On Monday, ESPN.com columnist, former Associated Content VP and guy known best in some circles as the blogger personally uninvited to last year’s Blog With Balls sports blogger conference by Joakim Noah, Dan Shanoff, launched Quickish, an almost-realtime, editor-curated news recommendation service. I’ve been scanning it a few times a day and really enjoy it, predominantly because Shanoff, true to form, launched with sports as the flagship subject-matter.

If for nothing else, commend him for launching this before the Verizon iPhone announcement.

Here’s what TechCrunch had to say about Quickish…

News recommendation services are plenty, and they all try to crack a similar nut: getting news updates more rapidly in front of people who are likely to be interested in them. Quickish is no different, yet, as the name implies, recommendations for online news items are shared quickly but decidedly not instantaneously.


That’s because Quickish shuns automated systems and relies on editor-vetted news recommendations, which are nonetheless delivered at modern media consumption speed.


In Shanoff’s words:
“People have made it clear how they want to stay updated: fast. Quick to know something happened, quick to access the best of what is being said, quick to consume, quick to recognize if something is worth their time. Quickish is built for them.”

Personally, I’m up for vetted – hopefully more intelligent – content recommendation in 2011. Along with the launch of Quickish, consider the success The Daily Beast continues to build with The Cheat Sheet and the recent mass growth of Q&A platform Quora – who reserves the right to delete your question if it’s too foolish (Yahoo! Answers-esque). Maybe seeking smarter content will become a trend this year? Could mean big things for sites like Quickish if they do a good job.

For those who don’t know why I mentioned Joakim Noah…

Blogs With Balls 3.0 | Joakim Noah from HHR on Vimeo.

My good pal Jake who writes for this blog sent this to me yesterday letting me know that Joakim Noah’s dad and former tennis great Yannick Noah may have, as it’s been rumored, in fact at one point in his life been legitimate musically. Why else would Central Park have added him to the list of artists playing Summerstage, right?

Yannick the tennis phenom went pro in ’77 at the age of 17. Among his feats of tennis prowess include becoming the first Frenchman to win the French Open in 37 years when he did so in 1983 (dropping only one set throughout the tournament). During his career, Noah won a combined 39 singles and doubles titles and was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2005. He also played on the French Davis Cup Team for 11 years. In 1991, Noah captained a French team which won its first Davis Cup title in 59 years.

That same year, Noah released his debut album Black of What. Apparently, after winning the Davis Cup, he led his player and the whole stadium in a rousing rendition of Saga Africa, his breakout track off of Black or What. (Wikipedia – Yannick Noah)

Did I mention the show in Central Park is free?