This is my Irish Stew Recipe, v.1.0, aka Darby O’Gill’s Little People Stew (named for my favorite non-Bond Sean Connery movie, not b/c I put little people in the stew).

And a note of warning — I’m not great with measuring, so these are approximations.  You may want to go on the low side of these estimates, then add more as necessary.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of beef cubed
• 4-5 gold potatoes
• 5-7 carrots
• 1 red (or white, if you prefer) onion
• 4-6 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 4 tablespoons of salt
• 2 tablespoons of ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon of black peppercorns (unground)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 4 cups of beef stock
• 1/2 pint of Guinness
• 2 tablespoons of Browning sauce
• 4 cups of water
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1 tablespoon of paprika

Instructions:

• Start out by covering the beef in a mixture of the flour, paprika and about 1 tablespoon of salt.
• Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan.
• When the oil is hot, drop in the flour-covered beef and brown on all sides.
• Once the beef is browned, pour 1 cup of beef stock, the 1/2 pint of Guinness, and half of the clove of garlic into the saucepan and lower the heat to medium.
• Turn the slow cooker on high. Pour the remaining 3 cups of beef stock, the Browning sauce, the other half clove of garlic, and the thyme into the slow cooker.
• After the beef+stock+Guinness has simmered for about 5 minutes, pour the entire contents of the saucepan into the slow cooker (be careful — you’re pouring hot liquids there!).
• Put the lid on the slow cooker and let it cook on HIGH for about 20-30 minutes.
• After 30 minutes, put the onions, carrots, and peppercorns into the slow cooker and put the lid back on. Let it cook on LOW for about 1 hour.
• After the hour has passed, add the salt and the potatoes to the slow cooker (for best results, you may want to only add some of the salt, then return to add more salt at varying intervals throughout the cooking process).
• From here, you can either cook on LOW for approximately 3 hours, or turn it up to HIGH to cook in about 2 hours.  The main thing to watch is the potatoes, to make sure they have cooked satisfactorily.
• Once the potatoes are where you want them, you should be ready to rock.
• Toast some bread to have on the side, and serve the thing up in a nice big bowl.

Over at kylebunch.net, I spend a lot of time chronicling the trivial, the mundane and the silly from around the web. We take a moment to highlight the best of that trivial, mundane silliness with another Arts & Culture Linkdump:

• MTVmusic.com arrived.  And I celebrated with November Rain.
• Will Ferrell dropped by USC football practice (again).
• Heidi Klum blue herself.
• Sarah Palin got pranked.
• LeBron got sixy.
• Marketing executives at Coca-Cola got clever.
• Doorways finally got their due.
• There were election results.
• And of course, Nate Silver called almost every single one.
• Randy Marsh got really excited about the 2008 Election results.
• Thornton’s got stuck.
• Steven Seagal tasted some wine.
• Obama got Baroque and I proposed a few new President-Elect puns.
• The Greatest American Hero was remembered.
• World of Warcraft zombies gave some recession survival tips.
• The new Watchmen trailer dropped.  I drooled.
• And Faith No More helped celebrate the arrival of Friday.

Beerdo! is my solution to a problem I had been frustrated with for some time — I wanted an easy way for me and my fellow IPA-loving beer connoisseur friends to log the delicious beers we were drinking to share and re-access later.

After dreaming up a thousand more intricate roadmaps to achieve a proof-of-concept for my solution, I settled on a vastly simpler implementation: using Twitter, you send messages that look like this whenever you enjoy a frosty brew: @beerdo Shiner Bock !!!!

Beerdo then grabs them through Twitter, parses them, turns them into:
@bunch drank a Shiner Bock and gave it 4 stars and republishes them at twitter.com/beerdo.

But Beerdo doesn’t stop there — it also grabs them and saves them over at beerdo.com as: Shiner Bock | 4 stars.

After concepting much more complex implementations (some of which I still hope to pursue down the road), I got Beerdo off the ground by sticking to the time-honored K.I.S.S. approach, using a combination of the following pre-existing solutions:

1. Twitter API - currently I am using the most basic approach to the Twitter API: simply grabbing all of the @replies data in XML format.
   
