So Dave Sifry announced the private beta of his new personalized and printed travel guide service, offbeat guides, last night. Back when I was still casting about for the next good thing, I spent some time with old friend Dave and heard about the ideas and the prototype.  I was excited then, and still am, and here's why:

• Picking through the comments by friends on TripAdvisor and on blogs to compile what people really think about places, lodgings and attractions for a destination is time-consuming, unwieldly and un-efficient.
• Even if you do this work, finding a place to save/store it can be a pain. And there's no good way to do the wisdom of crowds and find others' compliations (or annotations).
• When you're on the street in Rome, unless you have a smarter phone than many people do (I don't think most people today have a BlackBerry, iphone, smart phone, etc.--though they will--)paper really matters. And guidebooks just don't always have what you want. Or have too much. And tear out pages is ugly.

So, there's something great about being about to print a custom travel guide, focused on what you want to know, for a place you are headed. Having both a digital copy and a printed copy is cool, useful, disruptive--it diminishes the importance of the airline aggregator and the publishing business as middlemen, as well.

And finally, I think it's neat that someone who built something very distinctive in search back in 2003 is tackling a totally different set of problems here in 2008--and this time, it seems like Dave's been able to build some initial business models right in.

More in the breaking TechCrunch story, here.

"Don't break your news on your own blog! Like press releases crossing the wire, breaking news on your blog makes the news less valuable if others haven't yet had an opportunity to break it for you first. It's like the new car analogy. The value of the car drops the minute you drive it off the lot. Time your post for after when the news breaks and link to everyone who helped cover the story."

--Brian Solis, blogger, photog, PR and marketing maven, giving advice on TechCrunch to new companies

Susan sez: Lisa & I are just starting our blog for Peoples Software Company, so while we are both avid bloggers, this kind of advice is a good reminder.

Did I mention how much I enjoy Weezers Pork and Beans video?  The meta-approach of making a video that includes bits of popular vids from YouTube--notably Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain Blendtec's "Will it Blend" blender, Miss Teen South Carolina, the  Numa Numa video, All Your Base are Belong to Us, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, the "stupid" ninja guy, and a nerd who made  the Guinness Book of World Records for wearing the most t-shirts at any time.
just makes me smile.
Loving the wit of it every time I watch.

NYTimes columnist David Brooks keeps writing the coolest stuff. Here's some snippets from the latest, on the ascendency of geek culture:

"The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds. Now there are armies of designers, researchers, media mavens and other cultural producers with a talent for whimsical self-mockery, arcane social references and late-night analysis."

and

"Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes. They honor him with videos and posters that combine aesthetic mastery with unabashed hero-worship. People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority-figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers."

Queen of Spain, aka Erin Vest, interviewed Barak Obama this weekend, and did an amazing job. Erin's interview addressed policy questions developed by BlogHer members--congrats to all,this is very cool.

As Lisa Stone says on her blog, Surfette, Obama is the first presidential candidate to a directly address BlogHer's audience of nine million women each month via BlogHer.com and a publishing syndicate of 1,800 blogs.

"I can't think of a company that I am more impressed with than Google, but they are coming to grips with the fact that "startup energy" can't be faked. There's nothing quite like going from five people to fifty or a hundred."

_VC Fred Wilson, issuing an open recruitment call to Google employees who want "something more entreprenurial."

Susan sez: I like this because a) it's probably a true observation, b) it is so amusing to see someone use the start-up story on their blog as a way to woo staffers away (who want to go, natch), c) I feel a small bubble of jealousy for the now well-fund companies Fred is doing this for--we're way more early stage and I don't have substantial real money yet to woo away Googlers, so I am both admiring and a little envious.

(And having said that, if you are kick ass FE and want to work with a very cool start up this summer, I am the woman to contact..we are early stage enough you can have a BIG impact.)

"I can't think of a company that I am more impressed with than Google, but they are coming to grips with the fact that "startup energy" can't be faked. There's nothing quite like going from five people to fifty or a hundred."

--VC Fred Wilson, issuing an open recruitment call to Google employees who want "something more entreprenurial."

Susan sez: I like this because a) it's probably a true observation, b) it is so amusing to see someone use the start-up story on their blog as a way to woo staffers away (who want to go, natch), c) I feel a small bubble of jealousy for the now well-fund companies Fred is doing this for--we're way more early stage and I don't have substantial real money yet to woo away Googlers, so I am both admiring and a little envious.

(And having said that, if you are kick ass FE and want to work with a very cool start up this summer, I am the woman to contact..we are early stage enough you can have a BIG impact.)

I'll be at the Editor & Publisher conference in Las Vegas for the next couple of days, in support of the Knight Foundation announcement of the 2008 Knight News Challenge winners.

If you're not aware of this Knight program, it's a multi-year grant program that supports innovative ideas that use digital media and technology (mobile, platforms, etc.) to transform local and regional community news and support discourse in the commons. Knight has funded both very location specific projects and much more platform-driven efforts and these efforts have jump-started platform and tool development around local, community, news and even some social justice and accessibility issues,because of how well-distributed the funding has been.

Last year's News Challenge (2007) winners iwent to 25 individuals, and to private and public entitiesthat ranged from individual developers to  MIT to MTV. This year's list of winner's is equally cool, and the announcement of the winners is tomorrow.

Chuck , the SEO Rapper, Prophetic Prophet sez: "My 9 to 5 is in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Consulting at an agency called Pop Labs." These videos are where his passion lies--

Susan sez: No doubt there are many performances at web advertising sales meetings and awards dinners in Chuck's future.

"The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print -- in fact, a better life after print."

-- Pat McGovern, founder and chairman of IDG, a large trade publisher that's moving print magazines online, and now has 52 percent of its revenue is from online ads, 48 percent still from (higher margin) print side, in one of those semi-breathless NYT stories.

"Technology publishing just happens to be at the point of this whole transformation of media. What's happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it's going to happen."

--Stewart Alsop, VC, writer, former InfoWorld lead

Susan sez: I believe that most of the dynamic online media will be--add is being--created new, not out of formerly known as print products--but this is  still a great shut up, get on with it, and get over bitching quote for Monday am.