Amanda Congdon, formerly with Rocketboom, is surprised that I found her “little project.” Oh, Amanda, you think I didn’t build an RSS feed for your name on Technorati? Not to mention I have tons of people who email me about stuff regarding tech or video on the Internet.

Speaking of which, rumors are Amanda is going to soon announce a huge deal that’ll surprise everyone. I hope so, but it doesn’t take away from what I wrote yesterday. Even if she’s going to be on the Today show, that announcement would still have been a LOT bigger if it was done three weeks ago.

Still, I’m cheering Amanda on! I’m sure whatever she will do it’ll be very cool and I’ll be watching.

How has culture and society changed? Just ask 14-month-old Tyler — the kid in front of us. He keeps looking at my computer and saying something that sounds like Bob the Builder. Bbbbbbbob is really more what it sounds like. But his parents say they let him play with Bob the Builder.com. Damn, they start the kids young on computers in San Francisco.

I think it’s cute that he thinks that Bob the Builder is on my computer too.

I love San Francisco. We have free wifi when we come to ballgames here. And the Giants page that comes up with the WiFi is pretty interesting too! (It shows lots of stats of the ballgame we’re watching).

Patrick says he doesn’t like baseball. I told him that there’s Garlic Fries and free WiFi and he’s happy now.

So, if you’re in San Francisco and you attend a baseball game, remember to bring your mit AND your laptop!

Giants won 8-0.

UPDATE: Looked like Elliott Back was the author of that site, but now I learn he just wrote the software (Elliott just called me and says he’s not involved). This guy John Comokaz (stickybuns@gmail.com) is bothering Elliott too, by dragging his Elliott’s name through the mud. I just did a whois lookup and found the guy who does the crazyfactor site is John Comokaz.

Anyway, now that I have more facts I see that John Comokaz is doing CrazyFactor which is stealing my content without proper attribution, spamming blogs via trackbacks, and doing other crappy things. Anything we can do about this guy?

Sorry to Elliott Back. I should have done a whois to start with.

UPDATE: Ajay says his site is being ripped off too.

Ian Kallen writes about webspam in the Google ecosystem. This is one area that Windows Live Spaces got right. Until Microsoft has an effective spam blocking system it’ll stick with requiring commenters to register.

On the other hand, why doesn’t Google get more aggressive about blocking spammers? Because to do so would require either shelling out some serious cash to acquire Akismet or another spam blocking system or it would require making things a LOT tougher for its users. Translation: that would retard adoption, something that an advertising-distribution network like what Google really is will have a VERY hard time doing.

I need to go back to my little blog counting experiment that flamed out last weekend. When I was looking through the various blog systems I found that while most Live Spaces have no content, Google’s Blogger has a ton of spammers. Not sure which one is better, to tell the truth.

Thanks to Doc Searls for linking me here.

UPDATE: Matt Cutts, of Google, points out this article is old (April, 2006) and that Blogger has a new system that’s a lot better at cutting down spam. Might be true, but I saw a ton that still was getting through the system last week.

How many employees did Kiko have again? Three, right? Well, they just sold their “failure” for $258,100. Not too shabby!

It took less than an hour to wake Toni up (the CEO) and get him to acknowledge the problems here. On a Sunday morning.

I’ve seen so many things written about so many companies who never show up and say a simple “I’m listening.”

And people wonder why Wordpress is seeing very rapid growth in both blogs produced on Wordpress as well as readers-per-blog?

That’s why. And it’s why everytime I speak to corporate types I tell them how to use Technorati to LISTEN to what bloggers are saying. These are the interactions that get your customers to be wildly enthusiastic (even during times where the product isn’t quite working right).

Update: Wordpress tech support says the problem should be fixed now.

Whew, the comment spam is still pouring in. I miss my Akismet! Someone wake Matt Mullenweg up! Heheh. I already emailed him. Interesting that this story isn’t on TechMeme or TailRank yet.

The problem is that bloggers who don’t use Wordpress.com blogs mostly don’t see this as an issue. It’s a HORRIBLE issue here when Akismet isn’t doing its job. Since I’ve started using Wordpress.com Akismet has blocked more than 64,000 spams.

Why does this matter? Cause imagine how bad the comments here would be if you had to wade through 64,000 spams just to participate. Whew.

Hey, if you’re at Foocamp can you wake Toni Schneider up and tell him Akismet is down? (He’s Automattic’s CEO and is at Foocamp).

Help, we’re drowning in spam here…

UPDATE: Looks like it’s fixed now. No more spam, yeah!

Last Friday I was at TechCrunch’s big mondo party. I met the guy who built del.icio.us. Guy Kawasaki. Dave Winer. Kevin Rose. And many other ”famous geeks and technologists” and I spent more than six hours at that event.

