The auction house Sotheby’s is selling an official memo from Steve Jobs to Atari about improving the World Cup Football game. The pages – stamped and signed by Jobs himself – describe circuit diagrams and paddle layouts. Delightfully, the stamp says “All-One Farm Design” and features a Buddhist mantra, “gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl.” As you do.

If you’re thinking of picking this up you’d best have about $10,000 to $15,000 handy – although bidding could get fierce. Quoth MacWorld:

If you’re really feeling spendy, you can plop down $180,000 on an original Apple I circuit board, presumably in mint condition. Get cracking and don’t forget: Sabbe satta sukhi hontu.

TechCrunch is headed down south this summer and we’re starting our trip in Savannah, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh-Durham. We already have some great spots lined up but we definitely need your help finding a few more locations.

We begin by riding down to Savannah where we’ll see what the Coast is up to then on to Atlanta, Charlotte, and ending in Raleigh-Durham where we’ll have a great night planned of networking, chit-chats, and boozing.

The goal here is networking and connecting with the exciting projects happening in your cities. These mini-meetups are a great way to get noticed and to chat about what you’re working on and, in addition, get some advice on next steps. That said, we’ll have very limited time in each city so please drop jordan @ techcrunch.com a line if you’d like to meet with us. We’ll probably be holding office hours at a central location. Because of the vagaries of city travel, we won’t be able to come to your office, even if you ask nice.

If you’d like to help nailing down Atlanta and Charlotte, drop me a line as soon as possible at john @ techcrunch.com. Also note that we’ve changed the dates for the meetups to better work around vacation schedules.

Here, then are the dates and locations so far:

Savannah is happening on July 6th at the offices of The Creative Coast, 15 West York Street. It’s going to be a smaller crowd, I suspect, but considering we found Vinylmint at the Norfolk mini-meetup, I’m excited to see what Savannah has to offer. You can RSVP here.

Atlanta is happening on July 9. Location is still TBD so if you have any ideas, please drop us a line as soon as possible. You can RSVP here.

Raleigh-Durham is happening on July 10th at the Tyler’s Taproom in the American Tobacco Historic District. We will be taking over most of the restaurant and garden so roll on over. You can RSVP here.

Special thanks to the fellows at GBW Strategies who helped us organize the event. GBW Strategies is a new era, Triangle-based public relations and marketing firm serving clients such as Facebook and the Cherokee Challenge.

Charlotte is happening on July 11th. We are still looking for a location although we’ll finalize it by Monday. You can RSVP here.

Spring has sprung and like Persephone loosed from Hades’ bonds, our iPad app is now available to all and sundry. This app is literally years in the making and we have been back and forth and up and down regarding functionality, design, and look and feel for most of this month. I’m pleased to report, however, that it is ready to go, free, and fabulous.

The app connects our blog content with live Internet reactions as well as some amazing functionality centered around CrunchBase data. You can also just view Gadgets and Mobile content with one click and an offline mode will cache content for the road. It is retina-ready and looks pretty darn good.

An Android version is forthcoming and should be available this summer.

This is, obviously, version 1.0 and we’re planning updates over the next few months that will smooth out the interface and potentially reflect a new design direction for the site in general. Until then, sit back, relax, and start slip-sliding through the new TechCrunch iPad app.

Product Page
Click to view slideshow.

Special thanks to the whole team at AOL and thanks to you for reading.

Star Wars music homage by Will Gannon.

Apple is continuing its “famous person uses Siri” commercials by bringing in famous person John Malkovich to add a soupçon of Old World weltschmerz and philosophizing to what is, in short, a way to schedule a wake-up call without unlocking your phone. The commercials feature Malkovich in what appears to be the house above the nasty places in Hostel where he muses on fine meats and the meaning of life.

I don’t quite get these celebrity appearances but, in the end, I suppose they’re good for brand awareness. Siri isn’t for the geeks – it’s for the folks who may have once been in love with BlackBerries. Siri suggests a certain ease, a certain subsumed technicality that would draw in the C-level exec and, in parallel, well-known superstars. It is, in short, a little assistant that will never talk back to you, never ask for a raise, and never request that you stop cursing.

