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Format Wars: Director Michael Bay changes his tune on HD-DVD
In an effort to prove he's as fickle as he is talented, Transformers director Michael Bay has retracted what he calls a Kool-Aid-fueled denouncement of Paramount's deal to support, exclusively, the HD-DVD format for high-definition movie discs. When Bay first heard the news, he posted, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For [Paramount] to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!" In what could only have been a fit of rage, he then decreed there would be no Transformers 2. Why the change in tune?Bay later explained that his rant was spurred by a dinner conversation with a few "Blu-ray owners" who were upset over the announcement. He "over reacted [sic]." He then sat down and watched 300 on HD-DVD and declared himself a convert. Good news. He's back on the Paramount bandwagon, spouting something about $200 HD players and that he "liked what he heard." Was it the sound of money? Cause he's reconsidering his rash decision about Transformers 2 as well. Money...

Media: What Yahoo's Jerry Yang is really thinking
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, tired of playing ambush journalist with her handheld videocamera, tries her hand at pretending to be Dan Lyons, the fabulous Forbes fabulist behind "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Sort of. Except here, she's Fake Jerry Yang, a faux version of Yahoo's CEO, not Fake Steve Jobs The best bit comes when Swisher imagines Yang's reaction to Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who called for major changes in what's now called "The Peanut Butter Memo."I should just throttle Brad Garlinghouse or, at least, force feed him some of that peanut butter he was so obsessed with in that memo that kicked off this whole mess. Spread too thin, are we? Here's my new response every time I see him strolling around with that I-told-you-all-so grin: You got peanut butter on my company! You got company in my peanut butter!

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Monster's initial, capricious response to ...
Monster's initial, capricious response to a phishing attack targeted at users of the job site: "In fact, the information that is gathered from Monster is no different than that displayed in a phone book." Two days later, "Monster respects your privacy and understands the risk involved in making your personal information public" as it finally responds to halt the flow of user data and bad PR. [PC World]

YouTube: Mary Meeker makes a math mistake
Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker has been caught in an embarrassingly basic math mistake -- by Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, a former analyst (who, to be fair, made some mistakes of his own in the last boom). Meeker's estimate of the impact of YouTube's new "overlay" ads? She says they could boost Google's gross revenues by $4.8 billion next year. But her math, Blodget discovered, was off by a factor of a thousand. The error apparently stemmed from forgetting the meaning of CPM, or "cost per thousand," a commonly used term in advertising rate cards. Given Meeker's assumptions, the actual impact of YouTube's ads? A mere $4.8 million in gross revenue, and $720,000 in net revenue. In other words, a drop in the bucket, and nothing that comes close to justifying YouTube's $1.65 billion purchase price.

Patents: Amazon's 1-Click lawyers need their beauty sleep
For an hourly rate (PDF) of $245-$465+ per hour, most people would be champing at the bit to start work at 6 o' clock in the morning. Not the high-powered but sleep-deprived attorneys of Fenwick & West, however. They'redefending Amazon's 1-Click patent, which covers Amazon's vaunted click-and-buy ordering process. Not only are Amazon's San Francisco-based attorneys unwilling to travel to D.C. for a September 13 hearing they requested, they've asked the Patent and Trademark Office to move the hearing time from 9 a.m. Eastern to 1 p.m., lest they be forced to endure what a Fenwick & West partner characterized as the "undue hardship" of being ready at 6 a.m. Pacific Time. Just another way Amazon's making good on CEO Jeff Bezos's pledge of making "less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office."

Superficial: Who's the hunkiest New York Googler?
Tim Armstrong, left, the Google sales chief ridden with conflicts of interest, is drawing unconflicted interest from junior staffers. Apparently the hunky executive is being tracked via Twitter, so ga-ga Googlers can maximize their eyefuls of Armstrong. Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, whom we hadn't previously thought as a connoisseur of manflesh, also recommends Google's Tom Phillips, right, a cofounder of Spy, as a target for Twitter stalking. So, readers, any other denizens of Google's Chelsea office handsome enough to deserve such excess SMS interest? Leave a comment or send in a tip, and we'll run a poll later.

Careers: Second Life hosted its first interactive ...
Second Life hosted its first interactive job fair, organized by recruiting firm TMP Media, this week. "You get to know a candidate better," says Polly Pearson, a VP at storage-hardware maker EMC. "You see what they chose to wear, you see what they laugh at or what they interact with." This includes dressing as teddy bears and handing out beer. [NPR]

Social Networks: Is AOL trying to get back into the game?
A D.C. metro-area job listing on 37signals:In need of a top notch individual to lead a highly visible development effort. Project is for the office of the CEO for a well-known, large, successful company who is seeking to diversify their efforts and needs you to assist them in building their own Social Networking Site to accomplish that goal.Our best guess is that the company in question is AOL, whose efforts to build social networks around its instant-messenger software appear to be going nowhere. Any other ideas?

