Come back Monday to my Twitter account at 10 a.m. for something fun. I’ll be at the Web 2.0 Expo in the lobby. Where will you be?

I can’t let Justin.TV and Chris Pirillo have all the fun!

I’m taking the weekend off, hope you are having a good one and see you on Monday morning!

UPDATE: Oh, heck, beta test here. We’ll see how long Verizon Wireless is going to last. We’re driving to Merced. My phone is 425-205-1921. Call and get on ScobleShow, live walkaround edition.

UPDATE2: beta test was successful. We were showing people video for more than three hours as we drove through California. See ya on Monday!

I just got a tip that Google is about to make a sizeable acquisition. Not much more data. So, of course I took it to Twitter. I hear it’s a big dollar amount.

UPDATE: $3.1 billion DoubleClick. Microsoft was in bidding. New York Times has the story and says “Microsoft has been trying to catch up with Google in the online advertising business, and the loss of DoubleClick to Google is a major set-back for Microsoft.”

What do you think?

How did I find out about the Mexico City Earthquake? On Twitter. As soon as people started reporting it on Twitter, I looked at the USGS maps. The Twitterers beat the USGS by several minutes. But now USGS Is reporting somewhere around a 5 to 6.0.

andresb my whole apartment creaked and bent a little half a minute ago from twitterrific

andresb The strongest tremor I’ve felt since I’m here

BioXD Acaba de temblar :S….estuvo muy fuerte 1 minute ago from web

andresb woooooow, earthquake in Mexico City

CyberMJ75 Damn! Just experienced an earthquake. That sucker lasted some minutes.

paranoideo Very strong earthquake in Mexico City, paranoideo.com is reporting live (:P)

earcos Very strong earthquake in Mexico City, VivirMexico.com is reporting live (in spanish, sorry)

Satrina Earthquake in Mexico City, was long and a little bit strong

dotmotion That was a hell of an earthquake.. and I’m on a 7th floor… I still feel sick

rogeriogal Earthquake in Cuernavaca, just passed. I’m still dizzy.

trisignia wow, earthquake in Mexico City…my first ever

helmi Mexico earthquake now on german news tv

robblatt Earthquake still not on cnn.com (at approx. 11:10 p.m. Pacific)

Later…

GraceD mexico earthquake reports coming in on Google News: http://tinyurl.com/yqxakr

A Web report of timeline (in Spanish). I had a report up on my blog within about three minutes after the quake was felt thanks to my more than 3,000 friends I’m following on Twitter. I immediately started watching Twitter Search, which lets you look at stuff in almost real time, which is how I found some of these reports. I also put TwitterVision up on a screen here to see any other real-time reports.

UPDATE: Chris Pirillo has a live video call going on right now and is urging Mexico City residents to call in and tell him what they felt had a live video call. Mike Doeff recorded part of it where @Earcos from Mexico City is on a video call with him.

I just learned of a new Twitter service called Twitterment. Here’s a page that shows Twitters that mentioned Mexico along with some trends of same.

Now if you’re a Twitter freak like I am, you can get my link blog pumped into your Twitter account. I didn’t create this. @Natetrue took my RSS feed from Google Reader and made this Twitter feed.

We were sitting around in Jeff Pulver’s hotel suite when Dr. Robert Pepper (former policy chief for the FCC, now works in advanced technology policy at Cisco) asked me “what is Twitter?

Chris Brogan films the answer. In the video you see cool video blogger Steve Garfield and law blogger Denise Howell, among others. Fun discussion. I’m http://www.twitter.com/Scobleizer if you wanna come and follow me. I’m not on today, though. Trying to dig through my email.

I asked my friends over on Twitter what video blogs they are watching on iTunes or AppleTV and which ones they’d recommend I check out and a raft of good ones came back.

tomVS
BBC London News, BBC NEwsnight, BBC Breakfast Takeaway, Reuters breaking news, Cranky geeks, MacBreak weekly, CommandN…BBC Storyfix, BBC Ten O’Clock News, Tiki Bar TV, Ask a Ninja, Webnation. I work for the BBC, OK? And the podcast trial ends in May!

