This morning Kent over at The iPhone Blog pinged me to show me a blog post a reader had sent him. Rakesh Agrawal’s (CEO of SnapStream) 3-year old daughter came up with a very inventive solution for watching her dad’s iPhone and using both her hands to learn Yo-Yo at the same time: stick it up on the fridge, 3-year old height level, with magnets! They’re calling it the “iPhone TV” over at their house, but I think I’d call it the “Toddler Distraction Device.”

Not only am I thrilled that she liked the show and is learning how to Yo-Yo from it (which speaks volumes of Doctor Popular’s teaching abilities, even over video), but I’m also amazed at how brilliant kids can be. I’ve heard that magnets aren’t the greatest thing to have around your gadgets, but since this is flash memory, I don’t think it should be a problem. They’d better get working on the patent application!

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Tumblr is growing in popularity, and a lot of my friends online have gotten into it (at times replacing their blogs entirely) but frankly I find them overwhelming. It’s not that I don’t like them aesthetically, since the layout is very simple and organized, it’s just that it causes RSS overload. Let me explain:

Tumblr allows people to add multiple feeds that are aggregated onto your “tumblelog.” In this way, it’s almost like Jaiku, except that you get full photos and videos on the page instead of thumbnails like Jaiku shows you. Let’s say “Bob” uses Tumbler, and adds his Twitter feed, Flickr feed, blog posts, etc. The problem is that I already follow Bob’s tweets, and I like viewing my Flickr photos in one large RSS feed of all my contacts. Because of this, all of Bob’s blog posts get lost in this huge collection of feeds — the only way I can see them is by sifting through information that I’ve already viewed in other places. It gets to the point where I don’t continue checking, because there are so many updates to his feed that I can no longer keep up.

I can certainly see the attraction to a Tumblr blog, and I can also see why people would think they’re more convenient for everyone else. Maybe I just prefer to have a little more distinction when it comes to what kind of data I’m intaking, and when. Which way of following do you prefer?

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Next week on the 14th, I’m participating in a game show at the NewTeeVee Live conference here in San Francisco! The folks over at NTV have given me a special code for my blog readers that want to attend, so if you’re in the area, please stop by!

Other contestants include Robert Scoble, Kevin Rose, Irina Slutsky, Casey McKinnon, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, Zadi Diaz, Justin Kan, Yuri Baranovsky, Hayden Black, and hosted by Heather Gold. It should be a lot of fun.

UPDATE: Holy moley, even with the discount that’s still a lot of money to come see me in the game show! I didn’t know it was like THAT! So… uh… yeah. See you there? Maybe? No? It’s cool.

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So Tom Merritt and I have started a little science fiction and fantasy-themed book club, called The Sword and Laser. Just a fun thing to do on the side, but it’s really picking up some good steam! We have about 90 members or so on our Ning page, and we’ve announced the first book, The Golden Compass (one of my favorites, and especially appropriate considering the upcoming movie).

Should be a lot of fun; yes, I realize how incredibly dorky it is. Thank you.

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