2. Yahoo Pipes - I’ve known about it for some time, but until this project I don’t think I really grok’d it.  Pipes is truly excellent for people who want to do some cool server-side data manipulation but don’t want to spend all the time setting it up on their own box.  I am using it to grab the data feeds from Twitter, and parse and format them the way I want.  Currently I am creating two unqiuely-formatted feeds from the @replies that Beerdo receives on Twitter — one to republish on twitter.com/beerdo and one to publish on Beerdo.com.
3. Twitterfeed - a nice shortcut, saving me in the short-term from having to install scripts on my own box to auto-publish new RSS items on Twitter.
4. WordPress - really just the easiest way I know to get a site up quickly. And b/c it made it easy for me to use SimplePie to aggregate the RSS feed of beer reviews, I went ahead and installed WordPress on my MediaTemple box to provide a CMS framework for Beerdo.com, at least until we push into something more robust (see the roadmap below).
5. SimplePie plugin for WordPress - to handle the aggregation of the RSS feed on beerdo.com.

As I alluded to above, the long-term plans for Beerdo are definitely more ambitious than this initial proof-of-concept.  My initial roadmap sketch looks something like this:

• Displaying stars as little star graphics instead of the boring “4 stars” I have now (just for you, Ryan).
• Parsing and logging every entry in a properly-formatted database (right now I am just using SimplePie to cache and display the most recent RSS entries, but I’d like to actually get each one storing in a MySQL or PostgreSQL database).
• Showcasing some of the top-rated and most popular beers on the beerdo.com homepage
• Expanding the accepted syntax for Twitter posts (sorry, I just can’t bring myself to call them tweets) beyond 1-5 star ratings to include brief reviews. My initial proof-of-concept actually included this functionality, but I decided that out of the gate it was better to focus on the simplest interaction to get traction for the idea, before expanding into a more robust feature set for user reviews.
• Creating pages for every beer logged, with a rundown of who has drank that beer and the average rating it has received
• Leveraging the location data available in Twitter’s API to create a map of where posts to Beerdo are coming in from (could also use it to see beer popularity by region)
• Creating user pages for everyone who has opted in, similar to these examples of similar Twitter extensions: FoodFeed and Foamee (I’m sure there are others, I am just spacing on them right now)
• Integrating collaborative/social beer recommendations, based on the beers you’ve said you do/don’t like.
• Mobile access to beer recommendations and/or your friends recent posts on Beerdo — so you can figure out what to order next time you’re out for a pint.

I will keep you all updated here as Beerdo progresses.  But in the meantime, please give it a try (quickstart guide here) and let me know what you think.  Would love to hear any feedback, good or bad, that you might have.

Been awhile since I’ve recapped the happenings over at TrojanWire…so here’s a rundown of the best from the 2008 college football season thus far:

• Season started with a trip to Virginia.  And plenty of pics from the sidelines here, here, and here.
• The second game was the main event — a showdown with Ohio State.  There were tailgate parties, some ill-timed Buckeye trash talk, and of course, more great pics here and here.
• This is where things got messy.  The Trojans, riding high on a wave of national hype, had an ugly first half in Corvallis, and may very well have flushed their (national and Pac-10) title hopes down the drain as they got Jacquizzed by the Evil Beavers.
• But they bounced back against Oregon’s other (typically more ferocious) football school, with a 44-10 victory over the Ducks at the Coliseum.
• And it was more of the same against ASU, who couldn’t even get on the board — despite a mistake-filled second half that included three turnovers in three positions during the third (and yes, it was SO bad that I actually did think it was the comedy rule of 3’s)
• Then came a 69-0 dismantling of the feeble Washington State program and their first year coach Paul Wulff.  The highlights can be a bit painful to watch. Poor, poor Cougars.
• Arizona came next, and after watching the Trojans roll in every game since the Corvallis disaster, the Wildcats gave the Trojans a serious scare. Also scary — the hurt that Taylor Mays put on the U of A offense. But very not scary (and quite cool) were the birthday wishes that Rey Maualuga gave to a 5-year old fan after seeing a hand-drawn birthday invite on T-Wire.
• With the Wildcats out of the way, it was on to the other school from Washington — who, while not quite as pathetic as the Cougars, are quite the mess themselves.  And the results were pretty similar — USC 56, UW 0.  And yet again, we got pictures.
• Then came the emerging rival of recent years, Cal.  But the Trojan D wasn’t having any of it, and held the Golden Bears to only 3 points. And of course, we were there to get pictures.
• And finally, there was last night’s revenge game at Stanford.  The first half looked eerily like the 2007 upset game vs the Cardinal.  But the second half was a whole other story. Final score, USC 45, Stanford 23.  (Recap soon to follow on T-Wire)

