PAUL BOUTIN — Skip the year-end recaps and next week's inevitable Predictions for 2007. Instead, bone up on these four tech/biz insiders whose blogs you don't read, but should say you do. All four are way more successful than you. Each posts faster than you can read. SVUG's party trick: Read 'em today, then trust they'll keep blogging the same topics through March.

Don't be fooled by these guys' low-flying Alexa charts. Anyone who's anybody in the Valley reads them — or pretends to. So should you.

Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick

• Day job: Owner, Dallas Mavericks basketball team.


• Claim to fame: Web 1.0 billionaire from now-forgotten Broadcast.com.


• Blogs incessantly about: The Internet biz, NBA inside basketball, lying-sack-of-shit reporters.


• Best-known post: "I still think Google is crazy."


• Fail-safe banter about Cuban: "If all reporters are liars, why doesn't he just stop talking to them?"

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail

• Day job: Editor in Chief, Wired magazine.


• Claim to fame: Author of The Long Tail, which posits that because of digital distribution, there's more money to be made selling an infinite number of non-hits than a handful of megahits.


• Blogs incessantly about: Because of digital distribution, there's more money to be made from, say, photofinishing an infinite number of ...


• Best-known post: "What would radical transparency mean" for his own magazine?


• Fail-safe banter about Anderson: "He's brilliant, but just once I'd like to see him go nuts on somebody."

Fred Wilson, A VC

• Day job: Partner in Union Square Ventures, investor in del.icio.us and Feedburner.


• Claim to fame: Made a killing on dot-coms. His house is worth more than your company.


• Blogs incessantly about: The quotidian concerns of a wildly successful investor.


• Best-known post: "Is the traditonal Venture Capital model broken?"


• Fail-safe banter about Wilson: "I'm convinced he's mocking us, 'Here's how to get as rich as me, but you'll never pull it off.'"

Dave Winer, Scripting News

• Day job: Scripting News.


• Claim to fame: Unofficial alpha noodge for Web standards including RSS, podcasting, stuff we forgot.


• Blogs incessantly about: How he never gets enough credit.


• Best-known post: September 11, 2001 when his site didn't crash along with the entire mainstream media.


• Fail-safe banter about Winer: "I can't stand him. Especially when he's right."