I was over at Matt Cutts blog where he is relieved I am not talking about Google so that he can take the day off. But, while over there someone in his comments said “RIP Steve Irwin” and several others said “sad day” etc. So, I head over to Google News to read the sad news. He was the famous “Crocodile Hunter” that I, and millions of others, enjoyed watching on TV.

Then, over on Jory Des Jardin’s blog I learn that Craig Cline had died (she was with him when he died and wrote that up, I actually found out from Dave Winer, who linked to Jory’s blog this morning). He was the head of programming for Seybold. They had a famous conference for publishers (I had attended back in the 1990s).

Bummer. Hope your day is going better.

Ahh, to some people the dropping knowledge project sounds like a great idea, right? Get 112 smart people around a table to answer the world’s deepest questions. Some good will come out of this, you might be thinking. Sorry, this will bring about some lunacy, but I doubt anything deep will come out of it. Why?

Because it’s the world’s ultimate committee! Now you can watch — in real time — why great companies slow down their innovation rate when joined in with a larger company.

Committees suck the soul out of all great ideas. This one included.

Thanks Hugh Macleod for your ascerbic commentary on this and for linking me to the world’s ultimate committee. Sigh. We should hand every participant here a copy of the Mythical Man Month. Adding more smart people to the committee doesn’t make it smarter.

Oh, and happy labor day to those of you inside the United States. Maryam is celebrating by making me labor for her. Translation: no more blogging today.

Update: you can make your own talking Web page over at SitePal. Long Zheng tried it out on his “I’m Windows Vista page.” Fun, but not something I think I’d use.

Finally, Rocketboom has a tugboat challenge from New York City.

Have a good day, even if your wife is asking you to do a bunch of chores.

Thanks to Geek and Poke for the cartoon.

When I was eating sushi and chatting with Jeremy Wright, CEO of B5 Media, and Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug, Don, at one point, pointed out that SmugMug had 150,000 paying customers and was profitable. I answered back “oh, I guess you aren’t a Web 2.0 company then” and we all had a big laugh.

But that laugh has been bothering me. Comedy works best when it’s reflecting a truth no one wants to admit in public. I’m noticing something in the valley. The newer companies are struggling to get noticed. Are struggling to figure out how to get outside the TechCrunch/TailRank/TechMeme/Reddit/Digg/Slashdot/Om/Scoble bubble.

I’ve been awfully cheery of late, but I’ve been comparing traffic notes with bloggers, journalists, CEOs, and other geeks and there simply isn’t that big a pool of traffic out there unless you can get some hot search term on Google or Yahoo.

Hint: what’s Jeremy’s most profitable blog? It ain’t about Ruby on Rails. It’s about Lindsay Lohan.

The thing I’m noticing is that outside the valley most people use search engines to find things. Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, etc.

How strong is that? Well, insiders tell me that one of the top search terms over at Yahoo is actually “Google.” And one of the top search terms at Google is “Yahoo.”

Why is that? Because most people outside the little tech bubble we live in every day don’t know how to use Web browsers. They have been trained to use the search box.

Not many people are talking about how to get outside of our little tech bubble. At least not in public.

But Joe Kraus, CEO of Jotspot, let slip that he’s hired a person who is just analyzing how good their keyword advertising is working. He wouldn’t tell me his favorite Google keyword. Why not? Cause that’s how he’s going to escape the bubble and provide a return on investment for his investors.

I wish we had a conference on “how to find customers outside of the tech bubble?” The entire industry could use some creative thinking there.

Other things that are catching my eye on this topic this morning? Renee Blodgett wrote a post about “Web 2.0 out of control” and Paul Graham, VC behind “Y Combinator,” which is a grouping of companies in the Web 2.0 space pulls out his best Richard Nixon impression in a TechCrunch interview and says “this is not a bubble.”

Of course it’s a bubble, but it’s not bubble 1.0 (actually, I’m agreeing with Paul’s interview, he did say it’s not a financial bubble).

