Does your school block sites like MySpace or Facebook? I was hanging out with Maryam’s family and friends tonight and the kids started comparing ways to get around the system. Of course I turned on my cell phone’s video camera, which immediately got everyone but Patrick to be quiet. He gives up the goods.

Tips? Add a period to the end of URLs, so www.facebook.com becomes www.facebook.com. — the kids say that often works. So does visiting international versions of your favorite sites.

Me? I just turn on my cell phone’s wireless data system (I have a Verizon Wireless card) and say hell with IT folks who try to keep you from doing what you want to do. But if you’re a 13-year-old kid that isn’t economically possible.

Do note how astute they are in sharing information. I bet this same conversation is going on between lots of people tonight. How about in China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? You bet!

I gotta have a talk with Patrick about the porn thing, though. It’s not easy being a parent in these times. Clamp down too hard and they just won’t tell you the truth (lots of Patrick’s friends tell me their parents have no clue what they are doing online).

Reuters reports on a new iPhone killer (Verizon’s claim, not mine) that’s coming soon from Verizon. Sounds great. Can’t wait to try it. I doubt people will wait in line, but who knows?

Ahh, maybe this is why Steve Jobs lowered the price to $399 for the iPhone. Now that seems like an even more brilliant move.

Some things I’d like to see here:

1. What maps are on the system. I use Google Maps all the time on my iPhone and I notice that even Patrick and Maryam are using it a lot too.
2. What stock quotes are on the system. I use Yahoo’s stock prices several times a day on my iPhone.
3. What’s the experience like? It’s one thing to put a touch screen on a device. It’s a whole nother thing to make it a thrilling experience. Even my ex-wife (the one who hates technology so much she moved out of Silicon Valley to get away from the geeks) loves her iPhone. Will the Verizon devices get the same kind of evangelical fervor going? We’ll see.

Well, after playing with always-on camera work yesterday I’ve decided that being on 24-hours-a-day isn’t for me. Justin.TV is safe from being cloned. It’s very exhausting being “on” all the time with an audience staring you in the face. I felt a lot of pressure to keep the connection up and running (which was frustrating at the beginning of the day) as well as ask interesting questions and keep things interesting.

That said, it was a fun thing to do at a conference where I could ensure there were lots of interesting people to talk with and I think my guests enjoyed getting live questions from the chat room as things went on. I did an interview over at the Marriott where the wireless worked great, even inside. There were lots of people watching (oh, and I broadcast my drive in and it worked all the way from Half Moon Bay to San Francisco). Verizon Wireless works pretty well. Once inside Moscone, though, I hit a snag. Turns out one wall doesn’t get good wireless connectivity. Once I moved back to the lobby things were great for the rest of the day.

Ustream.tv’s setup works pretty well. Found it scaled pretty well (someone even turned their widget into a full-screen display). The tools, however, on the service really need more work. For one they need an “automatically reconnect” feature. If the system freezes it requires a series of clicks just to get back working. Also, there’s no way to know if you’re actually successfully sending video. They need a green light or something that’ll tell you that the servers are receiving video and audio packets.

I’ll be on again tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific Time. I’ll be hanging out on the third floor lobby at the Web 2.0 Expo near the speaker room (always ensures a good flow of interesting people).

Yesterday a student from Virginia Tech used Ustream’s system to live broadcast from yesterday’s horrific scene. It won’t be the last time live video is used journalistically. I’d expect to see a LOT more people doing live, wireless, webcasting (lifecasting, if you will) in the future. It’s very inexpensive to do, and it’s an easy way to bring your audience into a new experience.

Dave Winer has a little video of what the rig looks like.

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!

Matt Mullenweg (the guy who started Automattic, which produces Wordpress, which runs this blog and many others) tells Jonathan Schwartz that Sun Microsystems isn’t there for startups.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Sun can improve its approach to startups. LAMP is sure getting traction — I’ve stopped asking entrepreneurs what infrastructure they are using since the answer was so consistently LAMP.

Sun has done a great job of stopping the bleeding and getting some interesting new products out (Black Box, for instance) but for Sun to dramatically increase its relevance it needs to convince Steve Jobs to put Java on his new products and needs to build something that really shakes up the Web 2.0 industry.

That’s why I asked Jonathan what Sun’s iPhone was. I notice Jonathan didn’t have a good answer to that question.

Oh, and someone asked why would Steve Jobs put Java on the iPhone? My answer: it’s dramatically easier to write applications for a runtime-compiler system like Java or .NET. Because Steve Jobs refuses to go with Java (putting .NET on iPhone doesn’t make sense for Apple’s business) it means that developers on Apple’s iPhone will need to work a lot harder to get apps out. Translation: fewer apps.

I remember back in 1989 that Apple was six years ahead of the industry with its Macintosh II. Remember, it took until late 1995 until Microsoft was able to match the innovations Apple shipped in 1989.

So, why did Apple only end up with a small sliver of market share? Developers, developers, developers.

Oh, sorry, I’m channelling Steve Ballmer again.

Aside: I’m posting this from the Golden Gate bridge. I love Verizon Wireless!!!

I’m sitting with Dan Balz, political journalist for the Washington Post. He wrote this story of the events this morning.

I am getting back to looking at how technology is changing campaigns. Getting back to my geek roots, as it were.

He’s been at the Post since 1978.

Technology is radically changing campaigns, he says. First he’s no longer writing just for paper. Dan told me he’s updated his story several times in the past few hours, plus he’s been on radio and TV interviews. The Post wants him to produce podcasts and video blogs too, or look for opportunities in bringing other media onto the Post’s pages.

He’s typing furiously into a Dell laptop — is now rewriting his article for the newspaper that everyone will get in the morning — and has a Verizon Wireless card.

