So, yesterday Apple hit a grand slam home run yesterday with its announcement of the iPhone SDK. Guy Kawasaki hit a home run with his interview of Steve Ballmer. “Don’t go monkey boy on me.” Steve Gillmor had a News Gang Live yesterday to talk about both of these things.

I’ve been busy with my Qik channel. Got an interview with the Internet Explorer executives where we talked about its moves into Web standards. Also, met up with Concept Share’s co-founders who showed me a new version of its really cool service that lets you work remotely with graphic designers.

Now I’m on my way to SXSW.

Google just came out with a new sync system for Google Calendar. That’s pretty good. It will sync your calendar in Outlook up with your online calendar on Google.

But if you have Plaxo I don’t see what this brings you. Plaxo syncs with more systems, not just Outlook and Google (I use Plaxo on my Mac too, so my iPhone’s calendar is always sync’ed up with my Google Calendar and Outlook.

What do you think? Why aren’t you syncing your calendars?

RUMOR ALERT — I have not substantiated this with anyone at either Adobe or Apple, so might turn out to be totally false:

Today I got a note from someone I know who works closely with Adobe and Apple. He saw my “Apple stabs Adobe in the Back” post and wanted to give me some details about what’s going on between Adobe and Apple. He says that he’s seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab and that it’s been running for quite a while and that it’s not a technical issue that caused Steve Jobs to go public about not putting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone. He wrote “Geez - my Chumby with half the CPU horsepower can run Flash8/AS2.”

So, what’s the reason, according to my source?

Adobe is playing hardball with Apple over their PDF renderer. “Adobe wants Apple to use the Adobe PDF renderer.” His thesis? Steve Jobs is playing hard to get to get Adobe to give up this demand.

Again, I have no idea if this is true or not. But tomorrow’s SDK announcement with Apple is going to be very interesting to listen to.

On a week when Microsoft landed a big deal to put Silverlight on Nokia phones, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, tells Adobe that there won’t be Flash on the iPhone.

This is a real bummer for Adobe and many users and developers, because most of the world’s casual games are written for Flash. Just go over to game site Kongregate. Or, look at the world’s video like that on YouTube (or any other video site like the Qik one that I use on my cell phone). Almost all of it is done in Flash. Now developers at those sites will need to find some other method to get those games and videos onto the iPhone.

This is a HUGE opening for Microsoft to take momentum and mind share away from Flash/Flex/AIR with its Silverlight set of technologies (which, based on my Twitter conversations, is winning developers over at a pretty good pace).

So, what is Steve thinking? He probably didn’t want to hand control of developers to another company, but Apple might also have had concerns about battery life or it just might not have been able to make Flash work well on the iPhone. I can’t believe that Apple couldn’t find a way to make these things work, though. Flash isn’t that heavyweight, it might have taken some committment on behalf of Apple to rewrite Flash to work and it sounds like Apple wants to go the way of SVG (it has long been rumored to be working on SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics, which is an open W3C standard) for the iPhone).

The inside story has yet to be told on this one. Not that Adobe is in a place to retaliate by only doing something like future versions of Photoshop or Illustrator on Windows or Linux (which would hurt Apple, but would hurt Adobe itself in its real war with Microsoft) but Adobe has got to be smarting from this decision this morning. After all it was Adobe that helped solidify the Macintosh’s role in the world with its desktop publishing, fonts, and Postscript technologies.

Does this put a death blow onto the Flash/Flex/AIR teams? No, but it certainly does cripple their chances against Microsoft’s Silverlight. I’ll be at Microsoft’s Mix conference later today to report on that angle.

UPDATE: Microsoft’s keynote this morning at its sold-out Mix conference will be webcast live, Neowin is reporting. I’m hearing there’s some news coming there, and also later in the afternoon.

I didn’t expect this.

Nokia is working with Microsoft on delivering Silverlight to Nokia phones.

The only thing that would be more shocking is if Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone were going with Silverlight instead of Flash.

DISCLAIMER: Please be patient, during launch we’ll probably have some technical difficulties — our engineers have been up all night optimizing databases and getting things turned on. If you’re not having a good experience, please check back later in the day.

