David Risley this morning wrote about all the noise in all these systems like Twitter and FriendFeed. Of course that kicked off a whole discussion over on FriendFeed.

Oh, the glorious noise! Everyone loves beating me up for causing the noise. No, I am not the cause. I pass it along. You should see my inbound streams. Every second or two a new Twitter is aimed at me. Every few seconds, a new blog post comes into Google Reader. Every few seconds, a new thing on FriendFeed.

24 hours a day of noise. And we’re not even counting the professional noise over on TechMeme and Google News.

Buried by noise.

So, how do we get out?

Well, we have a couple of choices.

1. We can choose to remain ignorant. Billions of people choose this route every day. Pop open a beer and pretend nothing interesting is happening in the world. That explains why American Media would rather talk about Britney Spears than about anything really important (like what Barack Obama’s new policies are).

2. We can try to swim in all the noise and soak it in. That’s what I do, but only a small number of people are going to have time or willingness to do that.

3. We can build noise reduction systems. Techmeme is one such system. It shows you only what the bloggers think is important. Google News is another. That shows you only what professional journalists think is important (or, at least their algorithms are designed to show you that and, while the algorithms don’t always match real-world behavior, they do get close enough to have high value).

4. We can use search to only present high value items. For instance, let’s say you work for my sponsor, Seagate, wouldn’t you be very interested in only items that mention Seagate? Like this search on TweetScan? Yes, you would. There’s still SOME noise there, but a lot less for someone interested in stuff about Seagate than there is coming through, say, TwitterVision, which shows a random selection of all Tweets being posted in the last few minutes.

The problem? Twitter and FriendFeed have brought new noise into our lives (at least for the early adopter types) and there aren’t good ways to reduce the noise.

But FriendFeed shows us a way out. How about seeing only posts that have at least two “likes?” Isn’t that a way to reduce the noise? Yes! In fact, my eyes are already doing that. I scan the page of FriendFeed looking for things that stick out of the noise and I’ve noticed that items with lots of votes and lots of comments stand out.

Tonight I’ll be attending a FriendFeed party and I’ll ask them just what their plans are in terms of giving us new views into their streams of info: one with noise, one with noise removed. Yes, of course I’ll post videos to my Qik feed and they get forwarded to my FriendFeed account too (which shows up on my blog’s sidebar too). More noise ahead! :-)

What kinds of noise reduction systems are you seeing? What kinds do we need?

Oh, and here’s a FriendFeed search for all items that include the word “noise” in them. That’s one reason I wrote this post. The noise has our attention and we need to damp it back down.

UPDATE: In just half an hour we’ve gotten tons of more comments on this blog post over on FriendFeed.

UPDATE 2: another way to remove noise is to just watch the things I’m commenting on or liking. That ensures that my noise isn’t there, and that I’ve hand filtered the noise for you. Another way? Don’t subscribe to many people, just to people you know will provide you interesting stuff and little noise.

I just visited the offices of Lefora, free forum hosting, who is making cool new forum software that goes in interesting new directions that I haven’t seen forum software or services do yet. Stuff like embeddable YouTube videos with just copying the URL. And I +love+ the color theme selector they have.

You’ll see that in the video demo I just filmed with Vinnie Lauria, VP of product.

Paul Bragiel, CEO, told me a lot more about the company and its plans in a separate video.

An example of their new forums can be found on their “fun stuff forum.”

UPDATE: In just a few minutes Vinnie created me a forum.

New 3G iPhone is coming this summer, it seems. Will Patrick and I wait in line overnight again like we did last year?

No.

Why? Even though the line was a heck of a lot of fun, I think that’s a one-time deal. It’s pretty clear there won’t be any scarcity (there wasn’t any real scarcity last time, either) and I doubt Bill Atkinson (Apple’s first software developer) will come and wait in line overnight with us like he did the first time.

That said, I will be one of the first to buy the 3G version. I hope it has video on it.

The downside? With millions of people getting new 3G iPhones, I bet the speed and quality of AT&T’s 3G network will go down. In the United States there aren’t many 3G phones yet, and the ones that are out there suck for Web browsing, so other than a few freaks like me who are using it to broadcast video there isn’t much usage yet.

The 3G iPhone will change all that.

OK, over the past few hours I’ve gone crazy with Google Reader’s shared note feature. You can see how I’m using it on my shared items feed, which has a cool new ninja design (another new feature shipped yesterday).

It’s interesting, but leaves me wanting a LOT more.

For instance, if you share an item, add a note, I can’t pass those notes along to my readers. I can on FriendFeed, though.

I also can’t edit my notes. You can on FriendFeed though.

