In this interview with The Deal's Mary Kathleen Flynn, Jason Calacanis recounts how he got in a little hot water with his advice for startups when he urged founders to "fire people who are not workaholics" and tell them to "go work at the post office or Starbucks if you want balance in your life." Calacans explains that he didn't mean what he said the way it sounded. And then, elaborating, he explains that, well, yes, he actually did.

Yesterday, ESPN kicked third-party ad networks off its site. Good move, writes Mahalo CEO and Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis on his blog in 430 words. Here's a version for your ad sales guy to read after lunch while waiting for Salesforce.com pages to load.

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.

What was Star editrix-at-large Julia Allison saying to Tumblr's David Karp while they waited for Jason Calacanis's limo in Manhattan? (Photo by innonate)

"Charles Forman is the most arrogant person I've ever met. Other than myself." — Jason Calacanis, on the tight-T-shirted Iminlikewithyou founder.

At his Dim Sum 2.0 dinner in New York last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis congratulated Silicon Alley Insider blogger Dan Frommer on his boss's fundraising abilities. Calacanis said he'd heard Blodget raised $12 million for the New York tech blog. Frommer asked Calacanis if he meant $3 million to $5 million, as TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington reported yesterday. No, Calacanis said, he'd heard $12 million from one of the investors.

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.

New strategy for dealing with Nick Denton: everyone give him a HUGE 30second hug. We will hug the love back into him (nick carlson's idea!)

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 ...

Mahalo.com developer Chris Finke blew up a bad screenshot of Jason Calacanis AOL's Netscape Propeller redesign. But we need more pixels to make sure something's actually changed. (Photo by dvanvliet)

Jason Calacanis started a company, Weblogs Inc., and sold it to AOL for $25 million. And he has some ideas on how to build a successful startup. But Mark Cuban started a company, Broadcast.com, and sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. So you'd probably rather read Cuban's "Rules for Startups" post — though not all 707 words of it. Here's a version you have time for:

"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!

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined egoblogger Robert Scoble and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis for dinner last night. After, the trio took to the streets of Santa Monica for a little street racing. Scoble and Musk in a Tesla. Calacanis in a Corvette convertible. "The Tesla smoked the 'vette," Scoble reports on his blog. Jalopnik editor Ray Wert tells us this mostly speaks to Calacanis's inability to drive. Both Calacanis and Scoble took video, of course, and both streams are embedded below.

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.

Facebook has made it easier on users who have lots of friends sending them zombie bites, quizzes and sheep. A notice appeared in my News Feed this evening telling me that Facebook has added a "clear all" option for those who have more than 25 requests pending. Noted Facebook-friend collectors Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble must be dancing a happy dance at this development.