Roodscreen
Video casts= Diggnation, Art History in Just a Minute, Martin Sargent, Onion Network News, the Merlin Show.

AndrewLighten
The NASA video podcast.

garthk
Tiki Bar TV, The Merlin Show, MacBreak, and Media Watch (ABC TV in Oz). Also trying Big Ideas, dotBoom, VideoGrunt, and others.

BaghdadBrian
Galacticast, Alive in Baghdad, i could tell you what shows i watch, but i dont watch them on itunes…

mrtopf
tikibar, xolo.tv, rocketboom, Josh Leo sometimes, Verdi [ED note: I couldn’t find this one], Screencasts online, merlin show, Steve Garfield.

bluetex
Ask a Ninja. I look forward to killing you soon! Rocketboom.

kosso
yes, and GETV and Cranky Geeks. John C Dvorak makes me chuckle a lot. And Irina rules!

Polyfaux
I subscribe to TikiBar TV that it for video podcast.

Loudmouthman
Vidpodcasts are Hak5, DLTV, GBTV, 1up, CrankyGeeks, MerlinMann, SciFi and ITIdiots just repeating myself sorry.

coolChickLA
Conscious Media Network

mblair
Quicktips for Designers is a handy video blog: http://www.rookiedesigner.c…

monkeyleader
diggnation, cranky geeks, bbc, gamespot, dltv, command.h, national geo, tikibar, MTV, WoW, rocketboom, oh yer and scobleshow

I got tired there at the end of Googleing URLs for these, please do post your own video show and let us all know!

If we find new ones, we’ll get the best on the Vloggie Show too.

Oh, and the reason I want all of these is to compare Apple TV with a Windows Media Center to see if I can see any difference when displayed on my HDTV. I doubt it, based on my first tests, but want to be a little more scientific about it before reporting my findings.

Tim O’Reilly just posted the draft of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct that he’s hoping we all adopt. I instantly asked the mob hanging out on Twitter what they thought. Brett Nordquist had this funny thought:

“Something tells me the sites with the ‘Anything Goes’ logo will be more interesting.”

I’m not able to currently sign this, either. First I allow anonymous comments. I do watch for hate speech, though, and delete that when it’s found (pretty rare, actually).

Second, I engage with my trolls. Why? Cause if they show up here I think they deserve an answer and I find they often get me to think deeper about the topic that I’m writing about than if we didn’t engage in a little gutter wrestling.

Third, I’ve broken the “talk privately” plank several times before and I’m not sure I would be able to stay true to that one, either. I blog. I don’t back channel. I don’t beg for links behind your back the way many other sites do (and sometimes even require). If I have a problem with something you wrote on your blog I think we should play it out in public. If I’m wrong, that’ll be part of the public record. I don’t like back room “deals” between bloggers. Makes me wonder what else they are doing in the back room. But I do understand the principle here, and, truth be told, I do value opinions of people who do their homework first. When I haven’t done my homework first it’s hurt me.

So, for now, I guess I’d have to wear the “anything goes” badge.

I do find disquieting the social pressure to get on board with this program. Tim O’Reilly is a guy who really can affect one’s career online (and off, too). I do have to admit that I feel some pressure just to get on board here and that makes me feel very uneasy.

How about you?

UPDATE: this is at the top of TechMeme right now too, with tons of comments coming in.

Leo Laporte just reported he’s leaving Twitter to go to competitor Jaiku instead. Here’s what he posted:

“I’ve asked Ev to delete my Twitter account. I’m concerned about confusion with TWiT. I’m moving to Jaiku: account is ChiefTWiT. CU there!”

and

“I should never have trademarked TWiT. Curse you Ev. Couldn’t you have called this Odeoer or something?”

