Robert Scoble, the former Microsoft evangelist and die-hard PodTech videoblogger, has ended his brief departure from the Web. Clearly he thinks he's "adding value" with his bold theory that "Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google's butt in four years." You won't be able to read his theory, of course, since he has, tiresomely, recorded it on video. But you can see the sincerity in his eyes, hear it in his voice, and watch him pull out the whiteboard and three, count 'em: three, colored markers! In truth, he's just revealing what he has always been: a confused evangelist who doesn't understand the underlying technology, doesn't have his facts straight, and can't keep his story consistent. But, boy, is he enthusiastic about it! Why? I think he's lobbying for his next job.

Jason Calacanis, the blowhard blogger, has called spammers and SEOs "slime buckets," "snake oil salesman," and "low-class idiots." He has now joined them, however. Calacanis has been flooding inboxes with unsolicited spam advertising his company's Mahalo Follow software, a browser extension. And here we thought Mahalo was supposed to combat spam, not produce it. Reports are coming in across the Web that people who have never used Mahalo nor requested information about Mahalo are receiving spam from Calacanis. "Apparently 'Mahalo' is Hawaiian for 'douchebag,'" says one irate spam recipient. If you've received the message, do what a responsible Internet citizen like Jason Calacanis would do: report the abusive spam and delete it.

Remember Fast Company? The print-magazine relic of the last boom is, surprisingly, still around, and still spilling ink monthly on the unlikeliest of subjects. Take, for example, its profile of Jason Calacanis, the serial entrepreneur and blog blowhard, and Mahalo, his bravado-powered search engine. The writer, Adam Penenberg, is relatively evenhanded in his coverage of the man, lauding his "transparency" while noting his "predatory" tendencies. But he falls short in his analysis of Calacanis's new company, which is trying to hand-build pages of search results for popular subjects. Even with help from Calacanis, Penenberg failed to ask any tough questions about Mahalo.

Purchase an iPhone and experiencing problems? Have no fear, Mahalo is here! Jason Calacanis's blowhard-powered search engine has handcrafted a results page specifically for your "iPhone problems." Mahalo claims to build "organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results" that "only include great links" with the best at the top using trusted "guides to make judgment calls based on what's in the best interest of our users." Certainly, a site that curates only the most authoritative links, according to Calacanis, can provide the answers to your questions about the most highly covered device in tech history. Well, no, it can't. But it does answer the question of why Mahalo is sure to fail.

Through her Demo conference, Chris Shipley strands some of the most important people in tech together in the desert and forces them to pay attention to strange new ideas. It's like Burning Man without the playa dust and with much fancier drinks, or so I'm told. The experience is apparently scarring enough to bond people for life, judging by the palsy-walsy crowd of past Demo participants and guests who crowded into Palo Alto's Zibibbo restaurant Tuesday night to mingle and mix with other "alumni."

Gnomedex, the Chris Pirillo-organized geekathon that took place over the weekend, claims to "unlock the attendee's spirit." Instead, the highlight of the event was the opening of a giant can of whoopass. Relentless self-promoter Jason Calacanis and blather-prone blogfather Dave Winer locked horns, and it wasn't pretty. Calacanis's presentation, unsuprisingly, was an infomercial for his latest venture, the human-powered search engine Mahalo. A few attendees started to heckle Calacanis, and Winer jumped in with the proclamation, "You're spamming us!" The presentation continued but led to a one-on-one berating, a weekend blogfight, the dissolution of a "friendship", and Winer withdrawing from Calacanis's TechCrunch20 startup conference. Winer's offended by Calacanis's self-promotion, Calacanis by Winer's lack of manners; but what really cheeses me off is their rank amateurism when it comes to heckling.

When Jason Calacanis finds a bully — other than the one he looks at every morning in the mirror, that is — his Brooklyn streetfighting instincts kick in. That's why he's going after Aftervote so hard. His response to a review declaring Aftervote "pimp" and superior to Calacanis' Mahalo? He Twittered that he has "inside info" that they'll be shut down for being "illegal." Of course, Dave Naylor, noted search-engine "optimizer" and the man behind Aftervote, did start the fight when he declared on his blog: "Aftervote will end Mahalo." What's really behind the fight and some choice quotes from the scrap, after the jump.