I also can’t comment on your notes without resharing an item, which causes duplication of an item if I’ve already shared it. You can do that on FriendFeed, though.

Are you noticing a theme? Is it any surprise that I’m seeing lots of early adopters move their reading behavior from Google Reader onto FriendFeed?

Discuss this either here, or over on my FriendFeed discussion page (which I call the World Wide Talk Show).

I love the idea of Google Reader’s new “share note” feature, but find it lacking in implementation — watch along in this video review.

What’s really wrong with it?

1. It’s breaking on my machines. No way to cancel note that I can see, and UI is not coming up. I’m sure that’s a temporary problem, so let’s discount that.

2. It’s causing a LOT of new duplication of items (which was a major problem in Google Reader before this, but is even worse after). Why? Well, I share one item, then I decide “I’d like add a note to that” so I click “share with note.” Now it shares it again with the note added on.

3. No way I can see of removing the note once it’s shared.

4. Unlike FriendFeed, I can’t add a note to other people’s shared items.

5. Unlike FriendFeed we can’t see threaded discussion under the headlines.

6. I can’t figure out a keyboard shortcut.

Speaking of FriendFeed. Check out the commentary about this feature. I’m sharing the best sites I see that talk about it. Welcome to the World Wide Talk Show.

UPDATE: I just added a video comment on TechCrunch’s post about this. Seesmic posts are pretty cool. This time the actual UI worked fine, but the post was shared twice.

Ballmer and Microsoft are the losers. Yahoo and Google win. See the chart from the day when Microsoft announced it was trying to buy Yahoo.

Now do you understand why Bloomberg says that there’s new pressure on Ballmer?

And why Ballmer is now out in the press trying to pitch that Microsoft has an Internet strategy?

Now you’ve seen everything.

Today we were at Ansel Adams’ house and this is me getting a seat in the sink where he made so many of the world’s most favorite images.

I did some videos over on Qik, too, with our “professional” videos of Ansel Adams’ son and home and business coming soon to FastCompany.tv.

Frederick Johnson, who works at Adobe on the Lightroom team, blogged about our visit (we interviewed him too — it was real interesting to hear about the past and future of darkrooms all in one place).

Well, just spent the past four hours watching FriendFeed for interesting discussions about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. This is the result. Page-after-page of conversations. It’s like a new talk show. There’s even an audio talk show that I participated in during this time. Do you see it on the feed? This is the new conversation. Now compare to Techmeme’s conversations about the same. It has a totally different feel, don’t ya think?

Which do you find more interesting, why?

Remember the recent MVP Summit? Where Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, asked them questions about Yahoo and seemed surprised by the answers? Reddit had a lot of reaction about that. Reddit is where many early adopters hang out. It sure seemed like Ballmer was surprised by the feedback he got.

Did that start the process that led to Ballmer pulling out his offer to purchase Yahoo?

Over on FriendFeed I’m following some of the better discussions of the Microsoft pullout of the Yahoo deal. Far different than what you’ll read about on TechMeme.

Yahoo is a bleeding animal. Left lying, gasping for its breath, after a larger animal (Microsoft) struck and then walked away after it proved too difficult to eat. (That was just announced a few minutes ago).

How will Yahoo heal?

Some daunting challenges:

1. The perception itself that Yahoo is a wounded animal.
2. The bleeding of interesting employees, both due to layoffs as well as people just leaving to join stronger companies.
3. The trouble that it has keeping its search market share.
4. They started working on a deal with Google to sell its advertising. That’s going to prove tough to get through regulators and will cause public opinion to turn against Google, so I believe that Google deal will fall apart soon.

So, if you were in Yahoo now, what would you be doing?

Me? I would first rally the troops. Offer some real financial packages to key employees. Release a video tomorrow that explains why Yahoo believes it is worth $37 a share (people I talk with don’t believe it is).

But after that, how do you do the real work of regaining momentum? Think about college students. Would anyone want to go to work there this summer? Google and Facebook seem a lot cooler than working at Yahoo.

If Yahoo’s management can stop the bleeding and get up and start running again, it’ll be quite impressive. I just don’t know that it has enough life in it to do that. Plus, when Rocky and me heard the news (we were driving back from Maker’s Faire) we both looked at each other and said “shareholder lawsuits.”

The bleeding might just start to be apparent. Tonight I’m going to a dinner with a ton of CEOs and I’ll ask around what they would do.

When I was over in Israel I was talking with a couple of journalists about what makes a good startup. One guy, I think it was TechCrunch’s Ouriel Ohayon, said he likes to visit startups to “smell the startup.”

