Amazon just brought out a new service-based database, called SimpleDB.

Since Amazon brought out its S3 storage service, I’ve seen many many startups give up data centers altogether.

Tell me why the same thing won’t happen here.

Photowalking with Thomas Hawk is grand, but today we have a real treat: a photowalk with a real professional photographer. Marc Silber. He even has the license plates to prove it! It’s long, but not boring. Just in case you don’t have the hour to spend Rocky made you a short and sweet editor’s choice for you.

Marc has written an eBook on how to take better photos, and we talk about some of the tips in the book. You’ll learn a lot on this hour walk. Plus you get to see some great scenery on a ridge above Palo Alto/Silicon Valley and hear some stories about the property because Marc used to live on the property, which is now a public park.

Oh, and I did almost the entire hour by walking backward. It’s a skill that only my parents would be proud of.

Thank you to Seagate for sponsoring my show and supporting digital photography through not only their storage devices but also by supporting my efforts to do educational photowalks like this.

I love the Lunch 2.0 movement. Every few days there’s a different Lunch 2.0 event around the world. Today was one at Oracle’s headquarters. These are great events to network at and see some new stuff (Oracle was showing off how it is Web 2.0-izing some of its Enterprise-focused stuff and privately I got a demo of how Oracle is building its own internal social network which is very cool).

Anyway, here’s some quick videos I shot at the lunch.

1. Matt Galligan told me about his company, Socialthing, which will aggregate all sorts of friends networks. Alpha coming later in October, public release expected later this year. He called it a “digital life manager” and compared it to Jaiku.
2. Justin Kestelyn gave me a little tidbit of why Oracle was hosting Lunch 2.0. His blog with reports on the event is here.
3. Dominik Grolimund of Wua.la shows me this very cool Peer-to-Peer online storage service. I’m going to try this one out. He’s visiting Silicon Valley from Switzerland.
4. Jeremiah Owyang just came back from Hong Kong and explains Cyworld’s homepi to us. Rich Mangalang, of Oracle, was showing us their internal social network (sort of like Facebook, but only for Oracle employees). He wasn’t able to demonstrate it on camera, unfortunately.

Everytime I go to a Lunch 2.0 event I meet interesting people and learn a lot. Why don’t you come next time?

Watch my Kyte channel tonight. I’m headed to the Showstoppers CTIA event where I’ll find you some cool mobile gadgets and post them up instantly as long as there is some bandwidth.

The folks over at NewTeeVee just announced its new conference schedule for a conference about NewTeeVee.

I find it severely lacking.

First, why feature Joost? They haven’t proven that they’ll survive in this new TV marketplace. I’m willing to bet that Justin.tv or Kyte.tv will have 10x the traffic in a year than Joost. Even TechCrunch is growing bearish on Joost’s future. Why is Joost going to have trouble? Because they wanted to replace TV and the TV networks will NEVER give Joost their best stuff.

But let’s face it, it’s still a YouTube world online. What will change that?

So, what else is missing at a discussion of new TV stuff?

