Hey, Valerie Cunningham sits right next to Maryam at Podtech. I’ve never been so close to a Valleywag Web 2.ooohhher. Vote for her. Oh, boy. Can’t wait to get into the office this afternoon (I’m home enjoying the Half Moon Bay wifi, while waiting for our locks to be finished).

Update: Vote for Tara too!

Someone I met today was talking to me about reading blogs and said “I wish bloggers made links pop up as new browser windows.” Or something like that. Hated using the back button.

I said “did you know you can shift-click on links to get them to open up as new Windows?”

Later I was talking to a guy who is working on a report on blog usability and I realized just how unusable my blog is for non-geek users. No “home” link. No “about me” page. Why not? Cause I figured most of my readers are Web-savvy and can figure these things out. But, I get a lot of accidental visitors due to search engines, so I shouldn’t make that assumption.

I was talking with Dave Winer this morning and I was complaining to him about how badly most weblogs behave on mobile phones. He said that he gets it now that he uses a Blackberry and wants to read more blogs on his mobile device. I think I’m gonna make good on my threat to out them on my video show.

But, I was wondering what tips do you have for reading blogs?

Yeah, my #1 tip is to learn to use an RSS News Aggregator. That makes reading blogs a lot more pleasant (and productive!)

But, are there other tips?

One thing I do is on Google I add the word “blog” when I’m searching for something just to see if there’s a blog. For instance, looking for a trucker who blogs? Just search for “trucker blog.” Here, I did it for you.

What other tips would you tell to people who are just starting to get into the blog world?

When people send me stuff I give it the “BlinkTest.” Named after Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” book.

What is my impression after the first 10 seconds? Especially in comparison to something I already know about. It’s those first few seconds that really count. It’s why I like WetPaint and PBWiki (I tried about five others and the first 10 second experience sucked in comparison to these two wiki tools).

Here, let’s try with “HelloWorld,” a new service that lets you post your video up to the Web for free. Open your browser. Visit HelloWorld. Look around. Have a friend time you and only give you 10 seconds. Close your browser. Do the same with YouTube.

Now, what are your opinions? For me I saw a lot of things that looked like ads on Hello World. I didn’t see any on YouTube.

On YouTube I saw examples of videos done by real people. On Helloworld I didn’t see any examples that demonstrated to me that there was a community there.

For me the new Web is about technology COMBINED with community. Heck, even the old Web was about that. Ebay. Craigslist. Today Digg.

On YouTube I saw a simple statement of purpose. I even remember it without looking “Broadcast yourself.” What about HelloWorld? I can’t remember one. I do remember seeing stock quotes on HelloWorld. Huh? If I want stock quotes I’ll go to Quicken or Yahoo Finance. They don’t belong on a video service page.

Portals are dead. Even the one Podtech thought it was building. Dead. Dead. Dead. (PodTech is moving away from the portal model, by the way, in the site redesign we’re doing. Instead we’re going to a “microsite” model where one URL is for one thing).

John Dvorak is right about YouTube (damn, I never thought I’d be using the words “Dvorak” and “right” in the same sentence).

You wanna beat YouTube you gotta pass the BlinkTest. Next! Who wants to submit something for the BlinkTest?

One thing Microsoft will have to learn on its own (I used to play one of the cops internally against people who tried to do stupid things like pulling down posts that pissed off someone) is never pull down posts. Especially if you don’t want someone like Mike Arrington to notice. That’s called breaking into jail, for those of you keeping PR scorecards at home.

Well, almost everytime I ask someone about the domain name of the video show I’m working on they ask “why don’t you just call it RobertScobleTV or ScobleizerTV or something like that?”

I initially hated that suggestion because, despite my reputation of being an egotistical baaahhhssstttaaarrdddd, this show should be about other people. I learned the power of aiming the camera away from myself and toward other people. Not to mention that if this is only about me it’ll never scale and build value. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past five years is that getting more people involved in something is not only more fun, but builds better businesses. Ala Weblogs Inc, Digg, Slashdot. Etc. It’s why I haven’t taken to the videoblogging form of “aim the camera at your face and start saying stuff.”

I also look at today’s Rocketboom and see that they are trying to use the camera to expose evil and improve the world. I doubt my show will get as good, but hell, it’s nice to see a high bar to reach for.