That they chose Malkovich for this one is a little odd on the surface but it makes sense: Malkovich’s audience these days is the indie-film-loving, ironic post-gen-X C-level business person who is adult enough to be able to spend a little money on a 4S yet still is wary of being marketed at. A similar demographic targeting is shown in the choice of Samuel L. Jackson (the just-below-Mensa-level adventure/action loving geek who remembers Mace Windu’s sword) and Zooey Deschanel grabs the plugged-in hipster demographic. If you extrapolated this further into an older demographic you could almost foresee commercials featuring Betty White and maybe Leonard Nimoy.

For those who find these a bit out of character, I suggest we go back and look at the Mac vs. PC ads that featured two memorable faces who, arguably, cannot be disassociated from that campaign. You can’t look at John Hodgman – even with his sassy little mustache – and not see that poor, put-upon PC being shown up by Justin Long.

The iPod advertising was genius because it made everyone think they could move like a sinuous dancer to the lilting chords of Jet. These new commercials allow a certain type of consumer to associate him or herself with a certain archetype. As inclusive as Apple seems to its fans, it’s still important to segment those still on the fence and, one by one, speak directly to them.

Dan Misener, in a fit of inspired data mining, scraped half of Kickstarter to find failed projects. He could not, it seems, find a single one. Why? Because Kickstarter hides them behind a non-searchable wall. They exist, sure, but you won’t find them with Google and they never, ever show them in their “Discover” browsing system.

And good for them.

In a general sense, Kickstarter isn’t a marketplace. It’s not like Etsy or eBay or Amazon where the slow-sellers sit next to the hot items. It is, instead, more of a competition. It’s a competition for eyeballs, for cash, and for media attention. It is more a dog show than flea market, and you don’t keep the ugly dogs on stage after the first round of judging.

What Misener discovered, in short, was that Kickstarter surfaces only successful or nearly successful projects and hides the failed ones. For example, Instaprint failed and if you search for it none of the original Kickstarter content will come up. It’s been norobot’ed.

GTar, on the other hand, is alive and well.

As is Shadowrun:

In short, in the 26,000 or so searchable Kickstarter entries there is not a single dud.

To his credit, Misener does not call this an outrage. However, as a source for potential crowdsourcing wisdom Kickstarter’s failures are as important as its successes. Although the variables are few, the configurations are many and there are reasons that project X didn’t succeed while project Y – a mere permutation of project X – pulled it off.

He writes:

It is well within Kickstarter’s rights to yank junk projects off the stage. It keeps the site fresh and vibrant and a graveyard of garbage iPod Nano straps is no one’s idea of a good time. That said, to push failed projects down the memory hole with such vigor is a bit harsh. Those who do not learn from their mistakes are, after all, doomed to make another damn iPad stand.

As evidenced by the success of Chatroulette, people get a kick out of seeing each other (anonymously) on video. Taking that to heart, WhosHere – an app that has allowed countless people to meet and greet each other in meatspace – has launched a video chat service that lets folks connect when and where they want.

The update embeds video chat into the standard text and voice chat already available through the app. Rather than allowing random video and photo encounters immediately, however, the system turns off most media sharing by default.

From the PR:

Although it will never replace seeing a nearly naked man staring at you out of murky darkness on Omegle, it’s definitely a step forward for mobile dating and chat apps.

Product Page

Vinylmint is a Norfolk-based startup that aims to assist musicians in creating their music. It’s essentially a recording studio in the cloud. You record uncompressed audio right into the computer, the service uploads it to the cloud, and then you can listen to and edit tunes in your browser. Think of it as a mixing board with microphones all over the world.

“Musicians can seamlessly store and manage their music projects from a single location,” said CEO Byron Morgan. “Whether it be a professional or amateur musician, Vinylmint easily fits into your existing production methods. Vinylmint enhances the creative experience ultimately providing our users efficiencies in speed, cost, and productivity.”

The service is launching today and there are plans for a freemium model that offers faster turnaround and more storage space. All of the founders are avid musicians who just wanted to make the process of jamming online a little better.

Q & A:

q: I think you did a fabulous job telling the story. I love that you’re tapping into trends that are out there. Collaboration is happening all around us. And the human desire to be on the internet is just as strong.

Where do you see the business in two or three or four years? Who pays you, and how do you build revenue around that?

A: First and foremost, accessing VM is subscription based. the other part is that the underlying tech allows individuals to share raw data files at a quick rate. That’s a scalable technology. Media and film and 3D modeling industries are looking to transfer raw data files as well as allow two remotely different systems to communicate and collaborate with one another.