Kraus, again, told me last week that ”it’s a bubble.” He should know. He cofounded Excite at Home, which was one of the biggest companies in the last bubble. But, he detailed the differences in bubble 1.0 and this bubble.

First, retail investors are not involved. Translation: your mom and dad can’t buy stock in any of these Web 2.0 companies so they won’t be hurt this time around like they were last time. Web 2.0 companies aren’t going IPO. They aren’t getting big.

Second, the amount of money involved is still small. Yeah, the company I work for got $5.5 million. Digg. A couple of million. And so on. But you aren’t seeing the total pouring in of capital without any oversight like last time around. I disagree with Graham that stupid things aren’t being invested in, I’ve seen a few.

The capital being invested today is being done by professional investors who keep a great deal of oversight on their money, Kraus says. He also points out that these are people with billions under their watch, so $5 million invested is like when you or I go into Las Vegas and put $20 down on a Blackjack table. Yeah, it bothers us when we lose it, but it doesn’t really hurt. Patrick won’t go hungry if I lose $20.

So, what kind of bubble is it if it’s not an investment bubble? It’s a froth bubble. MacAskill has a post titled “Flickr doesn’t suck” where he details some of the froth. The biggest businesses, or the most profitable ones, don’t always get the PR and attention. Heck, working at Microsoft, I learned that in a pretty deep way.

It’s getting harder to pick good ideas out of the froth. Why? Cause there’s so many more things coming at all of us. Look at some of those Web 2.0 lists. They are hundreds of companies long. I remember back when blogging started taking off. The entire industry fit into one coffee house in Mountain View.

So, how do we pop the froth? I don’t know. I’m trying to listen to people outside of Silicon Valley, for one. For two I’m trying to find companies that normal everyday people are interested in (ie, non geeks) and I’m listening to the grapevine to find companies that are making money with the Web 2.0 business models (dating site Plenty of Fish, for instance, is making their payroll with Google ads and doing darn well at it).

How can we detect the difference between real businesses and froth? How do you?

I do like Paul’s point of making things that you want to use yourself. That’s how I come at this too. I try to point out when I actually use something instead of just am pointing to it.

UPDATE: I agree with Dead 2.0, mostly. One thing, though. Web 2.0 is largely funded by advertising. Advertising is an AUDIENCE business. So, when Paul Graham is telling his companies to worry about building audience first, that’s actually a good point of view to take. It’s like building a magazine. If you don’t have any readers you won’t get any advertisers.

The other day I was talking with a developer (who’ll remain unnamed cause he didn’t know I was gonna quote him) and he told me about all the froth he was seeing in the Web 2.0 space. He was wondering where the people were who were paying attention to business. Profits. Customers. He pointed to a lot of the events he’s been attending lately and said “they are frothy.”

One event, the New New Internet, is so frothy that a few people like Christopher Locke are even thinking it’s a parody. I had to look at it several times to realize this was a real conference, not something funny. As Dave says, they are excited about being excited. Frothy.

One other thing. I watched the video from that conference and I notice that there aren’t any women there. Frothy, without women. Oh, I’m SO excited!

Hey, the Channel 9 team found one of my old videos that didn’t get run and it’s a good one. I’m sure it took a while to get it past the PR team — when I shot it earlier this year I thought to myself “this will never make it to the public.”

Why?

Cause it’s the team that builds not only the audio and video functionality in Windows Vista, but it’s also the team that builds (play Jaws movie soundtrack here please) the DRM technologies.

Yes, it’s the most evil team at Microsoft. Damn, and they have a good conversation with me about DRM. We even talk about Cory Doctorow (who hates DRM). At about 19:00 into it the intersections of the interests are mapped out by Steve Ball. “They don’t always align.” That’s PM speak for “they hate each other.”

Oh and don’t miss the demo of Windows Vista’s audio features at 34:40. This is a MAJOR reason why I can’t wait to use Vista, particularly for making videos.

