Mahalo Daily host Veronica Belmont — the videoblogger whom Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis once dubbed a "Rojas-level hire" , in a comparison to Engadget cofounder Peter Rojas — has announced she's "moving on to new projects." She'll host the show for a few more weeks and then later contribute as a correspondent. "This came out of nowhere," a Mahalo source tells us. Considering Belmont's working conditions, it shouldn't have been a surprise. Interviewed in the video clip below, Belmont — who lives in San Francisco — says she spends two weeks each month in Santa Monica. How did Belmont like the commute? "It's not optimal, but it gets the job done." Not anymore. But there is a winner here.

Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is an entrepreneur now, but back in the 1990s, he ran a publication called Silicon Alley Reporter. And sometimes, his journalist roots show. Like during this recent interview with The Deal when Calacanis explained who uses Mahalo. Seems 80 percent come from one place and 80 percent from another. Watch for when reporter Mary Kathleen Flynn nods in a big way, as if to say, "Makes perfect sense to me."

Eyeing the $30,000 to $35,000 salary TechCrunch's Duncan Riley says Mahalo pays its workers? Better be prepared for a rough-and-tumble job interview. That's Jason Calacanis's style, he told The Deal. How else do you think he got "all the money"?

Last week, a 43-page internal Google document detailing guidelines for the company's search result "quality raters" was leaked online. It details exactly what qualifies as Web spam, and as SEO pro Aaron Wall points out, much of Mahalo fits the bill. Content copied and pasted from other sites? Check. Lots of AdSense ads and affiliate links? Check. Mostly links to other sites? Check. Anything left after that stuff is removed? Not really. Google doesn't differentiate between human-curated link farming and automated link farming. And a pagerank demotion for the domain would also affect the "how to" content Mahalo shifted its focus to, leaving founder Jason Calacanis and his investors to depend on traffic generated by Veronica Belmont obsessives.

Coincidentally, the Valleywag crew was chatting in Campfire about how much we loved a new site we'd discovered, Downforeveryoneorjustme.com, right before we had to use it on our own site. Some theories we came up with: Nick Denton, Gawker Media's owner and publisher of Valleywag, likes to bring down his sites occasionally just to watch how his editors deal with the unbearable pressure of not being able to write. As part of Jason Calacanis's new Valleywag charm campaign, Mahalo guides posted so many links to us that it brought the site down. Or, most plausibly, outraged Arthur C. Clarke fans launched a denial-of-service campaign against the unremarkable observation that the deceased sci-fi writer was an admitted pedophile.

Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis will host a dinner at New York Chinese restaurant Golden Unicorn tonight. He's calling it Dim Sum 2.0. I'm going, but not for the lazy susan full of food. The last time Calacanis hosted one of these during a trip to New York, it was the night after Calacanis and DealBreaker blogger John Carney nearly came to blows. At the end of a fundraiser for Mouse, Carney allegedly told Calacanis "I will #&%$!ing drop you to the floor." The pair didn't come to blows, but maybe they just needed a little encouragement?

Robert Scoble [is] the most popular independent blogger in the technology space. I have to say, not being able to land Robert to work at Mahalo is the biggest mistake I've made so far — I so blew it. Fast Company is really lucky to have him. Grrrrrr ...

"Fire people who are not workaholics.... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life." — Funtrepreneur Jason Calacanis. After a bunch of other bloggers whined at him, Calacanis rewrote the line to a politically correct "fire people who don't love their work." By that standard, I'd have been continuously unemployed since 1977.

In a recent blog post, Jason Calacanis predicts that "Google will have 90 percent search market share in the U.S. one year from now." That leaves little room for Calacanis's own Mahalo. So how'd he bring himself to say it?

Email from our reliable bulldog pup photo source and Mahalo chief pineapple Jason Calacanis:

"Rednikki," better known as Nicole Gustas, an employee of Jason Calacanis's Mahalo Web directory, complains about Valleywag's coverage of local sex parties. But if you search on Mahalo for "Silicon Valley sex parties," where does Calacanis point you? Why, to Melissa Gira Grant's very same post. Everybody wins. Thanks, Jason!

In a blog posting about how he was the most popular user of Twitter, serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis says "if there was one other company I could be the CEO of (after Mahalo) it would be Twitter I think." Jason, come up with a way for Twitter to make money and I bet you could be CEO! Incidentally, Calacanis has been supplanted by Robert Scoble as the most followed Twitterer. How embarrassing.

Jason Calacanis recently penned a post titled "Startup Handbook: How to identify and deal with the slow masses, knowledgeable skeptics, and savvy dreamers." In the post, Calacanis explains that the reason no one understands Mahalo, his human-written Web directory, is because it's just that good of an idea. In his words:

Instead of computers, Jason Calacanis's Mahalo Web directory depends on entirely on humans to make sure its listings are accurate. Calacanis contends that humans are cheaper than servers and more accurate, too. Good theory, but here's the problem: computers only rise up against you in science fiction. Humans? Yeah, they ask for more all the time. One such fleshy Web crawler says Mahalo hasn't paid him enough for the work he's done. As a result, he plans to sue.

After warning me that he was coming to the CES Press Room and to "stay out of his face," blog blowhard Jason Calacanis stormed over to me to "introduce" himself and slam my boss and brag about how much money he has. Money can't buy you a snappy comeback, however.

Always the charmer, Jason Calacanis has announced plans to visit the press lounge at CES. His barking continues to amuse. But here's something that's no laughing matter: Why is the CEO of a search engine, a legitimate object of news coverage, allowed access to the private press lounge at CES?

With the stock market in a tailspin, blog blowhard Jason Calacanis dismisses any impact a possible recession would have on his own startup, Mahalo: "No, no layoffs. That's why I raised 5 years of funding. Mahalo is recession proof ... will execute on plan based on goals not market." By recession-proof, Calacanis must mean his startup, dependent on advertising and prone to overspending on trivial tasks, will lose money for years, recession or not. [Twitter]

Jason Calacanis's Mahalo has a problem: its business model is a Catch-22. Mahalo differentiates itself from Web search engines by using the paid services of humans, which Calacanis argues is a cheaper strategy than buying servers. And yet Mahalo seems to have trouble paying the rates it set for its human laborers. A blogger who works for Mahalo as a "mentor" — a fancy title for someone who basically works as a QA tester, reviewing pages of search results created by others, is complaining that Mahalo is refusing to pay the full amount he is owed.

Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales's for-profit search engine, Wikia Search, will go into a public beta on January 7, according to reports. (Good luck emailing Wales for access to the private beta going on now — he doesn't even answer messages from Bono.) The site — we hear it looks a lot like Facebook — will face competition from Google's Knol. It's also likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Jason Calacanis's people-powered search engine, Mahalo. Which means a lot of heavy breathing will be forthcoming from L.A.

Every year, for one day, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad for short, gets the juiciest Web traffic one can expect on Christmas Eve. The government agency responsible for monitoring space for incoming nuclear missiles is also the official tracker of Santa Claus as he travels around the globe delivering presents to the world's children. But why should the government have a lock on holiday pageviews — especially with a Republican administration that claims to believe in the power of private enterprise?