That’s where VM sees an evolution.

Q: What are the barriers to entry?

A: Our API fits into those systems. It allows us to tap into their users so they can collaborate and then create content through that. It also functions as a repository for that content. Our API also allows individuals to customize the solutions to their needs. They can add productivity tools to the system, and other collaboration functionalities and add-ons. We then function as a project management tool.

Q: But what is the barrier to entry? If you discover a huge market and Apple says that they like the idea, why can’t they do it themselves?

Well, Apple confines themselves to their own devices. There are other tools that users are always trying and using and that’s where we lie, outside of the Apple universe. New tools continue to arise every day.

What kind of feedback have you had from musicians, and what’s most surprising?

I’m a music producer myself, and working with other music producers across the world, I’ve learned that the issue is wanting to be able to reach or access sounds in other places. Because that’s where new things develop. There needs to be a central location where people can access each other and collaborate and that’s essentially where VM built its niche early on.

We’re saying here’s a tool where you can now manage your products you’re creating with each other and collaborate in real time and overcome any technical obstacles you may be having like bandwidth speeds, etc.

Q: Is there a discovery aspect of this? If I’m in Namibia and want to connect with a drummer in Munich, can I do that on the site?

A: We’re in our early development but that’s part of an update in Version 1.

Q: You talked about this being subscription based. Are you planning on charging subs straight from the get-go or making it free and then charging subs?

A: It’ll be a 60-day trial period. From there, a user would pay for a container of 30 projects for $10. They can put as much as they can in that container until they have to upgrade.

Q: Why doesn’t the product exist now?

A: Competitors want to confine people to different recording systems called DOS. These sites are confining individuals to these DOS systems. We don’t want you to learn anything new. Use the tools you’re comfortable with to create your content. That’s where our value add is.

Q: Once someone has collaborated and created music, what tools do you provide for editing, exporting and format?

A: What’s currently in development is allowing them to render files from our platform. In the meantime, you can download tracks from the recorders. Then they can use ProTools or Reason to render the files and edit the files outside of the recorders. We give power to the users.

Q: Have you thought about helping musicians promote their music after they use the platform?

A: One of the cool things we’re interested in is using crowdsourcing initiatives and using the power of our content creation community to teach people who are using the site and help advertising campaigns to better promote them and our platform.

Q: Have you thought about distribution?

A: We’re currently in talks with digital distribution partners. There’s a supply chain there, and we’ve identified a place where we fit in the supply chain until we can continue to grow.

Sonos has just gone really deep (get it?) with their new Sonos Sub, a wireless subwoofer that connects to any Sonos system and adds just a bit more oomph to the musical proceedings. The sub costs $699 and offers (according to the press release) “thick layers of bottomless sound that let you hear and feel the weight of every chord, kick, splash and roll.”

The woofer connects with the AMP, ZonePlayer 120, ZonePlayer 100, the PLAY:5, and PLAY:3. It doesn’t work with the CONNECT/ZP90/ZP80.

The Sub will launch on June 19.

via Sonos Blog

This week we recorded live from the show floor at Disrupt NYC. We sat through 24 hours straight of hot-rod hacking at the Hackathon and now we’re preparing for the main show and, most important, the brand new Hardware Alley where we’ll have loads of great hardware start-ups for you guys to check out.

In this episode we talk about Disrupt, the new EVO 4G LTE, and the rumors of the four-inch iPhone. We also talk about the “thumb touches anywhere on the screen” iPhone chestnut, how good the battery life is on some Android phones, the late night Nerf wars at the hackathon, and my horrible sausage fingers.

Tune in today and look for another episode next week from the show floor.

Teaching kids – especially little girls – about electronics is a hard job. First, there’s the electricity. Then there’s the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.

The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a “duplex.”

They’ve hit $13,000 of a $26,000 target and if it helps little girls think more clearly about science and electronics, I’m totally backing it. The project ends on June 16 so there’s still plenty of time to slowly replace the Barbie Dream House with a decidedly more DIY dollhouse.

Project Page

GameStop is hurting. Same store sales fell 5%-11% and revenue was down 17% to $2 billion. Profit fell to $72.5 million. Arguably, those are still huge numbers and presumably a new console refresh should push the company out of the doldrums. But what the company has just launched – a new MVNO called GameStop Mobile – is almost inexplicable.