Note: I don’t really think this team is evil, but it shows you the business pressures that teams at Microsoft are under and shows you a little bit about how teams come up with things like DRM technologies.

I hope the Vista team has a bunch more demos like the one at 34:40, too. That was the first time I thought to myself that I had to have Vista. One demo. Now imagine if they have a ton of demos like that?

Yeah, yeah, the compilers over in building #6 on Microsoft’s campus have finished their work (it’s a cool room to visit, by the way). RC1 is done. Where can I download it? I’m not on the beta. I’m not a blue badge (Microsoft employee). I’m not an MVP. I’m not on MSDN Universal. I’m a loser!

Shelley Powers asks yet another conference organizer “where’s the women?” I’m looking at my plans for my own video show and realize I don’t have a diverse-enough set of subjects on my show yet.

I realize that I’ve gotten mostly male voices for my show so far. Partly cause that’s just who is running the tech industry. Head of Sun Microsystems? Male. Person who runs Google Calendar? Male. Person who runs Printing for Less? Male. Person who runs JotSpot? Male. Person who runs Flock? Male. Person who runs eBay’s new research arm? Male. There simply aren’t enough Mena Trotts to go around (speaking of which I’d be honored to have her on my show — her talk at TED was posted on her blog the other day). UPDATE: can you name a CEO of a recognizeable tech company that’s not male? It’s hard to do. Apple? Male. Cisco? Male. Intel. Male. HP? Male. Google? Male. Yahoo? Male. Oracle? Male. Microsoft? Male.

But this is my problem partly cause I just haven’t focused on making sure my show has diverse voices. Truth is that +I+ can do a better job here and haven’t, for whatever reason (UPDATE: we have a segment of the show called “Digital Divas”, by the way, but it still isn’t enough and there aren’t enough women who are hard-core geeks — most of the engineering departments I have walked through lately are mostly male).

Thanks to Shelley and others for reminding us all to think of that.

But, on the other hand, I don’t want to change my process, either, and I don’t want to devalue the accomplishments of women (I remember when men would get together and wonder if I hired Deborah Kurata simply cause she was a woman or because she deserved it — I kept having to pull out speaker ratings and demonstrating that she was always in the top tier of speakers, usually #1. I hated getting that question. I always put the best person on stage that I could and I tried not to care about their physical attributes).

I simply want the most interesting geeks out there to be on my show. For instance, are you an interesting geek like Heather Powazek Champ (who works on the Flickr team at Yahoo)? I wanna talk with you.

So, if you’re an interesting geek, or know of an interesting geek, who is doing something interesting, or running an interesting company (especially one that is using tech in an interesting way) please let me know. Male or female.

It’s helpful for the next few weeks if they are in the San Francisco area since I won’t be able to really start traveling for a few months yet.

Who would you like to see on a video show?

One thing I have feedback for Shelley on is that a few times I, and other people I know, got her invited to events and opportunities and she didn’t make it for some reason or another. When a door is opened that seemed to be closed before, it’d be nice for her to walk through it and take advantage of the opportunity. If only to set an example for others and to make sure the door stays open. But maybe that’s just me.

UPDATE: several days ago Maryam wrote “the women who inspire me.” She also let leak that she was working on a “Digital Divas” segment of our show.

Just to prove I am using Google Calendar, here’s my calendar (sorry, I’m not sharing details, just showing whether I have something planned or not). It even has an RSS feed. And an iCal version. I’m adding more stuff to it right now, so you can watch it fill up.

That’s Courtney Hohne, PR manager at Google (she’s pulling some of the hard-to-come-by Google stickers out of her bag to give to me, gotta love a PR person who hands out swag. I promptly stuck one on my tripod).

