Before a green-rumped parrotlet is even able to chirp and squawk, mom and dad teach it a distinct series of sounds used by parrots to recognize a specific individual. In short, they give their nestling a name.

Wired Top Stories

With the national and international news game more or less dominated by traditional media and web giants like Google and Yahoo, much of the focus for companies that want to grow online is moving towards niches — sports, technology and other topics. But one of the biggest remaining unfilled niches in online content is hyper-local news. AOL has made the biggest investment in this segment, spending an estimated million or so on rolling out its Patch.com network last year to almost a thousand towns. But Topix CEO Chris Tolles — whose company aggregates news and community discussions around thousands of small towns and regions — says that is likely just the beginning of the hyper-local land rush.

The Topix co-founder says that one of the reasons why local content is ripe for investment, and one of the things that is likely pushing AOL in that direction, is that “local monetizes better than just about anything else” in terms of advertising. “The figures show that ads are about four times as effective if you localize them,” Tolles said. This phenomenon has likely been driving advertisers to work with other avenues like Groupon, who can target individual regions or towns. Topix, meanwhile, has been making an average CPM (cost per thousand) for its advertising, says Tolles, and has also been getting much more response from large ad agencies than in the past.

Two to three years ago when a sales rep would call on some Madison Avenue firm, the 25-year-old sales guy would say “local sounds like my local news, and that sounds like my mom and dad — so no thanks.” Now they’re saying “local sounds like Foursquare and I have an iPhone and that sounds interesting, so yes.”

Local advertising rates are climbing

The fact that CPMs for local advertising are up means that lots of companies like AOL and Yahoo — which is pursuing a Patch-like strategy with its Associated Content unit, which it acquired last year for an estimated 0 million — are going to be looking to amass as much content as possible so that they can get the scale necessary to make an impact on their businesses, the Topix CEO says. “It’s all about who can create a large local footprint,” he said. “I think we will see acquisitions this year, as part of a land grab from these companies, looking for someone who can deliver a large enough local footprint.”

Not surprisingly, Tolles says that Topix is in a pretty good position if that happens. The local news aggregator was profitable for the first time in 2010, he says — with revenues that were up by more than 50 percent compared with the previous year. “We are one of the largest local sites in the U.S.,” the CEO says, “larger than any other except maybe one of the big newspaper chains like Gannett or McClatchy. Not bad for about 30 people in an office in Palo Alto.” The site gets about 8 million uniques a month, he said, which is roughly the same as AOL’s Patch is estimated to have across its sites.

Topix doesn’t get much attention when it comes to the online-media space, perhaps because it has been around so long. It was created in 2004 as an automated news aggregator by a team that included Rich Skrenta — who now runs Blekko — and Tolles. They used algorithms to crawl tens of thousands of news sites, blogs and other sources of information and then filtered it into topics. Over time, the company started to focus on location as the main filter, and categorized the information into more than 20,000 towns and cities. In 2005 it got a large investment from several media companies including Gannett Communications, the Tribune Co. and McClatchy.

News is easy — community is the hard part

And what does Tolles think about competing with Patch, as AOL pours more money into the hyper-local effort, which is now in close to a thousand different towns across the U.S.? The Topix CEO says his site doesn’t really compete with Patch in many locations yet — and when Patch has good content from a local area, “we can aggregate that too,” he says. In some ways, Topix approaches local news in the same way that The Huffington Post did with national and international news: the site pulls in and shows excerpts of stories from other news sites. But more important even than the news, says Tolles, is the fact that Topix gives readers from those areas somewhere to discuss the news.

“We started out as a news aggregator, but the thing that we have done a really good job of is giving people a place to come and talk about the content, the news from their local community” the Topix CEO says. During the mid-term elections, for example, the site created pages for every local race, all the way from sherriff to local city council. Across all of its pages, Topix gets about 4 million comments a month from readers, which is roughly the same as The Huffington Post.

“Patch may be able to set up thousands of sites in local towns, but it takes time to develop that kind of community — it doesn’t just happen overnight,” says Tolles.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
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• What We Can Learn From the Guardian’s Open Platform

Post and thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user See-ming Lee

GigaOMTech

It is hard to get by in today’s technology based world without having some computer skills. No longer are children expected to do traditional homework. All students have to be well versed in computers, how to use them and how to navigate through the Internet safely. The Okidata C3200 Printer is a good solution for families who are looking to have a second printer in the home and is economical when used along with the C3200 toner.

In order to be able to handle today’s technological society, children need to learn the skills that enable them to compete when they get older. Children are being taught how to work a computer at younger and younger ages and some are even getting their first taste of the Internet in middle school. Computers are not all about playing games and this is one of the first lessons that are being taught in the elementary level.

Savvy parents are thinking of purchasing a second system for their children to use so that mom and dad’s computer is not being used for studies. The Okidata C3200 Printer makes a great choice for the kids because of the ease of use and the price is right. All the children can use this printer and it prints quickly enough that there is no waiting in line for it.

Part of the homework when in a technology or computer class is creating documents and then printing them out for review by the teacher. Older children may have graphic design classes which means that they create color graphics that need to be printed out as well. The Okidata laser toner offers crisp and clear graphic printouts that nearly guarantee a top grade.

The good news is that this printer not only is a great quality printer, but the toner is very cost effective, too. The reason for this is that this type of printer offers more prints per cartridge when compared to other printers. The initial expense of the toner can be a bit more than purchasing other types of printing media cartridges but, overall, the savings are found over time.

To add even further savings, the kids can print out as many times as they want without worrying about the toner quitting on them because they print more than other types of printers. Mom and dad are going to love that they do not have to spend much more for this printer than other printers, too. Other printers, like the dot matrix which are very cheap, are not even sold anymore.

