Rocketboom 2.0 launches

Well, it took a couple days longer than planned, but Rocketboom is back up and running. With a new, post-Amanda Congdon face.

The "interim" host is a woman called Joanne Colan, who sports a charming and cosmopolitan English accent. And she comes across as spunky, confident and not even a little bit intimidated to fill Congdon's shoes.

Timing-wise, the launch couldn't have been more on the mark. That's because the first RB 2.0, as Colan calls it, comes on the same day that Kyle MacDonald completed his quest to trade up from a red paperclip to a house. In tribute, Colan hit the streets of New York in search of some trades of her own.

Over the course of a couple hours, she traded from a pirate eye patch to a book about pirates to a shawl to a Diesel jacket to a cigarette case and finally to a titanium energy-enhancing necklace. Hardly a house, but impressive for one day.

Anyway, Colan and Rocketboom owner Andrew Baron clearly want to diffuse the hoopla over Congdon's departure, and they do so by poking fun at the whole situation.

Colan leads off the first episode by saying, after sitting in a catcher's outfit being pelted by tomatoes, "In case you haven't heard, Amanda has left." This while a rush of screen shots of the many news stories about Congdon's split with Rocketboom flash by.

In the end, Colan sits in the anchor chair in front of the world map made so famous by Congdon and says, "Well, folks, that brings us to the end of the first day of RB 2.0."

And then, in a poke at Congdon and general assertions that Baron would have a difficult time replacing her, Colan says, smirking as she catches a final tomato thrown at her, "I guess it wasn't that hard after all."