Allen Stern and Dave Winer noticed that my name is no longer on the list of judges for the TechCrunch 40 conference.

Allen guessed that was because of the impending birth of our son. Totally true. There’s no way I can make next week’s conference. I wish I could go. I’m missing several important conferences in the next month including this week’s Conversational Marketing event, Demo, and probably the Web 2.0 Summit.

Allen also noticed that Jason Calacanis was bragging that there’s big news coming from Arrington on Tuesday. I have a call into Arrington about that.

Over on the Consumerist is a reminder to always check your purchase boxes before leaving the store. The blogger there said she was ripped off by Target who gave her a camera box without a camera inside.

That reminds me of the time when I started working at a camera store after a stint away from the store. I did my usual thing and cleaned the store from head-to-toe. One of the reasons I did that was so that I could find things quicker cause I’d know where they are. Plus I’d know what’s in stock so I don’t go trying to sell things that we didn’t have.

But, anyway, I kept finding empty boxes. Where there shouldn’t have been any empties.

Turned out an employee was stealing equipment. We figured out who it was. He was stealing lenses in his thermos and taking them home.

When the cops raided his apartment they found about $100,000 worth of stolen camera gear. One employee can do a lot of damage.

Sounds like Target might have someone doing just that.

Another tip? Make sure the serial numbers on the box and warranty cards match what’s on the camera. Sometimes people will try to return something that’s gone bad by putting it in a newer box.

Heheh, I love these two posts.

Blindsquirrel.org (wants me to stop writing about Facebook): “I’m still a Scoble fan, but I’m hoping the subject changes once he takes on his most important role – the father of a new baby.”

Shel Israel (who is just discovering Facebook on his new iPhone): “I have never had a more productive business tool than Facebook is turning out to be. Never.”

That brings me to Techquilashots. He repeats something a lot of people have said without really understanding what I’m doing with Facebook: “But the problem Robert (and others with tons of friends — even if it’s 100) is that you don’t really care about the actions of all those people — and in FB apps, you really want to see the actions of certain top friends of yours.”

Totally untrue. I regularly just click around on my friends social graph. Not just the “big name” ones that I recognize. But especially the ones I don’t recognize. I want to know what connection we have and I want to discover new people before someone else does.

That’s the magic of Facebook and the fun of it.

Many people don’t understand what I’m doing with Facebook or the other social tools.

That’s OK, I hope they stay in the dark. Makes it more fun that way if people think I’m just looking at Kara Swisher’s profile.