1. Best practices of old on new. The best example of oldTV coming to newTV is what ABC.com is doing. Ever watch Lost over there? I have and it’s the best stuff out there. They are using technology from Move Networks. That stuff blows away Joost. To me THAT is “new TV.”
2. The best advertising technology I’ve seen is CastFire. I don’t see them on the program. I do see Brightroll. That’s good, I have a 24-minute interview with the founder on my show. Nexidia showed me a bleeding edge technology that’s already bringing new kinds of contextual ads to several TV stations’ local news shows.
3. The biggest innovator in streaming media is Chris Pirillo. The way he uses chat. His sponsorships. And the way he uses YouTube is very innovative yet he isn’t on the program.
4. Codec comparisons: DivX has some of the best codecs out there. It also has a set top box that I’m playing with and its Stage6 community is pretty neat. DivX’s CEO was on my show at CES earlier this year. Adobe is doing a bunch of work. So are other folks. Can we see a shootout? Or techniques to get the sharpest picture online?
5. Apple? No, they have nothing to do with “new TV” right? Well, I haven’t been able to get them on my show either, but Rocky uses Apple’s FinalCutPro to edit my show.
6. Adobe? I see one guy on there as part of a panel discussion. Are we going to learn anything in a panel?: No, we won’t. But the folks who bring us Flash deserve a lot more than a panel slot. Not to mention they have a video editor, Premiere. Oh, and my video with the engineering team behind Flex/Flash talking about its architecture got hundreds of thousands of views.
7. Microsoft? They want to get market share away from Adobe. I see Dan’l Lewin there, but you do realize he isn’t a technical guy and he hasn’t built any video or done any video on the Net, right? He was a co-founder of NeXT, though. Maybe that’s the closest to Steve Jobs you could get.
8. Rocketboom? They just shipped an iPhone app. They have the best distribution system I’ve seen for an independent video blog. Andrew is still doing innovative stuff. Where’s he?
9. Blognation? (Or ANY blog network other than GigaOm?) They are about to put video bloggers in dozens of countries. But not gonna be at NewTeeVee I guess. And because they are a competitive thing to GigaOm they get locked out the same way that PodTech gets locked out. If I ran a conference I’d invite my competitors to speak. Why? Cause my first responsibility as a conference planner is to the people who come. See Eric Norlin’s video for more on planning a great conference.
10. USVP? They invested in several video ventures (including PodTech, Zannel, and National Banana). Not gonna be there and they should be. Heck, let’s get out of stuff that’d help me out. Last night I had dinner with Stewart Alsop. He’s an investor in Justin.tv. Why isn’t he on the VC panel? Justin is doing the most innovative stuff in the streaming video space.
11. Tracking and uploading? TubeMogul, for instance, showed me how they can let video bloggers upload to multiple sites and track their results. Compete.com’s CTO was on my show too. I wish someone would do a session on new ways to demonstrate audience engagement and size and all that.
12. New ways to tell video stories? YourTrumanShow showed me how, for instance.
13. Mixing 3D world’s with video? I don’t see that either. But Scenecaster has a way to do that. So does Second Life. More on the way. I’d love to hear the latest and see what Eric Rice and friends are up to.
14. Why not a session on video vs. audio? There’s a lot of interest there and it sure would be interesting to see if BlogTalkRadio could make a case for audio. You noticed my son’s first sounds on the Internet were audio only, not a video, even though I had lots of video gear there. Heck, I sure could learn something about getting better audio quality.
15. Facebook? MySpace? LinkedIn? Plaxo? Facebook is one of the hottest video sites on the Internet yet I see nothing about it. That’s really lame and missing where a TON of “new TV” action is happening.
16. Building a social network around your video site? Magnify, Ning, and Broadband Mechanics might have something to say about that. In fact, Magnify shows off a great “new TV” site to me. Ning showed me their stuff too. So does BlogTronix, which has a system that lets companies build sites very similar to the Channel 9 one at Microsoft. Ning will be at the conference but, again, only on a panel. That’s not the help that people need — they need demos of what’s possible, not more talk.
17. Legal issues with new TV. How do you get rights to music, other people’s videos? What’s the rules around fair use?
18. Mobile video? On my show Buzzwire showed off its solution. Also, Radar.net showed me a way to share videos with your friends from your mobile phones. Kyte.tv’s CEO is on a panel discussion but I doubt they’ll do a demonstration of how that works. It really is mind-blowing what you can do on a cell phone now.
19. Streaming video? Ustream came on my show to demonstrate what it’s doing. Veodia is aimed at big companies with a better quality streaming video.
20. Mashups? YouTube is now showing videos on top of Google Earth. Plazes is giving us location-based presence. What could we do with that?
21. Film sites. Jaman is very impressive, for instance.
22. Webcasting? IVT showed me its solution. So did Adobe with its Connect service.
23. New kinds of Web experiences that’ll have an impact on how video is used. Zude got my “demo of the year” mark and demonstrates new ways to use video online. Mixercast is a cool way to mashup video, pictures, and other stuff too.
24. New hardware gadgets for video producers? Drobo showed me a new hard drive system, for instance, that we’re using at PodTech and love. I’ve been testing out tons of the latest gear including a Nokia N95 with Kyte.tv and a new Nikon pocket camera that has wifi built in. Heck, get Ryan Block of Engadget to come out and show off the latest gear. That dude has a ton of gadgets in his house and he always knows what’s good and what’s not.
25. Real Networks? Do they have a shot at sticking around? They came on my show to demonstrate its new player which lets you save from YouTube.
26. Search and Discovery. MeeVee demoed its search engine. Blinkx CEO came on my show to talk about it (then later took his company to an IPO). Dabble’s founder/CEO showed me its cool search portal and community for video. Stumbleupon came on my show to demonstrate its cool video discovery service.
27. Why don’t I see anything on Windows Media Center? TV Tonic showed me a killer system that’s getting lots of traffic for video bloggers.
28. Video greeting cards? Smilebox showed me theirs.
29. Video email? EyeJot showed me how to do it.
30. Bleeding edge ways to use video cameras? Get Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research to come down. He showed me a system that was wild.
31. Ways to make money with your “new TV?” Edgeio showed me a classified ad system that a few video bloggers are using to bring in some extra cash.
32. Splashcast has been seeing massive growth through its Facebook application. They came on my show a few months ago to demonstrate its widget and media distribution network.
33. What’s the future of home entertainment systems? Seagate showed me its version at CES. I just interviewed MediaMaster too (mostly music right now, but video someday soon) and they have a very awesome service. Videos of that coming soon.
34. Screencasting for fun and profit. Don McAllister, who publishes screencastsonline.com, came on my show to talk about how he does it.
35. Google? They do this thing called YouTube. You might have heard of it. Marc Lucovsky showed me how to “bling my blog” with a video bar, too.
36. Video education? Winnov showed me an innovative system for universities to use.
37. Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic (here’s me talking about it). If you really want to be known as “NewTeeVee” you gotta have them on the schedule.
38. Zannel. I interviewed them this week and they are competing with Seesmic and Kyte.tv.
39. UPDATE: I totally forgot Bittorrent. A guy I know downloads all of his TV shows via Bittorrent (and movies and music too). I’m sure he’s not alone so a conference like this should discuss that and what the industry should do for or against it.
40. Serving an international audience. Look at the new Pop!Tech videos. They have subtitles with eight languages in them. That really rocks. But what do you need to do if you want to serve China and keep your videos from getting censored? How about transcriptions so that search engines can work better? Etc.

