Valleywag has the scoop: (or should that be rumor?) Jason Calacanis, best known for his time starting Weblogs Inc, is entering the search game:

the next venture is a search engine. Calacanis, we hear, has already hired about 20 engineers to work on the project. Begun in the poolhouse of his Santa Monica home, it recently moved to an office nearby. Sequoia isn’t merely giving him shelter while he comes up with a new idea; Roelof Botha, Calacanis’ patron at Sequoia, has already committed the funds. Former associates of Calacanis, such as Mark Cuban and Jonathan Miller, his former boss at AOL, are also backing the venture.

They go on:

It’s a cross between Wikipedia and Google. Calacanis’ new site will create more digestible search results for popular queries such as the names of Hollywood stars, and tech products. The pages will be seeded, initially, with content gathered automatically from the web and other sources. But they will be open to contributions by readers. Sounds like Wikipedia? Yes: except Calacanis will employ paid editors to oversee the pages.

Sounds a bit like Topix to me, lots of content, initially from external sources, then added to by humans, great content for other search engines. The search part only comes into play if the content on the site becomes authoritive to the point that people will actually visit the new site to search for things. It logically cant be a search only play if it generates its own content, search engines don’t generate content, they index it.

One to watch.

Is Ghostblogging CEO Blogs Bad?
Debbie Weil, who has been dishing out great advice for corporate/CEO blogs recently moderated a panel and the consensus seems to be that ghostblogging is not bad. At least, that’s the consensus of a small group of writers surveyed. This is in response to a Dilbert cartoon about the pointy-haired boss wanting to start a blog. Tris Hussey gave his perspective on ghostblogging.

Twitter Too Popular in Australia
Apparently Twitter can’t handle it’s popularity in Australia and have suspended their SMS feature there. Rumor is that 901am’s Duncan Riley did this single-handedly :)

The End of Blogs?
I don’t know what the big fuss is. So what if the blogosphere has halted at 15 million blogs? Inorganic populations have lifecycles, too. No doubt there will be mini-spurts as more serious publishers join.

How To Blog Jason Calacanis?
Let’s not pussyfoot around here… If almost anyone else had done what Jason Calacanis just did on his blog, telling you how to get his attention online, they’d be called arrogant. But I don’t think that applies here. Calacanis is the genius who built up and sold Weblogs, Inc., turning himself into more than just a celebrity in his own mind. And that means some bloggers would like to catch his attention. It’s a fact, and he knows it and so do you (if that’s what you want). So get to it, grab his attention. Just don’t expect an interview over the phone.

Bad news for Adam Curry, content from the Podshow network is being dumped from Sirius Satellite Radio from May 1.

There is no word yet as to why the previous arrangement was not renewed.

Paul Colligan believes that the decision means that Satellite Radio “Becomes Even Less Important”, and that 10.5 million iPods sold last quarter is proof of the potential audience size for podcasts.

Google, with a brand value of $66.4 billion, has unseated Microsoft as the world’s most powerful brand, according to an annual ranking by UK research firm Millward Brown Optimor. The search engine’s brand value increased by 77 percent since last year and is followed closely by General Electric at $61.8 billion. Microsoft is a distant third at $54.9 billion and Coca-Cola at $44.1 billion.

“Success stories from this year’s Brandz Top 100 demonstrate that winning brands leverage major market trends effectively to create business value,” said Joanna Seddon, chief executive at Millward Brown.

“Strong brands are capable of extending into areas of opportunity to access new revenue streams and to help businesses respond to market changes.”

The ranking attempts to put a dollar value on a brand based on current and expected future earnings. The figure is generated from hard economic data as well as softer variables such as intangible consumer loyalty and perceived growth potential.

Why Web 2.0 Sucks
When the term “web 2.0″ first started appearing en masse, I hated the term because it just seemed like hype. I even said so on Tim O’Reilly’s blog. (He’s the publishing genius behind O’Reilly and the guy that came up with the term.) Since then, I’ve written dozens of articles on Web 2.0 and haven’t thought twice about how much I disliked the term. Now, I don’t think about the term and I’m caught up in all the incredible applications. Though not everyone feels that way. This Is Going To Be Big gives a critical but insightful look at their top ten reasons why Web 2.0 sucks. While it’s definitely worth a read, I’d say many of the reasons apply to the Web in general, not just Web 2.0.

What Meshly’s Really About?
Read/Write Web has a better explanation of what Meshly is really about. I might have gotten it wrong, saying it was like Twitter with Digg voting. RWW says its more for bookmarking through IM. So it’s kind of like Twitter over IM rolled up with del.icio.us and Digg. I think. Though if you’ve how many steps you have to go through just to post a bookmark, you might think twice about using it that way. Delicious takes about 1.5 steps, especially with the bookmarklet button I have on my Firefox browser. I’m not discounting the potential value of Meshly, just saying it takes too many steps to do what should take about 1-3 steps. And that’s inherent in the medium (IM), not so much Meshly’s fault.

Are Blogs Offensive?
Ars Technica writes about a ScanSafe “Global Threat” report that finds that 80% of blogs have offensive content. No kidding, big surprise. I don’t know about the 80%, but they apparently scanned seven billion page requests to come up with this waste of paper. I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry – stupid arse sniffing gits :)

A new survey from Scansafe has found that 80% of blogs contain “offensive” content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images.

