Lost in the din of CES last week and MacWorld this week was the conclusion of uber-blogger Robert Scoble's time at PodTech. As of Monday night, Robert Scoble reported he is "unemployed", at least for 24 hours, as he moves from one venture to another - starting Fast Company TV with friend Rocky Barbanica.

As announced by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington back in December, Scoble made the decision to leave PodTech, where he produced the ScobleShow, amid uncertainty surrounding the company.

Reached by phone Monday night, Scoble said he would be revealing more about the new Fast Company TV venture late Tuesday, risking going head-to-head for bloggers' attention with Steve Jobs' impending announcements at MacWorld.

Jokingly, Robert said, "Steve Jobs can have ten hours atop TechMeme and then we'll get it after that."

While some I had talked to in the Valley had speculated Robert and Rocky would go their own way, not joining Fast Company after all, Scoble said the prospect of running a business wasn't what he wanted to do. While he said there were six different companies fighting to land the duo, in the end it came down to two options.

"The serious options were Fast Company, and us running our own thing," he said. "What brings me joy is interviewing people, hanging out with geeks and blogging. Doing my own thing would mean having to run my own business, and that's not as fun as interviewing Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse." (See: Join us at Doug Engelbart’s house)

On Tuesday, Robert, with son Patrick en tow, will be headed to the Moscone Center to see Jobs' keynote live. Near midnight, we should see a post on Scobleizer.com outlining the new venture, and Fast Company TV will become a reality shortly afterward.

With the NFL playoffs in full swing today, and both games partially overlapping with our church schedule, I asked our TiVo HD to step in for us and capture both the Chargers/Colts contest, and that of the Cowboys/Giants. I avoided the radio, didn't look at any sports scores on television, avoided ESPN.com, and didn't look at My Yahoo! or Ballhype, who would each have given away the results.

But I did make a mistake. I checked my Google Reader feeds, and while I knew better than to check the RSS feeds from ESPN.com, excited bloggers who usually cover technology or media exulted in delight when their favorite teams won today.

(Meandering Passage blew it for me in both contests, so don't click either link if you haven't already seen the results...)

In minutes, as I hit the 'J' key, going through each of my items, the surprises were gone.

Now, while I haven't committed the final scores to memory, I am going through the TiVo recordings, knowing the eventual outcomes, and not enjoying the elements of surprise. I don't know just how each team won, or who the stars and goats were. That's left to be seen. But this time, RSS gave it away.

How do you take on a company who has first-mover advantage, significant market share, and a positive customer experience? It's hard to do. If you want to beat an entrenched company like this, your service should either cost less (or be free), be easier to use, or have significant differentiation, with features that customers can't live without. Whether on the virtual or real world, taking on the big guys can be tough.

In recent weeks, I've seen the emergence of a service that takes users from site to site, like StumbleUpon does, called SiteHoppin'. SiteHoppin' describes itself as a "social networking/bookmarking wiki site that lets you find, bookmark or share interesting sites by hopping instead of typing."

SiteHoppin' doesn't mention StumbleUpon by name, but it performs essentially the same function as the wildly popular service, owned by eBay. What it lacks in visual design and market penetration, it makes up for in buzzwords and attitude. It not only claims "social networking", "bookmarking" and "wiki" in its title, but call itself Web 2.5. I've never even heard of Web 2.5, even while others are working over a definition of Web 3.0.

Stumblers er... SiteHoppers can rate sites by the number of beers (from one to five) they give a page, similar to StumbleUpon's thumbs up and thumbs down feature.

Where SiteHoppin' does come out ahead of StumbleUpon is the lacking need for a browser toolbar. As StumbleUpon has delivered toolbars for FireFox and Internet Explorer, they haven't yet gotten to us Safari users. SiteHoppin's user interface is so light, they claim to work well on iPhones, the Nokia E90 and other smartphones.

The site is just getting started, having reached 10,000 visitors on Friday, and features a most-popular sites listing, as well as a directory of users. So far, the most popular site is www.doodlage.com, which has 43 "Beers on the Wall" for an "Average Beers Rating" of 4.63. I don't know about you, but maybe there's something safer about browsing sober. We'll see how far SiteHoppin' gets against the StumbleUpon juggernaut.

After publicly saying I wasn't all that interested in the MacWorld Expo this year, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica stated I just might have to give up my Apple fanboy ID card. I had stated the unforgivable, and had lost the respect of Cupertino - only a few miles away.

To redeem myself, I set out to prove my lapse was momentary indeed. One survey online helped put me back on my feet, as after answering 15 short questions on "How Addicted to Apple Are You", I was told I had achieved an 88% score - not bad. I could likely have scored higher if I had waited in line overnight for the iPhone, but we're not perfect...


Along the same lines, out of curiosity, I took a similar 14-question test on "How Addicted to Blogging Are You". I scored even higher, achieving a 92% mark - an A in my book. I'd only have scored higher if I used Twitter or installed Wordpress. That'd have given me the 100% score.


I was tipped off to the Apple Addiction test by Earl Moore of Meandering Passage, who achieved a 54% mark. I think he undersold himself, and should try the test again..