When you think of the professionals running the world's wine businesses, filthy mouths and public urination are probably not the first character traits to come to mind. But Fred Franzia is no ordinary vintner. CEO of Bronco Wine, now the fourth-largest wine maker in the country, Franzia hasn't let success affect his head ... or his manners.

Joel Stein of Business 2.0 magazine recently had the "pleasure" of profiling Franzia in a lengthy piece that describes the brusque Franzia relieving himself against the side of his Jeep, cursing out the competition, and claiming "We can grow [grapes] on asphalt."

Bronco Wine was put on the map with the Charles Shaw brand of wine, affectionately known as "Two Buck Chuck" and available exclusively at privately-held Trader Joe's. The Chardonnay varietal of this bargain-basement-priced beverage recently nabbed a top prize at the 2007 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition. The label, which was first available at Trader Joe's in 2002, is now one of the fastest-growing brands in America, selling 5 million cases per year.

Business 2.0 is reportedly being closed. Nope, not sold. Not being put out for more intensive outside interest review. Just closed.

Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) has decided that October's issue will be Business 2.0's last, and the editor and nine others will be transferred to Fortune magazine. Time even apparently turned down an offer from Mansueto Ventures, the owner of rival magazine Fast Company, to buy the operation.

Maybe the offers were not high enough. The sad thing is that Business 2.0 was a magazine and a web site that had great proactive tech and trending articles for small and mid-sized businesses. When you read about the death of printing, there are starting to be many more casualties outside of some newspapers that aren't worth their weight. This is a sad one to see get the axe.

Jon C. Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter for 24/7 Wall St., LLC and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

One of my fun, quick reads each month is Business 2.0. It is a magazine for investors and entrepreneurs alike. It costs me practically nothing to subscribe (under $10) and covers new ideas, products, industries, and inventors, presenting off-line and online start-ups. I worry about losing this wonderful magazine. It seems that it has been shrinking over the past couple of years.

During the heyday of the Internet bubble period I could not wait to plow into my Red Herring magazine -- it collapsed with 'Web 1.0'. It went bankrupt and was bought out, or perhaps absorbed by Business 2.0 and now I find this is struggling too. Perhaps there are simply too many business publications or just too few entrepreneurs. I subscribe to at least ten and read plenty more online. But that's me and I have managed to mix business with pleasure. All of them contribute to my investment knowledge and my writing.

The latest issue August 2007 touches upon global initiatives; Electric Cars from Norway sold over the Internet to order with interchangeable batteries the company will own; the worlds largest uranium mine, owned and operated by Cameco Co. (NYSE: CCJ) of Canada; MBA's heading to Africa to learn and to help, and a "carbon free city" planned for Abu Dahbi are some of the topics. They also discuss new internet companies and copy-cat companies around the globe.

Hopefully there are others out there interested in learning about intriguing new ideas beyond their own immediate realm that are close enough to be real...real soon.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

It hasn't exactly been a huge secret that that ad sales have become less predictable and in many cases outright awful for almost any publication printed on paper. The New York Times has an article this morning discussing Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX) Business 2.0 magazine. Business 2.0 covers technology and information technology companies and trends and, frankly, has been a great source of information during its seven-year history.

Unfortunately, it appears that being a good publication just may not be enough these days. The New York Times is reporting that the September issue may be the final issue. The reason, of course, is a sharp ad drop. It notes a 38% drop through July 9 of this year, citing Magazine Publishers of America. The amazing thing is that the reader interest is there with the 2006 paid circulation of 623,000. Ad spending or not, it's a pretty sad day if a publication of this quality cannot make it on a subscriber base of that size.

Ad sales department consolidation may be to blame. A focus shift to the larger magazine titles is also cited. As always, follow the money. If an ad salesperson can make $5,000 for placing an ad in the top magazines, they are probably going to spend less time trying to make $1,000 on the smaller magazines. There have recently been changes at the top of the Time Inc. Business & Finance Network, yet it is far too soon to know if this will pay off.

The former Time magazine technology editor has also reportedly approached VC's about buying the magazine to break it out of Time. This is a sad state of affairs when solid publications such as this cannot prove to be profitable enough to stay afloat -- particularly with such high-paid circulation.

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Despite the news of Greg Isaacs' departure having been mentioned in several sites, this key eBay director's recent departure hasn't made the wire reports news. Isaacs announced his departure yesterday.

Who is Greg Isaacs, some of you might wonder? He's not on the big eBay's management list, after all. True. Greg Isaacs is, or rather was, the Director of the Developer Program at eBay.

Through AuctionBytes Blog, I found that Isaacs was mentioned in July 2006 in CNNMoney's Business 2.0 journal in the top 50 people who matter. The top ten names in the list include Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's co-founders, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO and Ray Ozzie of Microsoft. Then, in number 31, Greg Isaac is mentioned. Skype's co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, are ranked after him at number 36, just to give you an idea.

Greg Isaacs had managed to persuade eBay's management to allow outside developers access to eBay's database so that they could build tools and widgets around it. Already several startups have sprung up from the developer site.

This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote about how venture capital is starting to seep into the blogosphere ("Bloggers Find Financial Backers For Their Independent News Sites").

Deja vu  all over again?  Interestingly enough, back in the 1990s, there was a flood of money that flowed into content deals. Yes, some journalists were becoming dot-com multimillionaires. However, when Nasdaq collapsed, so did many of these ventures.  In fact, there was a book on the topic -- Starving to Death on $200 Million – which chronicled the implosion of the Industry Standard.

So, to use an ominous phrase:  is this time different?  Perhaps so.  Actually, the attraction of blogs is that they are fairly low cost.  This makes it possible to make money from niche categories.  Also, it is fairly easy to scale-up (since bandwidth is extremely cheap).

Some examples of recent financings:  Alan Patricof, who invested in Apple at the start-up phase, has put his own money in PaidContent.org; True Venture Partners invested in GigaOm.com, a popular blog by Om Malik, a writer for Business 2.0 (which is a publication of Time Warner); and Mark Cuban, who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo!, invested in Sharesleuth.com.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't get no love. His famous "monkey boy" performance is crazy-popular among those who thrive on poking fun at (and re-mixing) Ballmer's sweaty antics. He's being marginalized as Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie are groomed to replace Gates (and, we imagine, Ballmer as well) -- and reporters and analysts are jostling to get past him and talk to Ozzie, who everyone seems to adore.

Now the worst possible judgment, from Business 2.0 Magazine. He just doesn't matter. And what's more: he matters less than anyone in business. Ouch.

In conjunction with the mag's "50 Who Matter Now" list (featuring Ray Ozzie and competitive leaders Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and worst of all for Ballmer's ego, Bill Gates himself), Ballmer headlines the "10 People Who Don't Matter" segment. "Let's face it: The head of the world's biggest software company is a lame duck," the judgment begins.

A lame duck who decides what happens with billions of investors' -- of your -- cash. Somehow, that's not very comforting.