So there you have it.  Believe it or not, the season is just about done — only rivals Notre Dame and UCLA (both still in downcycles) lie ahead.  And as I alluded to earlier, without an Oregon State loss, it looks like USC will not be in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 2004.  And while I really, really hope the alternative isn’t an also-ran like the Holiday Bowl or Sun Bowl, I welcome a respite from Pasadena in January for a change.

Fight On.

This is the resulting interview, for your enjoyment/torture.

(Killer as in the good kind — not the 80% that Calacanis has been talking about so much of late.)

Jeremy and I both feel good about where the app is at, and based on our first customers’ feedback, things are progressing quite nicely. At the same time, Jeremy and I are both our own harshest critics, and we’re quite realistic about all the work we still have ahead of us. So a little recognition for all that we’ve done thus far goes a long way towards keeping the engine fueled and chugging for all the work that still lies ahead.

If you would be so kind as to head over to Killerstartups’ review of SEOi and give us some love with a vote.

Now I’m trapped on the East Coast, with nary a can in site.  And no Mountain Dew or Fanta can provide a worthy substitute for that party you so consistently brought to my mouth.

Oh sweet Cooler — I look forward to the day when you will again be mine.

Since it’s the last day of August and I’ve yet to make a kylebunch.com update since we entered the eighth month, I figured I’d sneak one in before the closing bell and provide a quick update on the many things that have kept me from kb.com this month:

• Traveled to Western Pennsylvania and visited Fallingwater
• Watched as Anthem surpassed all expectations at Nikebasketball.com
• Was mesmerized by Dr. Ronald Chevalier
• Covered the Pac-10 college football preview scene at FanHouse
• Helped launch the French and Spanish versions of ballersnetwork.com
• Traveled to Mexico (Cabo and Mexico City) in honor of Mr. Fuller
• Continued to make progress on the next SEOintelligence release
• Got excited about Transporter 3
• Hosted a big BBQ for a few dozen of my closest R/GA compatriots
• Stumbled upon the best hip-hop album cover in years
• Traveled to Montreal (where I’m writing this now)

Add to that the regular work routine, prepping for some big fall campaigns, a fantasy football draft, and USC’s big win over Virginia yesterday, and I can’t feel too bad about my absenteeism here at homebase.

That being said, got a lot of big stuff looming on the horizon, and I’m intent on sharing as much of it as I can with you here.  So please stay tuned, and I’ll do my best to make August’s neglect a thing of the past.

The past few seasons, the trade deadline has come and gone, and Angel fans like myself have listened to countless rumors involving the Angels, one of their prospects, and some big bat with an expiring contract (Carlos Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Miguel Tejada all come to mind) have circled, the Halos have come away without any new pop for their mostly anemic lineup, leaving manager Mike Scioscia to concoct new ways to squeeze runs out small-ball style, like a retiree trying to negotiate a recession on a fixed income.

Until this year.

Yesterday the Angels officially secured the biggest bat of the 2008 Trade Deadline Derby, agreeing to a deal to acquire Mark Teixeira from the Braves for Casey Kotchman and a minor league pitcher (who is not one of their biggest prospects). Already owning the best record in baseball, the deal gives the Angels the slugger in the middle of their order — one they’ve been lacking ever since Vladimir Guerrero joined a lineup so devoid of any significant support it conjured visions of Morgana the kissing bandit in a strapless dress. Finally, Vladdy will have the big swingin’ backing needed to ensure he might actually see some decent pitches on a regular basis (not that Vlad needs them on many of his golf swings, but it can’t hurt for him to see a few balls in the zone).