That started a discussion of what you do smell. Do you smell money burning in the middle of the floor? I remember visiting ZDTV when it was just getting started and thinking to myself that this business would never be profitable. In my mind I imagined $100 bills burning in the middle of the floor. I wasn’t too far off.

Other journalists have told me they get nervous about a company if they claim to be a software house, yet there are too many “pretty people” running around. Engineers are rarely pretty. Or, if they are too scripted. Or if they have ostentatious offices. Startups should be in pretty cheap surroundings.

Yesterday Rocky and I drove for four hours to visit Threshold. Because we video each startup and don’t just talk to them over the phone, we get a far different feel of each company than someone who does a blog, but who doesn’t take the time to actually visit.

This is a huge tax, and explains why other bloggers can get 10 posts out a day, while I can only do one or two videos.

But, it does give me an advantage: I can “smell” the startup.

Yesterday we used those “smelling skills” to get to know Threshold. It’s a startup focused on building home-automation and control equipment. I’ve been interested in this field for some time, but I haven’t seen anyone really get it easy-enough-to-use to have a chance of getting anyone but the geekiest early adopters to use it.

Why is that? Well, let’s think about home automation. You might want to put in a security system. Or a system to control your thermostat (which is why I’m interested in the topic, since my heating bills are too high and I am always traveling, which means the house is freezing when I get home if I leave it off to save the money and the environment).

But usually these systems require you to go through some very geeky networking setup. Not Threshold’s equipment. They found a way to pair up all your sensors via an optical sensor on top of each one. No batteries are even needed. They call it the “magic blue spot.” Just get a new motion detector, say, and hold its blue spot next to the blue spot of your home base station, push a button, and they are paired. Works for all their sensors and controls. And everything is Web based, so you can now control that thermostat from your Web browser, so you can turn on your heater before you get home, right from your iPhone.

Anyway, back to the smell of the startup. The offices were in a low-cost place. They had what looked like used furniture. Clearly no expense had been overdone. And the people we met were geeky, passionate, and not very good on camera. Makes my job a little tougher, but tells me that we were in front of the real deal, not some dance and pony show. Funny, the same CEO even does his own videos on its Web site, along with the same cruddy furniture.

It worked on me. Threshold passed the smell test. I wish it well as it works to get to the next level (they are looking for funding to build even more modules and get more retailers on board).

How about you, can you “smell” a good startup?

See, the early adopters are forgetting to study how the late adopters actually do get involved in our worlds.

Those in the social media worlds seem to often forget that it’s still a Google World. Most normal people who aren’t frantically checking FriendFeed or Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn all day long are just hanging back doing 1998-style searches for stuff. And most of those, in my experience, are using Google. So I call it a Google World now for late adopters.

Lately a BUNCH have showed up here looking for info about recession. I couldn’t figure it out, until I looked at my referer log, then looked at Google.

Here, do a Google search for “recession 2008.”

Hundreds of people do that, or one for just plain old “recession” every day for MONTHS.

Welcome late adopters.

OK, OK, I see that people are saying that we should stop calling our latest economic troubles a recession because, well, technically we’re not in a recession.

So, we need a new term for what we’re going through.

We’re not jobless, but our paychecks in the US are worth less and less every day thanks to a combination of dollar weakness and oil price increases.
Our home prices, according to Zillow and our neighbors have gone down so much that we won’t be able to sell our home and come out ahead anymore. Our equity is gone, and that’s if you’re one of those who still can afford to make payments. If you are one of the unlucky ones who didn’t plan ahead you now are renting some cruddy apartment and your credit is in the toilet.
We’re still paying for a war by printing more funny money, which means there will continue to be pressures on our economy.

Maybe we’re not in a recession, but we’re in a deep hole of economic dung. DHED. You heard it first here.

If you’re a late adopter and don’t know about all that newfangled RSS stuff, not to mention you haven’t heard of Twitter yet, not to mention FriendFeed, that’s OK. We love you just the same. Hope you visit again sometime thanks to the wonderful quirky Google World.

Oh, and if you are a late adopter and you see this thing called FriendFeed over on the right side of my blog? Ignore it. You won’t need to know much about it for at least six more years. Not to mention, don’t think of watching those FastCompany.tv videos we’ve been shooting. Someone might see you watching videos and think you’re on YouTube or something.

I almost wrote a very long blog post telling Microsoft how it could get back into the search business. In response to all this stuff in the Wall Street Journal and on TechMeme about how Steve Ballmer is telling employees that he thinks he can guide Microsoft into the advertising business without buying Yahoo.