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The first shows have just launched on FastCompany.tv:

1. FastCompany Live.
2. ScobleizerTV.

The first is a show done totally on cell phones. If you’ve been watching my Qik channel, you’ve been getting a preview.

The second is a new version of my show. This time done with high-end microphones and much better camera equipment. Oh, and a camera operator (that’d be my producer, Rocky Barbanica) instead of me trying to do everything.

CenterNetworks was the first site to write about our new network. Mashable followed quickly afterward.

The first four shows are ones we’re pretty proud of:

0. A welcome video that we filmed yesterday.
1. The Innovator. Interview with John Kao who taught business at Harvard University for 14 years and now consults with companies about how to get more innovative. BusinessWeek named his book one of the most important business books of 2007, too.
2. Getting Friendly with MySpace’s CEO. Chris DeWolfe invites us into his office to talk about MySpace and how it’ll keep Facebook from taking over its world.
3. First Look at Microsoft’s Stunning WorldWide Telescope. This is the thing that made me tear up when I saw it because it’s the most impressive thing I’ve seen Microsoft do in years. We visit Curtis Wong’s office to get an in-depth look.
4. Meeting with Amazon’s Web Services Evangelist. Many of you know about Amazon’s Web Services, like S3 or EC2, but I wanted to introduce them to the broader Fast Company audience, so we visited Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle and talked with Jeff Barr, Amazon’s Web Services Evangelist, about the impact that they’ve had on business.

Some things that haven’t yet shipped that will soon:

1. Shel Israel’s program, Global Neighborhoods. We’re still working on that and will start that in a couple of weeks. He’s been to tons of companies including General Motors, Ford, Intel, and Seesmic and we’re working to build an interesting program for you that’ll focus on social media’s impact on culture and business.
2. My blog’s redesign. We’re working on that, but it might take a month more to get it complete and make sure it really works well before turning it on.
3. High-resolution videos. I want higher-resolution videos to be available (we’re shooting and editing most of our stuff in 720p HD, but only delivering smaller sizes right now — that’ll change thanks to our use of Twistage, which is a new company in San Francisco that’s providing the video backend and player technology we’re using).
4. RSS Feeds that work with iTunes. That’s the first thing to fix after the developers get some sleep (they were up most of Sunday night working on this).
4. A bunch of other stuff. I have a long list of things to add to the site. Schedules for our live videos and other stuff. Ways for you to upload your own videos to the site. And tons more.

I also wanted to thank our sponsor, Seagate. We’re not only using their hard drives to edit and store our videos on (and they are massive files) but they’ve put financial muscle behind the show so that we can not only pay our bills, but travel around the world — in April I’ll be visiting Amsterdam and Israel.

Some Q&As?

QUESTION: How is this different from the shows that you’ve done at Microsoft and PodTech?

ANSWER: Professional microphones. Heheh. Seriously, we just got some really nice new equipment. No more tapes! And we have Rocky doing two-camera shoots now. Look for the production values to continue going up (we had to use Rocky’s older equipment for some of the first shows).

We’ll also broaden the content. We’re working with the editors of Fast Company magazine to get content that’s not just about the tech industry. John Kao’s interview is a good example of the kinds of things we’d like to do in the future.

QUESTION: Where’s the tour of Microsoft Research that you were bragging about?

ANSWER: Coming in the next two weeks. We have a ton of stuff and we’ll run a new video every day or so.

QUESTION: What happened to Shel Israel’s show, why isn’t it up now?

ANSWER: We just ran out of time and wanted to make sure that we could deliver a great show. That’ll start soon.

QUESTION: Why do the RSS feeds suck?

ANSWER: They will be fixed soon so that they work on iPhones and have full-text.

QUESTION: Why does your blog still say you work for PodTech?

ANSWER: Because I was lazy. Actually, the truth is I forgot about it, and I don’t have control of my sidebar and I was hoping that the redesign of my blog would be ready. We’ll get that fixed soon.

QUESTION: Where’s the video downloads so I can put these things on my iPhone?

ANSWER: Those are coming soon, sorry for not having them ready yet.

QUESTION: Why watch this show instead of, say, Rocketboom, Geek Brief.TV, or Diggnation (three of my favorite online video shows)?

