Today, Steve Rubel’s (long one of my favorite bloggers) decision (So Long Blogging, Hello Lifestreaming!) to move over to The Flow. Posterous, my new home, feels more like flow and where the web is going so it’s time for me to do the same with my publishing, which will become daily once again!

As Jedi Knight-esque as The Flow sounds, I get where Steve is coming from. As I ruminated upon recently, I’m also trying to reconcile time pressues with an efficient way to share my thoughts about interesting stuff on the webs.

I spent a few minutes playing around with Posterous today, and there’s a lot there that might help that reconcilation whilst harnessing the flow. This includes the ability to post via e-mail (add images, mp3s, and videos by simply attaching them), and particularly a super nifty bookmarketlet that lets you post up a quick post from where you are. And it even works with Google Chrome, by golly!

A few downsides, however: you can’t grab your own URL; you have to take on a Posterous subdomain, and you can’t run ads or customize your profile page all that much from what I can see. So this is much more a social media/share-and-goodwill than an online publishing-as-a-business play. At least for the time being.

I’m not sure I’m ready to go as far as Rubel and “abandon” OMC, but I am going to continue to experiment with Posterous.

Last month, you may remember having heard about a special iPhone ad from Dockers. Its claim to fame was that it was the world’s first “shakable” ad. Called “Shakedown to Get Down,” the ad prompted users to shake the phone in order to set the on-screen freestyle dancer into motion. The dancer, of course, wore Dockers. It was certainly a clever attention-getter at the time, something that had everyone talking. But this ad wasn’t just a one-off experimental project - it was representative of the start of a new trend and one that’s going to change advertising as we know it.

Beyond the obvious cool factor, there’s something more, well, shakable about the implications and possibilities of what media and advertising and interactivity can do.

A Mashable piece by Stan Schroeder called We’ve Got Tools to Undo Censorship in Iran and China. Let’s Use Them does much to shed light on this topic:

Besides the already existing tools such as anonymizers, various proxies, and Tor, which are now gaining prominence, I’ve seen a number of almost simultaneous similar initiatives. The idea to turn Opera Unite into a web proxy for Iran is one such idea, which will undoubtedly (save possible technical limitations) quickly be turned into reality. There’s also the recently launched beta of Ipredator, The Pirate Bay’s stab at creating a secure VPN for everyone.

Initiatives such as these assure me, more than ever, that it will never be possible to entirely censor the Internet. A critical mass of users that employ techniques such as encryption and anonymization will arise, and it will become tougher and more expensive for anyone to control and monitor the information flow. It’s up to every one of us to join and use the tools we have at our disposal; once these tools become commonplace, the battle to set the Internet free will be won.

It’s somewhat heartening to see the amount of information coming out of Iran today in the midst of political turmoil and governmental interference (check out this great Slate piece for example). It’s being harnessed by technology and the Internet, and it strengthens my belief that even in the most restrictive regimes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stifle voices that yearn to be heard.

The zero cost startup has led to the age of the “microstartup.” It’s no longer two folks in a garage hoping to build a prototype in order to land a huge VC round, then getting millions of dollars to build out an office. Microstartups are sustainable from prototype to launch and on to a core user base, all for around $5-10,000 in costs.

It’s all about super low cost, low overhead, fast iterative releases, and high engagement with audience and customers. It simply makes sense that these kinds of companies are the ones that are going to innovate in this “post web 2.0 era” and in this crowded and noisy Internet space that we’re all playing in.

And so it’s interesting that a Calacanis piece also pointed me to a new $300 million “micro VC” fund launched by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

The technology industry has never been more inclusive, what with folks like Y-Combinator, BetaLabs and Founder’s Fund doing smaller investments and now this. If you’re looking to raise capital it’s fairly simple: go to the Valley, pick a growing market and get two or three qualified folks to work with you on tackling that market. The money will then show up–even for first time entrepreneurs–if you pick a growing market and try to kill it.

I’d counter that you don’t necessarily have to base yourself out of Silicon Valley, but nonetheless the implications of this fund’s launch are pretty great for innovators, entrepreneurs on the make, and people who care about seeing the Internet economy flourish.