As if the Big Tex news weren’t enough, the Angels other Big Tex — John Lackey — went out and two-hit the Bosox last night. After reaching the postseason and falling to Boston in 2004 and 2007, could July 29, 2008 be the day Angel fans remember as the one where this squad officially got over the hump?

Nobody’s busting out the champagne until the Halos do more than cross a symbolic hump and actually slay their postseason AL demons (which seem to center around Sox of various colors) and get back to the World Series. But for the first time since the storied 2002 season, the Rally Monkeys can set their sights on something bigger than another AL West title banner.

If I were a cable network vying with ESPN for dominance of the lucrative young male demographic, say Versus or Spike TV, I’d look at buying up some rights for Euroleague basketball on the cheap. This notion of pro players looking overseas isn’t going to die out soon, and giving it some US play will only increase the validity of Euroleague in American eyes, both fans and players alike.

For that matter, skip TV. There’s potentially even a BETTER suitor — Yahoo! Sports, AOL Sports, or Sportsline.com. For a relatively small sum (since the Euroleague would practically pay for someone to take them into the American basketball viewing market), you could OWN the sport here in the States, as far as coverage goes: webcast games live around the world, create a robust online archive of Euroleague basketball available online and through mobile devices, offer Euroleague fantasy basketball — leverage your own media reach to build the league’s notoriety over here and around the world, doing all the things that the NBA has been so tortoise-level slow on adopting themselves. It’s exactly what ESPN is doing with the AFL (Arena Football, for the uninitiated). And unlike football, where lower quality play is painfully apparent to the viewer (and has to be compensated for with 50 yard fields and Astroturf just to be remotely bearable), basketball is still good viewing when the talent level drops a bit.

While we’re at it, there’s all sorts of summer leagues here in NYC that I’d much rather watch televised than a Timberwolves-SonicsThunder game.

Just a thought.

Ever since I worked with the team building out mapping capabilities for Ballers Network, I’ve been wanting to dive back in and play around with various custom mapping solutions, from Google and Yahoo’s Maps APIs to the simpler Yelp mapping and Google MyMaps solutions.

For my first experiment, I went ahead and created a map of my Favorite Spots in Austin, which I plan on using as my first testbed for mapping experimentation.

Right now it’s extremely simple, using Google’s MyMaps functionality and no real coding, beyond grabbing some embed code and pasting it into WordPress.

But over the coming months, I’m going to explore ways that a WordPress plugin and/or theme might be written, to provide a more robust CMS that would enable location-based storytelling to be displayed as an overlay right there on the map (and potentially accessed and/or edited via a GPS-enabled device like an iPhone).

I’ll post updates as those new versions roll out…for now, take a peek at version 0.1 and let me know what you think.

The Portland Trail Blazers will finish with the BEST record in the Western Conference.

I issue this promise not simply because of the awe-inspiring collection of young talent they have assembled. From Roy (who, mark my words, will be this year’s CP3, vaulting into the upper echelons of NBA super-stardom in ‘08-09) to Oden to Aldridge to Bayless, everyone knows this team is stacked. If top young basketball talent were supple human flesh, Kevin Pritchard would be the Buffalo Bill of the NBA. That’s no revelation.

I’m betting big on the Blazers because of several intangible factors, which will more than compensate for the team’s relative lack of experience. In every sport there are those teams, perched at the right intersection of opportunity and readiness, whose preparation gets a nice assist from external circumstances beyond their control to propel them past reasonable expectations.

