This post on SFGate’s Tech Chronicles alerts us to the interesting tidbit that Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak has invested “an undisclosed sum of money” in Numedeon, creator of Whyville.

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”
—Aldous Huxley

Thanks to the folks over at ad:tech, who’ve included me in their judging process for the 2008 ad:tech Interactive Awards. Bummer that I’ll probably miss the Awards Ceremony during ad:tech San Francisco in April. Word is it’ll be held at Mezzanine, a San Francisco nightspot. I wonder if they can fax me a beer. Or a black Russian.

Oops.

Takeaway for marketers: No matter how often it’s said, it always seems to bear repeating: Words matter.

Take Digg-style rankings and mash them up against an FC.com-style microscope on startups and whaddya get? KillerStartups.com.

Seems like a good idea. After all, a startup needs to get some traction among early adopters if it’s going to go anywhere, and this seems like a pretty good way of seeing who has that early traction.

More than 8,500 startups have been ranked so far, with the top-ranking startup of all time being ourTVad.com, which has received 13,714 “killers” (their equivalent of “diggs”). Though I have to wonder whether their system is easily gamed: 13,714 “killers” and no comments? That doesn’t quite pass the sniff test.

Still, it’s a fascinating site, and fun to explore the thousands of startups listed. As they say on their “About Us” page, they “follow blindly the belief that the wisdom of crowds will be able to determine who ‘the next big thing’ on the Internet will be.” If enough people plug into their site, they could very well be right.