So, why did I, in the first hour today at nofoo learn more Web sites and hear more original ideas discussed than at that entire six-hour event? Keep in mind that at today’s event. Keep in mind that for the first hour there was just one guy, Bud Ozborn, there. And he’s not a famous technologist.

Anyway, he told me about Joe Satriani’s “Guitarist TV” that is done using Brightcove, an Internet TV service.

Later as a few other people showed up I noticed we all were learning a lot faster and riffing off of each other’s ideas a lot more than at most of the other events I’ve attended this summer.

I learned about Swaptree, which will let me trade books, DVDs, and other things with you.

Joseph A. Paolantonio joined us and we started talking about identity and presence (he wrote up what he remembers of the afternoon on his blog). I forget why we were talking about Anne Galloway’s blog (she’s a PhD candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) but I’m glad we did cause she talks about stuff I would never consider. Ahh, it was when we started talking about how we relate to each other and physical spaces.

Anyway at the end we all noted that we had a great time and a great conversation — better than we usually have, even at events where the people are smarter or more accomplished - and started thinking about why that was?

I realized that you can really only talk with three other people at one time. If there’s more than four, then you’ll actually start spliting up into two separate conversations. Get to about six or seven people and you’ll have two conversations and you’ll want to pay attention to both.

So, we’re now already in ADD land for conversations. Pay attention to the interesting one.

It gets worse the more people that get added. Then you want to “graze” for the best conversation — at TechCrunch there were so many interesting people that you couldn’t spend more than a few minutes talking to any one (and there was the social pressure of knowing that the guy behind you listening in could have been a journalist or a blogger that’d put your stupid opinions up for the world to make fun of). If you’re stuck talking to someone at such an event, even someone who is damn brilliant and interesting you keep looking around for someone who is even MORE brilliant and interesting.

And, even if you are a brilliant conversationalist and stay focused on the person in front of you the noise level goes up and up and up. I remember talking with one guy at TechCrunch and I literally couldn’t hear his answers so I gave up on any type of intelligent conversation.

Out of my two years when I attended FooCamp I remember only two conversations clearly. And both of them were in this very small-group clustering and stayed in that cluster for a very long time. One was where the two guys who started Google walked in on Patrick and me at about 11 p.m. in an empty cafeteria. That was an experience I’ll never forget.

Another one was where I was sitting at lunch with Esther Dyson, Stewart Brand, Jeff Bezos.

In what setting have you learned the most in one hour from other people?

I’ve grown so used to the awesome spam blocker that Wordpress.com includes for free (it comes from Akismet, which is owned by Automattic, the same folks who do Wordpress).

But tonight a TON of spam got through. So, I wonder if Akismet is down or if something got horked?

By the way, if Matt Mullenweg is reading this, can you let me see older comments on the comment page? I can only see the last few comments and when I get a spam storm like this it makes it very difficult to be sure that I deleted them all. Same on the spam page. Let me see hundreds, not just the last few.

The wine is disappearing, but the talk is getting good. We’re about to go upstairs for some sushi. Anyway, Bud kept a list of the cool things we talked about and here it is.

Don told us how he survived without a TV: TVRSS.NET. He also told us that Prosper.com rocks. It’s “eBay for loans” he says. Great way to make small investments, you tell the system what interest rate you want to earn and how much risk you’re willing to put up with and people bid on taking your loan. Pierre, one of the founders of eBay is behind this.

He recommends using UTorrent to download shows.

Hasan Diwan told us about Consumerist, which is a site that encourages people to post their customer service problems.

Bud Ozborn told us about a new beta service he’s been playing with: Freenigma. It’s a way to encrypt your Hotmail or Gmail email.

It’s interesting, in three hours I’ve learned more things than I learned at any other geek party. And that’s after forgetting half of the cool stuff because of the Windy Point red wine we’re drinking.

Don MacAskill, founder of SmugMug is here telling us about how they are switching to Amazon’s S3. This is huge.

SmugMug has 300 terabytes. Terabytes!!! Of data.

Don is telling us how he’s moving over to Amazon S3. He said it saved his ass after someone accidentally took down a server rack and they had everything backed up on Amazon. See, he’s built redundancy into his data center. Every photo you upload gets copied to two hard drives.

But, Don is getting rid of that second backup and putting it on Amazon S3. He says that Amazon S3 is amazing and lower cost than the drives in his own data center.

More interesting things from nofoo soon.

Yeah, we might not have tons of geeks at an exclusive camp out. We might not be over at Stanford coding up with the cool kids. But, we have some good views! Nofoo is on, come on over and visit us. We’ll be at the Half Moon Bay Ritz until 6 p.m. tonight. Bring some food, drinks, and $7 for the valet.

Whew, what an awesome blog: Google Maps Mania.

