Tiny bubbles: Home prices surged 13.6% in the second quarter.

Observation: For the past year, predictions of a housing market bust have been a staple of the business press. Home buyers must not be reading the same stuff I do. Is there a bubble in the housing market? Or, is there a bubble in stories predicting how the housing market bubble is about to bust? I wonder which will collapse first?

A key to understanding blogging’s popularity: (From Tuesday’s NY Times) “Gossip appears to be a very sophisticated, multifunctional interaction which is important in policing behaviors in a group and defining group membership.”

(Gossip is a big topic in Tuesday’s Times, as there’s another article about one of my favorite topics, celebrity magazines.)

Nashville Krystals add free wi-fi: Actually, Krystals all over the south have added free wi-fi, but I seem to be doing Nashville news tonight, so I thought I’d keep it hyperlocal. By the way, I discovered this news via an RSS feed of notifications when new free wi-fi locations in Nashville are added to this directory maintained by a business that says it can help a free wi-fi provider profit from giving away free wi-fi. I guess that means ways in addition to getting me to drop by.

Speaking of Nashville music that’s good: I just noticed that Nickel Creek’s new CD, Why Should the Fire Die? is the #1 iTunes album download today. There’s hope for the world, afterall.

That photo on the left of the 14-year-old (who turns 15 in a couple of weeks) and Nickle Creek’s Chris Thile was taken in April.

That reminds me. Thanks to Terry Heaton who was nice enough to send me an e-mail recently when he learned that Nickel Creek is performing at the War Memorial Auditorium on October 15 (the Nickel Creek site says the 16th, also, so I guess they’ll add that date if necessary). (Ticket info – they officially go on sale 8/20, but I believe they are available now through a WRLT “presale” & because you read the rexblog. Use password “Rome”).

Tim O’Brien on “TNNK” podcast: If you haven’t listened to Candice Corrigan’s “The Nashville Nobody Knows” podcast recently (RSS, iTunes Link), a great place to start catching up is this interview with a genuine Nashville treasure, Tim O’Brien.

In addition to sampling some of his great mandolin playing and singing, he zings some great quotes, as well — like this one:

“One of the great things about Nashville is you have this opportunity to work with all these brilliant people who are here to get something together with music and they’re pretty open-minded. It’s only when you get to that little funnel that goes into playing country radio and trying to fit into that little teenie niche that it gets restricted.”

Other stuff people don’t understand: In addition to not knowing what RSS is, people don’t know how to use alarm clocks.

(Joe has a solution.)

You can learn stuff from people who tag like you: A really cool del.icio.us feature has just been added. I am not going to try to explain it. If you’re a del.icio.us user, Matt McAlister does a great job of doing that. However, if only 10% of people who read blogs even know what RSS is, then I’m sure as heck not going to bother with trying to explain what this feature is all about. Frankly, it’s probably not something you’d find interesting anyway, unless, that is, you want to tap into other people’s expertise and knowledge — specifically those who share your interests. But, really. I’d ignore it if I were you.

Flash – even people who read blogs don’t know what “trackbacks” are: No, wait. It’s not that they don’t know what trackbacks are that people are getting all buzzy over this morning. It’s that they don’t use RSS feeds — and don’t even know exactly what they are. When I get time, I’ll link back to a post I made a week or so ago about why such research is utterly meaningless. In the mean time, let me tell you about the time in 1996 when I asked a group of 300 business owners to raise their hands if they had their e-mail addresses printed on their business card. Less than ten did. I guess from that research, I could have assumed that e-mail was not catching on with people who run businesses.

Technorati Tags: nugatory

Extension extension: As long as there has been a rexblog, there have been links to stories about Maxim putting their name on some new product. Now it’s lounges.

AdAge RSS feeds: If you’re a registered user of their site, you can find them here. Steve Rubel has a link (I’m guessing it will be temporary) that doesn’t require registration.