Deathwatch: Playboy launches a college-only network
PlayboyU is stealing a page from Facebook -- Facebook circa 2004, that is -- and launching a college-only social network, restricted to people with ".edu" addresses. With help from Ning, it's starting PlayboyU -- but not, sadly enough, delivering the goods in the form of nude coed shots. No matter. The college-only restriction limits the potential audience. And why would college kids, when Facebook and MySpace exist, bother to sign up for this website? The association with a porn brand alone should be enough to scare most students off. One thing Playboy forgot: ".edu" addresses include professors and alumni, who might take an interest in students' extracurricular activities on the site. We're placing the site on immediate deathwatch.

Valleywag Jobs: Today in Valleywag Jobs
Tired of your boring company? Try Valleywag Jobs: SportsWrap Blogger - beRecruited.com, San Jose, CA (SF Bay Area, nationwide, wfh) Web Designer - Opera Software, San Francisco, CA (Mountain View) Backend Software Engineer - Digital Music Store - A2Z Development, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA (financial district) Sr. Java Engineer - NileGuide, San Francisco, CA (SoMa District) Senior Manager of Web Engineering, Community Systems - Netflix, Los Gatos, CA Product Development Lead / Managing Producer - New Interactive, New York, NY...and moreFor only $25 your job could be here! Submit it today.

Media Relations: The blogger-focused BlogWorld tradeshow and ...
The blogger-focused BlogWorld tradeshow and expo in Las Vegas is only giving press passes to "accredited members of the professional media" -- not to the bloggers trying to usurp them. [Reuters]

Yahoo: Toby Coppel builds a Canadian empire
Yahoo has decided to lump the hosers in with the Eurotrash, adding Canada to the Yahoo Europe team now headed by exec Toby Coppel. Why? Ostensibly because "Canada's multicultural diversity parallels Europe; and Canadian sites operate in English and French," Coppel claims in an inadvertently hilarious memo sent to all European and Canadian employees. The real reason, we suspect: Feeling his position threatened after career patron Terry Semel stepped down as Yahoo's CEO, and having been unceremoniously booted off Yahoo's "Management Team" page, Coppel is now begging for scraps of authority. Full memo after the jump.From: Toby R. Coppel [mailto:toby@yahoo-inc.com]Sent: 23 August 2007 05:29To: Ruth Sarfaty; Dan Foehner; Mark Rabe; Charles Thomas; Jim L'Heureux; Damian De Rosaire; Tim Mihok; Maria Marshall; Chris Karl; Beth Lawrence; Vish Makhijani; Vince Broady; Tapan Bhat; Scott Moore; Ira L Kurgan; Eckart Walther; Brad Garlinghouse; Rollanda Harris; Jeff Weiner; David Windley;...

Great Moments In Pr: Business 2.0 decision coming next week, or not
Folio reports that Time Inc., the parent company of Business 2.0, will be making a decision on the fate of the magazine next week, according to a source. The article, however, then quotes a Time Inc. spokesperson saying that the company "absolutely will not" be making a decision next week. The spokesperson in question is, of course, fibbing flack Danielle Perissi, so take her statement with a very large grain of salt. Heck, store it away in a Morton's warehouse.

Rumormonger: Has Craig Newmark quit Craigslist?
A fascinating tidbit buried in a story about Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin's allegations of child prostitution on Craigslist: Susan MacTavish Best, Craigslist spokeswoman and girlfriend of CEO Jim Buckmaster, claims that Craig Newmark "is no longer is involved in the company's daily affairs," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And indeed, Newmark, the company's founder, though he was listed on the Craigslist management page a week ago, no longer appears there. Newmark has certainly made enough money, thanks to a 2004 stock purchase by eBay, to retire on. And his "team bio," still online, notes that he's "embarrassed" that the site is named after him. But for the geeks who still idolize him, the idea of a Craigslist without Craig would be hard to bear. Update: We heard from Newmark. His comments, after the jump.In a couple of conversations on phone and Facebook, Newmark said he was still working at the company as a "customer service representative." He had no explanatio...

