Let's gather some info on the essentials and begin by navigating over to Chris Pirillo's live site, where you can usually find an operational example of the popular boredom elements that can be found on Ustream. Boredom does not mean unpopular. The guys has well over 300 viewers checking in with him right now. And as for the excitement that attracts them, well, it must be the back of his head hunkered down behind his computer monitor. Or maybe it's the distant finger taps upon the computer keyboard. I haven't quite figured it out. But do take note that Chris has amassed a formidable following, more formidable than a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host, Rusty Humphries, who enlists Ustream to accompany his live terrestrial radio show. You can check here for the Rusty Humphries Live video stream embed of his show, which unfortunately does not include chat. Or for the full social effect, simply log onto the Rusty Humphries Ustream.

And to that end, here's a semi-related side bar on the subject of Rusty.

Myself, amid other followers, watched along while Rusty streamed his bachelor party several days ago. There were some characters. And as boring as a cigar party with a few drinks might very well be, it was nevertheless lively, due in part to the gaggle of guys and gals working the crowd on both ends. On my end, there were the masses who chimed into the chat forum, which is conducted through straight Ustream account chat as well as Facebook and Twitter authenticated social chat. On the other end, it was the cigar party, living high on the hog. It was interactive and hilarious. I miss the days of performing real-time Off-Road.com-style editorial updates. Among other accolades, I am indeed a funny guy. But on the streamed end, the true star of the show, the de facto host, was Navy Dude In Red Shirt. We do have his real name, rank and social security number, which he offered to the stream in good fun and resulted in a jovial threat to report his actions to his CO (commanding officer).

As for Rusty, he left himself to the ambient noise most of the time, mixing amongst the real crowd, chiming in every so often to see what what the laughter was all about. And when he did, I led the charge to get him to stream his wedding and added to that the concept to launch a weekly round table discussion around cigar bar. His last words before the stream ended late into the next morning was something along the lines of: "Fidel, we ain't doing that." That was sometime Saturday morning in Hawaii.

Monday evening rolled around. His fill in host opened up the Rusty Humphries show with exuberance, announcing with great glee that the wedding would indeed be streamed via Ustream.

And so it was. The wedding was streamed. Whether that be due in part to the fact that Rusty no longer wears the pants or weather his gaggle of fans that make up his fan club strong armed him just enough is as of yet unknown and is of no concern. The next step for the gaggle of rogue fans is to unashamedly seek the weekly cigar bar roundtable stream.

What's the point? Well, as we work our way back to Chris Pirillo's stream, it may very well be that boredom is in vogue. And if so, perhaps this is due in part that boredom may be boring but boring is nevertheless engaging when live upon the web. Just check the kid's Twitter following. Numbers don't lie. Sign him up with some sponsorship dollars.

So, if boring is engaging and amassing a credible following, then perhaps if we were to add some engaging characters to an otherwise boring social media stream, would we not have some far more engaging. And let's add some adrenaline-charged content that feeds into the world of action sports and gear heads. Would we take the otherwise boring social media stream to the level of viral brand propagation?

Hmm. Something to consider.

Now, let's real in my overzealous side bars a bit. Just for a bit, though.

I briefly glanced at the King Of The Hammers stream last week. Pirate 4X4 and Dirt Newz combined their resources in the effort.

I have known Lance Clifford for nearly a decade, back when his website was relatively small. Sometime late during that era, Tim Sanchez, founder of Dirt Newz, was introduced to the realm of the World Wide Web. I hired him as a freelancer at Off-Road.com.

Way back then, the website I ran, Off-Road.com, was bustling in the high end of its heyday and the top dog when it came to web traffic in the off-road and powersports industries. For motorsports, it was touted as the second largest motorsports website in the world next to NASCAR.com. We ranked in somewhere within the top 12,000 and as low as the top 10,000 websites in the world, according to Alexa and other sources. Pirate 4X4 has yet to surpass that statistic, but ever since we sold Off-Road.com to Advanstar, Pirate 4X4 slipped in to take charge of the industry and soon became the off-road industry's top dog for web traffic. There are many events that assisted Pirate 4X4 in its effort, but most of it is attributable to Off-Road.com itself. It's sage editorial lineup gave way to inept marketing gurus who had no clue about the lifestyle industry. Rather than hip shooting savvy tech articles laced with raw humor and haphazzard stunts, the crew cranked out press releases and glorified editorial advertising, geared primarily toward the ATV segment of the site. What really sealed the deal for the site was when it switched over to a bloated content management system. It lost the core of its off-the-cuff content and the community that amassed amongst it. Any editorial that did not meet the marketing objectives was eliminated. Other articles that made the cut were often mangled by the tech geek charged with the duty to copy and paste the content into the new system.

Short version, as Norm Lenhart would say, was that as a last ditch effort, Off-Road.com laid the scantly clad ladies on thick, pimping sexy to sell an imploding website. They still tried. They caught wind of social media scurried without time to waste, dropping Kick Apps onto a sub-domain. Attesting to wanton nature of a sinking ship, they aptly named the sub-domain "my," as in MySpace, which most in the social media marketing realm realized was fling that lost its zing to the emerging Facebook social networking platform.

Back to the subject matter at hand.

A while back, Lance Clifford caught up with me via instant messaging. This was over a year or so ago. He questioned me about doing some real-time Off-Road.com style event coverage. I gave him a few hints. He went headway into a stream soon thereafter and doubled down once again, and here we are, some two King Of The Hammers later, and they are still attempting to strike the mark. Perhaps not my mark. But the mark I would aim for.

I won't go into much detail so as to give anyone more meat to chomp on than they might deserve. But I will allude to just how much Cover It Live SUCKS. And yet that's still not the sole reason why the mark was missed.

Now call this blog post to a close and work our way back to Ustream.

The subject of the Totally Off Road Radio Show emerged during a discussion earlier this morning. The TORR Show has long been dormant. Though, within the past week, the project regained a faint pulse with a non-show related update upon its website. I was alerted this evening its presence upon Ustream. I could not find anything recent. The latest update to the show dates back to April 29, 2009. It's shows have no title. The 20 seconds of the archived show video that I saw touted a grim 111 views after yearly a year upon the web. Something has got to be wrong with that picture.

Some things are more obvious than others. At a glance, it's easy to assume it's in the image. And it is. Look at it. It's bland. It lacks detail. Look closer. You'll also see that it lacks the key (word) ingredient. No. Not as in words. If you know the web and understand words then you know of what I speak. And it goes further. But we'll end it there.

Delving deeper into the core, it's about lifestyle and all about socially engaging the guts of the lifestyle, way down deep into the heart, into thine self, into the hardened core of the target market is manifested. No amount of market analysis can truly captivate the demographic. You cannot fake fast. And on the subject of fast, streaming and Ustream, one has got to aknowledge the Speed Technologies entry onto social streaming universe. Check the SpeedTechTeam Ustream page for a quick gander. The page has yet to see its first stream but its image thus far is one worthy of reference.