But the feedback is so consistent and persuasive that I’m now considering it rather than something else like geekbreakfast.com or something equally lame. MrandMrsGeek.com and EdgeCase.tv were a couple that were being thrown around for a while here before the chat room killed those. Mercifully. Maryam killed “geekier.tv.” Like I said, committees suck all life out of projects and names. I’m almost ready to fall back on a descriptive name like “VideoShowHostedByAFatWhiteGuyWhoThinksHeIsAGeek2006.com.” You can take the boy out of Microsoft but you can’t take the Microsoft out of the boy.

Anyway, now that I’m full time I’m starting to put together a plan. We’re working on a design, getting the server setup, have already a couple of interviews done with a ton more under development (are you announcing something in the next few weeks? Email me and let’s see if we can get it on video).

Frequency? Once a week to start, but ultimate goal to move it up to at least once a day.

Format? This is the Web, not TV. So why are we worrying about staying in a preset timed format? I’m not. If something takes an hour, why not take it? On the other hand, if what you need to communicate only takes 50 seconds, why take longer?

I’m thinking more in terms of chunks of video that’ll be sent out via RSS rather than one long video with several segments. If there’s a segment you really aren’t interested in, why should you be forced to wade through it just to get to an interview you might like, or vice versa?

What are the chunks I’m thinking of?

1. Cool services/products to try. Five new things to try that you probably haven’t tried yet. For instance, before last week I hadn’t tried Dodgeball.
2. Popping the bubble. A short rant on something technology related. Like DOPA.
3. No particular demographic. Something fun with no particular demographic in mind. A cool YouTube video. A Carl Franklin Song. That kind of thing.
4. Getting deep with unusual tech business geek. Interviews with geeks and CEOs. Already have one excellent one with the CEO of Printing for Less in the bag.
5. Tech tea time. Getting together with several geeks over tea to talk about the issues of the week. Or, maybe, just get into an argument about programming languages like we did last week.
6. Blogs we dig. Or is that Digg? Anyway, I have a few blogs that are killer that I haven’t talked much about yet. You know, like Kiruba Shankar, who is helping plan a BlogCamp in India.
7. Digital Divas. Maryam and a few other smart people at PodTech want to do this videochunk.
8. Podcast and videoblog news. Cool video blogs from around the net. Not just Ze Frank, either.

Anyway, looking for ideas. This is still in the “mix the cement” stage, so it’s really easy to change things. If it’s lame, tell me that too. I’d rather hear that now than in a few weeks when we get the first show up.

Seshadri PV asks a good question: why don’t the more than 3,100 Microsoft employee blogs get more attention, on balance, than Mini-Microsoft?

Human nature. We like shit disturbers more than we like people who are calm, rational, nice, and who post code on their blogs.

It’s not a fair world. The deck is stacked against Microsoft. For the same reason I root against the NY Yankees. We wanna tear down the big guy.

I told a friend the other day the marketing challenge for a big company is to appear small and the challenge for a small company is to appear big.

It’s why a $250 camera worked wonders for Microsoft and why a $4,000 camera is working wonders for PodTech.

I found this over on Steve Rubel’s blog. It’s a Web 2.0 logo generator. Meant to be a parody. But I like it! Too bad you can’t order stickrs for your laptop there. But, no, then it’d have a business model. Can’t have that!

Believe it or not, there’s a company that actually sells that free swag that you can get for free by hanging out in San Francisco on Friday evenings. Or Mike Arrington’s shindigs.

I hear they are doing thousands of dollars in the stuff per month. Damn, I have about 80 T shirts — maybe I’ll sell them on eBay to raise funds for my Windows Vista supercomputer.

By the way, I’m collecting stickers for my new 17-inch Mac. Who has some good ones? Here’s the laptop stickr pool over on Flickr.

All the cool kids have stickrs. Except Patrick. He is such an Apple fan boy that he thinks that defiling an Apple product by putting a stickr on it is sacrilegious.

I should ask my ex to try this out: Snarfware.

Looks like a great way to track your sales on eBay and Craigs’ List. I don’t do much selling on either of those, though, so it’s hard for me to judge whether this is useful.

Anyone else try this?

Speaking of Carl Franklin. This is funny: the Windows Vista song. Ted Pattison wrote most of it. I read about it in eWeek.

One of my favorite experiences is when I planned a bus trip for a bunch of Visual Basic programmers back in the mid 1990s and Carl sang “My Darling Clementine” for hours. There’s a wikipedia entry for that song. Turns out Carl wasn’t alone in singing those lyrics to a number of different melodies (he did everything from AC/DC, the Who, Beattles, Cher, to a ton of others). You can get a sense of what that bus ride was like by listening to Best of Clementine.