I could spend tons of time just visiting all the things they link to on this blog.

Now THESE are the kinds of bloggers I want to get on my tech video show.

Tech maniacs!

Matt Cutts, blogger at Google (by far the most interesting guy who blogs at Google, too, he should get a promotion or some extra stock grants or something) asks “what’s your fave Web 2.0 company.” All my favorites have been listed. Any that are missing? Add them to the list over there.

The other day someone asked me “why should I trust blogs?” I gave a pretty good answer about how the system self corrects (it’s really important to read my comments, for instance, cause if I am blowing smoke up your behind someone like LayZ will point it out in a couple of minutes, sometimes he’s wrong, but a lot of times he’s right. If he’s right other people will join the pile on).

Anyway, here’s one way I trust what people tell me. If they build a relationship with me, like Drew Meyers did, then I generally trust them unless they prove unreliable some other way. Drew, by the way, has free tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Fresno, CA, tomorrow night. Anyone want to go? He’d like to see a donation to a charity in return for the tickets.

But that’s an aside. Here’s an example of how something that I didn’t know about percolates through the blogosphere and onto my screen. I subscribe to about 100 RSS feeds of bloggers that I trust. Overtime they continue bringing me an interesting stream of stuff. Marc Canter, for instance, started the company that became Macromedia and later was sold to Adobe. He’s an interesting guy and I’ve known him for years. If he tells me something is a “must read” generally he’s right 99% of the time. So, today he pulled that on me.

Now a link stream has my attention, big time. So, I head over to Mark Cuban’s blog. Another guy I trust. Heck, he runs the Dallas Mavericks and is one of the best bloggers around. He links me on to Rahul Sood’s blog.

Now, I’ve never read Rahul before. So, I have no idea about whether this guy is good or not. But Mark Cuban says he’s the president and CTO of VoodooPC, and is also a “buddy and supergeek.” So, I click over to Rahul’s post about his discussions with Michael Dell.

That’s a gesture of major support. And, it tells me that this is something I’d probably be interested in (cause I’m interested in geeky stuff, and that’s what I’ve promised you, my readers too. Geeky stuff is good. Cat photos, even funny ones, are bad).

And that’s the story of how this link got on my blog. It indeed is a great post.

Hugh Macleod cracks me up. I know that when I’m 60 I’ll probably be talking about what Scoble said. Patrick Scoble, that is. If I’m not in a cardboard box somewhere.

But, no matter what happens, I’ll still have my Hugh Macleod business cards, my Hugh Macleod coasters, my Hugh Macleod t-shirt, my new Hugh Macleod PowerPoint slide deck, and my Hugh Macleod poster.

Damn, I’m interesting cause I’m a Hugh Macleod cult member!

Seriously, I have all that stuff. It’s weird.

Ex-Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon is doing some work with PopURLs, they announced on their blog.

On the other hand this demonstrates how NOT to do PR on your blog. If you have such important news, which you know will drive traffic to you, you should do at least some of this:

1) Link to your company site.
2) Explain what your product does. I have no idea what PopURLs does.
3) Link to a video. Damn it she’s a video star! Get a freaking video of her with your team explaining why she partnered with you.
4) Link to HER Web site, which gets her Google Juice (they linked to Wikipedia). That’s really a lame way to build a partnership with someone!

That’s a TOTAL opportunity lost. It demonstrates that maybe even hip, new startups, should hire a company that understands how to communicate with the word-of-mouth network properly.

I also would have included my cell phone number so that you would be available to the press for interviews. Oh, and I would have announced this at a conference where there are going to be a lot of bloggers (at Stanford right now there is a BarCamp going on, that would have been a perfect place to go and hang out with Amanda).

Update: Thomas, in my comments, says that she isn’t even going to do a video show and that PopURLs is just an aggregator of popular websites. That’s just lame for both parties. If Amanda had announced a video project that’d be one thing. But this really is lame on all sides. She had one chance to get the world’s attention (it’s too late, actually, most of the world’s press that wrote about Rocketboom has already forgotten about that whole story and moved on, they certainly won’t pay attention here).

It’s interesting. I’m hearing about more and more stuff (like I just linked to) from Microsoft blogs before hearing about them from big-name journalists (like Steven Levy at Newsweek, or Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal).

It used to be that the only way to announce news was to talk with those two guys (and maybe a dozen or so others).

A lot of what these people do is keep relationships going with these journalists, hoping that they’ll write something nice when their product comes out. But the big companies still hold the big news for these guys. Why? Cause they still have immense influence due to the audiences that read their writings.

The hard part is when they want to give a jouralist an exclusive. Exclusives are important ways to reward journalists for writing a great review last time (which encourages them to write more good reviews, right?) but it also is just a way to reward someone for building an influential and large audience. If you were in corporate PR would you talk with, say, a geek with a few thousand readers like Scott Hanselman, or Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy first?