I got about halfway through that long post and I just deleted it. Why? Because they don’t care to listen. So why am I wasting my time talking at 1:30 a.m. to a few billionaires and a bunch of arrogant coders who think they built something of value when, in fact, they’ve just built second-rate Web sites (Windows Live Spaces anyone, sorry, it sucks even if there are 100 million of them) who don’t have a clue about how to get back into the search game and who are never going to have a clue?

I’m bored. Microsoft buying Yahoo is just going to be very boring for users for a long time. Why? Even if things go perfectly it’ll take six to 12 months to get approval by EU and DOJ. And they won’t go perfectly. Even after the deal is done it’ll be another six to 12 months before these two cultures get together in any significant way. So, that’s a year to two before we even see anything non-boring.

I find that Google listens a lot more than Yahoo or Microsoft does. Google has left billions of dollars on the table that it will go after over the next year, if they are as smart as I think they are.

Where are those billions? Well, let’s just look at one tiny little sliver of Google’s system that it’s left alone. Google Travel. That page sucks. Think about how you decide to take a trip. Does that page help? Not really. No video. No cool people telling you about interesting places. No personality. No branding. No interesting Web services.

And the big brand travel sites aren’t any better. Now, what about parenting? Other activities?

This is why Facebook is so interesting as a business. Facebook has some inherent advantages to creating market need that no one else is even attempting to do. Ask Jeff Pulver how he gets hundreds of people to show up to his breakfasts all over the world. He just opens up a Facebook page and writes what he’s doing.

Or, ask any winery how much of an impact this small little video show is having on their business. The red carpet rolled out on our little wine tasting trip told me everything I needed to know about its impact.

Funny, Microsoft just bought Farecast, which is one piece of what I’m thinking about, but will Microsoft do anything innovative with it? I think it’s distracted with this purchase. Too distracted to do anything soon enough to keep the newbies like Mahalo and the Googlers’ from figuring it out.

I just don’t see Microsoft and Yahoo making any serious moves into search or advertising that comes off of search, do you? Yet I see that Google is weak in other areas (and I told them such when I met with them the other day — they listened, and that listening behavior told me they know that they are going to see more growth in non-search areas if they execute well). It stuns me why Ballmer isn’t going after those areas (as bad as Google’s Travel page is, Microsoft’s is worse) instead of spending billions trying to buy Yahoo, who clearly doesn’t want to be purchased (Farecast, again, was an interesting purchase, but only if put inside a bigger strategy).

Unfortunately Ballmer is hamstrung by two things: 1. the returns that they need to see to have any real effect on the bottom line are so huge that it causes Ballmer to have blindness to small things and 2. they really don’t have that many people working there who really grok the Internet. Think about that for a second. If you really knew how to build a scalable web site, wouldn’t you be joining Facebook or FriendFeed right now instead of toiling inside Microsoft where they can’t even seem to execute on a purchase of Yahoo very well? Heck, just reading Mini Microsoft tells you that things aren’t being seen well from inside the walls. Yeah, there are those inside Microsoft who are happy with the way things are going, but I’m hearing more and more screams lately from inside the walls. I hope to learn more when I go to Seattle June 10-13 to visit Microsoft and learn more about the Internet strategy (which is becoming more interesting on several fronts like what Scott Guthrie, tools, Ray Ozzie, Mesh and infrastructure, and Dean Hachamovitch, IE, teams are doing).

I don’t see the Yahoo acquisition ending well for Microsoft but I’m losing my will to care anymore and I’m not the only one. THAT is Microsoft’s real problem.

Google: take the money off the table — build great niche search sites around topics like travel, wine, parenting, housing, automobiles, etc. You have a year to do it before Microsoft can even START to figure out where you’re weak.

Too bad that Ballmer didn’t have a vision for the Internet. Imagine if Microsoft started doing some really great niche sites with its $40+billions? Imagine that…

OK, OK, forget for a moment that many early adopters are serious Mac fans and are trying to wash Microsoft out of their hair.

I’ve stumbled onto what really is challenging for companies that want me to load software onto my computer: when something goes wrong we start uninstalling everything to see if there’s something the matter. And things with limited utility are gonna stay uninstalled.

Joel Spolsky said this yesterday about Live Mesh, but came at it another way.

I just had a problem with Skype video and I uninstalled everything to see if I could get my system to behave. Guess what? After uninstalling 10 things Skype video works great. I need Skype video a lot more than I need backup.

So, guess what goes? Everything but Skype video.

Fail. And we wonder why most of what gets the hype lately is Web sites? Here you go. Sorry Ray Ozzie.

