Having personally done embarrassing things on the Internet, I can imagine what Daniel Brusilovsky is going through right now. According to Mike Arrington’s post on TechCrunch, an intern “allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.” Cali and I thought of Daniel right away. Then Daniel posted an apology on his blog for a line that “was crossed.”

I can’t remember how long I’ve known Daniel, but I think it’s been since 2006. Before he really started making waves around Silicon Valley, he and I used to chat about new media, school and how he was connecting to big names in technology. I remember pinging him on iChat sometimes when he was up too late and telling him to go to bed!.

If Daniel did, in fact, ask for/accept a MacBook Air in exchange for a post on TechCrunch, that’s a bad thing. If he didn’t know it was bad before, he knows it now. The best part about being so young is that he has plenty of time to redeem himself.

Daniel is probably the best networker, I’ve ever met. I’ve admired his ambition. I’ve watched him go to school, work at QIK, attend tech events and put off sleep to accomplish as much as he could as quickly as he could. Daniel has tons of potential and this doesn’t change that. If he learns from the mistake and continues to pursue his dreams, I still look forward to watching what he’s going to do.

I hope the adults that Daniel has reached out to in Silicon Valley will reach out to him and be there for him. Let’s give him the chance to redeem himself and shine like those of us who admire him always thought he would.

Today I hit 1000 Tweets! I’m not usually one to celebrate round numbers, but I love Twitter and all it’s plurking hang-ups.

Plurk, by the way, is now my official curse word.

I’ve never been good at getting rid of stuff. I’m a pack rat. Doing it on eBay makes it a game and even though I don’t like games, I’m still having fun. We’re selling stuff that’s been in a box for years. It’s stuff that has huge sentimental value to us and it’s exciting to see it sell for a reasonable amount of money on eBay.

A Geek Brief viewer asked Cali what she wants for her MacBook Pro. She said $1,000,000 or whatever the market decides. The truth is, we’re trying to make a tremendous amount of cash for our Big Trip, but the fun is watching something we love sell for the amount that the market chooses…even when that amount is only $1. 

About 3 weeks ago, I realized several WordPress sites we run were inadvertently setup under an FTP username that we give out to people for uploading large files for us.  I deleted that username which then disconnected access to the various databases that feed the sites.  It wasn’t a hard fix and it wasn’t pressing enough to take care of right a way so I just now got to it.  

There have been times during this down time that I felt really frustrated because I couldn’t post something I wanted to remember.  Like the other day, we saw the news on the wires that Paige Davis was returning to host Trading Spaces.  The production let her go after photos were published of her stripping on a bar to raise money for charity.   That was a mistake.  Without her, the show floundered and couldn’t hold it’s audience.  Having a charismatic host is gold, and we’re excited she’ll be back.  The show is in production now and it’ll start airing again in January in HD.  The original series was such a phenomenon, and my guess is that re-creating that success isn’t a given.  I hope she can do it again because she is magic on screen, and I don’t think she deserved being dumped.

SO THERE!  I’ve written, I’ll post and I’ll start thinking about something else.  I might get serious about blogging for an audience some day, but for now, it’s just personal record keeping for various thoughts and memories.  I hadn’t realize how much I have started to depend on the blog as an emotional release.

The moral: start blogging and save on therapy! 

UPDATE: There are still some issues. I’m having to put HTML in to make paragraph breaks and the sidebar is down at the bottom. Wacky.

The whole Jason vs. Dave thing at Gnomedex makes a whole lot more sense, if you read this post from Fred Wilson’s blog.

Since I was there, I didn’t really appreciate Dave Winer’s perspective. I was on Jason Calacanis’ side.

Dave blogged,

Bottom-line, he needs to figure out a way to build the company so that many others can profit from it. Otherwise I don’t think it has a prayer against Google, which we like less and less as a company, but who basically offers an equitable proposition to the users of the Internet, who the Gnomedex crowd represent in a loose kind of way.

That was really nice advice, if you think about it. We make money from Google because they have a system that makes it possible. Will Mahalo provide a way for it’s users to profit? I don’t know, and I think that might have been the point Dave was making. His point was overshadowed by his inappropriate shouting during Jason’s speech, but in hindsight, I think he was really trying to help.

Earlier this week, Cali and I went to a blogger event hosted by Monster Cable. I met Alexander Grundner from eHomeUpgrade.com. He’s one of my absolute favorite blog writers. I can safely call myself a vlogger, I guess, because I produce video podcasts, but I want to be a better blogger. I want to write something people want to read, so I’ll start with this:

GeekBrief.TV is blessed to be a part of the PodShow network. We love them and they don’t ask for much in return, but they give us a lot. Before we released Brief 203, they asked us to promote Port City PD. It’s a very commendable Podcast drama series. It’s probably the most ambitious Web video production effort so far. The problem is that it’s violent and we HATE the fact that people are entertained by violence. We’re “make love, not war people.”

So…PodShow doesn’t ask us for much, but they asked us to promote a show that we think is too violent, and since we love and appreciate PodShow, we don’t want to say no. I think we found a happy medium on brief 203, but I’m not entirely sure.

Cali and I love a show produced by Ricky Montalvo at TheDailyGeek.TV. We’ve been trying to get PodShow to sign Ricky, but we’ve gotten no response. TheDailyGeek.TV webisodes have the look and feel of This American Life (TAL). TAL is at the top of the iTunes charts so why PodShow wouldn’t jump at the chance to have a similar show, I’m not sure. They seem to think a hip hop thing is a better strategy. I’m just not sure the Web is all that hip hoppity, yet.

So, we love PodShow because they’ve blessed our production efforts, but I want them to embrace what works on the Web as opposed to what works on TV. There is a difference.

Where there is demand, there is value. Cali, host of GeekBrief.TV, gets 50 to 200 email messages a day. A good number of those messages are tech questions. To date, Cali has answered the questions privately. Starting this weekend, she will start answering them publicly on a blog we’re calling Dear Cali (ala Dear Abby). It’s online at dearcali.com.

Who am I and who cares what I have to say?

My name is Neal and I produce an Internet TV show called GeekBrief.TV with my wife Luria (aka, Cali).

I have an MA in Psychology, but never planned to practice. I had it in my head I would be a pop psychologist when I grew up. I would write books and speak. Then people started talking about this Internet thing. I checked it out and got hooked. I started desigining Web sites and before I knew it, we had a nice little business that wasn’t going to make it through the bursting of the dot com bubble, but for a few years, it was good.

The bubble popped, we hopped off the ride, got day jobs and started writing a book–a novel. The book was three-fourths of the way done, when Katrina hit New Orleans, and since the book was set in New Orleans, we shelved it for a while. Inspired by Dawn and Drew, we decided we would become professional podcasters, and we did.

So who cares what I have to say? I’m not sure anyone should or will, and that’s okay. A kid who majors in psychology tends to enjoy some self analysis, so for me, that’s what this is about…writing what’s on my mind to see if I feel better when I’m done.

I’ll probably write about marketing, our lives as professional podcasters, and my struggle to keep loving God the same way I did when I was a kid.