Her claim to fame? She was the one who did the PR for the Google Apps for Your Domain press coverage last week. She told me she didn’t have any ulterior motive other than she didn’t brief enough people and got heck for it (even Business Week’s Rob Hof says he wasn’t briefed). I told her don’t brief me, but start with the Z list — a blogger with four readers will get noticed almost as quickly as if Michael Arrington wrote it. She told me that she’ll try to make more use of the email mailing lists that Google is building over on the Google Press Center, so if you’re a blogger you might want to subscribe to their mailing lists if you want to get news from Courtney. Anyway, I respected Courtney a lot for coming out and meeting with me. That’s the sign of a good PR practitioner, they take the bad with the good.

Speaking of good and bad PR, did you see Frank Shaw’s blog? He runs the Microsoft account for Waggener Edstrom and he had to clean up a mess by another PR guy in the UK who said “I don’t get blogs.” If a PR person said that to me I’d say “I don’t get why you’re still employed.”

It seems to me that if you don’t understand something you should work hard to understand it.

Which, brings me to Google Calendar. I wrote last week that I don’t get why I should use Google Calendar instead of Exchange and Outlook. So, yesterday I met with the Google Calendar team to explain why I missed Outlook. Really I do.

Some things that bugged me, though, like how when I just accidentally click on the Google Calendar it wants to create an event for me, are actually features that they discovered in user testing. At least that’s what Carl Sjogreen, the guy who runs the Calendar team, told me. He said that before they added that users couldn’t figure out how to add a new event and after they added that they could.

He also showed me how they build the Web into everything they do, and don’t just make it an afterthought. For instance, I can share my calendar with you in a variety of ways. I could just share my calendar out with you as a Web page (I almost did that, but I realized there’s some stuff on there that people sent me in confidence, so can’t share that, sorry). Or, I can build a specialized calendar and share that with you in a box on my blog to the right. That kind of Web-thought is deep at Google and is going to be how they come at the Enterprise world.

You might not switch your Outlook/Exchange calendar to Google for many years to come, but they’ll come in the back door by getting you to start new calendars that you can share with your family, friends, and with the Internet at large. I’m going to do a new calendar just for my video show, for instance, and share that with you so you’ll be able to see both interviews that are upcoming as well as shows that I’ve both published and that are going to come up. I’ll try to have that calendar done by the end of the weekend.

Yeah, he admitted that they have a lot of work to do on mobile phone sync and the other stuff I asked for (offline, for instance and better email integration). When Google solves those problems they’ll have something very interesting that will see usage inside corporations.

Anyway, after talking with Google yesterday I headed off to meet Kaboodle’s CEO, Manish Chandra. He designed Kaboodle to make it easier to keep track of projects you’re doing on the Web. That sounds pretty cold compared to what it really does though. Let’s say you’re planning out a vacation and you’re visiting dozens of sites, keeping track of the places you want to visit, or the hotels you’re considering and you’re working with other family members. Kaboodle helps you store all those Web sites and pieces of things you’re tracking, and put them in one place, and also collaborate with other people on them. Pretty cool stuff.

Last night Daniel McVicar (who has been an actor on the popular soap opera “The Bold and The Beautiful” had dinner with me last night). I didn’t even realize just how big a star he was until I read his Wikipedia page this morning. He has a funny vlog. Last night he was wearing a Ze Frank t-shirt (I snapped a picture of that on my Flickr feed. Hey, he’s in the ORG! Watch out for those “little duckies.” He can’t get the damn song out of his head either. Heh, Rabbit Bites made fun of his vlog already.

Hope you’re having a good Friday. While I was out meeting the geeks and interviewing people more than 50 more emails came in that haven’t been answered yet (and that’s after cleaning out the ones that aren’t important or were spam). Yikes. I’m gonna take the weekend off and see if I can catch up on my email a bit. Have a great one (it’s Labor Day weekend here in the United States, thanks to everyone who does the work that keeps this world running).

I visited the Googleplex for the third time yesterday. I’m still thinking through what I learned that was different from prior trips. More later (they didn’t have me sign an NDA, so I can share whatever I learned with you, although one conversation with a friend who works there started out with me asking what he was working on and he answered “that’s sorta confidential.” Heheh, Google still does like keeping quiet about what’s coming next).