Jason Calacanis, in search of a full-fledged strategy for his flailing "human search engine" Mahalo, wants you to work for him. For free. The wealthy Internet tycoon is using Linkedin to ask: "Lots of discussion as to the value of Facebook for startups.... wondering, how would you market Mahalo on Facebook?" Calacanis's Facebook bankruptcy has left the Internet millionaire downright poor — in ideas about how to use social networks, at any rate. Our favorite answer, after the jump.

Jason Calacanis and Kevin Rose, interviewed together on the second episode of the GigaOm Show? Of course, the "fur would fly" — or so hosts Om Malik and Joyce Kim promised. Despite recent photographic evidence of a peace accord, Calacanis did, after all, try to undercut Kevin Rose's Digg social-news site with a revamped Netscape during his short tenure at AOL. So, did the claws come out?

Loren Feldman of 1938 Media sucking up to Jason Calacanis on his latest podcast: "If ...um... Mahalo went away, people would freak! If Facebook went away, I don't know if people would freak." [Calacaniscast]

When it comes to Web launches, Valley A-listers (Truemors, Mahalo) can't compete with baby landlords (Funnyordie). [Compete.com]

If you can't be Larry Page and Sergey Brin, why not try being Martha Stewart? That's Jason Calacanis's new plan. (We think he'd look absolutely fetching in an apron, too.) Less than two months after he launched his search engine, Calacanis has shifted strategies, emphasizing how-to content on the so-called "human powered search engine."

Mahalo, Jason Calacanis's new search-engine venture, uses Google's AdSense system to target ads to its content. But in placing the ads, Calacanis got a bit too chummy for Google's comfort. Mahalo's website cheerily informs users that the ads that appear are placed by "Our Friends at Google." Oh, really? We asked Google if the search engine was really best-friends-forever with Calacanis, or what. Here's what we heard back from Jason's supposed friends.

Lolcats vs. Jason Calacanis. "How can you call yourself a search engine when you're getting beat by cats with bad grammar?" [uncov]

Jason Calacanis' target for today is Seth Godin's Squidoo. Whether or not Squidoo is being gamed by search engine optimizers (SEOs), the puritanical founder of the human search engine Mahalo has a problem with porn. Apparently porn has no place on the web, and search tools should not index the dirty, dirty content. Or is Calacanis just upset that a search on Mahalo for "xxx" results in entries for the Dallas Cowboys, Michael Irvin, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Vin Diesel, and "porn" yields entries for churros, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, Jenna Jameson, and Tera Patrick? If Squidoo is being gamed by SEOs, maybe Mahalo could use a little gaming to shore up the relevancy of these presumably popular search terms.

James "Jimmy" Wales, founder of the non-profit, online encyclopedia Wikipedia and not yet developed, commercial search engine Wikia, exchanged barbs with Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc. and the recent human search engine Mahalo, over the holiday on the Wikia mailing lists. Wales says that, since it isn't free, Calacanis' Mahalo "is just not that interesting. I mean, I am sure it is lovely and all, but I really don't care about it." Calacanis, not one to shy from a fight, questions Wales' accuracy, memory, ability to hold his liquor, and apparent ambivalence. Calacanis, a constant self-promoter in need of publicity for Mahalo, and Wales, an idealist who can dismiss commercial concerns in favor of an academic debate, both benefit.

No one should be surprised that Jason Calacanis has taken issue with my analysis of the paltry traffic to his new search engine, Mahalo. Ever the promoter, Calacanis jumped right into the comments. But I am a bit disappointed that this is the best spin he could come up with: "Being in the top 20,000 on Alexa rank is a darn good for a one month old site." Really, dude, you're better. Let's review this list of Web pages which outscore Mahalo on Alexa:

In Latin, "ave atque vale" means "hello and goodbye." But in Hawaiian, the same word, "aloha," means both. How convenient for Mahalo, the Hawaiian-named search engine from Jason Calacanis. Calacanis is a ceaseless self-promoter in person, on his blog, on Twitter, and no doubt in mediums yet to be invented. But all his hard-charging Brooklyn ways have yet to bring Mahalo actual users. After the jump, a look at Mahalo's vanishingly small traffic.