One of my favorite podcasts is .NET Rocks which is done by Carl Franklin and friends. I just saw that they analyzed a bunch of hardware and found a kit that works great for less than $500.

PodTech uses some $1,500 specialized recorders but our folks are doing a lot of recording (and they get banged around a lot) plus we donate them to good events so they can record their sessions. I’ll cover those in a future video.

How about you, what do you use to podcast?

I’ve been pretty harsh on Microsoft lately. Hey, that’s normal, I guess, after you leave a job. Sort of a “jump on the man” impulse. Anyway, there are some killer things happening at Microsoft. Catching my eye is the hobbyist renaissance that’s happening there.

Another is the Made in Express Contest. I agreed to be a judge for free cause I believe in this kind of contest which encourages normal people to try their hand at software development. Anyway, like American Idol there’s an audience part to the judging and that’s open now.

Dana, a security expert I’ve been following for quite some time, is blogging his development of a new product, all in one month. It’s an interesting look into the development process that we rarely get to see.

Now, imagine Apple or Microsoft or Google or eBay doing the same.

Imagine that they let you participate, even a little bit, in the development of a new product.

But, no, they won’t try that. It’s too bad. When I did my book I accidentally found that building something in public view ends up with that end thing being a lot better because of the participation of the people who drop by. Not to mention that our search page rank is a lot higher than it would otherwise be (even bloggers who hated our book, and said “that chapter sucked,” added to our search engine ranking).

I am liking Windows Live Writer so far, but I’m not pushing the edges like some others are (I saw a bunch of complaints about bugs in some of the weirder features. I just type and post, so it works great for me so far).

Anyway, just saw that Ed Holloway has an Ink Blog Beta out for Tablet PC users.

One problem with the Windows Live Writer is the tagging support. It has categories, but that capability sucks. So I gotta open each post back up in the browser and apply categories there.

Turns out that CNN, among others, is reporting that Iran’s president’s blog doesn’t have malware or viruses after all. So, how could I report such yesterday? I wasn’t reporting, just passing along information I had from a reputable technical source (O’Reilly).

Blogs can get hoaxed. But, if they do the truth does come out eventually. I try to update my posts as I learn more information. If you see something incorrect that I’m reporting, just point it out in the comments. Thanks!

I just downloaded the updated GoogleTalk which just got a bunch of new features (I’m “Scobleizer” if you wanna drop in and say hi). A lot of Microsofties used to “poopoo” GoogleTalk saying “it has no features.” They were right. But, it also had something much more important: elegance and shipping.

It was a small thing. Microsofties don’t get small things. I think it’s a disease of Microsoft’s. Not getting small things. Until it’s too late. I usually don’t keep MSN or Skype up and running during the day. Why? I don’t know. Part of it is I get too many chats from people just asking “who are you?” or who say “hello” and then want to get into some stupid conversation. But another part of it is just the weight of those apps — MSN just popped up a bunch of dialogs that I had to close (more than 50 since I hadn’t been on for several weeks).

Funny enough Joe Beda, who now is on the Google Talk team admits that he had the disease when he worked at Microsoft on the Avalon, aka Windows Presentation Foundation, team.

GoogleTalk is the lightest weight, has an elegant UI, and, well, simply works.

What do you think?

Oh, I’m also on Skype as “RobertScoble” and on Windows Live Messenger as robertscoble@hotmail.com.

I’m going through my mound of email right now looking for things I haven’t linked to. The list is way too long (more than a hundred at last count and I’m not even half way through my “blog this” folder). Lots of cool little things, too. Like ChatCreator. A neat little chat creation engine. Here, let’s try. I’m here now.

Another thing that’s fun? How about WetPaint? It’s a wiki tool. But, unlike PBWiki I used for my OffTheGrid it’s easier to use for normal people. I used PBWiki cause it had — by far — the best setup I have seen so far, but WetPaint isn’t far behind and is nicer once you get inside. More on that soon.

Oh, enough of this, I just wanted an excuse to point out that on WikiMapia there’s a nude beach that someone pointed out just south of Half Moon Bay. Are there “no Flickr” signs there?

Got any other wiki or chat tools we should be playing with? Post them here, I’m gonna put them on my new video show next month.