But I was even more impressed this visit than last because of the small things that they do on their campus. One is that the lobby in building 41 had these hanging slivers of frosted glass. You’re looking at one of them. On the glass were Google searches that constantly scrolled up (each word is displayed only for a few seconds as it scrolls up). I hear this is a randomly-selected set of searches with “naughty” searches pulled out.

It’s these small things that makes Google cool. Not to mention the organic food market in the courtyard. The snack bars that are every few yards. The cafeteria that has — by far — the best food of any large company I’ve been in, and it’s all free.

But beyond that, every interaction I had with Googlers this time was different than the last time I was on campus. They seemed more humble. More comfortable. More inquisitive. And, when I gave them chances to say “you’re an idiot” they didn’t take it (and I gave them many opportunities). This is a different Google than I was used to. And it’s the small things that I noticed.

One other small thing I noticed? A lot more blog listening behavior. Carl Sjogreen, who runs the Google Calendar team, told me that the first thing he does every morning is do this search on Google’s Blogsearch service: “Google Calendar.” He says he answers everyone’s questions, even if you’re a kid in another country with only four readers.

Bing. Small things. They are gonna prove to be dramatically important over time.

I knew that traffic in Silicon Valley seemed a bit light this week. Everyone is at Burning Man. There’s a fun video site from there. I wish I was there. It just didn’t work out this year, but it’s one of the things I really want to do.

One thing about Burning Man. I’m told it’s something you need to experience. Watching a little two inch video about it won’t really do it justice.

I was talking with a geek who’ll remain unnamed and he was telling me how easy it is for someone to sit at a Starbucks, slurp off the local WiFi, and recreate almost everything you do, often gaining passwords and private conversations. I saw this once at a conference where someone up on stage was showing the audience everything that was going over the WiFi networks. For instance, did you know that if you’re using many common Instant Messengers that those send your information over WiFi in plain text? I could be sitting next to you watching EVERYTHING you are typing across the Internet.

So, what do you do to keep your stuff confidential? Any tips beyond this excellent article in Security Focus on this topic? By the way, both this article and my geek friend recommended Off-the-Record Messenging if you want to hold private IM conversations over public WiFi networks.

UPDATE: I had a post here about Browzar, but there are some concerns about it so I pulled that part of the post to protect people.

I occassionally have been checking in on Channel 9. I’m still a Niner. Anyway, I’m listing to this video with Brian Beckman. That guy is a smart mofo. One of the first guys to join Microsoft Research.

I have dreams of getting videos like this inside eBay. Google. Yahoo. Sun. Cisco. Apple. Intel. AMD. Nvidia. etc.

Anand M., in India, asks “has Scoble lost his blog power?” (I linked to him and he didn’t get many visits). My read? If I ever did have blog power, it’s gone now. Digg and TechMeme have all the power now.

I think Rageboy has the clue to what’s going on here (the yawning baby cracked Maryam up). I’m boring. Haven’t been linking to enough cool people and cool tech. Too much inbred inside-the-blogosphere, linking. Or, maybe, I’ve been doing too much linking and not enough first-hand-experience. Translation: not enough lists. Sorry. It’s hard to do good blogging when you’re busy all day long. Sigh.

But, Steve Gillmor has it right: this isn’t a game of traffic. It’s about sharing what you love. I love using tech and studying the product of geeks. Whether or not anyone is listening isn’t the reason I’m doing this (sometimes I forget that, yeah, but getting a link from Digg isn’t worth as much as everyone makes it seem). My passion? Trying out new stuff, finding new problems to solve. I haven’t been doing enough of that lately cause I’m just inside an email tidal storm that I can’t get off of me. Seriously, you have no idea how hard it is to keep up with email. I’m failing, and failing horribly. Sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you. Leave a comment instead of emailing.

The flow that’s happening in my life is simply incredible, especially when I compare it to what was going on in my life in 2002 when I worked at UserLand. Back then there were so few companies, very few interesting things going on. Today there’s SO much. I’m not surprised that it’s harder to get people to click on a link.