You’ve seen my ego feed on FriendFeed. It’s the one on the right side of the page on my newly-redesigned blog. You know, that’s where you can find all the crap that +I+ have done on the Internet. All my Google Reader shared items. All my Qik videos. All my Twitters. All my Flickr photos. All my Fast Company videos. And a ton of other stuff all show up on my ego feed.

But that page really isn’t really that important for you to watch.

There’s one FriendFeed page that is FAR more important: the one where you can see YOUR stuff that I’ve liked and commented on. Why is that more important? Well, it’s where you’ll find a lot of new stuff from other people. It is where I signal to you what I think is important to pay attention to (which is quite a database, if you look at it along with my ego feed, since that includes all sorts of cool stuff I’m seeing come through my Google Reader feed).

If you haven’t figured out yet how to see this page for everyone, just look at this URL:

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/discussion (replace “scobleizer” with the name of your favorite person on FriendFeed).

I thought about embarrassing most of the A listers on FriendFeed, because very few of them actually read that many blogs (I can tell, they rarely comment on, or link to, or FriendFeed with other people’s blogs).

One guy who does it well? Louis Gray. Is it any wonder that Louis is moving up the TechMeme Leaderboard (he’s currently 37, ahead of Wired News)? It’s not to me.

The best way to become a great blogger is demonstrate you listen to other people. FriendFeed is BY FAR the best way to do that.

Are you listening? How many things have YOU liked or commented on this week?

Dang, there has been a spate of early adopter angst lately.

Just read Alex Vanelsas to see a good example.

Today Frederick over at the Last Podcast gets into the act, writing “I kept wondering if the gap between early adopters and mainstream users isn’t expanding more and more and what that means for services that cater mostly to early adopters.”

Over the last few days I’ve seen another misconception: that Twitter is only Silicon Valley people talking to themselves. Do a search for “Silicon Valley” on Tweetscan and you’ll see a few of those. That misconception is easy to disprove: just watch Twitter Vision for a few minutes and you’ll see that very few Twitterers are in Silicon Valley.

There ARE huge differences between early adopters and others. I was in Alana Taylor’s Ustream channel the other night and many people there told me they like hanging out there “because people understand what I’m talking about here.”

In other words, when someone says to “Tweet that” you don’t get blank stares, or, worse, derision.

If I get arrogant about the role of early adopters (some people call them influencers, or “passionates”) it’s because I’ve seen they are the ones who drive society. You really think that guy who I saw the other day on the plane using Windows 2000 and an old version of Lotus Notes is driving society? Riiiigggghhhhtttt.

I’ve seen this discussion happen EVERY TIME there’s a new technology. I remember back in 1977 that only nerds could use personal computers. Very few people (not even Steve Jobs or Bill Gates) understood just how big that would become.

I remember the days when email was only used by the nerds who had access to Unix terminals at universities or research labs.

I remember the days when people said “IM would never be used in enterprises.” Today it’s built into Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. Seriously. They did say that.

I remember the days when the World Wide Web was only for nerds who did physics at places like CERN and weird kids who went to Stanford. I remember people actively betting against the Web. Luckily the guy I worked for, Jim Fawcette, saw its promise early in 1994 and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build one of the first publisher’s Web sites. That investment is why I’m here today.

Today the angst is onto things like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. Even older Web 2.0 properties like Flickr haven’t really gone mainstream. Last week we spent some time with Ansel Adams’ son. He had never heard of Flickr. Ansel Adams son!!! That dude should be the first that photo sharing sites pitch, since he’s always talking to press about photography and his company does tons of classes for photographers in Yosemite and other places. Heck, Flickr should figure out how to sponsor the Ansel Adams’ Gallery. But they don’t.

Why not? Because convincing late adopters to change their behavior is VERY hard and VERY expensive. It’s why Amazon doesn’t do TV advertising. Rather they build a product that early adopters, passionate computer geeks, and influencers like.

How does that affect their business performance? Well, compare Best Buy’s price/earnings ratio to that of Amazon’s. According to Google Finance Best Buy’s is 13.91 and Amazon’s is 67.03. I know which one I’d rather have.

Early adopters DO matter. Anyone who says that they don’t needs to go back to business school.

This is why I follow 20,000 Twitterers. I want to study what early adopters are doing and thinking. Twitter is the best place — by far — to do that.

That’s not to say that business people should forget about the late adopters. They are going to be the ones you need to see huge profitability and growth. I guarantee you that most of Ansel Adams’ business is among late adopters now. But then his business has been in Yosemite for 102 years and has one of America’s best-known brands. If you’re building a business today you don’t have those advantages. Your best option is to follow eBay, Amazon, Google, Flickr, Facebook, etc by talking and understanding early adopters first. Why? They are passionate and want to see something new. That guy with the Windows 2000 old Dell laptop? He isn’t looking for anything new. He isn’t going to adopt your newfangled service.

