D.C. videoblogger Andy Carvin rendered himself unfit for the camera.

Chicago Tribune reporter Wailin Wong discovered that magical Susan Boyle singing clip.

Formerly relevant Web-video personality Amanda Congdon made progress in her quest to become a crazy cat lady.

Wired.com's Priya Ganapati hit up a Twitter user as a source. And another. And another.

TechCrunch contributor Sarah Lacy displayed the toxic aftereffects of exposure to Julia Allison.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who believes Europeans are too lazy to found startups, experienced drooling contempt at the DLD conference in Munich.

Vaguely employed videoblogger Amanda Congdon concluded that L.A. is full of racists.

Macworld editor Kelly Turner froze in San Francisco.

BusinessWeek's Amy Feldman thought about the children.

Media critic Jeff Jarvis criticized the media.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Formerly famous podcaster Amanda Congdon kept it classy for another one of her forgettable post-Rocketboom projects.

Wall Street Journal gadget columnist Walt Mossberg got so distraught over Steve Jobs's health problems he couldn't type straight.

And like Jobs, Guardian writer Jemima Kiss overshared her digestive problems.

Blogueuse Ana Marie Cox, the former Wonkette, maintained her standards.

Vaguely employed gossipmonger Bonnie Fuller tried to make "cutes" a word.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us their username.

He's a leading Dallas attorney who even sued the firm he cofounded, Baron & Budd, and is a regular on blog Overlawyered. More interesting is that Amanda Congdon intervened in order to protect her claim on part of the company. Meanwhile, the younger Baron complains all this legal wrangling tied his dealmaking hands, and that the company nearly went broke twice this year.

The Rocketboom episode neatly explains why the world of online video so resembles film school, a parent-funded enterprise of self-indulgent auteurs with macroambitions viewed by microaudiences (including yours truly). Sony's deal doesn't affirm the potential of online video as a means of creative expression; it simply tells us that the rich, despite themselves, can't help getting richer. (Photos by Eric Skiff and Alex de Carvalho)

In a wonderful piece of linkbait, Vanity Fair produced an illustration featuring a number of popular "blogs" arranged in a cartesian graph from "Scurrolous" to "Earnest" on one axis and "Opinion" to "News" on another. While we're trying to grasp how the 'Wag ended up on the earnest side of the scale, more confusing is the inclusion of Salon and Slate. Apparently, if you're not printed on paper, you're a "blog" — even though both publications predate the term. But where the chart really gets things wrong is in using the disembodied head of Amanda Congdon to illustrate online video program Rocketboom. If the authors or illustrator actually watched the show or read many of the listed blogs, they'd know that Joanne Colan took over as host after a very nasty and public departure from the show by Congdon. Keep trying, guys, you're bound to figure out this Internet thing eventually!

No news yet on whether Baron will try to hire a third host for his show, which would mean the show had as many hosts as it's had paying advertisers.

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.

In his post, Baron gripes about Calacanis's "aggressive marketing tactics" to promote Mahalo Daily, the site's videoblog with former CNET host Veronica Belmont. But in a reply to Baron's attacks, Calacanis guesses the antipathy stems from Calacanis's public attempt to hire Amanda Cogdon after she quit Rocketboom.

Yeah, it could be that. Or it could be that in Mahalo Daily's launch trailer, Calacanis and Belmont parodied "Rocketboom" on Mahalo Daily and Calacanis said, "Hm. Been thinking about it. Rocketboom just isn't that funny."

There's only one way to resolve this, of course. No, not a catfight between Belmont and Rocketboom anchor Joanne Colan, pervs. Instead: Bulldog love!

There's the fact that it's an old joke. That it's mostly humorous because Congdon is usually incapable of humor. That I laughed because she is defying her image as a vacuous, uninteresting shill attempting to make her way in the world of "legitimate journalism." That lightning doesn't strike twice. On second thought, who knows what the future will hold for Amanda Congdon? All I know is that if it looks anything like this, I'm wishing the videoblogger all the luck in the world.

ABC can dismiss the failure as an experiment:

It's been a great year with Amanda — a great experiment for both of us. We thank her for her many contributions and know that she's about to embark on new endeavors and expect there will be times in the future that we can again work together.

One thing we can count on: Congdon will bounce back, perky as ever. She has a show in development for HBO — technically, according to HBO's advertising, that's "not television," so we don't know if that will count as a TV comeback. And she seems to have a burgeoning if ethically questionable career as a spokesblogger for advertisers like DuPont and American Express. The only question: Will anyone care? Or has her audience, like ABC, tired of her "experiments"?

The YouTube/CNN debate delivered sophomoric (but stereotypical YouTube) softballs. And any remaining hopes were dashed by the Iowa Republican debate hosted by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. The Disney-owned network, like YouTube, implemented user voting in its video-submission process. And, predictably, the result was more "America's Funniest Home Videos" than New England Town Hall. ABC adroitly crafted its call for citizen submissions to market its televised event, not raise the level of political discourse.

If you followed the marketing hype around ABC's debate, you may have believed that video questions submitted by everyday people would be central to the broadcast and that the popularly chosen submissions would be selected. Instead, only two videos were used, neither of them top-rated. Zennie Abraham accused the network of "vlogger fraud," describes one of the lucky two as "the typical, predictable, stereotypical blonde white female that a TV producer would select." (Ironically, Abraham then turned around and suggested ABC pick typical, predictable, stereotypical blonde white female Amanda Congdon to run the debate instead.)

Of course, a close reading of ABC's actual call for submissions should have warned Abraham and company of what to expect:

We encourage you, your family, colleagues & friends to vote/rate favorite questions & the highest rated videos will be a factor in George Stephanopoulos' decision and also have the opportunity to be featured in ABC News NOW's post-debate Spin room!

And why would anyone think otherwise? The networks have long known that hard-hitting questions and articulate, thoughtful responses don't make for good TV. Or, for that matter, win debates. But exploiting the vlogger community? That makes for excellent pre-debate buzz. The fact that the vlogging community was taken in, and is now up in arms, just shows how clever ABC's marketing team is.

Bring on the endorsements indeed.

UPDATE: Consumerist.com says that AmEx's project is getting hijacked by Proctor and Gamble, who entered a project of their own for this $5 million contest. The "Children's Safe Drinking Water" project would be enacted by UNICEF, and guess what corporation sells water purification systems.

You know, when I first heard about the shooting on TV in my hotel room at NAB, I turned to Mario and said "why does this always seem to happen this week in April?" Turns out, at least according to this blogger, that the beginning of spring marks "school shooting season". [sic] Do we, the media, have a responsibility to tone down coverage of these horrific events so as not to motivate copycats?

Top 5 [Amanda Congdon]