I was talking with Chris Messina and Tara Hunt on email tonight and said that just the number of events that’s happening in just the San Francisco area is stunning. I can’t keep up. It makes me just want to grab a bottle of wine and go sit on the beach out by the Ritz. Which is why I missed Barcamp this year. I just wanted a small, manageable conversation with a handful of geeks. It was SO enjoyable.

I’m thinking back on the last year and what I really remember and find special. That Swiss Chalet with a handful of geeks. That was it. Out of all the conferences (many expensive, like Mix06 where I had my own Las Vegas suite). All the PR. All the noise. All the events. Getting, what, five guys together in a Swiss Chalet for a weekend was the highlight of the year.

I wonder if we can have more of those types of experiences? I find I learn a lot more from conversations like that, and it helps me out cause then I have something interesting to say to you all.

The power of four people talking is something that’s just fascinated me all week.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. Everyone is getting bored, even me.

Developers: Facebook (social networking site popular with college students) now has APIs and a blog to boot! Thanks to Martin Lucas-Smith for sending me that

I love the new geotagging feature on Flickr. Check out my neighborhood. Can you find the little duckie sign?

Congrats to the great success Flickr has had with this new feature. Now, when will I be able to add blog posts onto a map? Oh, and is Thomas Hawk’s photography getting better and better? I love his rave about Flickr too, made even better because Thomas works for a competitor of Flickr’s.

Interesting, turns out that blue diodes are gonna be tough to get this year. That’s what’s inside the Toshiba HD-DVD player I bought and what is scheduled to be inside Sony’s Playstation 3’s later this year. My brother says this is making the Xbox team look like geniuses.

Ahh, I see someone is asking “why is the Windows Live Writer blog banned from Google?” They are talking about that over on Channel 9 too.

I doubt it’s banned. There are lots of reasons things don’t get into Google very highly. For one the search term isn’t in the title tag (which, for many searches, is more important than how many inbound links you have). For two someone notes that the HTML on Windows Live Spaces is giving lots of errors on the validators.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m gonna visit Matt Cutts at Google. He loves these kinds of questions. I’ll make sure he gets a good answer. I’ll be the guy wearing my “I’m not Matt Cutts” t-shirt. Just incase anyone gets us confused. Also on the calendar is the Calendar team. Meeting me there will be Scott Mace who runs the Calendarswamp blog. Should be an interesting day!

Why don’t I want you to buy this book? Because it contains the secrets to beating me at Technorati (and how to get Shelley Powers and Steve Gillmor to link to you on the same day! Although with Gillmor you really don’t want him to link to you, trust me on this).

It is the best aggregation of tips for how to get noticed that I’ve found anywhere. I hope all my competitors don’t buy this book and I am buying it for everyone at PodTech. Disclaimer, I liked this book so much I wrote the forward for it for free. I am not getting paid for this endorsement (or, anti endorsement, if you will). Well, unless you buy it by following my link to Amazon. Please do. I’m having a house warming party next month and need money to buy wine and beer for everyone.

This post by Rob La Gesse isn’t the first time I’ve heard that build 5536 rocks, but it’s the most convincing that I might be wrong about Vista not being ready by November (which is when it needs to be finished by).

I wish I had time to play more with new stuff. I’ve been using IE7 exclusively ever since RC1 shipped last week, though, and it has only crashed once in more than 40 hours of use so far and it’s dramatically nicer than IE6. It feels good and it’s a good baseline browser, I’ve only found a couple of sites that didn’t look right in it too. One thing I’ve been doing is visiting dozens of “at risk” sites (er, let’s just call them porn and gambling sites) to test its security — these sites usually load TONS of malware, toolbars, and other nasty stuff onto your computer (due to IE6’s extensibility model, er, lack of security). In IE 7? So far no nasties!

Has anyone been testing out IE 7 looking to see how much better its security is? Can you link me to your experiences? So far it’s dramatically better.