I’ll follow the details and post more on my Twitter account.

UPDATE: we’re having dinner with Lisa Stone and Chris Carfi and Chris says Leo is the “Twitter quitter.” The reason Leo’s leaving Twitter is significant is because Leo kicked off the Twitter hype by talking about Twitter on his show, TWiT (This Week in Tech) about two weeks before SXSW.

UPDATE2: Jaiku is currently down. So, at least they have the same scalability problems that Twitter had three weeks ago.

UPDATE3: more on Leo’s blog about his decision.

UPDATE4: I’m on Jaiku too now at http://scobleizer.jaiku.com/. Personally I like the simplicity of Twitter better. But that might just be me.

I just switched my life over to a 17-inch MacBookPro. Don’t worry Microsoft fans. I still have Vista and Office 2007 loaded too.

I asked the 2500+ people following me on Twitter what their ideas were for me to load up and in just the first minute got dozens of suggestions. Here’s some of the first:

@kirkmarple says “Vista.” Heh, already got it loaded. With both BootCamp and Parallels.
@rpechler says “start with iUseThis.”
@davewiner says “audio recorder, brain dead simple MP3 recorder and azureus, bittorrent client”
@endacrowley says “transmit by panic software for ftping, aperture for more advanced photography, adium for chat and twitteriffic for Twitter).”
@cbee says “Transmit, Onyx, iClip, WhatSize, DeskTopple, Typeit4me.”
@CamonZ says “optimized binary of firefox for Mac.”
@MHJohnston says “Quicksilver.”
@FANLESS says “icecoffee, menumeters, copypaste & Growl, all found via http://www.macupdate.com.”
@davewiner says “graphicconverterpro - paint program.”
@matthendry says “Triple Boot via BootCamp.”
@DonMacAskill says “AdiumX, NeoOffice, Yojimbo, Spanning Sync, Missing Sync (if you use a SmartPhone or Windows Mobile), iTerm, Twitterrific.
@johncruz says “You better get twitterrific.”
@pierre says “LaunchBar is a must if you prefer keyboard to mouse.”
@derrickpeters says “‘tickr‘ for flickr.” (now replaced by Slide).
@cbee says “Amadeus and/or Audacity, Wiretap Pro, Flip4Mac, File Juicer, Pipette.”
@autodidactus says “Where do we start, Scoble? Twitterific, VLC, WireTap Pro, Transmit, Adium.”
@autodidactus says “I’ve found myself quite hooked on Monocle lately.”
@lightandshadow says “Letterbox, plugin for Mail.app.”
@joshowens says “perian.org — a nice codec pack for all those lovely bittorrent TV shows, etc.
@edwardsterkin says “seismac.”
@tuz says “Appzapper for uninstalling, Colloquy for IRC if you do that, NetNewsWire for free reading, write room for uninterrupted writing.”
@edwardsterkin says “VoiceCandy.”
@R2C13 says “I like pathfinder.”
@edwardsterkin says “ChatFX.”
@parislemon says “Definitely have to check out delicious library to organize your media: http://www.delicious-monster.com/“
@kevinrailsback says “Synergy.”
@tuz says “Disco for a light weight burner, Paparazzi for screenshotting entire Web pages to jpeg or pdf, transmission for torrents.”
@bigwebguy says “virtuedesktops (at least until leopard spaces).”
@kevinrailsback says “Desktopple (hides all the icons/files on your desktop for a clean look).”
@MHJohnston says “Growl is also a good bet for notifications- ties into a lot of apps.”
@rpechler says “my ‘must have’ Mac apps.”
@derrickpeters says “Sailing Clicker turns phone into remote for computer and a second vote for Growl.”
@jaseone says “TextMate is the best text editor out there.”

This is all in the first 10 minutes on Twitter. Lots of very passionate people hanging out on Twitter lately. Oh, and can you pick the SmugMug CEO out of the list above?

