Dan Florio is a Flash developer who works up at Microsoft on the Xbox team. Forget where he works for a second because that really has no impact on what we’re talking about here.

He’s created a ton of custom Flash video interfaces which lead him to develop a tool for other Flash designers/developers to make their job easier called video.Maru.

He just released a major update of the tool and based on some of his testimonials I expect it’ll be a big hit for Flash developers.

He wrote me that the only thing he gets out of this is the notoriety for creating this and the “satisfaction of giving back to the Flash community which has helped me so much in my career.”

Hugh Macleod has an astute eye. He saw that I have one of his drawings (Microsoft’s Blue Monster) on my laptop.

I notice he didn’t catch that I have a Google sticker right underneath that one which says “Go Code.”

You can watch marketers battle right on my laptop.

Speaking of which, I need more stickers. Who has some good tech industry stickers?

Last night one of the people who’ve been on the ScobleShow (my video show) wrote me and told me he was fired for appearing on my show without PR permission. I won’t tell you who that was since he’s interviewing for a new position now, but it made me realize that when I aim my camera at someone that there are real consequences for doing so. Now, the guy in question should have known that would have pissed someone off. Most big companies, in their employment agreements, have in there that you aren’t allowed to talk with the press unless given permission by the PR departments.

This rule drives many people nuts. I got yelled at at Microsoft for talking to the press a few times. But they stopped bothering when they realized that I was talking to the press on my blog anyway and generally I wasn’t causing too many messes that needed to be cleaned up. Heck, the executives did enough of that and I was paid a lot less so my messes were cheaper.

Being in the public eye is NOT easy, NOT for the timid, and NOT for those who don’t have a good read on the corporate membrane.

I’m reminded of this again when I read David Weller’s blog at Microsoft where he points out some of the difficulties of representing a big company in the public eye. I see both points here, by the way. Doing the kind of blogging that I was doing at Microsoft is much harder than it looks. You’ve got to have great relationships across the company to be able to do things like tell people they should be fired for not doing something, like I did at Microsoft, without being fired yourself.

Plus, today, Microsoft is changing its approach to PR. Why?

Two words: Steve Jobs.

Steve has gotten the most fantastic amount of PR the world has ever known by making everything secret.

You can say a lot of things about Microsoft but one thing I came away with after my three years inside there is that it’s a learning company. I’m sure right now they are arguing out all sorts of things about the iPhone launch and thinking about how they will apply the lessons from this period in time to Microsoft.

I’m hearing from my friends on the Windows team that Steven Sinofsky and his team (Steven runs the Windows team) has made it clear he doesn’t want anyone talking about the next version of Windows. Hey, Steven is learning from Steve.

Steve Jobs is MANUFACTURING great PR by keeping everyone’s mouth shut. Heck, I’ve met some people I KNEW had an iPhone and they were so scared of retribution or consequences that they wouldn’t answer a single question.

Have you noticed that no one has started talking about the next version of Windows? I have. That’s on purpose. They learned their lesson and realized that letting you see inside the meat factory is a little too messy for this new world of PR. Rather keep all that mess behind corporate walls and come out when something is actually finished.

This also is the reason why I haven’t had many developers on my show. I’d love to have more. But PR departments keep the developers away from the press because the PR departments know that developers:

1. Are likely to tell the unvarnished truth.
2. Aren’t skilled in explaining/demoing what their product does.
3. Might be boring or unprofessional on camera.

It’s a real problem and I’ve been working with several of the PR folks to gain their trust so they’ll let me a little deeper inside their companies to look around like I got to do at Microsoft. But it’s not an easy process.

Anyway, when interviewing people from now on I’m going to make sure they have PR’s approval to appear on my show and/or understand the consequences of doing that.

It’s not worth getting people fired just by turning on my camera because they didn’t check with PR first.

That said, if you want to get on my show I’ll be filming for the next two days in front of the Apple Store in Palo Alto on University Ave. Come on by, bring your PR person too!

What is the second most important category to Google after its main search engine?

Hitwise says it’s image search.

So, don’t miss this announcement about Flickr photos getting integrated into Yahoo Image Search.

It’s surprising to me that Google continues to let Flickr run away with the metadata. What is the meta data? Well, Thomas Hawk, my photographic partner at PodTech, does a good job of explaining how the social features in Flickr give photos on Flickr more metadata which makes building a better image search possible.

Personally I’ve done a lot of testing of image search cause my Microsoft friends keep telling me “look at us, look at us” and I want to believe that Microsoft has its act together somewhere. But Flickr’s image search always pulls back better images for me than Ask, Live, or Google’s image search, for that matter.

