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Google Maps has just made it as easy as can be to embed a map in a Web post. This is a sample map showing the location of several of YoChicago's videos.

Jeff Jarvis suggests that AdAge is telling advertisers they have nothing to fear from their conservatism and myopia.

I'll be resuming posting on this journal in the near future. In the meantime, everyone should continue reading the often infuriating but more often wise postings at Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine. Hint: pay attention to what he has to say about media and ignore everything else.

Jonathan Last, at The Weekly Standard, wanders around the subject of improving journalism education before finally getting to his point:

If America's universities were providing students with adequate academic instruction, instead of pumping out degrees in pseudosubjects like "communications," then J-schools wouldn't need to adapt at all. They could simply shut down.

Speaking as an employer, I’d hate to see J-schools shut down or universities drop "communications" as a major. I’d have to spend more time screening resumes.

I won’t even consider hiring a recent grad who majored in "communications." In my way of thinking the major firmly brands its holder as a learning-averse individual who lacks ambition, is unable to communicate, knows nothing worth communicating, and has never been required to master any difficult subject.

Resumes from J-school grads, unless they went to Northwestern’s Medill School, go into the same reject file. J-school grads are dependably illiterate about the world of new media and – far worse – have bought into a way of thinking that makes them grossly dysfunctional in the new media world. They’re precociously pompous about not knowing what they don’t know.

Communications major? Reject. J-school grad. Reject. Next resume.

Craigslist’s Craig Newmark has been out visiting apartment rental services in New York.

My visit first creates a combination of disbelief and panic. I don't really say "Sure is a nice place you have here, sure be a shame if…", which is to say I manage to control my sense of humor, but it's tempting.

Not too tempting: Craig knows how dependent his business is on letting the fraudsters prey on his so-called community. He’s encouraged them for years, and shows no signs of stopping.

From the ever-wonderful Hugh Macleod at Gaping Void.

Go read the descriptions of Backfence’s acquisition of Bayosphere at CyberJournalist.net, Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, and Yelvington.com.

I did, and I’m asking myself some questions these posts didn’t answer.

First, why should anyone care that one lame loser is taking over another?

Second, what's the reality of Backfence?

The reality, as I see it, after spending some time at the Bethesda site, is that this particular back fence has been spectacularly successful at keeping the neighbors out and a failure at everything else. It’s a virtual ghost town.

If you get lonely in Bethesda, head on over to McLean, VA and click Right now to see what was going on months ago that no one cared to comment on. The 4 most recent posts in Right now are dated April 3, March 15, March 13 of this year and November 7 of last year.

My third question is whether losing touch with reality is an occupational hazard of being in the media business these days, and when that hazard’s going to whack me, if it hasn't already?

New Homes Magazine ad sales are up 20 percent year-over-year through the May issue, without any increase in ad rates.

Online revenues from YoChicago and Housing Newswire are largely theoretical at this point - a bit beyond the fabled "tens of dollars" that newspaper sites were once mocked for generating, but not enough to talk about.

Weak online revenues are not yet a cause for concern. Print's up substantially over budget. And, we have yet to finalize our online offerings and begin asking for orders.

We've been focused on recruiting, adding and training several new staff members. We've also redesigned the YoChicago site (rollout next week) even though it's new, has been well received and is growing its audience.

The bulk of our time and attention recently has been devoted to establishing a base for our neighborhood guide content and our other audience-building features. More on that topic soon.

If you’re too lazy to run your own mass advertising scams on Craigslist, you can hire these guys to do it for you. Need to spam the nation with thousands of phony listings overnight? Not a problem.

Think Craig will protect his community from mass spam? Think again. Craigslist is all about the money. The more active the marketplace appears to be, the more money will flow in the long run.

Mike Miner's ever-enjoyable Hot Type column at the Chicago Reader has a deliciously ambiguous quote from Craigslist's Craig.

eBay and Craigslist, says Newmark, "share a similar moral compass."

It's a moral compass they share with Gordon Gekko: "Greed is good… It's all about the bucks, kid. The rest is conversation."

HomeStore.com is rebranding itself as Move.com next quarter and making a wide variety of changes to its product offerings and business model. Taken together, these changes have the potential to make the company a stronger competitor for advertising revenues.

We're most interested in their plan to enable Realtors and others to provide community information. Our guess is that this will prove beneficial to us, by raising awareness of the value of this content, and the difficulty the company will have in doing it well on a national basis.