GameStop Mobile is, in short, an unlimited voice with limited data offering for $55 a month (down to $20 a month for pay-as-you-go plans.) GameStop is just selling SIM cards and service and is running on AT&T’s network with some notable dead spots.

The stores actually do take trade-in electronics so, potentially, the company could begin selling unlocked GSM phones to customers who come in for games. Because of the intended audience – kids and the adults who bring them as well as a few die-hards who aren’t yet into PC gaming – it makes some sense for this service to exist.

The synergy also opens AT&T to new markets and, more important, places GameStop right at the nexus of mobile and gaming – a place it absolutely needs to be once future consoles stop accepting optical media.

However, with revenue down and hard-core gamers moving to services like Origin and Steam, there is little impetus for folks to trek out to the local GameStop for titles. Here’s hoping this latest attempt at monetizing the audience works as well as their midnight launches of Diablo III.

While, arguably, you’re not going to convince many kids to give up their Topps or Pokemon cards for these things, it’s nice to know they exist. They’re 3D Printer trading cards featuring some of the best 3D printers in the world. You got your Makerbot Replicator, your UP! Printer, and your Printrbot Plus. You got stats on there, a little trivia, some pricing information and then you can trade with your friends (“Awwww man, I need that Reprap clone!”)

You can check them all out here or see them in person at Maker Faire in SF this week. Sadly, they’re not actually printing these things but if they did I’d totally buy a pack.

The impetus? They came to creator Shawn Wallace in a dream:

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter.

This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience.

The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in.

It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.

Project Page

In this first installment of Gadget Of The Week I decided to try something a bit different. Rather than focus on some obscure cellphone or wonky laptop, I decided to take on one of the biggest questions in the average small and home office: which juicer should I buy? After trying a number of juicers – and investing in a few – I’m pleased to report that the Omega J8006 is definitely worth the investment.

I am what they call, in the medical literature, a fat and lazy blogger. There’s nothing I love more than scarfing down cookies as I sit at my computer. With that in mind (and inspired by Brian Lam’s article at The Wirecutter), I decided to try my hand at juicing.

I began by picking up the $99 Le’Equip model which uses a swiftly rotating blade and an ejection system for squeezing the juice out of almost any fruit or vegetable. The price was right – under $100 for a fairly sturdy juicer is good – and the reviews were excellent. I also tried the Breville models but those didn’t support the juicing of greens as readily. Obviously there are more (this dude made 290 videos featuring all of his favorite) but I was going for the lower end.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s important to understand the various aspects of juicing that are important to the average consumer. There are multiple types – the Le’Equip is an ejection system that uses centripetal force to push out the juice out of a spout. Then there are masticating juicers. These juicers either use a worm gear or two larger gears to chop food into finer and finer bits. These bits are then smashed to render the juice. They move much more slowly than ejection systems and, in turn, work a bit more efficiently.

What does juicing do for you? The science is still out (and many nutritionists state that juicing isn’t much better than eating a bunch of vegetables and the process removes much of the fiber, rendering the juice less biologically useful) but I personally find that after a big glass of kale, cucumber, and maybe a lemon or apple, I’m less hungry and less inclined to sit at my desk idly snacking on Bugles. I would never eat, say, a head of kale by itself. Juicing takes the tedium out of veggies.

Working with the Le’Equip was quite enjoyable although it tended to spray pulp out of its back end and spit juice out of the top. The speed of the blades – while excellent for rendering juice – didn’t allow for much control.

That’s when the Omega came into my life. This massive, heavy juicer – more a home motor than a real juicer – takes it slow and steady. You feed veggies in, they’re slowly masticated with the thick, 80RPM rotor. As the food moves through it is chopped up and squeezed out into a plastic cup while the pulp falls into another cup. Clean-up is simple. You take the juicer head off, move it to the sink, and uncouple all of the pieces. Then, with some soap and water, you can just rinse off the four pieces and clean the metal screen. You can also run the gear through the dishwasher.

The device also makes nut butters and can extrude pasta. You can even use it as a slow food processor.

The bad news? At $299, you’re really going to have to be into juice to pick this thing up. However, compared with the swiftly moving and messier “cheaper” models, I’m very pleased with the 8006′s performance. If you used this in an office, for example, you’d have considerably less to clean up and the system is far more durable than other machines I’ve seen. No one wants to clean up a scrim of flung orange pulp off of the kitchen wall, which is why the 8006′s slow-moving auger is a much better choice.