The Blazers are in that magical spot this year, thanks to these factors:

• Kobe’s pinky (and postseason chip on his shoulder)
  With their finish last year and the return of Bynum, the Lakers are certain to start the season as the odds-on favorites to win the West. And I do believe that by the time the Western Conference Playoffs are through, the purple-and-gold will rise to the top again. But while Kobe and the Lake Show will start 2008-09 with something to prove, that proving ground lies exclusively in two spots: Boston and the NBA Finals. The Lakers could sport the best regular season record in history next year, but it won’t help them live down the embarrassment of Game 4 and Game 6 if they can’t get it done in the playoffs. Kobe’s got his MVP, he’s proven he can lead a team to the top of the regular season heap. Phil Jackson is a master of pacing his teams for the postseason. Add in the injuries — Kobe’s pinky, which, unless there’s been a second opinion I didn’t hear about, still needs surgery and Andrew Bynum’s still-untested rehabbed knee — and if the Lakers are know what’s good for them, they will pace their output and try to peak in April-June, instead of December-March.
• New Orleans, CP3 and the Loss of the Surprise Factor
  New Orleans enjoyed a good 2-3 months before anyone took them seriously last season. Not going to happen this year. Sure, Chris Paul is young and potentially still getting better. And Tyson Chandler, David West, and Peja form a nice core that will keep this team competitive for some time. But everyone who comes to play them this year is going to bring their best. They may step up, respond, and remain in the hunt — but do you really want to bet on them improving upon their 2007-08 next season?
• Aging Western Powerhouses
  The Suns and Mavericks each made blockbuster deals last year, both of which just increased the miles on their respective squads. And the Spurs are so old, they’ve started making out a Bucket List. Even if more time in Phoenix enables Shaq to gel with Nash and the Suns core, you really think he’s playing more than 60 games this year? And while J.Kidd may be good-to-go in more games than Shaq, did you see his defense against the top PGs of the West? Chris Paul, Deron Williams, heck even Derek Fisher — they all ran circles around him last year. Is a summer spent playing ball with USAB and not resting up (see next item) really going to improve those results?
• The Olympics
  While Western superstars Kobe, Pau Gasol, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer, Jason Kidd, and Yao Ming (and potentially Manu Ginobili and Dirk Nowitzki too) are off gallivanting in Beijing, B.Roy and the Blazers will be back in Rip City, working out and getting a bit of rest. You’ve already got fresh, young legs — now you’ve had the chance to rest while the rest of the top teams have to wear out their best players in pursuit of Olympic glory? It’s downright unfair…and Portland must be salivating over the advantage it confers upon them.
• Raef Lafrentz’s contract
  Ok, this one isn’t exactly an intangible or an external factor — NBA GM’s covet expiring contracts like the Lafrentz monstrosity almost as much as LeBron covets a New York home address — but it might be the biggest and perhaps most-overlooked thing the Blazers currently have going for them. Not only do the Blazers have the most-talented young team in the league, in Lafrentz’s expiring $12 mil deal, they’re sitting on the single best piece of trade bait out there. If Mitch Kupchak managed to turn Kwame Brown into Pau Gasol, what could Pritchard do with Raef’s soon-off-the-books millions? Frightening. (And equally or perhaps even more scary — Pritchard can deal Lafrentz this year for a top veteran or a couple role players, still have free agent dollars to spend with Steve Francis’s expiring $17 million contract, and next year he’ll get to do the same thing with Darius Miles’ expiring $9 mil per deal.)
• Clay Bennett and the Sonics debacle
  The final dark horse external factor that will buoy the Blazers in 2008-09 comes by virtue of the Sonics relocation. Where do you think all those spurned Seattle fans will turn? Sure, some of them have rooted against Portland for years and may take awhile to warm to the Blazers. But there’s literally millions of alienated Pacific Northwest basketball fans — some of the most die-hard roundball lovers on the planet — who will have a void to fill. You think a majority of them are going to turn to Golden State or Minnesota for their pro basketball fix? Clay Bennett spurned the beautiful girl, and chased her right into Paul Allen’s hands, with a jilted lover mentality to boot. Portland’s about to score a bunch of jilted lovers, eager to show Bennett and the former Sonics what they’re missing. And they’re going to scream loud enough to be heard in Oklahoma City.

A lot of you probably think I’m crazy, even with the reasons I listed above. But that’s the beauty of longshot predictions — you’ll have to wait to talk to me in April.

