experience (if you count the media center upstairs in my home, but playing through to my TV, as watching video on the Web).

Interesting that the BBC gives a good list of where to go to watch video on the Web.

A Google employee can see the day (about 12 years from now) when an iPod or cell phone will come along that will hold all the world’s videos. Yes, even those big ones I’ve been putting on the ScobleShow.

The thing he doesn’t see (or isn’t including in his calculations) is that the world’s video available is growing exponentially every few months. Why? Cost of production. Today with a $4,000 camera I can create better video than even a $50,000 camera could back in the 1980s and using a cell phone camera I could create video that would have been impossible to create just a few years ago.

But, either way, my sponsor, Seagate, is positioned well in this trend.

I see a day when every home will have 10 or more hard drives. Heck, in mine I’m already up to 10. Two in my MacPro. Three external. One in my PVR that’s coming on December 12th (yes, we’re finally hooking the HDTV up to a satellite dish). One in my Voodoo machine. One in my Sony Vaio. One in my Xbox. One in my Thinkpad.

I’m going to get a RAID drive set for archiving my videos, too. That’ll mean at least two more hard drives.

How many hard drives do you have?

Alan Reiter, who has been covering camera phones longer than anyone else I can remember, links to Guardian and other articles in a post about how camera phones are changing the way people find out about police actions. Last week the video of a student getting stunned by campus cops was passed near and far. 20 years ago you probably wouldn’t have heard about such a thing, and if you had, it would only have made it to your local newspaper and probably to page 30.

New York Times reports that a blogger in Canada received a ruling that said he’s a journalist. I expect it won’t be the last time, either, especially as more and more professionals start opening blogs.

Ahh, Microsofties won’t get to work today. Snow days, like what Seattle is seeing today (thanks Jeff Sandquist for the pictures), is something that never happens in Silicon Valley. I remember the last time it snowed in Silicon Valley. March 16, 1976. Total on ground? Maybe 1/8th of an inch. But it was a big enough deal that I remember it. I was in sixth grade.

Anyone catch Mark Cuban’s expose of BusinessWeek’s “journalism?” That’s blogging at its best and why anyone quoted in the press should have a blog.

Anyway, enjoy your snow day Microsofties! Maryam and I are off to London. More when we arrive. I’ll be off email and out of contact until tomorrow, probably. We don’t have our cell phones on while here in Europe, sorry. Email is it. robertscoble@hotmail.com.

Meet at the Eros statue in London at 1 p.m. on Friday to go on the “pissed as newts” tour. I love how they use language over here, by the way. While walking around Cardiff yesterday I realized where a lot of those weird Web 2.0 names must have come from: Wales. The Welch language seems to be missing a few vowels. I should take a picture of a sign to show you what I mean.

Anyway, we won’t just visit pubs. Hopefully the locals will show us around some other fun things in London too, so if you’re not into getting “pissed like newts” please come along too. I promise not to get too out of control. After all, Maryam’s coming along and will slap me upside the head if I drink too much.

On other news, we’re off to London today. I just read all my feeds and put up a few dozen new items on my link blog. There’s lots of good blogging going on lately.

Oh, jeez, seeing three of Chris Pirillo might give you nightmares. Anyway, he makes an interesting point about Google Video vs. YouTube vs. Revver. He should have thrown Blip.TV into the mix.