But the people on Twitter and FriendFeed and Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn and Plaxo? They have already told you they are willing to try new things. Therefore they are probably going to be willing to try your new thing too.

We’ll be talking about this in 20 more years when some newfangled thing comes out, though. Most people have no clue about the role of early adopters, and/or totally misunderstand early adopters and/or even lie about them, hence the “only Silicon Valley people are on Twitter” meme.

While we’re talking about Twitter, Yuvi, the wonderkid in India, did an analysis of my usage of Twitter that’s pretty interesting.

I’ve been sitting here in the San Jose Convention Center where Google’s sales and operations team have been having an in-house event. Al Gore spoke yesterday and a bunch of bloggers were on a panel today. Anyway, random Googler’s have been coming by all afternoon while I’ve been using the wifi to keep up on the comments and Twitters coming in thanks to my redesign.

So, a few YouTube engineers have come by and I keep asking them if they are working on live streaming features. They are very aware they are getting outrun by streaming services like Ustream, Stickam, Justin.tv. They are more worried about cell phone videos like Qik, Flixwagon, Bambuser, and Kyte.tv. They tell me they see tons of people at concerts using their cell phones to record video and know that’s a big market that they’ll need to serve. Funny enough, several of them mentioned Seesmic and Seesmic’s new video comments. Since those are only five days old now, it’s surprising that they’ve gotten on the radar screen so quickly. Yesterday Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic, told me they are seeing huge growth and have hundreds of blogs who’ve already deployed those new comments.

The employees quickly add “you didn’t hear it from me” and aren’t willing to tell me dates or other details (the devil is in the details) but it’s clear that YouTube’s leadership realizes that they’ve slipped behind in innovation and are going to start putting out some new stuff to keep its brand fresh.

Looking forward to it. YouTube has a huge audience compared to all these other newer services, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do in response.

“Finally,” Om Malik just told me after I told him about my redesigned blog that just went live. We were just on a panel discussion talking to Google’s sales team.

Some things you’ll notice: a prominent FriendFeed component. I’ve really become addicted to FriendFeed. It’s the best place to watch my interactions around the Internet. More and more of my time has been spent on places like Qik, Twitter, Google Reader, Seesmic, Upcoming, Flickr, YouTube, and commenting on other people’s blogs. In this redesign, done by a team at FastCompany’s offices in New York, we’ve featured many of those in my navigation bar too. UPDATE: Haewon Kye did the redesign and it’s getting mostly good reviews — more than 100 comments in about an hour on various services.

I’ve also added an advertising panel, so I’m sure that’ll start some discussion.

Sorry for being gone so much lately. Now you can see my calendar, and see just how busy my life has become. Plus, something about Twitter is more fun. Trying to say something in 140 characters does have its charms.

I’d love to know what you think. We’ll do tweaks over the next month or two as well.

What else should I add along the side?

UPDATE: TechCrunch says my sell out is complete.

Today Minggl came to my house and showed me their latest toolbar that joins Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace together. That’s pretty darn cool, although I can’t get it to work on Firefox’s newest betas (you gotta stick with old Firefox).

I’m trying it out on IE, and it is definitely the start of something interesting. What if such a toolbar could replicate all your photos between Flickr and Facebook? That’d be cool and a good way to defend against getting kicked off of Facebook.

I got a tour of Xerox PARC and got a look at a few research projects as part of a press day today. That all is pretty cool, you can see my videos over on my Qik page, there’s a few.

But the last one was pretty fun. The President of PARC, Mark Bernstein, gave me a tour around the famous lab where so much of our world was invented. We started at the first Ethernet cable in the world.

If you don’t know why Xerox PARC is so important, please read up on it on Wikipedia.

At the end of the interview I asked Mark if he met Steve Jobs the day that he visited back in the early 1980s (which was a famous meeting in of itself). I love his answer about that day, but I’ll let you listen to the video.

I have a feeling the wall in the video where the Ethernet cable is will eventually be cut out and put into the Smithsonian. It’s a hugely important piece of cable to our history. It was an honor to see it in place.

Here’s a video of the reusable paper that the researchers are working on.

If no one is on Twitter why am I getting a new Tweet every second?

Yeah, Kara Swisher’s friends aren’t on Twitter. Of course they are the same type who would look at you strange back in 1977 if you bought an Apple II for $5,000 like my dad did.

Jeff Clavier explains how this works.