Virtual Worlds: IBM marketers seem to be buying into the ...
IBM marketers seem to be buying into the Second Life marketing slogan, "Engage." It's now staffing its virtual business center 24 hours a day during the working week. One hopes they're using cheap offshore labor, as we really don't want to meet people willing to work a graveyard shift in Second Life. [Virtual Worlds News]

DVR: TiVo's turf becomes the latest Sony-Microsoft battleground
Sony's recent announcement that its PlayStation 3 console will soon act as a digital video recorder in Europe is little surprise to anyone following the industry. It's long been believed that the PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 could act as DVRs. The real question is how this move will affect a soon-to-be crowded DVR marketplace. TiVo, the best-known DVR brand, has struggled financially as cable and satellite distributors released their own recorders. Although its future may be a bit brighter thanks to a recent licensing deal with Comcast and the potential of a renewed DirecTV contract, there's more competition for TiVo than ever -- and from the unlikeliest of places.Services like iTunes, working with the Apple TV set-top box, and Xbox 360's Marketplace, offer a limited but growing library of TV shows and movies. Netflix, the DVD rent-by-mail service, is hiring hardware engineers. Amazon, currently a TiVo partner, is rumored to be working on a media-playing device of its own. And...

Blogging For Dollars: The Internet Society of China forced blog ...
The Internet Society of China forced blog service providers like Yahoo and MSN to sign a "self-disciplinary pact," says Reporters Without Borders. The pact requires blog hosts to "censor content and identify bloggers." Alas, it does not require bloggers to "add value." [Boing Boing]

Dossier: PodTech's future may lie in new CEO's past
PodTech may finally have rid itself of founder John Furrier's so-called leadership. But how will new CEO James McCormick fare? We've already pointed out that, despite 23 years of experience, he has never been the public face of a company. His past as an operations and finance executive is also littered with repeated failures: disgruntled employees, lawsuits, bad mergers, and other flameouts. McCormick may get by for a time simply by not being Furrier, but the failures linked to him through his resume do not bode well for the troubled videoblogging network.Quiet Solution: Can't hold onto employees and intellectual property. The maker of soundproofing materials couldn't get its employees to keep its solution quiet. Quiet Solution recently filed suit against a competitor, Suppress, founded by a former employee for allegedly taking patents and other staff and along with him.Perfect Commerce: Spiralling to nowhere. In the mundane business of "supplier relationship management," Perfect...

Hires: Will Intuit's new CEO prove a Google guy?
It's odd, sometimes, the contortions reporters will go through to make a story out of nothing -- especially when they miss the real one. Take, for example, this report from IDG News about the planned departure of Intuit CEO Steve Bennett. The subhead of the article: "Intuit chief executive's resignation is not tied to April tax database snafu." The first sentence: "Four months after a database problem prevented thousands of U.S. users from paying their taxes on time, Intuit Inc.'s chief executive announced plans to step down." Obsessed with an embarrassing, expensive, but ultimately meaningless, glitch in Intuit's tax-prep software, IDG misses what's interesting about Bennett stepping down in December to make way for Intuit SVP Brad Smith.Intuit has long had unusually close links with Google. The company's chairman, Bill Campbell, though not credited for it, has long been an important advisor to Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. And the...

Wireless: Googlephone rumors offshored to India
After persistent rumors of a Googlephone -- Google's supposed answer to Apple's iPhone -- failed to pan out in the U.S., the true Googlephone believers are looking abroad. Rediff, an Indian news and information portal, reports that Google will launch a "Gphone" in India in two weeks. Unlikely, unless, like Valleywag, you believe that Google's strategy is to turn every phone into a Googlephone.

The Red-eye: Richard Branson gets a bit wet over Virgin America
newVideoPlayer("water_fight_gawker.flv", 475, 376);We missed this the first time around: Virgin founder Richard Branson, touting the new San Francisco-based airline Virgin America, drenches Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert with a bottle of water. Whatever it takes, Sir Richard, as long as you keep provoking United and American into suicidal fare wars on the SFO-JFK route.

Quotable: Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote ...
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a blog post to explain why the server hardware maker has changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA, emphasizing its Java programming language and software suite. Luckily, he left comments enabled on the post, leading to gems like this: "This is a move right out of the Dilbert school of management." [Jonathan's Blog via Fake Steve]

Sponsors: Valleywag-linked sponsors fail to hack site
Security personnel at Valleywag recently detected unusual IP traffic from a machine in New York's SoHo district. We intercepted it and found the following list of sponsors to thank:American ApparelAsk.comBank of AmericaBlackBerryMioPentaxSnagItSprintTiVoToyotaZuneDetailed instructions on how this brazen computer attack went down can be found here: Advertise on Valleywag.