ANSWER: You should watch all of us! Seriously, we’ll focus on innovative entrepreneurs, business ideas, new businesses. How will we be different from CNBC? Depth. Most of the time when you see a company on TV the entrepreneurs can’t really give you a full-blown demo because they only get a few minutes. On the Internet we don’t have such pressures to make things short and exciting (a producer at CNBC, when I was on that during the Consumer Electronics Show, told me “we don’t care about gadgets.” On FastCompany.TV? We care).

QUESTION: Who do you most want to interview?

ANSWER: Steve Jobs, because then I’d be a hero to my 14-year-old son who loves Apple stuff.

But seriously, I like meeting people building new things that we didn’t expect. I hope to interview Google’s Android team soon, to get a look at what they are trying to do, for instance.

QUESTION: Will you be adding more shows?

ANSWER: Yes, but slowly. For a few reasons. First, we don’t have venture capital funding us, so we’ve got to make sure we can support new investment. Second, I want to make the quality of everything on the network higher than anything out there before we start expanding. But, yes, we want to start developing new shows, so please let us know if you have something in mind.

And please do let me know what you think, good or bad.

Ryan Stewart (who works at Adobe) wonders if Microsoft is bringing an offline version of Silverlight out this week at Mix.

I’m hearing that Google is about to ship something major offline too.

So, for the next month we might hear “go offline” from all three camps (Adobe already shot their big guns in this war at last week’s “Engage” event).

Microsoft should have the best offline technology, because it’s king of applications on your desktop, but I think that answers the wrong question.

I’m trying to get everything I do online because I want freedom from my computer.

What do I mean about that?

Well, what if my computer gets stolen? I don’t want any data on it.

What happens if Linux comes out with a Macintosh killer? Or if I decide to get a Windows computer again (I’m currently using a Dell Tablet PC because they sent me one to try out) I want to just load one thing: Firefox and go to work. Right now I’m switching between my Dell and my Mac without any problems at all because almost everything I do now is in the browser.

The thing about Microsoft is that they’ll do some killer offline technology but it won’t work on the Symbian cell phone or iPhones that I’m currently using. It won’t work on Android, which is the Google cell phone OS that’s soon to make an impact on the market. It won’t work on Linux (which is getting a LOT better on the desktop, so I might try that again this year). And it won’t work well on Firefox or Opera or other new, non-IE browsers. (Channel 9 doesn’t work well with Silverlight on my new Dell when I use Firefox 3.0beta3, while Flash and AIR work just fine).

So, I guess the question is: can Microsoft keep the world as it is (IE, one that mostly runs on Windows and Office) or will the world follow bleeding-edge users like me into a more online world?

Ahh, the patina is shedding off of Facebook.

Looks like the trend I noticed when I was in London talking with Maryam’s niece in December has hit home for Facebook. Is usage down?

My own usage is certainly down. Here’s why:

First, Facebook depresses me. I can’t add new friends, so the “game, er, fun” of Facebook has gone away for me (yes, building my social network was fun for me). Now, I know most of you don’t have that problem, but it does create a retardant effect on the fun of Facebook. It can NOT be a “utility” like a rolodex until it gets rid of all limitations.

But this morning I got a call from someone in France. He was kicked out of Facebook for sending too many messages to his friends. He said he was just chatting with his friends, not doing anything spammy (he only had a handful of friends, he told me). This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this kind of story, I get dozens of such emails every month from people who’ve gotten kicked off the service for not doing too much other than participating in Facebook the way they want.

Anyway, Facebook kicked him off (turned off his account, like they did to me) and now there is no way for him to get added back on. He’s emailed an explanation of what he’s been doing to Facebook. They haven’t answered back. There is no recourse. It’s made more difficult because this guy doesn’t speak English well.

As much as I like Mark Zuckerberg, I can not recommend Facebook to anyone until they fix this problem. There’s ABSOLUTELY NO WAY someone’s account should be deleted without recourse, if Facebook wants to be seen as a utility.

Facebook needs to fix these two problems before I’ll recommend it again to anyone.

One other thing? I’m getting spamish messages on Facebook now because I added hundreds of groups. I’m going to unsubscribe from most of them to keep that from happening. I already have too many attention thieves in my life.