Me? I have already turned off the autofollow because too many of Kara’s friends were following me. Heheh.

I’ve stayed out of the Microsoft attempted merger of Yahoo so far. But EVERYONE seems to be talking about it from all sorts of angles.

Me? I take the user’s point of view and that’s one I haven’t seen discussed much yet.

Will Yahoo moving to Microsoft be a good thing for users? Let’s take a tour.

Yahoo Messenger users and MSN Messenger users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s messenger. They already work together and I doubt that having two huge teams with two huge user bases of hundreds of millions of people trying to work together will bring much new. At worst case the Yahoo team will leave and so Yahoo’s Messenger will stop seeing new features.

Yahoo Mail and Hotmail users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s Mail. Same as with the messenger side of things. Eventually I can see Yahoo’s Mail get frozen and so bugs and things won’t get fixed on Yahoo’s side and I can see pressure (advertising, etc) to pull people off of Yahoo and put them on Hotmail or whatever they are calling it now (Microsoft Windows Live Mail).

Flickr. The users of Flickr are very scared of what a Microsoft purchase might mean. But here Microsoft has no significant player, so they’ll probably try to keep the development team intact. Plus, there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft who are into photography (Ansel Adams’ son Michael was at Microsoft Researcher Curtis Wong’s wedding, for instance) So, good things could happen here for Flickr’s users.

Delicious? No real Microsoft competitor and tons of Microsofties love Delicious, so good things ahead, just like Flickr.

Yahoo Maps and Live Maps? I like Microsoft’s Maps better, but there’s some tricks that Yahoo does better. So, if these teams get along we’d probably see an improved version of both services, although I doubt they’d remain separate code bases.

Yahoo Search and Microsoft Live Search? Microsoft is already gaining on relevancy, so that tells me there are still a few smart people at Microsoft working on search. They just don’t have a brand name worth s**t. So, Yahoo’s brand name on top of Microsoft’s search will help Microsoft out a lot. I doubt that we’ll see a Google killer out of the joining of these two companies, though. The sales teams will be joined and will prove profitable for Microsoft. For users, though? I doubt we’ll see anything for years in terms of dramatically better search.

Developer tools and such? Microsoft isn’t threatened by anything Yahoo is doing, although the Pipes and Fire Eagle and other Yahoo teams will probably love working at Microsoft. For users? Join those tools into Ray Ozzie’s new Mesh and we could see some cool new stuff.

Portals? Yahoo’s has more users, more respect, and more features. I don’t see anything major for users either way there.

Finance and Personals sites? I doubt users will see much change there.

So, for users, there’s some negatives, and some positives.

How do you see the Yahoo/Microsoft merger affecting users?

As to Microsoft employee morale? That’ll end up a positive in this deal. After all, Microsoft employees will see their stock go up, not down. That drives morale more than anything.

For board members? Marc Andreessen covers that.

People wonder why Facebook is getting nasty PR while last year everyone was singing its praises.

Here’s why.

Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz is a CEO of VodPod.tv in Europe. Not a spammer. Not an idiot. Not someone abusing Facebook.

Yet he still got kicked off.

Until this stuff stops I won’t use Facebook and won’t write nice things about it.

They say that Facebook is a “utility.” But since when does a utility just kick you off with no recourse?

Mark Zuckerberg: you need to fix this and now.

Rodrigo isn’t the only one, by the way. Every few days I get another email from someone who got kicked off and the thread about me getting kicked off has 500 comments now.

I guess Facebook really is just for college kids to poke themselves on. Oh well.

SmugMug just released HD video player that really works great here. While other photo sharing sites have added video, they have tiny little videos that only are allowed to be 90 seconds. And people wonder why SmugMug has hundreds of thousands of people paying real money for its services? Here you see why.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be interviewing Xerox’ CTO at its Palo Alto Research Center. This will be my first visit to this famous center (they basically invented almost everything we use in our modern computers).

What would you like to know? Over on Twitter there’s a bunch of interesting questions already.

Steve Gillmor’s mind is quite a trip. You can see why on his post over on TechCrunch about Microsoft’s Mesh.

The only good excuse I’ve heard so far why Microsoft Mesh isn’t interesting is “I hate Microsoft.”

That’s a tough thing to overcome, but I thought Steve Gillmor was one of those who hated Microsoft too. After all, he bought a Mac and kept repeating on his blog “Office is dead.”

But, let’s translate Gillmor: Microsoft Mesh is fascinating. Agreed.

What do you think now that you’ve had a few days to check it out?

Heheh, I knew Twitter and FriendFeed was affecting my writing.