The world of politics is changing, he told me, because now a candidate must give dozens of interviews to tons of different people with small audiences. The age of talking to one guy who had a massive audience is probably over. Even if you leave blogs out of the story even the mainstream press is seeing its audiences split up into smaller and smaller niches with more and more pieces. I remember back to journalism school where I saw pictures of the Presidential press corps back in the 1960s: there were only a handful of journalists. Today, even for news like today, dozens of different camera crews show up, along with dozens more of print journalists, photographers, everyday citizens, and radio journalists.

One other thing that we chatted about is business models. He knows his organization is under pressure to not only grow audience (he says the Washington Post is read now more than ever, but increasingly only online) but also figure out how to make money with its increasingly online audience. He’s not the only journalist to talk with me about that lately — seems the entire industry is focused on how to make money to continue to fund content.

Anyway, I’ll try to get back to tech a little bit. Ahh, Apple’s in trouble over stock option back dating. That’s a tough issue to chew on, but then ripping off investors isn’t exactly sexy.

No, Dave Winer, I’m not out of California … yet. But tomorrow I get on a plane to go somewhere outside of California that I can’t yet share publicly about (I’ve been asked to keep quiet until I arrive where I’m going Wednesday evening). Hopefully the Verizon Wireless card will work where I’m going. It’s going to be an exciting week. By the way, nice to hear that Dave Winer will be coming to the Seagate/PodTech BlogHaus at CES.

So, how was your Christmas? Mine? I got a MacBookPro 17-inch model, thanks to my brother-in-law who got me a good deal from Apple. I need a bigger hard drive, though, so don’t know if I’ll be taking it on my trip this week.

The weekend was a grouping of parties. Saturday saw John Furrier and family along with Theresa and Tim of TangoDiva dropping by for some fun. I forget what we did on Sunday. Heheh. Yesterday we went to my dad’s house, then to Shel Israel’s house.

In both places yesterday I met people who said “I try to read your blog, but can’t understand it.”

In other words, I was using technical terms like “wiki” or “blog” or “podcast” or, even something even more geeky and that they didn’t feel comfortable here, so left.

On the other hand, a friend who hangs out with the Channel 9 crowd says that that crowd thinks lately I haven’t been geeky enough.

Demonstrates the problems making anyone happy while writing a tech blog. It also shows why the audience sizes here will remain small (at least compared to the audience watching the average American football game).

I write for a passionate audience. If you don’t know what things mean here, I’ll be happy to help out.

Lately I’ve been doing a LOT of reading on the political scene in the United States. They use words I’m not all that familiar with either, like “reapportionment.” If you aren’t really deep into the political scene you’d have no idea what that meant. And, if you ARE deep into the political scene, you can use such terms to test whether the people you’re talking to are really “with it” or not.

By the way, I hear Wikipedia is trying to build a search engine to challenge Google. It already is damn close. You want to learn something you don’t know anything about? Google won’t give you the answers — Wikipedia will. In fact, I think I understand why Google gave up on its “Answers” thing. Wikipedia is just taking over here. For instance, look at the entry for “reapportionment.” You think you can get better info than that anywhere else? I haven’t found it.

Oh, no, I’m not headed for the World Economic Forum, like Tony Perkins is.

In other news, I wish I had kept my dad’s Apple II.

As usual, I’ve been keeping my link blog up to date. Tons of interesting stuff from more than 440 different leading tech blogs.

We’re on our way home from Seattle (we are driving home from Oakland International Airport) and stuck in a traffic jam. All lanes of 92 are closed due to an accident. Major one, based on how many fire trucks and ambulances have passed us.

In past years one might turn on the radio. KGO and KCBS here in San Francisco area are two that come to mind. We did that (KCBS has traffic and weather every 10 minutes) but after a few of those reports said the same thing, I pulled out my laptop to answer some email and check on traffic. In Seattle the traffic sites are very accurate and even have good cameras where you can see what’s happening to traffic. San Francisco area is WAY behind Seattle in this regard. In Seattle I can even see where each bus is located and approximately how long it’ll be before it gets to my stop.

Now that more of us are getting portable phones that are Web enabled, we’ll expect even better services.

Who has the best traffic info sites, particularly for mobile phones? And what impact does that have on things like housing prices? I remember thinking in Bothell that having lots of alternate routes to the freeway was good and it did impact our decision on where to live.

Anyway, follow along and see if we get home anytime tonight. We’re stuck on the San Mateo bridge on HWY 92. SF Gate gave best traffic report. Others still don’t show the accident.

Oh, I do love having a Verizon Wireless card. Makes traffic jams a whole lot more productive. This is the first time I’ve setup office on a bridge, though.

UPDATE: we got home OK after being delayed about half an hour. Turns out we were a few hundred cars back, and it, indeed, was a bad accident. A car was destroyed the way you can destroy a piece of paper by crimpling it up in your hand. Sure hope it turns out OK for everyone inside.

UPDATE 2: this points to a new opportunity: a “news near me” URL. Put in “San Mateo Bridge” and mark that you only care about things that happened in the last hour and such a service would have pulled up all the latest stuff within 10 miles. I haven’t seen anyone do anything like that, have you?

Ethan Kaplan does. He complains about spending $3,500 to attend a conference without being able to get good Wifi.

Damn dude. If you can afford $3,500 for a conference then spend $80 a month on Verizon Wireless like I do. You won’t care anymore about conference Wifi. My Verizon wireless worked just fine the whole conference.

So, what should we care about? Access to power outlets!

Calling Matt Cutts (Google’s #1 blogger). I’m on another plane, sitting in Washington DC. I love Verizon Wireless. But, this guy is having trouble with Gmail. Can you help him? Gotta go, talk from Greensboro.