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.

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 :)