Tag Archives: Robert Scoble

Church, Computers/Technology

Meet the Bloggers

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Blogging seems to be taking off in a big way, so much so that the recent Greenbelt Christian festival hosted a session on the Spirituality of blogging. Both Ian over at Youthblog and Sarah at Deep Thought have blogged about the Greenbelt sessions, with Ian even starting a sideline with the I-Spy book of Bloggers.

In a strange coincidence, Robert Scoble, the well known Microsoft evangelist was talking Christian Blogging today too. On a visit to their Dallas Church, (he claims to get evangelism ideas from a pro) he managed to persuade his friend Brain Bailey of the power of having a blog, so much so that Bill is now writing a book called The Blogging Church, backed by a website offering advice on using blogs in a local church. Incidentally, Scobles upcoming book, Blog or Die: Why Businesses Should Blog and How to Do It Effectively is now available to preorder on Amazon.

General

Scoble Goes Off On One

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Usually Robert Scobles blog is a pretty good read, however I’m not quite sure what he was on yesterday, but he seemed to throw a massive mud slinging session over a MacDailyNews article about the recent Microsoft announcement that when released Longhorn will be called Windows Vista. The general gist of the article is that many of the features that will be included in Windows Vista, MacOS X has already in Tiger, or are fixing problems introduced in previous versions of Windows. To some extent it’s the kind of post, and on a site that I wouldn’t really have registered had it not been for Scoble’s reaction.

However, it seems I’m not alone. Later on Scoble printed a summary of some of the responses, perhaps the one that best sums up my opinion being the one from John Wulff called “When Cheerleaders Sneer“:

I really enjoy Scoble’s blog, but sometimes he crosses the line from entertaining evangelist to petty mudslinger.

The key point from my point of view is that looking just at the two operating systems, Tiger is already out there and shipping. However some of the earlier announced features of Windows Vista, for example WinFS are being dropped out to ensure a timely release. Indeed there is speculation that the next major release of MacOS X, Leopard will ship by the time Windows Vista finally gets released, so there is really no point in comparing either two future products, or an existing product with a competitors potential product. You can only compare two existing, shipping products.

Really all these school playground style mud slinging sessions don’t get anybody anywhere, and it was somewhat of a surprise to find Scoble having a go.

General

Scoble to the Rescue

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Robert Scoble posted quite a long posting under the heading “Arrogant Scoble is Back” describing how he is starting to be recognised as he travels around.

However, what I found most interesting about the posting is further down, where he describes how he found one posting about him, and also discusses how one part of his job works:

Whenever I find someone having troubles with Microsoft stuff I try to get them help. I’m successful a large percentage of the time. One person. Watching four RSS feeds.

What is interesting is that the process is entirely automatic, through PubSub, Technorati, Feedster and Bloglines he has feeds created that look for any use of the word “Microsoft”, plus “Microsoft sucks” and “Microsoft is evil” and “I hate Microsoft” and “Microsoft problem”.

So, a useful tip there, if you’re totally stuck with something Microsoft, just write about it on your blog, and the chances are that the Scobleizer will see and possibly come to the rescue. Has echoes of one or two superhero plots in some ways. I’m not sure about Scoble in a superhero costume though… Nope, scrub that vision. 😉

However, it does highlight the power of the technology for keeping track of what people all over the world are saying. So it is probably worth bearing in mind what you say as thanks to the power of PubSub, Technorati, Feedster and Bloglines, almost anybody could be listening!

Computers/Technology

Scoble Feeds The Conspiracy Theorists

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Reading through the new postings to Robert Scoble‘s blog, the Scobleizer, I came across a posting that as a Mac user I found pretty funny.

The posting is on the subject of a video of the recent Longhorn RSS announcement, however due to limited bandwidth, rather than posting two versions, he had only posted a Windows Media streaming file. This had caused problems for Mac users because the Mac version always shows the lowest bandwidth stream in the file rather than the largest. To his credit he is now chasing up the relevant team at Microsoft to sort out the problem.

The reason I found the whole thing funny is that most Mac users try to avoid dealing with the Mac Windows Media Player because of the generally poor performance. Also quite apart from the performance, even the latest version won’t run all the videos that the Windows version displays, and streaming video to it is just a waste of time.

Whilst I’m not convinced, many Mac Zealots will have you believe that Microsoft deliberately put out a poorly performing version for the Mac to give the impression of cross platform support to encourage people to use the format, but then to argue that to get good performance you really need a Windows machine, as the Mac can’t cut it. Whilst there may be a myriad of reasons as to why the bug wasn’t spotted sooner, the admission on Scobleizer can only add fuel to the conspiracy theorists!

Computers/Technology, MobLog, Pictures

London Geek Dinner

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So despite the efforts of South West trains, we made it to the Geek Dinner!

I met Howard on the train at Basingstoke, and it turned out that Sarah was sat opposite us on the train. Dave met us at Waterloo.

It was great to meet Robert Scoble, and also to hear some of his opinions as to the effect that blogs are having on the world. He seemed genuinely chuffed by the number of people who had come along (about 120, double the largest geek dinner held in the USA). It was a great opportunity to meet a load of other techies, and just generally chat.

Probably the funniest moment of the entire night, was Ian, who was convinced that Sarah couldn’t be a geek, until she pulled out her binary watch! You can read both Ian’s version and Sarah’s version on their respective blogs.

Aside from the good food, and general geekiness, it was great to be able to catch up with Howard now that Locutio is really taking off. Howard did make a bit of an impression on Dave however, with his Frankenstein style surgery to produce Zaphod Beeblebrox Channel 9 Guy!

There is a page up with loads of blog entries describing the night, and links off to pictures, plus pod casts of the night and Robert Scobles speech itself – well worth a listen if you have an interest in blogging. (Incidentally, I do pop up in the pictures, just to prove I was there!)

I only had my Nokia 3650 with me, so my pictures are not the greatest (roll on the arrival of my new phone), but I’ve added a few below.