This lil guy from South of Beale needs a home

On this week’s Social Expedition podcast, we cover a surprisingly wide range of topics, from Mashable’s Open Web Awards (we liked their “Most Interesting Twitter User” and were fairly nonplussed by their “Best Breaking News Site“) to why the iPod’s interface pwns Guy Kawasaki’s linking. Also: puppies found by South of Beale, Ardent Music, and a disturbingly extensive display of soap opera knowledge among all of us.

Conversations are already starting to sprout up about the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, TX.

We brought in Kerry Hayes, the Special Assistant for Research and Innovation from Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton’s office to talk about the mayor’s use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media in communicating with Memphians and keeping us updated on what they’re doing. We also cover Net Neutrality and bringing high-speed internet access to all Memphians.

Join us on Friday for the call-in Core Conversations podcast for predictions about what 2010 holds in store for social media, tech, and emerging Web technology.

You can download the podcast here, click the player below to listen on this page, or click the banner to subscribe in iTunes.

It’s a fitting time to be on this topic with the launch this week of Google’s social search, a tool that displays your online peers’ opinions and comments right alongside traditional sources in search engine results. We tackle the social search, plus social media news in Memphis, how city entities are using social media to improve services and more in this episode.

Elizabeth Cawein, Matthew Crawford Trisler, Elizabeth Lemmonds, Dave Barger

For the URLs mentioned in this podcast, see the complete list below, and be sure to join us Friday for our Core Conversation call-in podcast on doing business through social media.

This episode mentioned the following links:

• Google Social Search
• The Memphis Chamber on Twitter
• MemphisConnect.com
• MemphisConnect on Twitter

Download the episode here, or click below to listen on the page.

"Mastering" by kasperbaago on Flickr

But, as we said, the interview was heavily edited to meet our desired time limit – roughly 30 minutes. In reality, the conversation covered a lot more, from their recent Twitter epiphany, to their day jobs, to the value they find in their community.

Download or listen > The Unedited “Shut Up and Listen” Interview

You’ll probably also notice, if you’ve listened to the podcast, that a lot of the conversation was originally in a different order. In cutting down the interview for time, it was also necessary to re-sequence the conversation somewhat to maintain a natural-sounding dialog.

If you have questions about whether these edits are par for the course, we’ll have to defer you to some people who’ve been doing this longer than we have – here’s a story about editing audio for radio by John Solomon, from NPR’s “On the Media.”