$500 for this? Damn, maybe I should start charging for my show! I give you a TON more content for free! :-)

Heck, we can even meet over on my newfangled Kyte.tv channel and have a live chat. With audio, video, AND good old text, even!

Oh, and keep in mind I +HATE+ panel discussions. They look great on the Web site, or in a brochure (that’s why I added them to my conferences when I planned them). But you rarely learn anything you can take away and apply to your keyboard. I was just on a panel discussion too at the recent Facebook conference and, while it was entertaining (a good fight on a panel is one way they can be redeeming) I watched the video and didn’t see anything anyone would have learned from it.

UPDATE: Om and I had a nice talk this morning and he’s severely constrained by time (this is a one-day conference). More on that conversation hopefully later in next week.

If you were doing a conference on “new TV” what would you put on it?

Wow, you all like a good ship party! Me too, and what a party.

Today Thomas Hawk came and shot a bunch of photos that are really precious.

This one is my favorite photo of my dad.

Patrick has been carrying around our new Canon 5D and I predict he might give Thomas Hawk a run for the money! He’s gotten some awesome photos, we’ll get some up later so you can compare his photos with Thomas’. The kid has already started copying Thomas’ moves (machine guns the 5D, which takes up lots of memory cards very quickly. Milan has already had 8 gigabytes of photos taken of him. Damn, I remember when a gig of data storage was something only a huge corporation could afford.

Anyway, I’m beat and I had the easy job. I have a newfound respect for mothers.

Milan is spending his time in the special needs nursery because Maryam had a slight fever during birth. Turns out they are ultra paranoid about infections and so they are paying extra attention to Milan. Which means Maryam gets some very needed rest. Patrick and me are home now, back for more fun in the morning.

Another thing that has my attention on Maryam? Her epidural didn’t work very well. So, she gave birth saying it was like having a knife stuck in her and someone twisting it.

