Geraci has a neato-keen idea to have New York's huddled masses monitor bus delays with their cell phones. The Observer gushes:

His DIYcity initiative challenges tech whizzes, futurists and even regular Facebookers to take transportation, and other antiquated city services, into their own hands by using modern technology-from geospatial tracking devices to social media platforms like Twitter to government data and stats.

Note whom DIYcity does not challenge: John Geraci. Geraci has a history of dabbling in changing the world through technology, but never quite seeing a project through to transformative fruition:

DIYcity IS THE culmination of six years of Mr. Geraci's work to improve cities with the Web. A Bay Area native, Mr. Geraci graduated from N.Y.U.'s Interactive Telecommunications Program, an incubator for some of the city's brightest tech brains, in 2005. In May 2004, he launched Neighbornode, a project that took the local community corkboard online-encouraging neighbors to set up their own wireless hot spots and create connections through electronic bulletin boards. The next year he created Grafedia, which connected graffiti in the streets to the online world. His thesis project, Foundcity, took inspiration from bookmarking site del.icio.us and photo-sharing site Flickr, and asked users to "bookmark" real-world locations and sites by text or picture message and "tag" them with descriptive words.

In February 2007, Mr. Geraci co-founded (with Everything Bad Is Good for You author Steven Johnson) Outside.in, a site that scrapes information from local blogs, event listings and other online media so people can see what's happening locally. Mr. Geraci recently reduced his responsibilities as head product developer for Outside.in and is only working part time to devote himself to fund-raising and advocacy efforts for DIYcity.

Somehow, we're supposed to see this flitting from project to project as the ever-building narrative of a genius at work. What it actually looks like: A 38-year-old guy who still hasn't learned to finish what he starts.

(Photo by Sean Ellingson/New York Observer)

Sure, publisher Arianna Huffington made noises about local HuffPos last year, but that was when she was in the process of raising an impressive $25 million. No one expected her to stick to that plan, particularly given the low-margins of selling advertising on a local level. (For a sense of how that business is doing ask, oh, any daily newspaper in the country. Or Curbed!)

If HuffPo were going to enter those markets, wouldn't it make more sense to do it on the cheap, shaking some free writers out of its giant database of "citizen journalists" rather than paying for a curious Web application that hasn't exactly set the world on fire? Maybe not: Huffington let her once-successful database project decay before handing it off to her Godson. And as any old media company can tell you, when you lose the ability to innovate internally, it's time to roll out the acquisitions.

(If you know anything about the HuffPo-outside.in talks, we'd love to hear from you. Outside.in employees might want to read up on the office habits of their would-be new boss.)

Tina Fey (or someone doing a bad impression of Fey, who could possibly be Fey herself) questioned her masticatory work ethic.

YouTube microstar Michael Buckley wanted to listen in on an intimate moment.

New York editrix (and beloved Gawker alumna) Jessica Coen wanted to lick herself.

Wired contributor Sarah Lai Stirland couldn't even contemplate the idea that the new chair of the FCC might have defriended her.

Steven Berlin Johnson, the author and chairman of New York startup Outside.in, announced plans to drink at a book reading. (Note: We hear Johnson is getting paid by Outside.in even when he's on book leave. So venture capitalists are paying him to read and drink. Sweet!)

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