On the ScobleShow today is Puneet Gupta, CEO of ConnectBeam, which has built an interesting knowledge management system for big-company employees. It’ll be interesting to see if he, and other “Office 2.0″ vendors will be successful in getting enterprises to adopt Web 2.0-style services. Here’s the two videos:

Demo of ConnectBeam, Web 2.0 meets enterprise knowledge management. 7:29. Quicktime video.
Interview with Puneet Gupta, CEO of ConnectBeam. 16:26. Quicktime video.

I’d love to know what you think? Does any of the Office 2.0 vendors have a chance to edge in on Microsoft’s market?

Wow.

Just got back from a great day in Cardiff and got an email from Phil Torrone that said “congrats.”

Turns out Amazon’s editors just named Naked Conversations to its Best Books of 2006 list in computers/internet category.

We’re about to leave for Cardiff, so did some quick searches on both Microsoft’s Live.com and Google. Google offers up a cluster at the top of the results (asking me to refine results, with links to dining guides, lodging guides, attractions, shopping, suggested itineraries, tours & day trips) which is much more helpful to searchers than what Microsoft is offering up.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen such clustering (AltaVista used to have similar clusters) but it’s the first time I’ve noticed them on Google.

I just tried Yahoo and they have similar clusters, but I like Google’s better.

Anyway, we’re off to Cardiff. Talk later!

UPDATE: Live.com has the same kinds of clusters that Google has, but it puts them over on the right hand side where I totally didn’t see them. I’m so used to the right side being used for advertising that I don’t even look there anymore.

Today: off to see Cardiff for family day.
Tuesday: traveling to London in the afternoon, speaker dinner in evening.
Wednesday: speaking at Online Information 2006 in London. Girl Geek dinner in evening.
Thursday: hanging out at Online Information 2006. Meeting with Microsoft’s accessibility team, then getting a tour of BBC around 5 p.m. Evening open so far.
Friday: breakfast with Sam Sethi of UK TechCrunch, then meet the geeks in Hyde Park. Hugh Macleod suggested meeting by the Eros statue because it’s near the Piccadilly Circus tube station. We’ll walk around, visiting tourist spots and pubs. Hugh says we’ll be “pissed as newts.” Oh, boy, that should be good for a Flickr scandal. In the evening Sam is taking us to two parties (the Firefox one, and Internet People’s Party).
Saturday: we fly to Amsterdam where we’ll stay until December 5th, when we fly home.

Anyone want to meet up? The schedule is getting tight, leave a message here and we’ll fit you in.

Through my news reader this morning I’ve seen several complaints about Digg. I too unsubscribed from the general Digg feed. Too much crap! I agree with Businessweek’s Rob Hof. TechMeme and TailRank are much better.

I think Digg is trying to get outside of the geekosphere, which will make its valuations better (normal people don’t read geeky stuff about Ruby on Rails or Java), but definitely make it noisier and less useful to people like me and Rob.

I put the best stuff on my link blog. Oh, and someone asked if my link blog has a feed that can be subscribed to. Yes, it does, subscribe to my link blog here.

Kathy Sierra is one of my favorite writers and her post on why Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword is a good place to start.

I’ve been getting more email lately from people asking how they could make their blog better (which, translated, means, “how do I get more traffic?”)

Well, go and study what Kathy is doing. Some things I’ve gleaned.

1) She uses great graphics that hook readers into checking out the article (I saw her post in my feed list on Google Reader, and getting me to stop hitting “J” — which goes to the next post — is something very few bloggers do).
2) She uses typography in a way no other blogger does. She emphasizes things with italics, bold, and underlines. I think I’ll start playing with those in my own writing.
3) She joins in an already existing conversation and adds to it. She doesn’t always try to start a new conversation. Joining in a conversation that’s already going means you already know that people are interested in what you’re talking about and at least you can post on people’s comments and use trackbacks and links to get people to check out what you have to say.

I love her little dig at my blog evangelism at the top of her page, too.

Ahh, the rumors have started up again that Apple is working on a Tablet PC. I can’t wait, cause then all the Tablet naysayers will ooohhh, and aaaahhhh, and praise Steve Jobs for being a visionary.

In the meantime the Tablet PC team over at Microsoft just posted a bunch of tips for tablet users of Windows Vista.

Heheh, Jeff Sandquist bought Microsoft an ad on TechMeme. So did PodTech. But Jeff’s ads are better.

Of course that brought out another round of “it’s a damn echo chamber” complaints from Jeremy Zawodny. How did I find Jeremy’s comments? TechMeme of course.