What about you? What utilities or apps or services do you think every Mac user should load?

Not to be confused with the Radar Networks of the last post, this service is pretty interesting for camera phones. What do you think? I wish it had a public version, though, where I could build a Twitter-like page from just my photos.

This was the Java app that caught my eye as something that Steve Jobs should add to the iPhone.

If this demo gets you interested, I have a longer interview with Tiny Pictures’ CEO on ScobleShow.

Oh, I guess someone IS reading my Twitter account (this time over at Zoho). Heheh. On Friday I went to their offices in Pleasanton to meet with Raju Vegesna of Zoho. Zoho is building an impressive suite of “Work 2.0″ services (things you can use at work to collaborate with other people).

They have spreadsheets, word processors, meeting apps, and many, many other things. Have you tried any out? I’m trying some out. The Work 2.0 space is hot and Zoho is a big reason why. As to Twitter, I post a lot of stupid, lame, things there. You’ve been warned. Oh, and don’t check out Twittervision. That’ll keep your attention for at least two minutes. Twittersearch is a good way to search for anyone who has said something lame about anything. Like I said, it’s lame. But I’m addicted. So are thousands of others.

Tweets are what we call posts on Twitter. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet. Good night.

Last Friday I visited the famous South Park area in San Francisco. It’s a small park south of Market street where a number of cool Web 2.0 startups are located (Twitter’s parent, Obvious Corp, is located in a building on one end of the park). Anyway, I was talking with a number of people and I heard that Technorati’s blog search quality had seen a fairly large improvement lately and was better than Google’s blog search again. It’s hard to test blog search engines unless you know when an event started and can count up the good links and count up the spam.

There’s no way I can — alone — test out the search engine’s quality.

So, thought I’d open it up to all of you. Which engine is now better? Why? Give us some things to test out and reproduce what you’re seeing.

Here, I’ll start. It’s Videoblogging Week this week. So let’s compare both for “videobloggingweek2007.” That’s a top search on Technorati, so it should bias pretty well for Technorati, right? Let’s see!

Technorati for videobloggingweek2007. 147 results.
Google Blog Search for videobloggingweek2007. 76 results.

I didn’t see any obvious spam, did you? I think there might have been one on Google’s results, but it’s hard to tell spam blog, or splog, from actual real blogs anymore.

Also, I didn’t notice any duplicates on either service, did you? How about on the searches you’ve tried? It does look like Technorati has pulled ahead again in this race. The UI on Technorati is certainly ahead of Google’s, especially with the little chart of how many mentions a term has gotten. Search Technorati for EMI, for instance, and you can see that it really spiked today because they announced non-DRM music which got a lot of bloggers all excited.

So, try some searches of your own. Which engine is working best for you?

The timewasters I see on Twitter that I must share with you. Here’s the latest: Web 2.0 Grocery. Waste everyone’s time! That’s my goal. But it is funny. Sorta. Blame it all on Sam Harrelson. He said it was the funniest thing he’s seen all day.

UPDATE: Actually, can’t really blame Twitter on this one. BoingBoing linked to it first. Oh, wait, hold the presses. Jeff Pulver was first and said it all is Yossi Vardi’s fault (it was first shown at Yossi’s Kinnernet camp).

Glad to see that Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke are getting along and have made a joint statement and appeared this morning together on CNN (I, and several others who were filmed for this, were cut out). I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to say this morning for a week and it just comes down to sadness. I’m having a tough time getting back into blogging, which is why I broke my silence with an April Fools’ joke. In a lot of ways it isn’t fun anymore. It’s a business now. Might explain why I like hanging out on Twitter more lately (no anonymous jerks named “Joey” get into my account there).