In a report at Ars Technia, ScanSafe says that it discovered the “offensive” nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers.

Further, 6% of blogs were also said to contain some sort of malware.

Now I know that MySpace blogs aren’t pretty, but does bad layout and bright graphics make for offensive content, or is it just that ScanSafe’s Corporate customers have a predilection for porn?

Apparently, any blog that contains the F word is considered offensive by Scansafe, which pretty much means this blog, along with every over blog I read would be marked as offensive, at least at one point in time. I suppose it could be worse, they could find terms such as “freedom online” and “surveys are stupid” offensive as well :-)

Build Your Own News Site With Newsvine
If you build it, will they come? If you think so, then check out the newly relaunched Newsvine, which lets you create your own news site. We’re talking going beyond something like Pageflakes- or Netvibes-like customization because apparently your customizations are reflected on the homepage. Techcrunch explains.

Our Hive Mind
Brady Forrest reflects at O’Reilly Radar on Jordan Schwartz’s writings about bees and the hive mind and how humans exhibit similar behavior online, especially at social websites.

Twitter Beginner’s Guide
I can’t imagine that it would take much to learn how to use Twitter, but Robin Good has produced a very indepth beginner’s guide to Twitter, detailing what it is, why use it, how it’s being used, why people love it, why people hate it, and a big list of tools to extend Twitter – including many I’ve never heard of.

Of interest to those (such as me) who wish Twitter could pull in feeds from elsewhere, there’s TwitterFeed and RSS2Twitter. I was also complaining about the lack of search. Well, there’s TwitterSearch. And there’s even a way to insert ads into your tweets. That’s a bit much, but if you get the urge…

Watch Your Back Technorati?
Valleywag of all places has an interesting explanation of where Technorati is getting traffic from. Yes, from Google, but even for terms “Wikipedia”. That’s because of all those Technorati tags thousands upon thousands of bloggers add to the bottom of there posts each increase Technorati’s ranking for those keywords. It’s also why many more experienced bloggers stopped adding Technorati tags. (My own blogs never suffered as a result of doing so – that’s for different reasons.) So when you type in some terms in Google, and possibly in other search engines, Technorati ranks very high. Though as Valleywag says, probably not for long.

Power Twittering
The other day I complained that Twitter is not very robust, and that I find Jaiku better. Well 30Boxes has created a Firefox plugin called Power Twitter that lets you beef up what you can do with Twitter, including photosharing with Flickr, adding video, and a tie-in 30Boxes information for members. [via GigaOm] In related news, Valleywag has a snarky, humorous look at how non-revolutionary Twitter is, in the form of a diagram showing the history of blogging.

MySay: Audio Alternative To Twitter?
I’m not sure I agree with this, but Mashable describes MySay as a sort of Twitter for talkers. You record audio snippets and post them via phone. Friends can listen online or subscribe via phone. So it’s great for reaching a group of friends easily, if they know to subscribe to your MySay stream. As far as I can tell, however, you cannot post from a web browser, but you can embed players on a variety of web pages (social networks, blogs).

Still, this actually could be a fun, even useful tool. Remember “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey”, a skit on Saturday Night Live a few years back (during David Spade’s time, I believe)? There are several possibilities: positive thoughts, short jokes, mini-sermons. The only drawback is that you have to call a long-distance number to record your snippets.

A New Way To Monetize Video Content
It’s not available quite yet but Hiro Media is launching a video site that offers a new way to monetize video content – which of course is great if you produce such. Essentially, clickable ads are embedded in the video content, and content providers earn per click. That way,the video can be viral and still produce revenue. New TeeVee gives more detail.

Video Email With Eyejot
Eyejot offers a nice way for friends and family to stay in touch with each other when live conversation is not possible. Just use a webcam to record a video message and send it off. The recipient gets an email with a link to the video message, which they can view without signing up. To respond, however, they have to register at the site. The interface is pretty simple but logically laid out. If you have multiple messages in your inbox, you can click the “automatically play next message” checkbox to view all of them in succession.

L.A. Times Jobs To Go
The Los Angeles Times will be dropping around 150 jobs this weeks due to decreasing revenues. Nearly half of these positions will be newsroom jobs. The L.A. Times is owned by the Tribune Co., who also own the Chicago Tribune. They have a recent plan to go private. Maybe they should do like the NY Post and double their newsstand price?

The defense of the well regarded Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic), currently on the receiving end of law suit from Amazon for the crime of daring to use Amazon’s open API’s and render Alexa data better than Amazon was, has just hit the mother of all spanners, according to TechCrunch, Statsaholic’s owner, Ron Hornbaker, is a convicted extortionist.

But wait, it gets better, because as well as serving jail time for extortion, Hornbaker wasn’t just your garden variety, every day extortionist, he was an internet extortionist as well, frequenting AOL Chat rooms trying to extort money from wayward husbands. Yep, he’s 1996′s version of Michael Crook.

Knowing this, a lot of people have got egg on their faces, including yours truly, for going in to bat for a chap who well…just doesn’t play cricket, if you know what I mean. Time to remove my name from the online petition against the legal action as well, and apologize to Amazon. Sorry Amazon, I’ll do some digging before acting against you in the future.