Ahh, the blogs are boring this morning. Too much talk about how cool it’d be if everyone could be an A lister. Me? I just want to be a Z lister. Why? I get too much email. I can’t even get started on my show. It’s a conspiracy to keep me down. I think Om and Mike are telling all their fans “email Scoble, it’ll keep him uninteresting.”

Well, one advantage of Maryam having a famous blog is she gets invited to Evelyn Rodriguez’ dinners. I didn’t know a single person other than Evelyn when we went last night. What do you do when you’re in such a situation? I went up to someone (turned out it was Charles Adkins, who doesn’t have a blog) and asked “do you watch Ze Frank?”

I was expecting a totally dead stare. But, damn, that got a reaction. “I love Ze!!!”

Ahhh, a fellow member of the ORG. We were instant friends. Anyone who likes Ze is cool in my book.

Speaking of the ORG (Ze’s little social experiment tool that you can use to find people near you that also listen to Ze), Michael Markman just wrote me and said “he blinked.”

Yes, Ze isn’t feeling well today. Now we know that blinking is a disease and must be stopped. Do it enough and you’ll die. It’s a scientific fact. I read it on a blog. It must be true.

OK, enough pandering to someone with real talent hoping that I’ll get a link, or a blink as it were, to justify my existence keep my ego sufficiently stroked.

Oh, yes, someday I’ll have the writing skill of Evelyn Rodriguez and I’ll figure out where she got those peaches she was serving last night. They melted in my mouth the way stuff off the trees in Silicon Valley used to (it was an orchard, I miss the apricots).

Evelyn told me last night she’s trying to shine light on things of value that few people get to see. She held her little shindig in an art gallery. Her food was hand picked from farmers markets. She was wearing a great hand-made shirt with hand made jewelry. And she invited some very interesting people. That explains her tone on her blog lately. For those who don’t know, she rode out the tsunami in Thailand a year and a half ago and she hasn’t stopped riding life ever since.

David Chamberlain impressed Maryam and I. He does philanthropic travel, is founder of Exquisite Safaris. Takes rich people to weird and exotic places and, in return, gets them to donate to local causes where they help out for a day or two. Go to Victoria Falls? Build a school.

He got me to think. Every day I have a choice. Do I tear down someone else? Or build up someone’s efforts?

I just created a WetPaint Wiki for those who love Ze Frank. Leave your URL and see how it works. More on why I did that next post.

Anyway, other reasons I want to be on the Z list? Cause then all my friends wouldn’t know when I piss off Maryam by doing something stupid.

Ahh, why do I fall for this stuff? Nick Carr started a whole debate about why he doesn’t get enough traffic.

I think the whole thing is bunk. No one promised me traffic when I started blogging. I just wanted to impress Dori Smith, JavaScript guru.

But, yesterday I was talking with Levy Cohen, CEO of Collarity (hot new search engine to add to Web sites that’s coming out) and told him that I missed the whole bookmarking thing. Why? Because I learned early on that blogging is an awesome way to get stuff into Google. I can instantly pull stuff out just by adding my last name onto a query for something I wrote earlier.

For instance, here’s a Google query for an entry I wrote about Victors Coffee in Redmond, WA. For me it’s better than Del.icio.us.

Yesterday I learned just how much better. Mario Luna, a guy I hadn’t seen since about 1990 (we went to West Valley together) called me up and said “is this the Robert Scoble who went to West Valley?” He found me on an obscure Google search, not even my name.

So, thanks Google for bringing my college friends back to me. That’s why I blog.

Being an A lister is not a good reason to blog. Nick will find that out soon enough. Starbucks lattes are still $3. I still need to take out the trash and wash the dishes. Sigh.

I love the “hack” though. Someone does it every six months. Call A listers names. That gets them emotionally involved and usually gets a link. Brilliant. Well played Nick!

Geek Entertainment TV goes to Montana and Montana will never be the same. What was sad is that the horse that Irina was interviewing actually bit her after the camera was off. Damn, if we had a clip of that we’d be on the top of YouTube!

In other news: the IE team is doing a good job of engaging with bloggers and Slashdotters to explain how IE 7 does or doesn’t support Web standards.

Ahh, Mena Trott must really have a headache today cause Time Magazine just released its list of 50 coolest Websites.

Aaron Brethorst gave me a nice compliment when he wondered why I wasn’t on the list (I don’t belong, Aaron, but I appreciate your thought!).