Robert Scoble was asking the other day if someone can be a thought leader if the they don’t have a blog?

A few years ago I tried to start writing one blog entry a day. I actually I’d pretty good for a few months, but then I got behind and then gave up, and I also discovered Twitter. I am a people person and I loved hanging out on Twitter. Writing takes time for me, o don’t type fast, and it seems like a blog post takes me about an hour to write. I would also say that I would have been diagnosed with ADD if I was a kid today. So long form writing is hard for me, but I want to do it. I love Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed but it’s not the same as blogging, not by a longshot.

So where am I now? I am never at a computer. 98% of my Internet use is done on my iPhone. So my slow typing is not an issue anymore.

I am writing this from the wordpress app on the iPhone, and since there is no multitasking on the iPhone I am not being distracted to go see if someone has responded to my comment somewhere.

And there is no substitute for reading a post you wrote 5 years ago and realizing that you are not the same person, and you sounded like an idiot. Serriously, was I really like that?

The one thing I am excited about the most by starting to blog again will be that I can get my thoughts out of my head instead of having ideas trapped with no long form outlet. I am excited about being my own thought leader again, even I it takes some work.

Dave Ramsey is asking us to pass along this plan as an alternitive to the 700 billion bailout that is being proposed in Washington DC.

Years of bad decisions and stupid mistakes have created an economic nightmare in this country, but $700 billion in new debt is not the answer. As a tax-paying American citizen, I will not support any congressperson who votes to implement such a policy. Instead, I submit the following three steps:

Common Sense Plan.

I. INSURANCE

A. Insure the subprime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance. Government-insured and backed loans would have an instant market all over the world, creating immediate and needed liquidity.

B. In order for a company to accept the government-backed insurance, they must do two things:

   1. Rewrite any mortgage that is more than three months delinquent to a 6% fixed-rate mortgage.

      a. Roll all back payments with no late fees or legal costs into the balance. This brings homeowners current and allows them a chance to keep their homes.

      b. Cancel all prepayment penalties to encourage refinancing or the sale of the property to pay off the bad loan. In the event of foreclosure or short sale, the borrower will not be held liable for any deficit balance. FHA does this now, and that encourages mortgage companies to go the extra mile while working with the borrower—again limiting foreclosures and ruined lives.

   2. Cancel ALL golden parachutes of EXISTING and FUTURE CEOs and executive team members as long as the company holds these government-insured bonds/mortgages. This keeps underperforming executives from being paid when they don’t do their jobs.

C. This backstop will cost less than $50 billion—a small fraction of the current proposal.

II. MARK TO MARKET

A. Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only subprime Tier III bonds/mortgages. This keeps companies from being forced to artificially mark down bonds/mortgages below the value of the underlying mortgages and real estate.

B. This move creates patience in the market and has an immediate stabilizing effect on failing and ailing banks—and it costs the taxpayer nothing.

III. CAPITAL GAINS TAX

A. Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous—and immediate—liquidity in the markets. Again, this costs the taxpayer nothing.

B. This move will be seen as a lightning rod politically because many will say it is helping the rich. The truth is the rich will benefit, but it will be their money that stimulates the economy. This will enable all Americans to have more stable jobs and retirement investments that go up instead of down. This is not a time for envy, and it’s not a time for politics. It’s time for all of us, as Americans, to stand up, speak out, and fix this mess.

Why cant this kind of solution be passed? The basis for passing the bailout is the same as was used in passing the patriot act. It’s all about Fear.

My phone died today during the Newsgang call about 30 minutes into it, but I had realized that I was in a definite minority in my view of Sarah Palin as the VP pick for McCain.

Tonight Adam Marquart and I had a conversation on how we feel about the pick, and our reservations of Obama as President. MP3

Today I woke up to the news that Twhirl had been acquired by seesmic. Fellow Newsgang live regular Dennis Howlett wrote a great post about it. Via twitter I pinged Dennis and he agreed to do a call about it. It turned into a really fun conversation about twhirl, single person development, twitter for the enterprise and small business using web 2.0 tools to save money and stay agile.

Conversation with Dennis Howlet about twhirl MP3

Well its high time I updated the look on this blog. I really need to post more often too. It is one of my goals this year to get off my butt and write more posts.

I have been getting txt msg spam to my cell phone and I know that I am not the only one. The site that is sending the spam is also sending comment spam to our various blogs.

WTF/ALL SOFTWARE EVEN WINDOWS VISTA 80% OFF VISIT http://www.buyoems.com

I am not linking to that url, just posting it. What can be done about this?

I have not posted to my blog for 11 days! It’s OK for me to slip on this one part of my new years resolutions. I have been very busy, we could have a new baby anytime. Work and life are so busy right now. And Twitter might have played a small role in my not feeling like posting to the main blog. Its all good. For some reason I cant blog early in the morning and night time is for family and wife.

So life goes on without blogging it :)

My friend Maury asked about Free Conference Call.

It is really simple, its free and it just works. Sign up and they give you an account for 120 days, then you have to just get another account. They tell you what your call in number is and what your access code and pin is.

In a call you just push 9 and your pin code to record. At the end of the call press 9 to stop recording and end your call. Then they will email you a link of the call detail and file in WAV format.

I then run the file through The Levelator and cut the first 5 seconds off the beginning and end with Audacity.

Take the edited wav and convert to mp3 with CDex to get 44khz and 64kbps.

I like to listen to people talking about stuff and the fact that everyone being recorded is on a phone evens out the sound quality. So you don’t have a professional studio and a  someone else on a call. This way everyone is equally low quality :) The result doesnt sound that bad. Here is the podcast with Eric Rice done this way

I would like to this again with others, just not sure when.

On the fly podcast with Eric Rice, I put out a call on twitter to see if anyone was up to doing a podcast, Eric stepped up to the plate,

• Report from SWSX music,
• Twitter and what is going on with it
• Groups and other feature requests
• Twitter within podtech.net and other companies

Direct download, 22 minutes, 10 mb MP3