That echo is loud. Even gets heard here in Wales.

What should PodTech do with our ads? We’ll be running them for a week.

Nicole Simon (who will be in London this week, we’ll see her at the Firefox party) compares how American media and German media talk about Second Life. Her diagnosis? American media doesn’t talk about the sex.

In other Second Life news, GigaOM writes about virtual sweat shops that build and do other things.

Me? I gotta cancel my account. I haven’t been in Second Life since they told my son he wasn’t welcome, but I’ve been paying my monthly fee.

So nice of the Firefox folks to throw us a party in London.

Hmmm, why isn’t this on Upcoming.org yet? That’s how we keep track of all the parties in San Francisco.

UPDATE: oh, it is on Upcoming. It just was too smart and knew I was in Wales so didn’t show me events happening in London.

Heheh.

“I didn’t call him fat, lazy, or stupid,” Loren Feldman says on his video show before telling my commenters to relax. Among other things. Proves that if one insult is worth a link, two insults are worth two. He says he doesn’t care about links. Yeah, me neither. I just search Technorati for all the classic insults and I find stuff like this.

Made Maryam and her brother crack up.

“Who is that guy,” Maryam’s brother asked.

He’s funny, but I’m more partial to Robert Gale’s blog (I spent the afternoon today with Robert). Why? Because instead of posting long, boring videos telling me my videos are long and boring Robert posts videos of ships driving into bridges and other weird and stupid things. My favorite is a video of cars being driven behind a fully-powered 747. Robert says the one that got the most traffic is a video of someone eating a 6-lb burger.

We watched part of the Chelsea/Manchester United game at a local pub (they tied, it seemed everyone was interested in this game, which was billed as one of the biggest soccer, er, football games since the World Cup), while sampling Australian beers, and he told me that his Google ads are bringing in a really good addition to his income (he runs a Web design firm in Newport, Wales).

Gale was wearing a shirt from Threadless, which impressed Maryam (they are having a sale right now and have a bunch of different shirt designs).

We’re visiting Maryam’s family here in Wales. Her brother’s son, last night, said “I’ll Google that” at one point during the conversation. He also was bugging Maryam’s brother for not having wifi (I’m hooked up to you via an ethernet cable, so “old school”). And people bug me for not getting away from technology. Hey, I traveled 5300 miles to, um, have a geek talk. I remember when Alan Cooper, back in the mid 1990s, told me Silicon Valley is not a place anymore, “it’s a state of mind,” he’d say. I now understand.

I love this new two-minute rule for email from Eric Mack (delete all email that takes more than two minutes to answer). I woke up today to find 48 new emails waiting. Damn, and it’s Sunday. Imagine how many I’ll have on Monday.

This is the problem with answering email — it generates more email.

One thing wrong with Chris Sells blog? I can’t find the RSS feed there and neither can Google Reader (which works remarkably well at finding feeds on most blogs).

Chris, that’s just lame for someone who is a developer, particularly one that is hip and using Vista (it has an RSS reader built in). It’s time for you to get a big feed icon and hook it up to your RSS feed.

Can someone go over to building 42, find Sells, and slap him upside the head?

Google Reader tip: I added a “subscribe” button to my toolbar. Here’s how you do that:

1) Open Google Reader (I do that by typing http://reader.google.com ).
2) Click “Settings” at the top of Reader’s page.
3) Click the Reader’s “Goodies” tab.
4) Drag the “Subscribe” link to your toolbar.

Unfortunately I can’t get that to work with IE 7, just with Firefox.

UPDATE: I’ve noticed that the subscribe button doesn’t work consistently, but using the RSS icon in Firefox to subscribe to feeds does.

On Thanksgiving the hit of the day (other than our two turkeys) was our photos that were playing on our HD screen — Maryam’s mom watched them for hours. They were coming off of a Vista machine located in my office upstairs. The photos were streaming through my Xbox. Everyone commented that they thought that was mondo cool.

It’s something that you can only do with the Xbox and Vista’s version of Media Center is much better than the one you can buy with XP.

After playing with Vista, I think it’s underrated. I have a new Voodoo box that AMD is loaning me. It sits next to PodTech’s MacPro — both playing on my 30-inch Apple monitor.

Ryan Stewart notices something that I notice too. Outside of the tech world there isn’t the hatred of Microsoft that exists on some blogs. Normal people don’t care that Vista was two years late. They aren’t like Chris Pirillo and won’t notice that some of the UI isn’t consistent.