Attacks are part of this business. And mobs are too. I’m sorry that four people had their names dragged through the mud for something that Maryam and I believe they didn’t do. It makes me very worried about my comments. Am I responsible for what people write here? I’ve come very close to closing my comments up. It makes me realize why many well-known bloggers don’t have comments anymore. It’s hard enough taking responsibility for what I write here, much less what other people write. I have turned on some moderation (new posters are held until I can approve them).

Regarding attacks. There are few things that’ll quickly attract a crowd: a fight or an pileup on a freeway or a mob breaking windows. This story became some of all three.

Bloggers know this. In fact, some blogging businesses even use this knowledge to build an audience. They pick on people on purpose to try to attract an audience, which they can then sell to advertisers. In the case of MeanKids (one of the sites that attacked my wife and Kathy) it wasn’t necessarily about business, but they did want to attract a crowd around attacks on other bloggers.

This is all well and fine. If we all were machines.

I’m not. Kathy’s not. My wife is not. It’s very hard to not focus too much energy on attacks. In the past few weeks hundreds of people have come up to me at various events and said “I love your blog.” I don’t know that I can name more than a few of those people (I have business cards, though, heheh) but I can name tons of people who have said something nasty about me over the same time period. Something wrong when we give those who hate us more time and emotional energy than those who love us. Guilty as charged.

Over the past week I’ve received tons of emails from people online who gave me tons of details of attacks. Lots of bloggers hate them, but know they better not speak out against them. Kathy, last week, got MORE attacks AFTER she wrote that post than before. So, bloggers, if they are in this for the long haul, learn they should keep their mouths shut. That said, they certainly don’t appreciate the attacks. We ARE human, after all. And don’t like hearing the constant banging of stones on our screens from those who think we deserve a good stoning.

My frustration over the past week is there really isn’t much any of us can do. It doesn’t matter if you’re silent. It doesn’t matter if you are loud. The attacks will come and come often.

One thing, though, that I won’t support: more rules or laws or, even, more “guidelines.” I value my freedom of speech. This is not a “theory” for me. My mom grew up in Nazi Germany where free speech wasn’t allowed. My wife grew up in Iran, where free speech still isn’t allowed. You’re definitely not allowed to attack the government in Iran, even today.

UPDATE: Matt, in my comments, notes that death threats are not protected speech and are already against the law. He’s right that I shouldn’t tie that kind of speech to those issues. The problem is that some people are calling for expansions on those already-existing laws to other kinds of offensive speech online. That’s what I’m resisting.

I’d rather put up with a few rotten strawberries on our meme shelf than go with a system where we all need to be “nice” to each other.

That said, there’s some things +I+ am going to do.

1) Reward people who teach me something and/or uplift people and companies rather than tear them down. If you read my Link Blog you’ll see I don’t point to attacks and only link to the best of tech blogging/journalism.
2) Work harder on my video blog to expose to you companies and people who are trying to improve our lives.
3) Watch more Galacticast (yesterday’s version was funny).

Really, the only one I can control is myself. That’s how I’ll get back to having fun again. In the meantime there’s always Twitter. Where all attacks are 140 characters or less. Ever notice that a good flame is hard to write short?

PS: I’m still bummed out that Kathy isn’t blogging. I love her blog and put her stuff up on my link blog frequently and often.

UPDATE: This post leaves James Robertson exasperated. Um, I think he missed the point I was trying to make. There’s a huge difference between laws and written-down-guidelines and morality and manners. Yeah, I wish people wouldn’t attack me. But I sure don’t want to see some sort of set of guidelines or, worse, laws. Should we go with the 1950’s version of politeness? Or todays? And, are we going to be able to attack our government after such a set of guidelines gets written? How about Robert Scoble? (Not if I write it, think about that one for a moment!)

I don’t know, but I’m having fun with it. I find that if I have something stupid to say I just say it on Twitter. But, I’m also finding it’s an awesome way to compare notes with other people, particularly at conferences. It’s also a great way to tell everyone about a cool new site, or a new idea, and get quick feedback.

