http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/valleywag.com.png http://valleywag.com http://valleywag.com Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:05:45 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096419&view=rss&microfeed=true We make fun of everything here, even death. But it's still too soon to laugh over the three SiPort employees gunned down by a coworker, or the misguided teenager who overdosed live on Justin.tv. That... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:57:09 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096408&view=rss&microfeed=true Layoffs suck. At least we're still alive. But still: Next week, I'll handle Valleywag all by myself while Owen takes an overdue vacation. Week after that, I'll be gone and Owen, my partner in... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:39:22 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096333&view=rss&microfeed=true "Merman" shares a birthday and a favorite musician — Jimi Hendrix — with chubby-but-hardrocking guitarist Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder behind Seattle's Experience Music Project... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:22:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096414&view=rss&microfeed=true "15 people laid off there today," says a tipster via email. "On a FRIDAY... Ouch. Have confirmation it’s across the board (sales, product, development etc.)" Our tipster didn't get it quite right... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:19:04 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096355&view=rss&microfeed=true "Spammers and scam artists are abusing Microsoft's live.com and livefilestore.com properties to redirect visitors to sites that peddle fake pharmacy products, porn and Nigerian 419 scams." That's how... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096382&view=rss&microfeed=true An unproar in the world of tech blogs is uncovering a broader fault line between writers and advertisers. Om Malik's GigaOm and his other blogs have dropped their outside ad-sales firm, Federated... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:40:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096308&view=rss&microfeed=true This is why people love Apple executive turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, whether or not he knows what he's talking about. At a Commonwealth Club event, Kawasaki was asked about his insanely... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:20:00 PST http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5058659&view=rss&microfeed=true Thanks to this week's sponsors: Chevy Fuel Solutions, Cingular, Energizer, Gyration Air Mouse, HP MediaSmart Server, Livescribe, The Mercury Group, MSN, The New York Times Magazine, Nokia, Pernod,... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096252&view=rss&microfeed=true Through the golden heart of every world-changing startup pulses an avaricious get-rich-quick scheme. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the billionaire-boy cofounders of Google, established this... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096138&view=rss&microfeed=true Into the jaws of an advertising recession comes the launch of the most hubristic media venture we've heard of: a "super-stealth new online company backed and funded by some legendary billionaires."... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096194&view=rss&microfeed=true President-elect Barack Obama has picked Tim Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rather than former Harvard University president Larry Summers, as Treasury secretary. That... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096117&view=rss&microfeed=true A tipster tells us that Palm, the troubled smartphone maker, is laying off 10 percent of its staff. I called a spokeswoman at the company, who confirmed the layoffs but not the number of employees... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:40:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095989&view=rss&microfeed=true With a name like SearchWiki, you know it's going to be clever, yet stupid. Google has spent ten years and I don't know how many hundred million dollars refining a rocket-science algorithm for ranking... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096007&view=rss&microfeed=true It was a fantasy left over from the last boom: Hire a movie star to pitch your startup, and the dusting of tinsel will turbocharge sales. Those William Shatner ads sold plane tickets for Priceline,... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:00:00 PST Adriana Nunez http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095704&view=rss&microfeed=true What, someone's hiring? Fixya, which is doling out the free food at Lunch 2.0 today, is hiring. Grab a bite and a job. Tomorrow indulge your YouTube habit. Your favorite timesuck is streaming live... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:40:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095961&view=rss&microfeed=true "There should be no Business Group, Technology Group or Business Unit-funded holiday parties." That's the extra bullet through the heart in an email being sent around Cisco. I've screencapped only... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:20:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095856&view=rss&microfeed=true On Wednesday, a 19-year-old young man in Florida killed himself live on the Internet, broadcasting the event by connecting a webcam in his bedroom to Justin.tv, a lifecasting site. Viewers who tuned... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:51 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095794&view=rss&microfeed=true It wasn't his BlackBerry, it was a non-smartphone. But Verizon has confirmed that several employees used their access to view President Change's private records for a cellphone account. Verizon's... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095418&view=rss&microfeed=true Lifecasting, a kind of do-it-yourself reality TV broadcast on the Internet, has thousands of practitioners. Until last night, one of them was Abraham Biggs, a 19-year-old Florida resident, who used a... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095383&view=rss&microfeed=true If Chinese viewers want to watch Disney's Hannah Montana — no accounting for global tastes — they can do so on 56.com, an online-video site akin to YouTube. The show is pirated. But does... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095211&view=rss&microfeed=true Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Sergey Brin, is exceedingly pregnant — and Brin himself has been spotted at the maternity ward. What will their baby look like? Wojcicki's genetic-testing startup,... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5095170&view=rss&microfeed=true What to expect when you're expecting a billionaire? A tipster reports seeing Google cofounder Sergey Brin running into a hospital, orange Crocs and all. Here's what that means: His wife, Anne... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094917&view=rss&microfeed=true It's the grand irony of Wi-Fi, a remarkably useful way of connecting to the Internet which has nevertheless proved to be a tough business to make money in. Aruba Networks, a maker of Wi-Fi equipment,... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094886&view=rss&microfeed=true For most of the rich, the object of charity is to make one's name known. Alberto Vilar, a founder of a once-high-flying tech-stocks fund who stiffed New York's Metropolitan Opera on a $25 million... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:40:00 PST Tim the IT Guy http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5091062&view=rss&microfeed=true Sooner or later we need to slam shut the door on technical have-nots. Pew Research found that nearly half of adults surveyed need help setting up computers and cell phones. Ars Technica notes what... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:00:00 PST Adriana Nunez http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094536&view=rss&microfeed=true If your office cut its holiday day party budget, don't despair! There's still ample opportunity to make out with that coworker from the 3rd floor — on someone else's dime. iWidgets is launching... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094671&view=rss&microfeed=true Google has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094524&view=rss&microfeed=true Desperate to train employees in the way of their customers on the other end of the world, Indian tech outfits teach them American accents, the names of local football and baseball teams, and slang... Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:40:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5094027&view=rss&microfeed=true eHarmony does not hate gay people. It is merely ignorant of them. That is the dating site's excuse for excluding same-sex customers — a practice that led a gay New Jersey man, Eric McKinley, to... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093796&view=rss&microfeed=true One imagines Facebook as a geek utopia, where hackers who dropped out of college play Rock Band all day, then stay up all night coding. The reality: It's as depressingly Dilbertian as any other... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093771&view=rss&microfeed=true Microsoft, harried by regulators in the 1990s, once lobbied Congress to cut spending on antitrust enforcement. Now, it's profiting from their efforts. The software giant's lobbying budget nearly... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:00:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093719&view=rss&microfeed=true A tipster sent in this photo of Facebook's business-development team, taken in bubblier times at a September offsite in St. Helena, north of San Francisco, where they played a croquet tournament.... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:20:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093675&view=rss&microfeed=true NASA deemed successful a month-long test of image transfers to and from the Epoxi space probe, currently 20 million miles away somewhere near Mars. Alleged Internet inventor Vint Cerf helped NASA... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093634&view=rss&microfeed=true Is Google becoming the king of the Web? Well, duh — that happened about five years ago, before anyone really noticed. But activist groups, now and again, worry about whether Google knows too... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093529&view=rss&microfeed=true No man is above the law — not even multibillionaire Google CEO Eric Schmidt. At least that's what we hear from a well-placed tipster, who says Schmidt recently confessed to having been pulled... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:20:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093373&view=rss&microfeed=true Microsoft's chair-hurling 800-pound gorilla slammed the door on talk of a renewed Yahoo acquisition deal at today's shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington. "We are done with all acquisition... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093207&view=rss&microfeed=true "My blog, because the press never gets it right." This 2006 Hewlett Packard ad featuring Dallas Mavs owner and dotcom bazillionaire Mark Cuban shows why it'll be fun to watch him fight with the SEC... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:40:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093350&view=rss&microfeed=true No one knew exactly what the Blueprint division of videogame maker Electronic Arts was up to. Officially, it didn't exist. Now, it officially hasn't been shut down, but there's no one working on it.... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:20:00 PST Paul Boutin http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093271&view=rss&microfeed=true Supernova conference organizer Kevin Werbach is part of President Change's FCC transition team. I've hung out with the guy, and I never would've guessed he belongs to not one, but two guilds in World... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:00:00 PST Adriana Nunez http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093200&view=rss&microfeed=true From personal computing to extreme sports, hackers out for a good time have been pioneering new ways of doing things. Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Media, thinks we should follow them. To find out what... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:20:00 PST Owen Thomas http://valleywag.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5093229&view=rss&microfeed=true Among the many windmills Jerry Yang tilted at in his brief career as Yahoo's CEO was his devotion to Web search. It veered on an obsession for him. It played into his decision to resist Microsoft's...