They’ll just see the photos on their friend’s Xbox and say “I want that.”

Chris Sells might be biased (he works at Microsoft) but he’s right. Vista rocks and is way underrated.

UPDATE: although it does have its problems. Joel Spolsky has been talking about the start menu and shutting down functionality, which prompted Moishe Lettvin to write about his experiences as a developer on the team that implemented that feature. That matches my experiences too. Microsoft has too many committees. They suck the life out of everything (which is why I made fun of the sound — that’s a metaphor for a lot of what’s wrong at Microsoft lately).

Whew, what a long trip. Got a ton of email done. One of the most productive flights I’ve ever had. Something about being stuck on a plane gets me totally in flow state. I started the trip with 550 unread emails and ended it with 43.

No distractions cause there ain’t no Internet connection and Maryam was watching movies.

Anyway, I’m jet lagged now. Looks like there’s lots of people who are excited about doing something on Friday afternoon (and a ton of parties we can crash too in the evening). We’ll figure that out.

This is a weird world. Not nearly as much wifi as back home and a LOT more people smoke here (one lady refused to put hers out on the train — in California she would have been arrested or beaten, or both). Oh, and what’s up with reading tabloids? It seemed the entire train was reading trashy tabloid newspapers.

I do love traveling for 16 hours and being able to jack into the Internet and everything works just like it did back at home.

Tomorrow Maryam wants to go see the Cardiff Castle. Sounds fun.

UPDATE: that plan got thrown out cause of family logistics. So, we’ll hang around Newport tomorrow. Just made plans to meet Robert Gale at Wetherspoons near Murengers in town. This is the best thing about blogging — I can go to any town in the world and most likely find someone interesting to have a beer with.

Our thanksgiving was awesome. Had a bunch of family over. The weather was spectacular in Half Moon Bay. You can hear Maryam talking about what Thanksgiving means to her as an Iranian-American. Anyone want some turkey? I’m stuffed!

In a few minutes we’re heading toward Wales (flight leaves at 7:50 p.m. tonight from SFO). Newport, that is. Home town of Robert Gale who keeps a great blog about funny/weird stuff. We’re visiting Maryam’s brother. I’ll try to hop on email and see if anyone left me a note (I won’t be checking voice mail until December 11th, though, because it costs too much in Europe, so email or Skype is the best way to get ahold of me).

Then on Monday we’re heading to London. Hope to see you there.

We’ll be at the Online Information 2006 conference. I have my video camera and would love to meet up with anyone who has interesting technology to show me. On December 3rd we head to Amsterdam. Anyone interested in meeting up there?

Oh, in London we’re trying to figure out a geek event. A geek dinner on Friday evening is proving difficult to make happen cause all the usual venues are booked up. Hugh Macloed wants to meet up in London next Friday evening and do something fun.

So, how about doing something different? How about we meet up in Hyde Park at, say, 1 p.m. next Friday? We can all get away from our computers and take a walk after seeing the sights we’ll probably end up on a pub crawl. If that sounds interesting, leave a note here. We’ll post next week where the meeting place will be.

Oh, while I’m thinking of Hugh, don’t miss his manifesto madness — he’s posting a bunch of 500-word manifestos on his blog and they are quite good.

If you’re bored, I caught up with my feeds so my linkblog is up to date.

Oh, Liz Lawley, you have Maryam and I busting up laughing at that video you posted. That kid is like a future Ze Frank. Notice that he doesn’t blink either.

OK, back on Thanksgiving vacation.

Wait a second. Is this the same Werner Vogels who “ripped us a new one” when we were doing our blogging book reading at Amazon earlier this year? (quote from Slashdot).

It is! And he’s talking about how blogging is helping a politician in the Dutch election get his message out.

So, that’s another thing I’m thankful for: more blog evangelism and yet another turned skeptic. We interviewed 188 businesses for our book (which is now being used by Shel to write his next book on Global Neighborhoods), which is still selling very well according to Amazon.

I’m thankful for Amazon. I wonder if this will mean more Amazon blogs?

Ahh, I missed the 1938 Media video review of ScobleShow. Short version? It wasn’t liked. He didn’t like anything. Not one thing? I love how he says “they” when referring to my video and audio work. It made me crack up. 2:30 YouTube video.

And with that, I’m outta here for Thanksgiving.

Thank you to everyone who helped me in the past year. It’s been quite a year already and I couldn’t have gotten 45 interviews without a lot of people’s help.

Have a great Thanksgiving.