It’s weird to read the New York Times to find this article on Ansel Adams on the front page. What did we just do? We spent two days in Yosemite with Michael Adams, Ansel’s son, who spent the better part of two days showing us around.

I shot a TON of Qik/cell phone video with Michael. We also did a bunch of “pro” video with our expensive HD camcorders, those will be up soon as part of a new show for DSLR photographers that’ll be on FastCompany.tv. Titled “PhotoCycle.” We haven’t set a start date for that, yet, more on that later. A special thanks to Marc Silber (he’s the professional photographer who’ll host PhotoCycle) because he’s the one who did the work to arrange this trip.

Ansel Adams Gallery now has a blog, too. One reason I was there was to film Ansel Adams Gallery, which is one of America’s most beloved family businesses and has been operating in Yosemite Park for 102 years.

Thomas Hawk, my favorite photographer that I watch on Flickr, put up a single photo from the two days and it already has gotten 50 votes on Flickr as “favorite.” Getting a “favorite” on Flickr is really hard, and to get 50 for one photo of something as photographed as Half Dome is demonstrates Thomas’ skill and popularity as a photographer, it was a real treat to get to follow him as he made images in Yosemite.

One really big thrill for all of us? They opened the Glacier Point Road just for us. There wasn’t another soul in place for 13 miles of road. Totally amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience of Glacier Point. We also made our own history: we did the first cell phone live video from Glacier Point thanks to Qik. It’s amazing that we had a live audience around the world while filming these videos.

The New York Times had a separate article about Flickr. Here’s Thomas Hawk’s feedback about that (he was one of the photographers quoted in it).

So, why a Kodak moment? Well, Michael Adams told me that Ansel Adams did a lot of work for Kodak. He shot a few of the Colorama ads for Grand Central Station in New York. Did you know Kodak has a blog now? I like the Kodak blog a lot, it gives me some great ideas for photos.

Little known Scoble trivia: I used to help run a camera store, LZ Premiums (now long gone) in the 1980s and was responsible for buying all the Kodak film and darkroom supplies. I saw someone walking out of the Ansel Adams Gallery with a yellow box of Kodak printing paper and it took me back to the hours I spent in a darkroom and all the friends, photos, memories I made back then.

This was — by far — the most special two days I’ve had outside of getting married or watching my two sons being born. I told someone I would have traded my Davos trip (which was freaking awesome) for hanging out with Michael Adams for 24 hours. It was that good and I can’t wait to show you the videos and more of our photos. Thomas Hawk told me he’ll have his photos up soon, along with a writeup of the two days.

Now, go back and read the New York Times article, and listen to it come alive thanks to Qik videos done on my cell phone.

Michael Adams, Ansel Adams’ son, in front of the family business, the Ansel Adams’ Gallery.
The famous Tunnel View, where Ansel shot his famous Storm Clearing photo. In the video we meet a tourist who took a class from Ansel and he tells us about that experience. I talk with Thomas Hawk about this view, and we find some other things to shoot as well.
Video from a meadow shooting Yosemite Falls.
Half Dome from the Bridge. In a second video Michael Adams tells what a photo from this bridge meant to his mother.
You’ve seen the famous photo, Moon and Half Dome, here you see where to shoot it, and we talk about some of our experiences making new images there, but also hear Michael’s stories about the photo and what it meant to him (it was used on his wedding announcement).
Up at Glacier Point we had the whole place to ourselves, so I made a TON of video.
Glacier Point 1.
Glacier Point 2.
Glacier Point 3.
Glacier Point 4.
Glacier Point 5.
Glacier Point 6.

In the videos you’ll learn that Michael is an interesting innovator in his own right. He was a fighter pilot, then went to medical school and now teaches medicine while also keeping memories of his father’s work alive and well.

I don’t know how I’ll top this in my career. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did (and there’s a LOT more to come from this two-day experience).

I also put up a bunch of photos on my Flickr stream and I’m sure that Thomas Hawk will have a lot more of his own.

Zude invited me into the Web 2.0 Expo hall to see some new stuff that isn’t released yet. Damn, Zude is one of those things that you just need to keep playing with to get. They are letting you drag-and-drop all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places on the Web.

Think about building a mashup between Twitter, Facebook, Upcoming, Yelp, and other social networks. Now you’re starting to understand a little bit about how disruptive these guys are trying to be.

Of course, if you don’t think Zude is all that cool, I made a few videos at the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday. Here they are:

TripSay, a new site for vacationers.
My former boss, Lenn Pryor, who now is a VP at Nokia tells me about Nokia’s latest.
Moo’s CEO shows me the latest from the cool business card and printing peo