Robert Scoble at Jive in their new offices. He’s talking to their CEO about how Jive stacks up against Microsoft and Salesforce initiatives. They discuss next big challenges, the different approaches, and how Jive fits in.

Warning. There is a lot of buzzword use. You’ll want to listen for the sections on lessons learned, challenges, and the future predictions.

This is not one of Scoble’s best interviews. It’s partially his fault, as he seems to be ill prepared to ask some hard questions. Also the Jive representative uses a ton of market speak and avoids specifics.

This video found at Building43.

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble took time out of their media maven lives to take a San Quentin field trip. Yep, San Quentin prison.  Dave and Robert spent time visiting prisoners and staff inside one of the most famous prisons in the U.S.

Dave shared his take aways on his blog. He titled his post “Our all-you-can-eat lifestlye.” And this quote makes his revelation clear.

We expect so much, and we get it. We live the all-you-can-eat lifestyle. But just a few miles away reality is very different.

Dave is right of course. We live in a world where we gripe not about being fed, or having Internet access, but how our smart phone misbehaves and the sushi prices are high. Even the most modest of my friends has a phone that supports messaging and has access to the net.

I’ve never been in prison but as Dave points out, it’s a drastically different life. He met a man who was unfamiliar with any of our modern conveniences. Heck, no Twitter for that guy.  Today in contrast a friend and I talked about trying to bring others on board with Twitter.  In a couple of days I’m co-leading a class on Twitter for real estate agents.

Dave’s article makes me stop and be reminded of how wonderful a time we live in, and what a wonderful set of circumstances, especially here in the States.

So this week, while you’re out riding the waves of the net, take a few minutes to read Dave’s take. Come back here, go there, or comment on your own blog.  One step better – go visit your own local prison, poor house, or orphanage.

Or how Scoble laments about his latest blog widget install.

Robert recently install the Google Friend Connect tool on his blog. It’s a widget I’ve installed some time back. I don’t recall struggling with it as much as he did. It’s because some of us still know the old tech side of things.

I don’t blame Robert for his struggles; I’m on his side. In this day and age, when blog plug-ins are near universally one-click installs, why does Google require FTP, copy/paste, and some other geekiness to get it’s Friend Connect in.

Of course, there are easy to use FTP tools these days, such as Cyberduck for Mac. The tools make it easy to do the FTP, but finding out the right place isn’t easy. Oh, the directory might be easy enough to determine, but how many of you know the FTP site for your blog host?

When you signed up, you likely received an email with the FTP information. If not, it’s going to be on the host site’s FAQ.

But back to the point, why is it that all plug-ins aren’t easier.  Some of them still require manipulating the actual script string or hardcoding things into the blog files.  This sort of change is just out of scope for the average blog user.  Folks like me are the exception I’ve found.

In the mean time, until Google and others catch up to today in tech, help out your friends by demonstrating the installs for them.  Go hands on if you can, but if not, give a hint or three in a blog post.