The one reason I think Google hasn’t bought more companies like Photobucket, Zooomr, Piczo, etc. is that the Picasa team at Google thinks they can solve it some other way. I don’t believe them and they should reevaluate their strategy of not investing in a real social image service. Their tactic of letting people add tags to images isn’t working as well as Flickr (and won’t).

Anyway, Thomas Hawk does a variety of searches on a variety of image search engines to demonstrate that Yahoo is running away from the pack in this area.

What do you think? Are you going to change where you search for images because of this new announcement?

There’s another blogstorm about a new style of conversational advertising.

Let’s back up a second. First, I wasn’t approached for this advertising campaign. I’ve done similar ones, though, for Intel. Why didn’t I get called out? Cause I pointed out that I was doing such and what I was getting in return here on my blog. From what I can tell the first time we learned about this advertising campaign wasn’t from the bloggers themselves, but from Valleywag.

So, first rule of avoiding bad PR for taking money is DISCLOSE, DISCLOSE, DISCLOSE!

I personally didn’t have a problem with the campaign itself although I thought it was pretty lame. Last night when the campaign disappeared I saw the story change, though. That was a tacit admission that something was smelly with this campaign. It was getting negative commentary therefor it must be pulled. Whoever did that made a mistake.

Why do companies try to do this kind of advertising? Because of a few reasons:

1) Bloggers start conversations. If you want a conversation to get started in the world, one big way is to get bloggers to talk about you. I’m looking at my emails and I have more than 1,000 pitches from PR people all over the world who are HOPING I’ll write about them, their company’s products, or their news. Almost everything you see on TechMeme started as one of these press releases.
2) Bloggers are credible. Credible enough, at least, to start conversations and accelerate those conversations through the world. Recently a CEO told me that because he was on my show he got on Fox News because a Fox News producer was watching my show, liked what he had to say, and invited him onto Fox News. He said that really gave them a major shot in the arm. He’s been telling all his CEO friends that they should also get on my show. So now I’m getting nailed by even more PR firms.
3) Bloggers increasingly have influence. Almost everyone I know reads TechCrunch, or GigaOm, or Valleywag. How do I know that? Because at dinner parties, or whenever I meet geeks they bring stuff up that was discussed on TechCrunch. When Valleywag printed that I was looking for a job tons of people started emailing me (totally fabricated, which is why I generally don’t believe much I read on Valleywag), or Twittering me about whether or not I really was looking for a job. Companies are paying attention to that too and are trying to figure out how to get into these influence networks.
4) The professional journalists are moving in. Look at TechMeme on the average day. I usually see more “professional” “big brand” journalism names there than people who came through the blogging ranks like Mike Arrington or Peter Rojas. We’re all competing for the same advertising dollars now, and some are going hungry and, so, the pressure to do things “to pay payroll” is increasingly to sell your credibility.
5) Advertisers know banners don’t work as well as text. Heck, Google got to be the #1 brand and half as big as Microsoft by understanding that. If I did have advertising on my blog I know that the content stream is FAR more valuable than anything I put over in the navigation part of my blog. So, if advertisers come to me they increasingly are wanting to get access to my content stream.
6) Increasingly bloggers’ recommendations DO sell product. I’ve seen this over and over in my own life as people come up to me and tell me “I bought XYZ because you wrote about it.” Or “I tried that Web service because you said it was cool.” So, increasingly advertisers want their brands to be mentioned by, or associated in some way with bloggers. ScobleShow’s sponsor, Seagate, is very happy because it is associated with me. That increasingly gets them mentioned at conferences, gets them included in conversations, and at the recent CES got them in touch with far more other bloggers (and professional journalists) than they would have hadn’t had an association with a blogger.

So, anyway, there’s a lot of pressure on bloggers to put their names on advertising. This pressure has been there for years. After all, Microsoft hired me back in 2003. They saw the value of having a blogger associated with their brand way back then (and tons of companies have followed).

If this pressure is going to be there (it will), then what can bloggers do?

1) Disclose, disclose, disclose, and disclose some more. If even there’s a PERCEPTION that money is changing hands, gotta disclose. Valleywag keeps nagging me everytime I write about Adobe cause Adobe paid PodTech some small amount of money to do some podcasts a year ago. I gave them power over me by not being ultra clean and making sure everyone understood what PodTech was getting paid for and what I was getting paid for. I assumed that since that wasn’t paid to get influence over me, it didn’t need to be disclosed. It really did. That way my readers can figure out for themselves whether or not my writing is biased.
2) Make it very clear what is advertising speech and what is not. This is why I don’t like PayPerPost and other advertising schemes that get bloggers to talk. If you write something you’re getting paid to write it should have the word “ADVERTISEMENT” in the headline. If you don’t do that, well, then prepare to get thrown under the Valleywag bus.
3) Disclose EVERYTHING you’re getting paid for. Even if it isn’t on your blog. This is what gave this story some power. Dave Winer writes that he didn’t know about this practice.