Chances are that my blogging credentials will be revoked if I don’t join the fray and take a moment to respond to the “big announcement” — the resignation of Mr. Calacanis on Friday and his follow-up about the State of the Blogosphere expressed in his first email list blast today:

…while blogging is clearly booming, there has been a deep qualitative change in the nature of the ’sphere. There are so many folks involved in blogging to today, and it’s moving at a much quicker pace thanks to “social accelerants” like TechMeme, digg, Friendfeed and Twitter. Folks are so desperate to be heard–and we all want to be heard that’s why we blog–that the effort put into being heard has eclipsed the actual
hearing.

Bloggers spend more time digging, tweeting, and SEOing their posts than they do on the posts themselves. In the early days of blogging Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to win at blogging: “show up every day.” In 2003 and 2004 that was the case. Today? What’s required is a team of social marketers to get your message out there, and a second one to manage the fall-out from whatever you’ve said.

Now, I’m not going to waste time reacting in-depth to the blogosphere’s immediate reaction — which seems to be about 40% rational (Jason’s playing everyone yet again/this means nothing) and 60% utterly irrational (regurgitation of the “why do there have to be popular kids?” death of the A-list meme — haven’t we been over this before?). And I’m going to keep my reaction to the reaction light — not just b/c it’s so disasterously ubermeta that it might raise my NMDB ranking to astronomical levels, or the fact that I played a role in helping to identify and quantify several iterations of the very list that everybody’s lining up to torch yet again (uh oh, there goes that NMDB score). It doesn’t surprise me that so many are buying the “this changes everything” idea — in today’s publicist-crafted media world, where most big announcements can be seen days or weeks out, there’s always a few opportunists who respond to genuinely unforeseen news with that sort of doomsdayish “this changes everything” response. It’s a good way to sound like you’re able to quickly read the tea leaves and grasp news you didn’t get a head start on while insulating yourself from any actual risk. After all, if you make a big, bold prediction before the dust settles, who’s actually going to remember and call you on that prediction 6 months or a year out? The irony is, it’s this very sort of linkbaiting that Jason calls out as a reason for his departure from the blogosphere, and in the wake of that announcement, that’s the takeaway I see dominating the response conversation. I’m sure J-Dawg appreciates all of you doing your part to feed his perceived prescience.

Rather than indulge in any of that, I simply want to reflect on some feelings I found myself harboring as I listened to the the tone of Calacanis’ announcement, as opposed to the dramatically-scripted content. In particular, I’m going to try and relate his own misty-eyed, Jordan-wannabe tenor back to my own recent attempts to take a quick break from blogging, right as my relocated blog had started to get some traction.

I frame my response to Jason with two items — one that preceded Jason’s announcement, and one that I don’t think had anything to do with Jason’s announcement directly, but is almost sure to get churned into the State of the Blogosphere threads that J-Cal inspired:

1.) A post by Sarah Lacy a few weeks back (which she linked in her own reaction to Calacanis’ “press conference”), where she rightly called out that for a driven, goal-oriented person, blogging can quickly turn into an all-or-not proposition. Even if you’re not putting new stuff out on a daily basis, it’s hard to flip the idea generation & refinement switch off, and it’s even harder to slow down. It’s 100mph or park. And for the past couple weeks, as I hunkered down to focus on several crucial professional milestones, the only option was to reluctantly pull into the garage.

2.) The commenter culture meme, which Rex referenced yesterday. From New York Magazine’s Brownstoner piece last month to Lev Grossman’s recent bit on commenter rage in Time (and let’s not forget Jakob Lodwick’s farewell), the age-old “Usenet trolls message board posters commenters people on the Internet are assholes” meme seems to be coming around yet again (makes me wistful for “Mambo No. 5″ and The Matrix)

So all of this has led me to some quick thoughts on creative cycles, media consumption, and how it especially affects the independent content producer, for whatever they may be worth:

• Everyone goes through creative cycles — you can’t keep going non-stop making stuff that people actually want to read/watch/listen to/laugh at/gossip about. Eventually, you’ll get boring, repetitive, tired, and/or wind up in rehab. And while everyone is different, chances are you need more than a day off here or there to stay sharp long-term. Musicians routinely take weeks off, movie stars and filmmakers take weeks or months off between projects (well, everyone except Will Ferrell), even the daily TV stars — talk show hosts, news people, etc. — squeeze in a week off regularly, and typically take a longer 2-week hiatus at some point annually. It only makes sense that indie content producers should also take time off — especially when you consider the many hats that so many of us have to wear, from concepting to production through post/editing/distribution, not to mention infrastructure like programming a site or providing the IT service of getting the computer working. Add in the rigors of dealing with the comment fray, and you’ve got to find some time to escape — even if it does cost your PageRank or a few points off your comScore ratings.

  Which leads me to my next two points, about the dual-edged promise and challenge of today’s media world:

• Our media consumption habits have gotten more and more demanding, thanks to on-demand sources like TiVo and DVRs, VOD/downloads/iTunes Music Store, next-day shipping and feedreaders that may or may not be contributing to everyone’s increasingly ADD states-of-being. When the opportunity cost of checking in with a favorite source of news/entertainment is potentially missing thousands of other NEW stories out there, the danger of forfeiting your spot in the media landscape only to find it squatted upon by Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader or whatever new gossip or tech blog launched that week are very real indeed.
• Major media has two main advantages in this landscape — $$$ and massive backlogs of content. They can fill any hiatus’s void with all sorts of other monetizable content from their libraries, then pour huge chunks of change into making sure everyone knows that story or actor you loved is back to reclaim their place in your world. If you want to beat them, but still want to take a break from time to time, you’ve either got to scale to hire people to fill your shoes while you’re gone, or find innovative ways to make sure your audience does come back, and doesn’t have their eyeballs ransacked by a deep-pocketed competitor who can shout louder than you.

So what does all of this mean? For starters, as independent content producers, we need our audiences to get equipped with better filters (which is, imho, a big reason people are getting SO excited about FriendFeed — its potential to take unified aggregation of our content production and consumption and (hopefully) turn it into something useful). Without some improved filters, Jason may have prove to be right — this may all permanently devolve into a shouting match, where the linkbaiters and people who can churn out the most content (regardless of how devoid of original thought/ideas it may be) are going to come out on top. But the more we can continue to help our audiences to separate the wheat from the proverbial chaff (and the burden shouldn’t just be on software developers to build better content filtering/organizational tools — we as producers have to chip in and do our part, with things like tagging, SEO, pinging, story submission, et al), the better chance that quality has to win out over quantity and volume.

As far as the Calacanis news goes, I just hope the citizens of JasonNation can make a distinction between what Jason is doing — continuing as an independent content producer, just (a) slowing the volume of content creation, (b) shifting the conversation from two-way to one-way, and most importantly to me, (c) limiting the ways we can access the content he creates.

And finally, if this week did nothing else for us, it taught us a valuable lesson. As Calacanis exited the building, Asshole Balk returned. Circle of life people. Circle of f-ing life.

Drawing credit: gapingvoid.com (duh)

I have seen the future, and it consists of a map, location-specific data, and a device to access it with when you’re out and can actually use it most.

Google integrated Wikipedia data and photos from 2007 acquisition Panaramio (and apparently real estate data too) into its Google Maps results over a month ago and if the screenshot above doesn’t get you excited, you’re clearly just not up to geek snuff.

This execution may lack the wow factor of Microsoft’s Photosynth, but it provides a worthy glimpse into the future of user-generated content.

We’ve all watched as people got excited over blog posts, and the revolutionary step forward that was tagging and “folksonomy”. What about when we break past ‘what’ and ‘when’ and actually add ‘where’ to the equation?

More on this as I have time to digest this, the new iPhone 3G and its GPS features, the potential returns on the Nokia acquisition of Navteq, and the forthcoming Android deployment from Google and its partners. But needless to say, keep an eye on this space — after years of incremental advancements (many of which, like Google Maps itself, got people extremely excited on only promise and possibility), we’re on the verge of lots of big breakthroughs.

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