We hear a ton about the growing importance of local search, but not enough attention has been paid to local media online as a whole. This has been changing somewhat recently, with the sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy and the associated examination of what McClatchy sees as valuable within its acquired assets.

There aren't many of us who could call bulls__t on Preston Padden, Disney's executive vice president-government relations--at least not in front of a room full of press and politicos. However, Mark Cuban, CEO of HDNet and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, did it twice in 10 minutes at the CEA's 2006 Entertainment Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.

Last week I happened to be checking out Gawker, and I came across the Gawker Stalker page. I spent 30 minutes cruising the site and became immediately infatuated with the concept of celebrity sight-seeing around Manhattan in pseudo real-time.

Last week, my girlfriend Lauren and I took some time away from the freezing New York weather and spent some time in the Florida sunshine. That's when I really begin to notice the failings of the mainstream media.

Are you sick of watching, setting and making bids via paid placement search? Sure there are great tools out there these days, but scoping out search work is always a struggle. Many can't believe how many hours it takes. It's tough to automate a process when bidding remains a sliding landscape.

Have you ever had your computer seemingly taken over by invaders? I wrote a column here more than two years ago on how to remove certain spyware applications, and I was inundated with thank-you notes from readers. These tiny .exe files that get dropped on users' hard drives can corrupt hard drives, take over users' search functions, and basically distract anyone from what they do online.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media is having a little trouble sending video coverage of baseball games to your cell phone. The technological issues they are facing are interesting, but it's the sociological issues that should really give us pause.

In a number of recent presentations, I've stated that emerging media formats are important when they achieve critical mass, but not everyone agrees with my definition of what critical mass is, so I thought I'd ask you what you think.

I've found that I can gauge how well the emerging media business is doing by looking at the last few new business phone calls that have come in. The more tactical the request, the better the marketplace is doing overall. I find that's a good barometer for the industry's health.

Greetings from the world of now-I've-heard-everything. I don't think I'm the last to know, but I sure might be. I was just made aware of a new cyber-dating trend called "toothing."