Has juicing helped me lose weight? Not yet, but here’s hoping. Does it make me feel a little better and less inclined to eat junk. I think so. And anything that can keep my fat face out of a bag of M&M-laden Chex mix is the thing for me.

If you need more convincing (or date) check out Brian Lam’s article at Wirecutter

This is the age of thinking thermostats and, not to be outdone by a well-known circular model, hardware startup Ecobee has released the Smart Si. It is a smart thermostat with small color screen and a web interface so temperature wonks can update their heating models on the fly.

The Smart Si is not quite as sleek as the Nest but offers more accessible settings – think of this as the Linux to Nest’s OS X. The web interface allows you to see your home’s current status, set a vacation profile, and view reports on your system’s performance including HVAC and heater usage.

The system pulls in weather alerts as well as alarms from your home system and you can chart and graph all of your performance parameters. Arguably, I doubt many will get very intense with this stuff, but it’s definitely available.

Ecobee has been around since 2007 and the introduced one of the first Wi-Fi-enabled thermostates. This is their effort at building a high-end thermostat but the company has plenty of experience in the space. The company also recently announced wireless Smart Plugs that allow you to control electronics in your house using the ZigBee networking standard.

The Smart Si costs $220 and is available now for pre-order.

Product Page

“People are sick of shitty customer service,” said FastCustomer co-founder, Stephanie Hay. And she and her team aim to do something about it.

Their first product, for the iPhone, Android, and other platforms, allowed you to search for a customer service number – say Adam & Eve – and press a button. The program waits on hold for you and then calls you on your phone immediately upon connecting. The company saw 100,000 downloads and estimates that they saved people 1 million minutes of hold time.

They’ve just launched a new telephone concierge service, 1855-DONT-HOLD (855-366-8465), that allows you to call in and perform the same operation. In short, this thing stays on hold for you. The whole process usually takes less than an hour.

“We asked ourselves ‘How can we remove the pain for the customer service experience for the end user?’” said Hay.

The co-founders are Aaron Dragushan of Wondermill, the aforementioned Hay, and Paul Singh of 500 Startups. They closed a $750,000 seed round last September.

The company currently handles 1,000 calls per day and hopes to handle more with the new phone number.

“After hearing ‘Please stay on the line, your call is important to us,’ on repeat, we talked about how awesome it would be if humans never had to wait on hold with technology again,” said Hay. “So now, with the introduction of our concierge-level service, we’re trying to make customer service experiences — dare I say — actually enjoyable.”

The company works closely with companies to ensure proper routing. Premium services allow companies to completely control the user experience, from assigning the correct phone numbers to modifying the notification messages. They also white label the service for corporate clients.

The new phone service will launch shortly but you can try the in-app service now.

Every few days something really amazing dumps over the transom here at TC HQ. Today it was YesterdayMe.ru. Built by Vladimir V. Tuporshin and partner, Ilja Razinkov, the site essentially allows you to enter yesterday’s alcohol consumption. Why? Because, that’s why.

While the Russians are known for their heavy-duty drinking – although they’re moving from vodka to beer and wine these days, perhaps to prevent liver death – this site is ingenious in that it offers a very simple, hangover-proof interface for registering how much you sucked down. By sliding little drink indicators back and forth, you can tell the world or just yourself that you had too many beers.

The site existed as a Russian-only tool until yesterday. Tuporshin wrote: “It was 1312’s hobby project, which we thoroughly developed during its first year, and then switched to the Pocket Lists project. Now we are dating with YesterdayMe again!”

The company, incidentally, has an interesting post about selling a simple To-Do list app on their blog as well, so you can come for the booze tracking and stay for the analysis.

Sadly, the sliders on the site only go up to 10 shots, which suggests that they may need to offer a freemium “bottle drinker” offer for folks like me.

At a J.P. Morgan conference held in Boston on Wednesday, Netflix CFO David Wells said that the company was looking up and, more importantly, customers who cancelled the service because of the Qwikster rebranding, plan repricing, and subsequent poor PR are now returning.