I’m far more likely to spit out a little thought over there, than on my blog here. Which, probably, makes my blog here better too.

It’s interesting that out of a crowd of more than 1,000 at Jeff Pulver’s big party last night that the Twitter’ers find each other pretty quickly and easily. At one point a guy came up to me and asked if I was Robert Scoble, then introduced himself as “I wrote TwitterVision.” It was David Troy.

He’s been amazed at the response to it. He’s gotten emails from all over the world. It went up Sunday. He wrote it in four hours using Ruby on Rails. People have been telling him it’s the most addictive thing they’ve seen lately. He finds that almost scary. But, I told him I am probably going to buy a third monitor just to display TwitterVision. It’s just so cool to see Twitters in real time from around the world displayed on a moving Google map.

Anyway, it was fun to hear how he built it. I told him that he should add Starbucks icons randomly in between Twitters. That would freak people out. Thankfully he graciously declined to do that.

If you’re on Twitter you can tell Twitter your location by sending a message with “L:” in it. After the L: you should include your zip code or some other location information that Google Maps will understand. I did L:94019 since that’s my zip code. You’ll see my Twitter messages popup from Half Moon Bay, CA.

Steve Jobs doesn’t think there’s anything cool being done in Java. At least that’s what he told Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

If I were Jonathan I’d pay John Poisson, CEO of Tiny Pictures to head over to Steve Jobs’ office and show him Radar.

This turns your camera phone into a social tool for sending fun stuff to your family. I got a demo a little while ago and it rocks.

Radar is sort of like Twitter (and we saw how popular that got in the past few weeks) but even better: it’s small photos for your friends. It’s getting very popular and I want it. But, the problem is I’m getting an iPhone and the iPhone doesn’t yet have a Java runtime (which Radar needs for its full-featured client — a lower quality WAP client is available, but it isn’t nearly as cool or useful).

Anyway, I’m noticing a trend here. The coolest stuff to come before my camera lately has been for mobile phones.

Maybe instead of Web 2.0 we should be talking about Mobile 2.0.

OK, OK, I’m an arrogant a##h@@e. But, everytime I do a Google vs. Live search Google wins.

Here’s another one. I remember a few days ago someone on Twitter announced a Twitter search engine. I didn’t remember the URL, so I went to Google. Typed “Twitter search.”

Google came right back with the correct answer. And came back with the best blogs on the topic.

But, some people at Microsoft are saying that I’m being unfair to Microsoft. I really still do love Microsoft (and I still own stock in Microsoft, I don’t own stock in Google or Yahoo). So, I want them to do well.

But, I go over to Live.com and do the same search. The site I’m looking for is nowhere to be found. Even better, the first result brings back Google!

So, sorry, when I say Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks, this is what I’m talking about.

I wish Microsoft were better. I really do.

Oh, and Twitter Search is here.

UPDATE: Look at the advertising Microsoft is bringing back too. Microsoft is trying to raise its advertising revenues by showing non-relevant ads. That’ll hurt Microsoft long term cause anyone on Live will know the ads really have nothing to do with the search being done. Google’s approach will lead to more consistent advertising users. Advertising IS part of the search. Microsoft treats searchers as something to take advantage of, while Google puts far more relevant ads in front of a searcher, or none at all.

Tonight I told Twitter followers to “call me” while I drove home from Petaluma to Half Moon Bay. I got about 20 calls in about an hour. One caller told me about 37 Signals new CRM software, called Highrise. Told me it was the most useful business software he’d gotten in years. I’m starting to use it, very nice user experience on first glance. Of course, that’s what I’ve come to expect from 37 Signals (we use their other software at PodTech.net).

I’m off to my last video interview of the day, but lots of people have been sending me emails about Twitter being down — it’s already on Digg too. I can just hear the productivity of tons of geeks going up. I bet it’s less than a week before major corporations start blocking Twitter.