But, to the question of “is Facebook doomed?”

No, it’s not. It still is the best designed, and best performing, social network out there. It fits my idea of what a rolodex, er, address book, should look like. I love the iPhone app. The way it all works. I love seeing photos and videos from my friends.

I just wish Facebook would fix these two problems so I can go back to hyping it up.

What do you think about Facebook? Has the patina worn off for you?

I agree with Ethan Eismann that TechCrunch took my post a little too far in an incorrect direction. It’s my fault for getting everyone worked up. In hindsight, I probably should have kept my mouth shut until I was released from an embargo.

It’s interesting where people are going with this. TechCrunch even followed up its earlier post (but took my post into a new, also incorrect, direction). The problem is that Microsoft brings so much baggage to any conversation about it. When you say “Microsoft is doing something cool” then people’s imaginations run too wild to things like operating systems, productivity apps, data centers or databases, video game consoles, or other things that you’ve seen Microsoft do in the past. Some over on TechCrunch are even talking about Photosynth or the Touch table-top device. The thing I’m talking about is NOT anything you’ve seen Microsoft do before. I also shouldn’t have associated it with things like the World Wide Web. It +might+ be that significant, but if we all met in 1994 and met with Tim Berners-Lee, very few of us could have guessed that the Web would have the impact that it ended up having. Heck, even Tim didn’t know the real impact. If he had, wouldn’t he have started something like Google or Netscape? It’s too premature to put that kind of baggage on a team that’s built something cool and inspiring, but is only two people big and hasn’t yet shown very many people their work. That’s unfair of me and I’m sorry about that. That said, I think it will stand up to the kind of hype I unleashed yesterday. It is still inspiring me and I still want to get my hands on it as soon as possible.

Instead of letting your expectations run wild, let’s stay calm. This is just a service that inspired me and made me react emotionally, in a way that few things I see make me react.

A few other things.

1. Sometimes, er, often, I get it wrong. I thought Tablet PC and Origami (and Vista) would be far more significant than they turned out to be (several people pointed that out, and they were right to do so).
2. Remember that I’m talking about a two person team, along with a few others. That limits the scope as to what can be done. Remember, Facebook is about 500 people now. Google? More than 10,000. Etc. Etc. So, what I saw is something small. Like I said, if I told you what it was a lot of you would say “Scoble, that really is lame.”
3. I believe that attendees at TED will get a quick look at this, but I’m not sure. Employees (and possibly others, including the press/bloggers) at Microsoft will see it at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest on March 4th. I won’t say anything else about it until March 3rd, when our video show starts up at FastCompany.tv. Last year Microsoft invited a few bloggers and journalists to come up and tour the TechFest, I’m not sure if they are doing that this year, sorry.
4. Valleywag told me off and said I should keep my mouth shut because this kind of hype can kill a product. That’s true. But, remember what Steve Jobs said about hype about the iPhone? He said that if the product delivers on the hype no one will care. On the other hand, see #1. That said my friends tell me that this service is deserving of the hype that I gave it.
5. Sometimes I just get so excited about things I see that I have to tell you and damn the consequences. This is one of those times.
6. I don’t believe this service will ship or be usable anytime soon. Remember that this is a Microsoft Research project and that they build things that aren’t meant to be production quality. We’ll talk more about what it is and when you’ll get to get your own hands on it on March 3rd. When I first saw Photosynth it was quite a few months before it was out in people’s hands.
7. Some have pointed out that the Segway didn’t live up to the same kind of hype that I gave this service. Good point. Let’s get together on March 3rd and talk more.

Anyway, back to regular postings…

UPDATE: Kevin Schofield, after I posted, wrote that I did cause his team some trouble yesterday.

Last night I took Patrick to the Crunchies, where we sat in the last row. Definitely the highlight of the show was when Apple won a Crunchie for the iPhone. Problem was that Mike Arrington doesn’t have any pull at Apple — they refused to send anyone to pick up the award.

So, who picked up the award? Fake Steve Jobs, of course, only he did it through a video. Beware of the language, if you’re going to play that around the kiddies this morning.

Oh, after the Crunchies? Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, came over and we had a really nice chat.