The company drove users away due to a considerable price hike on its cheapest disk plan – from $9.99 to $15.98 – as well as its ham-handed decision to split the company into a streaming arm – Netflix – and a disc-in-the-mail arm – Qwikster. Wells said:

Netflix pricing is currently set at $7.99 a month for one DVD (not Blu-Ray) disc out at a time or unlimited streaming, and $16 for unlimited streaming and one disc. The steady return of disgruntled customers is a testament to the breadth of Netflix’s streaming selection and general economic improvements.

For some inexplicable reason, Nintendo and Toyota have teamed up to turn the Nintendo DS into a navigational remote control, thereby allowing drivers (although I hope passengers do most of the fiddling) to set their routes using their game consoles.

The service, called Kuruma de DS lets you see map and destination info as well as tour information as you drive through town. The service slightly gamifies the experience by adding a POI saving option.

The compatible Toyota Smart Navi system costs about $3,000 while the game itself costs $92 – quite a bit of cash to simulate the map screens in Super Mario World. The DS connects to the car via Bluetooth and includes quiz games and delightful Mii characters who show you around town.

via 4gamer via Kotaku

Back in in 1999, just as Ebay was coming into bloom, William Gibson wrote a piece on his experiences buying expensive watches online. He called the article My Obsession and it details his youth as a picker in the 1970s.

He writes:

This “job,” if it can be called a job, is all but dead these days because of some of the basic properties of the new market. Barring those folks on American Pickers who find items that will eventually hang in a TGI Friday’s, the potential for making a lucrative trade in a post-Internet world by finding and selling odd items is nearly nil. First, a picker depends on arbitrage. Arbitrage depends on incomplete information on someone’s part or, in the case of collectable, desire.

Second, a picker is facing down an army of folks who, in a sense, refuse to allow their items to be picked for fear that somewhere, somehow they will find out that their Garbage Pail Kid collection is worth something. After all, a listing on eBay is nearly free and a listing on Craigslist is free. The cost, then, in finding someone to take your items off of your hands at a premium price is only time. And obviously no one has any of that. So the cards moulder and the old watches sit in drawers and the Beanie Babies slump over themselves like rotten potatoes and pickers are stuck sifting through detritus at best.

The golden geek example of this impetus is the Mile High Comics story. In 1977, a friend called the owner of Mile High Comics to explain that a realtor had contacted him about getting rid of some junk at the home of Edgar Church in Boulder. After a bit of back and forth, the owner went to see the comics and found a trove – literally a house full – of old books, posters, magazines, and comics that spanned back to the birth of Superman and the Golden Age of comics. In short, he picked his way into a long and happy career.

All that is gone now, and there is definitely a side effect that, for better or worse. The Internet is changing the way we look at nostalgia and history. Take for example the recent efforts by George Mason University professor T. Mills Kelly’s class, Lying About The Past. Kelly and his students essentially propagate hoaxes, using the tools of social media to spread lies about history. They have, in fact, successfully posted fake listings in Wikipedia and by faking primary material they were able to fool a number of people over the years.

Kelly and his class recently tried to fool Reddit with some fake newspaper clippings about murders in New York, suggesting that Jack the Ripper visited New York to do his dirty work. The resulting post – bolstered by some ginned up newspaper clippings and a short backstory, was quickly dismantled. The same impetus to hunt for the best price for a piece of nostalgia has been reversed here to slam the lid on a piece of flim-flammery.

Rob Beschizza notes on BoingBoing that Reddit is specifically tuned to sense when information is, perhaps, too good. He wrote:

They are, in a way, like collectors who can see through a 20th century Chinese reproduction of a Spanish conquistador sword simply based on immersion in the market. They are intrinsically skeptical and, as such, can’t be taken easily.

Sure, things slip through just as they might at an antiques shop where a rare painting is hanging next to a mangy deer’s head or when an entire crate of early Archie comics lies next to a box of romance novels at a yard sale. But the Internet has killed the casual picker and created a new breed of meta-curators – folks who are able to see through and comment upon the collections of others without, often, having first hand experience on the topic. Some would call them trolls and others would call them obsessives. I’d just call them Internet users.

Harnessing this instinct is what all of these social creation sites are about. A market cannot exist without a group of people interested in selling and an equal number – or more – interested in buying. Sites like Reddit are the last refuge of the intellectual picker and, while there is no way for us to find a #1 issue of Mad Magazine at the thrift shop anymore, there is a way to separate the intellectual wheat from the chaff using the picker’s instinct online.