Some little known facts:

He was born at 2:24 a.m. this morning.
Weighed 9 lbs.
21 inches long.
Middle name is “William” after my dad’s name, pictured above.
We picked “Milan” because Maryam has been bugging me to take her to Italy for quite some time. When Milan showed up I told her “there goes your Italy trip for now.”

Anyway, we’re having a great time and thanks Thomas for the beautiful first-day images.

Disclaimer: Seagate sponsors my show. In a year I’ve done about 300 interviews and none have paid anything to get on my show other than Seagate, so can’t say thank you enough to Seagate.

But here we have two videos. One where execs show off the new products they just announced in New York. But the second one is interesting. I sit down with Seagate’s CEO and some of the top execs and we talk about what role solid-state memories will play in Seagate’s future business. Why does that matter? Because Seagate is largely a hard-drive company today.

Now, are these advertisements? Yes. But they aren’t ads like you’ll see on mainstream TV, that’s for sure.

Marketing through having conversations. Hey, sounds like a famous book I remember. :-)

Smart dudes. 45 minutes. Talking about Sun Microsystems’ ZFS. File storage system that’s used on a ton of datacenter computers and is rumored to be used in a future version of OSX.

You know, I hope you are enjoying these conversations as much as I do. Getting to talk with some of the industry’s smartest people just is such a privilege. I pinch myself every day.

What do we discuss here? Storage trends, stories about how ZFS came about, data center trends they are seeing, and a lot more.

Disclaimer: Seagate is the exclusive sponsor of my show, which I greatly appreciate.

BetaNews reports on Seagate’s reported moves into the flash memory space.

It’s interesting, I’ve been working on a series of videos at Sun (with the ZFS team, which makes a file system manager that’s used on a lot of data center hard drives, so they know something about the reliability of media that they sit on top of) and at Seagate (I’m interviewing several of the engineers there on Monday) to talk specifically about storage technology and management.

The BetaNews article is on point with what executives at Seagate have been telling me: that hard drives aren’t going away anytime soon.

Why not?

1) Reliability. The ZFS team at Sun told me that in their tests hard drives are an order of magnitude more reliable than flash memory is (that video will be up next week). Reliable meaning you get accurate data back out. We’ll talk more about that with the engineers.
2) Cost. Hard drives are going to continue being much lower cost per terabyte than flash will be.

That said, Bill Watkins, Seagate’s CEO, recently told me that they are working on hybrid drives where your OS would be stored on flash and everything else would be stored on the hard drive. Why do that if the reliability of flash memory is less than hard drive storage? Because the flash will be a cached version. Backed up by the hard drive. And then you get all of flash’s advantages: almost instant boot time (very fast recall out) and low power utilization since you won’t need to spin a hard drive up just to get to your OS. I can’t wait to get a laptop that has these advantages.

But he’s also emphatic that hard drives are going to be here indefinitely into the future (I won’t say “never” cause that’s a very long time, but generally technologists can only see a few years into the future anyway, so when we make grand statements you’ve got to put them into context of that smaller time frame, not something like 1,000 years from now).

Anyway, there’s a bunch of stuff coming from Seagate over the next few weeks. On September 5th they are hosting a big press event in New York and that’s when my videos will be released from embargo and we can talk more about this stuff. What the engineers at Seagate and other storage companies are doing is just amazing. I remember my first hard drive. Cost thousands of dollars and only held 20 megabytes (not gigabytes). Today a 200 gig hard drive on a desktop is considered “entry level.”

Anything you want me to ask Seagate’s engineers about this stuff?

Want to see how the Drobo works? That’s the storage device we’re using to hold the ScobleShow. We’ve uploaded a demo of the Drobo (also embedded here), and an interview with the founder.

Congrats also to my sponsor, Seagate, for shipping today the highest-density hard drive. Can’t wait to buy a few of those to put in our Drobo.

Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate are in the Zoho datacenter. You can watch them here. Sun Microsystems also is sending over a loaner server with 42 terabytes of storage. All to help Zooomr get back up and running. Thomas Hawk left a long comment with an update on Zooomr’s situation. Don’t know who Zoho is? I interviewed them a couple weeks ago and their evangelist, Raju, is the one who’s helping Zooomr out.

Sometimes Silicon Valley bums me out with all the greed and talk about getting great valuations and all that. It’s nice to see companies help get customer data back up and live.