For families who need to have an extra printer for the children and who need to save money, the Okidata C3200 Printer is a great cost effective choice. The Okidata 43034802 may cost a few more pennies but offers savings over and above any other type of printer. If you want you child to succeed in their technology or computer classes, they need to have a printer that can handle the load and this printer with Okidata printer toners is an option everyone can agree on.

Electronics for kids have always been a fascination of mine. When I first saw the iXL I immediately thought of the first and best piece of kids consumer electronics, the PXL-2000. Sadly, this device, the Fisher-Price iXL, has no camera – there are two little eyes on it that are actually light sensors – but it has a bright, crisp screen and can play games, MP3s, and you can even paint over photos or color things in like a coloring book.

Fisher-Price is aiming this at kids who may not be old enough to fool around with your iPhone but still want cool stuff to play with in the car. Again, this is en electronic device for kids and, for my money, the jury is still out on whether this encourages constructive play. However, if mom and dad can’t give up their iPhones, why should junior have to go without?

The Fisher-Price iXL arrives in July and starts at $79.99.

We at CrunchGear seem to have opened some sort of strange Pandora’s Box resulting in a number of offers to send us marital aids for review. First it was the Sqweel and now it’s the Tenga Flip Hole. Mom and Dad: I’m sorry you wasted all that money on college for me.

The Tenga Flip Hole is a $70 Japanese sex jar (”onacup” in Japan) for men. It works thusly: You unpack it and open it up. Inside is a mass of strangely shaped and knurled silicone with an opening at the bottom. It is clad in hard plastic and those three knobs on the side allow for some sort of marionette-like method of pumping the plastic inside. It also has a fake hymen.

To repeat: It also has a fake hymen.

To use it you open it up, place a quantity of lubricant inside (”Mild, “Cool Ranch,” and “Wild” are the styles included with this kit), and then close it. You then introduce your male member into the hole at the bottom (past the freaking fake hymen) and manipulate the device until issue. You then wash the thing out and go eat a candy bar from the box that your son’s school is making you sell but since you work from home you can’t sell them in an office so they lie around the house all day and all you do is eat them because your wife doesn’t eat milk chocolate and you don’t have the will power to resist them, let alone resist twirling it into a Japanese sex jar.

While your own methodology may vary, I’m here to tell you that this is what sex will be like when we are colonized by the machines. Males will be given these devices to produce genetic material which will then be processed and pre-screened for genetic defects like “free will” by the robot overlords. The resulting slurry will be sent to the female inseminating fields where the next generation of bio-battery will be grown. The Tenga Flip Hole is what a robot thinks sex feels like: efficient, well engineered, and decidedly unnatural.

Sweet, merciful Cher. I had sex with a jar.

I received two of these devices from JList.com, a disposable model $12 U.S. Tenga model and this Flip Hole [NSFW link] (FTC please note: You are free to pick these up from my place of business in lieu of the standard disclosure documentation you will soon force us bloggers to prepare.) The $12 disposable model contained lubricant and was a one-time use device, something I cannot condone considering carbon footprint of waxing the dolphin inside a plastic cup and then throwing it away. I would say, however, that when using the Flip Hole you’ll want to use a lot of lubricant. It’s a tight squeeze, even for men as poorly endowed as me, and… I have a Master’s Degree in Business Journalism. Let’s not forget that.

Bottom Line
The world is full of lots of kinds of people. There are people who sing, people who dance, people who make gourmet cookies at a little place outside of the Hyannis Airport. And there are people who make onacups and people who have sex with those onacups. Now that I know what kind of person I am, I’m better for it.

Is it an amazing experience? If you’re alone and lonely and want to give Aunt Palm a rest, you know what? Yeah, it is a great time. I found I enjoyed it more in the company of my fine lady wife but that’s just how I butter my toast. You do what you need to do to get by. Different strokes for different folks, pip pip, cheerio.

Incidentally, Danny Choo has lots of photos of his Tenga Flip Hole. Go look at his.

It sure is great to live in the developed world. No having to worry about having enough to eat or finding clean drinking water or anything like that. Nope: we freak out when Twitter momentarily goes down, or when we can’t use certain software on our phones. Or, conversely, we complain about the undue influence certain technologies have over our lives. We’re all over the place.

So an article in the NYT zeroes in on the lives of a few families and how technology has torn them apart. You know, reading your e-mail at the dinner table instead of talking to your kids/parents; checking text messages within 1.2 seconds of getting out of bed, etc. The implication is that these activities are bad for traditional family life.

Consider this morning:

Both adults and children have good reasons to wake up and log on. Mom and Dad might need to catch up on e-mail from colleagues in different time zones. Children check text messages and Facebook posts from friends with different bedtimes — and sometime forget their chores in the process.

Terrifying.

I actually read something along these lines about a month ago. It’s called “disconnectivity anxiety.” It’s exactly as it sounds: people have become so conditioned to always being online that when the connection goes away they go crazy.

Or:

First, our expectations of connectivity have changed dramatically in the past decade. Before the Internet, mobile phones, text messaging, and now Twitter, we simply knew we couldn’t be reached readily by anyone except in person or by landline telephone. The default was disconnectivity, so being disconnected was the norm. Any ability to connect beyond that was a bonus. These days, the expectation is that we can be connected in many ways at any time by anyone. The default is connectivity, so being connected has become the norm. Any break from that norm feels like a loss.

To me, that sounds like a condition that can be unlearned. Sure, be glued to your BlackBerry during work hours, but once you leave the office turn the damn thing off.