Any other rules for selling your soul? I know some people say “don’t sell your soul in the first place.” Well, that doesn’t work either, at least for those of us who aren’t independently wealthy and increasingly it’s difficult to not take the money. I know some bloggers who have half the audience size I do that are getting paid $8,000 a month for advertising on his blog. Bloggers share those kinds of stories all the time. It’s incredibly difficult to turn down $8,000 a month, or even $2,000. All advertising is “selling your soul” at some level. Advertisers are buying advertising to get access to your audiences. If you don’t have an audience you don’t have to worry about this, but if you blog increasingly you’ll have to face this at some time or another. Even a free phone, or a free laptop is really advertising. Disclose that, too. Let your readers know your conflicts of interest.

I even disclose when I sell stock, or when I am going to own stock (I still own my Microsoft stock, for instance). Why? Because that’s a potential conflict of interest. If Valleywag ever finds out you own stock and you’re a blogger with a big enough audience expect to get thrown under the bus for that too. Why? Cause everytime Valleywag finds something that they can poke you with they get traffic. Hint, you are making Nick Denton richer everytime you give him something to say about you.

As for advertisers, come to PodTech and I’ll consult with you about how to get conversations started in the blogosphere without getting bloggers to sell their souls. There’s lots of ways to do that, but they require a bit more work on your behalf than the Microsoft “people ready” campaign did. I’m sure some people at Microsoft see this campaign as a success. After all, we’re all talking about it this morning. But I disagree.

Anyway, sorry for adding onto the blogstorm here, but thought it was important enough to add my $.02. What do you think?

Facebook turned on its new video feature today. Its best evangelist? Chris Putnam.

Do you remember that name? Oldtimers here will. Five years ago, back when he was 16, he let me listen to his piano practice via a Web service. Today? He’s on Facebook.

He’s an engineer there and runs security. I’ve watched a bunch of his videos. They are fun, if not frivolous things. Facebook seems to have a fun culture.

What’s weird is I’m now dealing with Ami Vora, who works in Facebook’s PR department. Wait a second, I know Ami. She used to work at Microsoft and I’ve even interviewed her a time or two back on Channel 9.

Oh, and happy 21’st birthday Chris!

Ever buy an ad on Google/Yahoo/or Microsoft’s search engine? Here I talk with a guy who buys MILLIONS of keywords for his clients. Get some insight into how advertisers look at search engines by listening to Jeff Figueiredo, senior strategist at PointIt, a search engine marketing agency based in Seattle.

Trend he is seeing?

“There’s more dollars in play and Google is getting more of those dollars.” Hear why and why Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling in the search advertising marketplace and his take on the acquisitions that Microsoft and Google have made in the advertising marketplace.

Oh, and he doesn’t have good things to say about Google ads on blogs and other content sites. He advises his clients not to advertise on content sites, only on Google’s search engine.

On Friday Patrick, my 13-year-old son, moved in to spend most of the summer with Maryam and me. His first question to me when his mom dropped him off was “dad, do you have an unused copy of Windows XP?”

I was pretty sure I had a copy. After all, when I left Microsoft I bought a bunch of stuff including a couple copies of XP “just in case.” (Microsoft employees get to buy software for far less than retail).

But I thought the request was weird. Why? Well, he has a cool MacBookPro and already has Vista running on it with both Parallels and Bootcamp. I figured he just wanted to collect OS’s to brag to his friends when he got back to school in the fall. “You think you had a great summer? Well I have four OS’s running on my Mac” Or something like that.

Anyway, when we got home he went through my stash of old crusty software and found an unopened box of XP. I remember he was very happy. Gave me a look like “finally there’s a reason my dad was cool for working at Microsoft.”

But I still didn’t understand why all this instant love was coming my way.

Snap forward to last night. We met a bunch of geeks at the Ritz for some fun times and a spectacular sunset. Eventually we ended up at the house to watch a movie and Patrick pulled out his MacBookPro.

Someone asked him why he was running Windows XP on it. They thought that was weird. I was just proud that maybe my Microsoft evangelism was finally having some effect on my son. I think he went Mac just to spite me and be rebellious. Heck, if that’s the state of teenage rebellion today I’m down with it.

Anyway, it just demonstrated how clueless I really was. His answer:

The latest patch of World of Warcraft that came out a few weeks ago took the framerate on OSX down to 10 frames a second in battle and 15 out of battle.

