Speculation is everywhere: will Apple will introduce a video ipod? And now Apple is cranking up the buzzmachine again. “The company sent an invitation to reporters on Monday morning for a “special event” being held Sept. 7 in San Francisco. “1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything,” the invitation reads, referring to the release of the first 5GB iPod nearly four years ago. “Here we go again.”

It will be a video device, but not exactly video ipod. A different device that does video, not music. It needs a large screen. Which means get rid of that famous scrollwheel.

• Apple won’t give the portable video market, no matter how small, away to Sony’s PSP.
• It won’t be an existing iPod shell with video capabilities, because that would just suck. Dissapointment would abound. Video on that tiny screen? It needs a big screen.
• The device will have a large screen, and will connect with iTunes 5 which will let you buy video and subscribe to video RSS feeds (iTunes 4.9 already lets you subscribe to video feeds).

Something like this?

Somehow that mockup just doesn’t seem right. Not.. revolutionary enough.

Unlike the PSP, the video ipod probably won’t be loaded with features (wireless, gaming, you name it, the PSP does it). That’s not the Apple way. It will do 1 thing (video), and it will do it well. Very well.

The big advantage it will have should be its connection to the iTunes video store. If Jobs can pull off deals with enough television shows, movies and such, and present all that video available through the store, that might be an announcement that will wow people in the Apple tradition.

Anyway, enough speculation. They might just come out with something completely different.

How many videobloggers are there? Ask Vlogstats.

After nagging about Jason’s nagging, I have to admit his post on webOS is brilliant. GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS? (kottke.org)

Jason Kottke: “News.com ruminates about Google building a collection of tools that serve as a replacement OS. Where have we heard that recently? You’re welcome for the story idea and thanks for the non-link, guys…tech journalism at its finest. I hereby institute a policy of not linking to you for a year.”

Jeez. Jason, sure you’re an A-list blogger but I don’t think you can take the credit for the “Google OS” idea (I don’t think any on person can). Nag nag nag.

EMAIL: Dreamhost to me: “I had to add indexes to several of your mefeedia_live tables because they
were *really* bad.”

Now that is beyond the fucking call of duty for a hosting service.

No wonder they’re out of dedicated servers until December. I’ve been with Dreamhost a few months now and I love them. I love them as much as my morning coffee. Their servers are zippy. Their support is good, and they know what they’re doing. They add indexes to your tables! And it’s a great deal if you have some small sites to host (and even if you have big ones, although they are growing fast and out of dedicated servers right now).

(Disclaimer: I get a bonus if you sign up through the link on this post, but that’s now why I recommend them. They add freaking indexes to your tables! Now you might think, I don’t want some sysadmin adding indexes to my tables. But if your tables were as bad as mine, you would.)

And: if anyone knows of another host with managed dedicated servers I can use with similar prices (US$ 2-300/month), please recommend.

The Doc Searls Weblog : How to Save the Web from Splogonoma. A well considered must-read about spam blogs. It has become very easy to create an automatically updated blog that harvests stuff from other blogs, and the problem is much bigger than many think.

Businessweek is doing a poll on the best sites of the web, and in the video category you can vote for Mefeedia.

Right. I need you now.

Vote here for whatever your heart tells you to. (Stare at this for a while first: Mefeedia)

I’d really appreciate a vote. It’s a big deal. Thanks so much!