So much for WordPress. It's running like snails in salt. Great, comments don't work. New blog doesn't work. Maybe that's the computer's way of telling me I should take the week off.

I'm emailing Matt at WordPress right now to find out what's up.

Update: now my comments are running here, and my blog at http://scobleizer.wordpress.com is running fine again. Maybe it's a good thing to have a few blogs. Decentralized infrastructure. One goes down, the other keeps working. ;-)

Update: I was reminded again that Dave Winer is hosting my comment server, not UserLand, and that that server is getting slammed by spam. I'm sorry for not making that clear. I really appreciate Dave's hosting of my blog. I'm getting a lot of traffic and my main blog has almost always been up (I can't remember the last time my blog was down like what WordPress behaved like tonight).

One thing I forget is just how much tuning I did of UserLand's templates, too. They are damn small compared to the other systems I've seen. That does translate into fewer bites transmitted and a faster response time (particularly on cell phones).

My comments are down again (Update: I should be clear that this isn't a UserLand problem, the servers are being hammered by spammers and Dave Winer is graciously hosting the server here, not UserLand). OK, it's time to switch over to WordPress. I won't do it if I don't force myself over there. Life has just been so busy lately. Every extra minute I've been trying to answer email. I have 244 emails waiting to be answered. I'm sorry.

Oh, and James Torio, thanks for saying nice things about me in your Master's thesis (as seen on Doc Searls' weblog).

See ya over on http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/. We'll clean up the house as we go along. I'm also going to open a TypePad blog, and also post over in my DABU blog (which is at http://www.robertscoble.com ) so that you can see how the blog tools compare (and so I can see that too).

One thing I'm interested in is which tool is most powerful? Which one is easiest to use? Which one gives best stats? Which one provides the best OPML and RSS options? Which one has best ping-server support? Which one has the most responsive company behind it? Which one is the easiest to customize?

What else is important in a blog tool? Well, let's move over to WordPress and talk about it.

Lots of Xbox 360 news today too. I visited Bungie this morning and did an interview, but they wouldn't show me their new stuff, though. The interview was still cool. I'm not sure if I'm the first video inside their new offices, but might be.

Anyway, Engadget has an Xbox 360 hands-on preview. "Hate to say it, but as of November 22nd the Xbox 360 is going to be only game in town."

I hate to say it, but I hate it when people say they hate to say it. But, it's more evidence of the brand damage we've done by shipping products that aren't done as well as the Xbox 360.

How deep is that brand damage? Well, when the team showed me the Xbox for the first time they said "looks like something Apple designed, huh?"

My answer? No, it looks better.

The team, by the way, is being taxed heavily right now. The BBC reports that launching in three countries all within a few days of each other might not have been that smart.

I'll be at Xbox launch parties both here in Redmond and in Ireland. More on that after my schedule gets a bit more firmed up. I think I'll be in Dublin. Anyone know of a good game store in Dublin to hang out in?

Rick Segal has been asking former Microsoft employees what they think of Microsoft and getting some interesting answers. One question he asks is to compare me with Mini-Microsoft.

A ton of Microsoft news today.

eWeek, via Memeorandum: Microsoft Has New Mission for Media Center.

One of the blogs there that caught my eye was Thomas Hawk's Apple Unveils Media Center Type iMac. He said: "Personally I'm a little underwhelmed from what I've seen so far."

Another one that caught my eye is Joe Wilcox and Michael Gartenberg's analysis of Apple's moves today. Joe said "Overall, I think Apple delivered a cohesive set of new products."

One thing I totally agree with Joe on is that Apple is WAY WAY WAY better than Microsoft at coming up with names. "Apple Front Row" certainly beats "Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005."

Oh, and Yahoo and Microsoft announced a plan to interoperate instant messaging clients today. That's important because Yahoo and Microsoft have a LOT of people using those two products. Hey, I wonder if AOL will join in the fun?

Dave Winer sticks up for Microsoft Office's XML formats. Hey, thanks! Here's Brian Jones, of the Office team, explaining what developers can do with the new file formats. (That's a clip of a longer video we ran on Channel 9 earlier in the year).

Sorry I've been offline for the past couple of days. Yesterday I was in an all-day meeting with MSN Search team. Today I was just busy. Visited Bungie's new offices at 8 a.m., did an interview with the CRM team, and the Microsoft.com test team, and got a look at some future HDTV stuff that Microsoft is working on too (damn, can't wait to show you that).

Anyway, it's been a very busy news cycle. Yesterday Real and Microsoft announced that we're getting along again and today Steve Jobs worked his Apple magic and brought out lots of new stuff. The new video iPod looks like a great way to watch Channel 9 videos.

One thing, though. Steve Jobs better never tell me we're copying him next time I meet him in the street. Why? Cause he brought out a video-playing computer (we call those Media Centers) and a portable video-playing device.

Congrats Steve for finally getting that people want to watch video. Geee, wonder where he got that idea from? Heheh.

Which brings me to something that the Channel 9 team just released tonight: video clips.

See, watch that Portable Media Center clip above. If you click "watch clip" it'll actually play just the part of the video where Charlie Owen shows off a Portable Media Center. That's a piece of an hour-long video.

You'll also see that we've rewritten the video player interface from scratch. So, it looks cooler and it works WAY faster! Now you know why we're using streaming servers. Click on the white bar underneath the video and it'll jump to that part. Lets you scan through my boring videos a lot easier.

Jeff Sandquist has a lot more on the new "Clipster" feature and we're talking about them on Channel 9 (there's more than just a new video control too).

I'll be using this feature a lot in the future to point out key parts of the videos so you don't have to watch an entire hour.

Update: the new feature doesn't work in Firefox, sorry. We'd love help converting this feature to Firefox.