With Web 2.0, where every individual can be both producer and consumer, it seems that the talent should rise to the top. In it’s purest form, what self-regulated social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are creating is a talent-based meritocracy where your peers are your harshest critics.  The good are lauded, the bad ostracized and the inauthentic are ousted before the masses. It is truly dog-eat-dog.

I set before you the rawest example of peer moderation in a laissez faire environment where every man (or woman!) considers himself Simon Cowell:  the YouTube collection of results for “Female Guitarist Acoustic Covers.” I’m pretty sure this is where Simon got the idea in the first place.

If Kelly Clarkson were “starting out” today (and she could play guitar this well!) she would probably be one of the girls below. Check out each video, read the comments beneath, rate your favorites and let the virtual cat fight begin!

The YouTube Results for Top Female Acoustic Guitar Covers.

1) Ash Soular soularashs

2) Kelly Rosenthal KellyIsMusical

3) Lilian Bui lilianbui

4) Elizabeth Laural elizlaural

5) Leesha Harvey LeeshaHarvey

Please vote for your favorite. And feel free to let loose and tell these girls what you think of their skills. After all, it’s Web 2.0. Doesn’t that mean we’re all experts?

New York City gets a bad reputation. As the most filmed city in the world, it is no wonder that I had many preconceived notions about NYC. Many of them were true. It is bigger, taller, and even more fast-paced than I had anticipated. I had blisters on my feet by the end of day 2. But I also had been lead to believe that this city was full of rude, selfish, busy and impatient people.

Many of you have already found this. This image was taken from space of a hill that looks a lot like A Native American Listening to His iPod. Google Inc.– the same company that gives us Google.com, Blogger.com, Google Moon, and a host of other fun things I use everyday provides Google Maps for Free. This site is great fun, inspiring Andy Samburg to call it “the best. . . Double True.” But I want to tell you that there are things to do on GoogleMaps even after you’re done finding your house, your job, and cyber-stalking your exes from Global Satelites.

Google Sightseeing is one of many spin-off sights where people are posting the funny stuff they find as they mouse all over the planet. Sightings of UFOs and monsters, as well as rumors of amassing armies on the Chinese-India border abound, complete with KML coordinates and clickable photos. Here are some other funny sights at Haha.nu. Including the boy who built his own Location Balloon.

Fast Company labels Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) as an “authentic” brand and calls it “purpose-driven.” Google is not humble about this, boasting a corporate philosophy that they “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Deeper into their homepage I found this: “You can make money without doing evil,” and, “Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.” Busy, busy.

Company shares today trade at $487.11, way down from their high at $513 in Nov, but still well above the market’s avg. share price– I’m predicting a split this summer, like my YUM shares! I think we should all pitch in, buy Google stock, and drive up this share price! (NOTE: The writer is not qualified to give stock advice or counsel, as he knows next-to-nothing about any of this stuff.)

Midway through writing this post, I realized how much Google really does for me to make our modern, internet-facilitated world a better place. Thanks Google! Good luck on your mission of taking over the world! –Shawn Butler

This week I turned 28. I had a very small celebration, entirely because my wife planned it, got others involved and did it for me. If it were up to me, I am through with birthdays. Which I think has worked out for me. My daughter was born on my birthday, which I happily spent in the hospital with my hand being squeezed in my wife’s as I shouted out encouragements about her breathing and pushing. At any rate, I believe I have effectively solved my problem of ever celebrating my birthday again.

I did, however, buy myself a birthday present. An expensive piece of electronics. I exhibit only a few of the classic Machismo behaviors, I don’t use profanity, ESPN bores me, and I think beer-drinking is laughably stupid. But one man-trait I exhibit shamelessly is a passion for the electronic. I love technology. Tying in my birthday and the birth of our daughter created the necessary justification to indulge my inner hombre and I bought a video camera.

But that does not do it justice. What I bought is a Panasonic GS-320 Mini-DV Camcorder, and yes, that is another man-mannerism, it made me feel powerful and cocky to type out all those numbers and dashes. That’s why girl items have soothing names, like Easyglide and Pearlmax, but boy items have Part Numbers and Product Codes, because men love numbers. And complications.

So now I have begun video taping things. And I find this fulfilling. There is a part of me that feels very satisfied when I am holding the camera and the red light is flashing. Something primal is comforted knowing that these moments; the words, inflections, miniscule motions of face and body are being captured and retained. It is a sense of reassurance that passing time IS something important. That it SHOULD be valued and held on to. It is sad that early man ( i.e.- man before the invention of the camcorder) was unable to experience this satisfaction. So it goes…

Before Digital, cameras worked very differently. One could not see what he was recording on a 2″ Liquid Crystal Display. There was no instant replay or rewind. Taking a picture was a supreme act of faith and an exercise in commitment. The image was captured, handed down from the eye of the camera and pressed resolutely and inalterably into the film. With Digital, every picture can be reviewed for approval, and without film being wasted, there is no sense of consequence. There is no metaphor in digital imaging. There is no “Cause and Effect,” no “Reap What You Sew” moral lesson to be learned.

With film cameras, we still had the element of chance. There was an aspect of danger in photography. You could come out of that photo shoot with literally anything. There was no such thing as a perfect picture. This is much more akin to life=

Sometimes you can do everything exactly right. Fill up a whole roll of film. Drop it off at the store, come back in a week to pick it up, and find twenty-four images of fuzz and darkness. Like you were photographing Big Foot. With the film crew from “Blair Witch.”

Life is like a film camera. I can set up the model, check the lighting, check my camera and do everything exactly the way I think it is supposed to work. Then Click. The picture is captured just as it was, whatever combination of light, distance, shutter speed, movement, etc. that occured at that moment has been compiled onto the rolling celluloid of the film canister and there’s nothing I can do about it except just keep going. Aiming my camera, pointing and clicking. Some shots are arranged, like fruit in a bowl or a family portrait, while others are candids, a flashbulb halting the scene in the midst of the action and holding it still.

When the roll is filled, it has to be developed. I won’t know what the pictures look like until I’ve gained some time perspective. When the photos are developed, I can see that “oh, I wasn’t smiling” or “her eyes were closed” or “wow, there was a rainbow right behind us,” but by then, the scene is set and inalterable. The moment has been through the stop bath and rinsed in hypo. As I proceed in life, I have no way of knowing what is coming next. But I have a ready camera, a half exposed roll of film, and stacks of albums filled with the things that have gone right and wrong in the past. Entire books of the things we call “Life Lessons” that can be pulled out and shared with others with a story beginning “Here is something I did wrong…” or “Here’s one that went right…”