Whew, yesterday was a busy day. Three interviews. Two speeches. One London Girl Geek dinner. Two videos posted (thanks to Kevin Edwards and Michael Klinger for posting those while I’m gone).

Anyway, I saw Don Dodge talking about blogging and wikis as platforms. He’s absolutely right. Anyone who’s seen a list of WordPress extensions sees that developers are building cool things on top of that blogging platform.

One of the blogging vendors, Blogtronix, I had on the ScobleShow yesterday (demo and interview). I like their stuff a lot, it lets companies build their own “Channel 9″ without having three great developers of their own.

I love this quote from Steve Sloan: “opacity is evil.” I totally agree with that when it comes to public institutions. The way our tax money is being spent should be done transparently. I doubt we’ll ever get there.

I look at yesterday’s events regarding PodCamp. Would I have done anything differently if we had been totally transparent? No. I told an audience yesterday that I live my life expecting that whatever I do or say will get on the front page of the New York Times. That makes people uncomfortable.

It is an uncomfortable life sometimes. Particularly when people don’t do their homework before jumping to conclusions.

I wish bloggers called and tried to get my side of the story before making attacks and tried to present both sides of the story, even if their side of the story is right and mine is wrong. I thought blogging was about being fair, and open, and different than what existed before. I guess not.

Hey, I live in a dream world. I know.

Is it to teach commercial skills (like how to run Adobe InDesign) or is it to push people to explore their fields and themselves?

Steve Sloan is asking for feedback about his innovative podcasting class because the university wants to change it to be just a pure skills class.

Sigh.

You can learn InDesign from a book. You can’t have a small group interaction with speakers like Steve Sergeant, host of Wildebeat, David Weinberger, author of Cluetrain Manifesto, Aaron Uhrmacher, Second Life expert, Phil Wolff, SkypeJournal author, or students talking about their own podcasts. I spoke to the class as well. Notice how all those link to podcasts of the actual class sessions!

It’s a shame, because San Jose State University needs more innovative classes like these, not fewer.

Steve is hosting a meeting Thursday evening to discuss the situation and see if they can do anything.

Hey, I’m not using my cell phone here in Europe, but this will prove to be very cool for blog and news fiends like me: MiniTechMeme.

I love this quote from Dave Winer: “Wes Felter says that “most people” don’t want to connect their computers to a TV. Well, most people, in the day in horses and buggies, didn’t want to ride in an internal combustion engine-driven mobility device, but today it’s impossible to live in modern society without using the darned things.”

Dave Winer’s comments yesterday sure got a lot of commentary. I put some of them over on my link blog. But, I liked Thomas Hawk’s points the best.

One thing about this new world. You can certainly see when there are divergent opinions and we’re far more cautious this time around. I still remember having to lay myself off in the bust last time and that wasn’t fun at all.

I’d rather have it this way than the old way where all the “professional” hype was up, up, up.

Ahh, the BBC reports a UK Press Complaints Commissioner told a conference this week that there should be a voluntary code of practice for blogs. Hmm, nice thought, but never will happen. Why? Cause a large percentage of bloggers don’t type their goods in the UK. So, who is going to regulate us? And, heck, we can’t agree on anything, including the definition of the word “blog” so you think you’re going to get us all to agree to a code of practice? Yeah, right.

But, then he gets started “on the internet ‘there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress.’”

Oh, that’s poppycock. If someone throws you under the bus on the Internet YOU CAN RESPOND ON YOUR OWN BLOG! And then the readers can decide the truth for themselves.  That’s what I just did.

Libel and slander laws still apply here, if you want to go that route. But I’ll take this world over the “professional only” world anyday of the week.

Me thinks this guy senses the end of his job and is grasping at ropes trying to keep it.

Damn, I love when something I write in email gets taken out of context and put on blogs. Here’s such a context.

The PodCamp folks asked me if I wanted to come and speak at PodCamp.

I email back and ask them if they can cover any of my expenses in getting there. That’s what I always do. Why? Because most of the time conferences WILL cover expenses to bring in outside speakers.

It’s my responsibility to make PodTech make a profit. IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO PUT AS FEW RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS ON MY BUSINESS AS POSSIBLE. And, yes, if there is money available to cover my expenses it IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO ASK FOR THEM!

I didn’t ask for hotel money. I have friends in New York that I’ll stay with. In fact, I didn’t ask for anything in particular. I just asked if there were any expense funds available.

But, I guess this group just wants to embarrass me. They could have simply said “no” and then I would have had to decide whether or not it was a good investment for PodTech to be there (it probably is).

Instead they took a private email, which hadn’t yet reached a conclusion, and took it into public. Wow.

Future speakers watch out when dealing with this group.

UPDATE: since my words, said in private, have now been taken public, here’s the email string in full. Please note that I was perfectly willing to fund the trip, but that THEY OFFERED THE EXPENSES AND ADMITTED THEY HAD SPONSORS!!! Read my thread. I said “I take it there’s no budget to cover travel expenses, right?”

And, here’s the thread that is in public view where they were talking about the issue.

UPDATE: Jason Van Orden, in my comments, says that Rob Safuto was not involved in the planning and the committee that was planning this doesn’t agree with him. My view? Unfortunately when you have negotiations in public view, these kinds of problems happen. It is unprofessional to be treated this way, but the blame for that lies mostly at Rob’s feet. He should have reported the facts, rather than just attacked. I hate it when people attack without even calling, or trying to get the point of view of the person who is being attacked. There’s a reason my email address and phone number are on my blog.

Hey, I know he’s a billionaire. Owns the Dallas Mavericks. And invested in an HD movie company.

I can still teach him something.

Today he said that it’ll be a long time before your PC will connect to an HDTV because your PC doesn’t have the right connections.

I say that’s poppycock.

Here’s how I hooked mine up: Ethernet. Your PC has one of those connectors, right?

My Media Center-run PC hooks up to my Ethernet jack, which hooks up to a Wifi router. My Wifi router sprays its packets down (via 802.11a) to a Wifi antenna on my Xbox 360. Those packets get decoded, and sent from my Xbox 360 over its HD component cables to my Sony 60-inch HDTV. Which displays them for me to watch.

I hear Microsoft is selling something like 15,000 Xbox 360s every day.

Mark, if you want to fly me down to your house I’ll be happy to connect a similar system for you. It’s easy and it ROCKS.

Once you do that, you can play Rocketboom (or ScobleShow, if you like long and boring videos about the tech industry) from your PC to your HD screen. Plus music. Plus photos.

It’s the best way to hook a PC up to an HD screen and has the added benefit of being “wife approved.” Why? Cause the ugly PC doesn’t sit in your living room with your TV. Just ask Maryam how important this is to getting along with women. You don’t want to look like a billionaire geek who has no sense of style, do you?

But Thomas Hawk bought a Mac.

Hmmm, I bought two so far this year. And my wife’s makes three. I still use my Windows machine more, though. Mostly cause of Outlook. Unlearning hundreds of thousands of emails answered (and tons of calendar items stored) is proving to be very tough. Since leaving SFO I’ve answered more than 600 emails. Whew.

What’s worse, is I received 48 new ones between Newport, Wales, and London.

Sigh.