Thanks Gunjian

Unrelatedly, I just learned that Gunjian Electric & Whalebone Corporation signed up for another sponsorship of the ScoobieCast. This means I can bring you another thousand hours of totally independent and unbiased tech conversations.

KEITH

Wow! Gunjian’s hard disk division has come up with something game-changing.

It’s built around a 10Gb hard disk – which means it’s already 2Gb up on the iPhone (j/k Steve – good to see that you link, unlike Engadget, which doesn’t link).

But it also has an LED to tell you when the disk is full, and a serial port. Gunjian has released APIs to allow other companies to integrate their devices with the KEITH (Kool Endogenous Information & Tips Handler).

Weight is only 4.2kg, and battery life is 4-6 hours of a single D cell.

My favourite feature: it can sense fear.

This short 49 minute taster is the pre-pre-announcement video, so it’s mainly some PR guy from Gunjian explaining how the company is going to use KEITH to position its hard drives as a “trusted budget luxury lifestyle” brand, and only 39 seconds of the actual product. The pre-announcement video, with a slightly longer demo of KEITH, won’t be posted until after it’s unveiled at the JamGadge conference next week.

Still, beats reading some rewritten press release, huh?

I’ve had enough of this whole debate about whether everyone should link to all of my posts or just some of them. Let’s bury the hatchet, OK guys?

Not everyone hates me. I’ve received some kind words from my friends Jonathan Sanderson (“He’d post a whole lot less if he edited out the dull bits” – thanks man!) and John Gruber, who points out this hilarious parody blog.

Introducing “Drinking with Dorks”

There’s a new sort of social networking event that a few people have tipped me off about. It’ s kind of like LinkedIn, except that you meet offline in small groups of about 6 people. You eat food and drink alcohol while talking IRL about the latest great Gunjian technology.

I think this “dinner party” network could be the next Orkut.

Check out the first episode of “Drinking with Dorks”, my new socianetwovodcast! This episode features Randy Socom, CEO-in-chief of NetWonkNews, Steve Llagerub, the man who invented the “refresh button” and is now acting CEO of RefreshWorks, and Mary Carey, meta-CEO of Dibble.

Dibble was only founded three days ago and today it announced a new business model: to monetise the ecosystem around the “dinner party” meme by selling advertising on spoons and placemats, so Mary had some particularly interesting things to say. You can’t really hear them because I found that leaving the microphone next to the candles isn’t such a good idea. Hey, when it comes to recording video, we’re all still learning.

If you want short “YouTube”-style videos, this is not for you, but there are brief moments of intelligible conversation about 34 minutes in, and later at the 3hr49 mark. I think Steve really nails why Google is in so much trouble lately.

Scoobie smear campaign!

Wow, Valleywag has accused me of being a paid shill for Gunjian Whalebone & Electric Company.

I’m not a shill. My exclusive video report on Gunjian was an objective piece of investigative journalism (it’s not my fault they make the best budget capacitors on the market!) but I guess in the spirit of “naked conversations” I should have disclosed a few things.

It’s all very simple. Gunjian is a sponsor of my employer, BubbleRapCasts Inc. But it does not sponsor my podcasts, allowing me to maintain editorial independence. In addition, BubbleRapCasts Inc is now a fully-owned subsidiary of Gunjian, but Gunjian has not bought me any cars or houses since the acquisition officially completed. Gunjian does allow me to have all the capacitors I need, but I don’t fit them in anything I personally use or look at them while uploading any of my video reports. I always bring my own sandwiches.

I think you’ll agree that disclosing this makes it clear that I’m just a regular guy, having conversations with a few friends and uploading them in full.

Compare this sort of transparency with what you get in the mainstream media, with their “adverts” and “features” and “advertising features” and tricksy “editing”. You won’t see any of that from me.

OK Denton you asshole?