I woke up, fired up coffee, eggs, ham, and toast (which constitutes a fancy breakfast in my house). Checked e-mail and hit the front page of The New York Times online, which is oddly making its way back around to being one of my daily check-in sites. I was particularly interested and anxious to find out the latest going on in Iran. This story — Opposition Members Detained in a Tense Iran — was both informative and chilling.

I then browsed Memeorandum and Techmeme and was interested to see that both sites’ top stories focus on CNN’s lack of Iran coverage (particularly in terms of protests and election fraud allegations), with the added bonus that Twitter has become a central source for 1) on-the-ground coverage in a country where open communication is being stifled and 2) watch dogging CNN (with handy hashtag #CNNFail) on its lack of focus on this breaking story.

I wrote:

It is extraordinary that we’ve reached an age where Twitter can massively amplify on-the-ground coverage AND watch dog the mainstream press

Ernest Koe soon responded:

@ericberlin we seem to be witnessing a watershed moment in history #iranelection #iranfail, breath-taking and scary at the same time

A couple of final thoughts:

1) A minor point: CNN, which played a part in really breaking Twitter to the mainstream audience, is learning that social media can both giveth and taketh away

2) Something less minor: I’d like to believe that online participation at the scale we’re now seeing has the power to directly impact governments and institutions and organizations in a positive way. In a major way.

China has accomplished remarkable things in the past 20 years, including building one of the world’s largest economies. Computers helped speed that development — and will be even more important in the future. So Beijing’s decision to require that all new personal computers sold in China contain software that bars access to certain Internet content seems particularly self-destructive and foolish.

The new rules say all PCs sold in China after June 30 must include special software — designed by a company with links to China’s military and security agencies — to filter out pornography and other “vulgar” material. Beijing claims that it is trying to protect children. Don’t believe it.

Surely China’s government must recognize on some level that using software to try to keep a lid (and spying eye) on Internet activity is a fool’s errand at best, and dangerous at worst.

That shows how far contextual advertising still has to go, I guess!

The simplest way to describe Steve is that he “gets it.” He gets the modern web and how people use it, he gets marketing, and most of all he gets how it all gets pieced together. From the big picture to the little things.

And that’s why I can unabashedly recommend All The Little Things, Steve’s new e-book. It’s free online, and the print version will be available soon.

Here’s a clip:

All the Little Things is a book about the Internet.

It’s about building great things using the Internet and it’s about understanding the opportunities available to anyone with drive, creativity and a whole lot of grit. Said with a little more flourish, it’s a book about dreams, reality and all the work in between. I wrote this partially as a proof that I could do it (books are hard for blogging types) and mostly as an answer to the hundreds of phone calls, emails and other such correspondence I’ve received from entrepreneurs and creative types about how their product can overcome the noise.

When you’re done, I want you to be inspired to do something useful, to build that great project, to overcome inertia, to take the world by the horns and other such inspirational bits. In exchange for changing your life, I am going to ask a few small favors from you.

Head on over and check it out!

So that’s to say I’ve long been a great fan of Darren’s ProBlogger, and want to congratulate for hitting the amazing mark of 5,000 posts. 13 Things I’ve Learned about Successful Blogging, which marks the occasion, is a great read and all signs point to ProBlogger remaining one of the best blogs-about-blogging that there is.

I’d say I’ve probably written somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 posts since late 2004 or so between Dumpster Bust (my original blog), Blogcritics.org, OMC, and various other professional and freelance gigs (such as Web Worker Daily most recently) I’ve had over the years. That feels like a lot to me, so I find a mark of 5,000 universally strong posts to be an astonishing mark.

I mention because I discovered a delightful treasure trove of detailed reviews and analysis about all things The Wire, and a bunch of other shows as well. It’s on a blog called What’s Alan Watching? The cool thing about how Alan handles The Wire is that he takes the time to split out episode reviews into “beginner” and “veterans editons.” Veterans is great for super fans like yours truly as it ties in “future” episodes and gives a Big Picture take on the entirety of the series.

If you’re all in the game, you must check it.