The thing is people in the new word-of-mouth network are figuring out it really doesn’t matter WHO you talk to first, as long as you talk with a diverse range of bloggers and make yourself available. Remember how I broke my news that I left Microsoft? I talked with 15 bloggers. I think only a couple of whom were in the top 100 on Technorati. The guy who actually broke my news? I didn’t talk with him at all and, in fact, didn’t know who he was before he broke the story. Total Z list (at that point).

Which is a key point. There is an invisible information sharing network among both big-name journalists as well as bloggers. When you put a journalist under NDA they tell their friends anyway. Or, at least give a good series of winks. Even something as simple as “I can’t tell you anything, but you should watch Google over the next few weeks.”

I call this “turning up the PR heat.” Everyone in the PR business knows it happens. They even have plans for what happens when news leaks. Usually they’ll have a list of other journalists to email or call if news leaks. That’s why when you see something happen it seems like everyone in the world starts talking about it all at once.

One thing about all this is to keep in mind Michael Gartenberg’s rule: those who really know don’t talk. Which is true cause they have signed an NDA.

It is something to keep in mind, most rumors turn out not to be true (or get blown out of relation because they are trying to read between the lines of a wink or a nod and don’t really have the right information). Remember the old “network” game we played when we were kids? Get 10 kids together, tell one of them something and tell him to pass it down. By the time it gets to the end of the line it sounds nothing like what the original thing was.

But it does get the line of 10 talking, doesn’t it? PR people know this intimately. They are experts at causing conversations to happen. The good ones are also expert at guiding the conversation so the right thing gets passed along.

This invisible information sharing network is real interesting. I remember the day when I learned about the “Universal Runtime” which was code name for .NET. I almost got fired for hearing about that six months before it was talked about publicly — someone who was in an Software Design Review told me “this will be a huge deal for software developers” and I used that information to email my own network about it. Someone told someone at Microsoft and I got in trouble cause, not only wasn’t I supposed to know that information at that time, but I just let a huge number of people know about it too.

Naughty, naughty.

Anyway, just cause it pisses off product managers doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen anymore.

Today my network is telling me that Google is showing around some sort of new Office-oriented suite of services. But they are holding everyone they are talking with to an NDA/embargo. My sources wouldn’t even tell me when the embargo ends.

But, this does cause some interesting distortions in the invisible news network. The pressure is building in the PR kettle. Sometime soon that pressure will release and it’ll be all over Memeorandum.

The weird thing is “does this PR actually get what companies want, which is adoption?”

Here, let’s check in again with Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords. He had a five star review in a USA national newspaper. On the front of the business section. With a picture even. He only got about 40 downloads from that. When he gets talked about on blogs, he gets a much higher rate of downloads (about 10 times, what he told me). He’s had quite a few newspaper reviews, by the way, and they, except for one in the New York Times, gave him small adoption increases.

Riya’s CEO, Munjal Shaw, says talking to bloggers is more important than talking to Walt Mossberg. I still don’t agree with that. Walt Mossberg or talking to the New York Times tech team is still more important, but here’s where I think Munjal is right:

If you start a PR campaign at the bottom of the stack. Yes, with Z listers, not A listers like me or Arrington or Om Malik, you’ll build a much better story.

It will only take a few hours for us to figure out something important is going on anyway and you’ll get a LOT more adoption that way. Plus, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal will have better quotes (from real users, even!) and they’ll be more likely to write about you, not less (you do have a hot product that everyone will talk about, right?)

So, who are the 40 Z listers you’re talking to today?

Hint: most big companies will never get this. They have to convince their bosses that their plans are correct. That means ALWAYS starting out with the A list and working down.

Anyway, even big-name journalists hate this game, they tell me, because it burns them more often than it helps them (and it puts pressure on them to only write nice things about the big companies, which they hate).

And the PR cycle continues. What you hearing from YOUR network? How are perceptions changing? That’ll tell you who has the better PR teams and methodology.

For myself? I used to believe in the “hand it to a big name first” methodology. I don’t anymore. When I have something to announce I’ll do it on my blog first, or I’ll show up at a conference where there’s lots of bloggers and show it to them equally there, with a blog to follow at first leak.

If you’re an entrepreneur, how do you announce your new products to the world?

Have you recently shipped a new product? Tell us about it here and link to your site.

I was over reading Dare Obasanjo’s blog and saw he linked over to the new Windows Live WiFi team. That team is working on tools that sound very useful. I’m signing up for the beta.

In other Windows Live news Don Dodge links to the new image and video search. That’ll be interesting to try out.

Sounds like Windows Live is quickly coming out with lots of stuff to compete with Google. More on Google next.