On Windows XP the framerate is 60 frames a second. He said about running WoW on XP: “it’s a whole new WoW now.”

I just asked Patrick, what about Vista? “Vista didn’t really work very well.” He says that Vista has better framerates than OSX, but gets unconnected a lot so wasn’t very playable.

So, I guess if you want the best WoW on your Mac, you gotta find an old copy of XP.

And, yes, I am now the coolest dad in the neighborhood again. Whew!

Happy Father’s Day!

PS: he’s been playing since February and is on level 48 and moving up fast. Watch out Joi Ito and Liz Lawley (they both are level 70′ers and have been playing a lot longer)!

UPDATE: James Au is reporting that World of Warcraft player numbers are going down. Maybe partly because of this issue?

Microsoft’s mashup programming editor, Popfly, has been updated according to Aaron Brethorst, program manager on that team. Lots of updates. Looks great and is getting good uptake from the community too.

I keep thinking back to 1989. Apple had just introduced the Macintosh II. This was way back in System 6.x days. A long, long time ago. But why did that year matter? Well, Apple was way way way ahead of the rest of the industry. I remember being in a computer science class back then where they forced us all to use DOS. In the journalism department we had just gotten brand new Mac IIcx’s. I think that’s one reason I went into journalism rather than trying to please my dad and become an engineer or a computer scientist.

Anyway, back then I thought Apple was going to take over the world. Apple’s equipment was just so brilliantly designed. They had the best printer, the best network, the best GUI, the best applications. Remember, back then Microsoft’s apps on Macs were WAY ahead of Microsoft’s apps on DOS and Windows was still a joke.

So why didn’t Apple win?

Well, go back to Rich Cameron’s classroom and look again. He wrote a ton of Hypercard applications for his journalism classes. That’s how we learned how to cover press conferences and all sorts of other things. Many of his tests were done in Hypercard too.

But Apple didn’t realize the power of developers. They ignored Hypercard. Never really improved it. Never gave developers really great tools. I remember meeting software developers who worked on Apple applications and they were always complaining about how hard they were to use, or how many rules they had to follow to make sure their apps were “Apple compliant.”

Many people think Apple didn’t win because Apple didn’t go Microsoft’s route of licensing the OS to clone manufacturers. I’m not so sure about that.

Look at what Microsoft did for developers between 1990 and 1995 and you’ll see that THAT was a huge reason that Microsoft became dominant with Windows 95. I remember when Visual Basic came out that lots of Apple developers would look over at it and say “that’s what Hypercard should have become.”

In 1989 Apple was in charge. By 1995 Apple was a second rate company and by 1999 people were thinking that Apple was going to disappear. Of course we all know the rest of the story, right? Steve Jobs.

So, why do I say that Steve Jobs is not an idiot?

Because he’s had to learn the lesson of 1989. Give developers tools to build apps easily and extend your product or else they, and the market, will go somewhere else.

Anyway, right now Apple is acting a lot like Apple did in 1989. Apple is miles ahead with its iPhone. It’s pretty. The folks I’ve talked to who’ve had their hands on one say it pushes the experience of using a cell phone ahead a mile and is way ahead of, say, my little Nokia N95 that’s sitting next to me right now.

But, why is Steve Jobs telling iPhone developers to pound sand? Dave Winer posits that Apple isn’t opening up the iPhone because they don’t have to.

Oh, but 1989 reminds us that chosing to remain non-friendly to developers will work for a while, but long term will doom you to second rate status.

Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot.

So, what do I think will happen? Oh, I can see the Steve Jobs keynote in 2008 right now. “We’ve sold eight million iPhones, more than we expected” and “remember how I said iPhone apps needed to be done with JavaScript and HTML? Well, we heard from all of you that you wanted to play games on Pogo.com so we added Flash. And we’ve been working on our own iPhone applications for more than a year now and we’re sharing the developer tools we use internally.”

Go back to 1989. What if Apple HAD invested in developer tools? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had released Visual Basic? What if Apple, instead of Microsoft, had taken the “consumer coolness” that they had in the Apple II line and made it so that a geek working inside some big company could make a business justification to use Macs instead of Windows machines? (Hint: a big part of that is how easy it is to make business applications).

Maybe Apple is happy with its 5% market share, but I doubt it. Steve Jobs is not an idiot.

Watch him open up the iPhone next year. Until then at least Dori Smith should have a job (she’s one of the world’s experts on JavaScript and is out looking).

Or, do you think Apple will keep the iPhone closed and tell developers to pound sand forever?

Steve Jobs is not an idiot.