Followup: Fark legal net tightens on Fox-linked hacker
Richard Thompson, a blogger who tracks the Memphis, Tenn. news scene at Mediaverse Memphis, has done a follow-up interview with Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com. Last week, Curtis, left, fingered Darrell Phillips, to his right, a new media manager at News Corp.-owned TV station WHBQ Fox13, as an all-but-certain suspect behind attempts to hack into the site. He based his accusation on an all-but-conclusive trail of electronic evidence. Thompson, at first skeptical of the accusation, seems to be giving it more credence, as Curtis confirmed that Fark has plans underway to seek legal action. After the jump, the latest revelations.Thompson: What's the possibility that Fark could be wrong? And if that happens, what can be done to redress Phillips' damaged reputation?Curtis: Our chances of being wrong are close to nil. Even with the information we currently have we're standing at 99.9%. Our data indicates that only one individual was using the dphillips Fark account for the entire...

Virtual Worlds: "There will soon be more avatars than humans, ...
"There will soon be more avatars than humans, at least in the industrialized world," writes The Guardian's Victor Keegan, riffing off Gartner Research's proclamation that 80 percent of active internet users will participate in virtual worlds by 2011. Keegan's bet is that Google Earth will become the next virtual meeting ground. [The Guardian]

Crime: A man who pleaded guilty to illegally downloading ...
A man who pleaded guilty to illegally downloading a copy of Star Wars: Episode III is being forced to use Windows as his operating system as a condition of his probation. Now that's cruel and unusual punishment. [VNUnet]

Media: The New York Times proves its digital knowhow ...
The New York Times proves its digital knowhow with the public launch of MyTimes. Web users haven't enjoyed this kind of newsfeed personalization since, oh, say, Excite.com in 1998. [Techdirt]

Hype: The social-networks phenomenon is influencing ...
The social-networks phenomenon is influencing the most unlikely candidates. Nielsen, the company behind TV ratings and other media data, is working on a network called HeyNielsen that will measure product "buzz." [PaidContent]

Zooomr: Photo site shares NSFW images
I've always wondered what kind of people use Zooomr, the also-ran photo-sharing site run by underaged and reportedly credit-deprived developer Kris Tate. Apparently, people who feel they've got something to share with the rest of the world. Something very personal, and something they're attached to. Intimately. Recent visitors to the site's "Discover" page were greeted by a collage of images that included some unpleasant and definitely not safe for work contributions. If you're easily shocked, move along now. But if you're curious to see what Tate apparently considers acceptable on his "No Limits Photo Sharing" site, click through to the jump. (Photo of Kris Tate by geodog)

Virtual Economies: Regulating Second Life
The recent run on Second Life's Ginko bank, one of the virtual world's financial institutions, has prompted many residents to ponder whether their magical playland might not need some regulations after all. Their fears aren't fueled by lewd acts or incessant griefer attacks. Rather, they're about the one thing that truly matters: money. CFO magazine recently looked into the bank's failure as evidence that some form of outside oversight is needed to guard against fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and incidents like Ginko and the recent theft from the World Stock Exchange. An excellent suggestion. But the article fails to deliver on its promise.CFO fails to actually answer the question it poses, which is how to regulate Second Life. Sure, there are a few comments from Second Life creator Linden Lab; a spokesman says the company has no desire to police Second Life. An SEC spokesman makes some noncommittal remarks. Before concluding that Second Life regulation is up to Linden...

Quotable: On Jessica Mah's Ustream.tv live chat, PodTech ...
On Jessica Mah's Ustream.tv live chat, PodTech spokesblogger Robert Scoble breaks his recent vow of silence to observe, "Yeah. Well, it's a tough life to write everyday. Eventually you end up demonstrating you're human and looking stupid." Proving the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day. [Ustream.tv]

Mysteries: Who's behind TheFunded.com? Not Jason Calacanis
Inc. magazine is digging into the mystery of who's running TheFunded.com, a website which lets entrepreneurs rate venture capitalists. Writer Max Chafkin makes four guesses: Gawker Media publisher and Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton; Digg founder Kevin Rose; Blogger and Twitter founder Evan Williams; and blog blowhard Jason Calacanis. Asked by Chafkin, Calacanis denied being "Ted," the mysterious man behind the site. A curious stance, since until recently, Calacanis was eagerly attempting to take credit for TheFunded.com. Never one for subtlety, he told friends of his plan to leak a rumor to Valleywag that he was behind the site. Alas, no, Jason: You only wish you were clever enough to come up with an idea like TheFunded.com.

Social Networks: Playboy wants coeds to "commune" on the Web
newVideoPlayer("owen_playboy_gawker.flv", 475, 376);In this clip from CNBC, a Playboy executive describes his company's new social network, PlayboyU, as a place where college students can "commune" with each other. Right. If that's what you want to call it. My take? "The bunny's not going to get much of a bang," I told CNBC.

The Future: The mindset of the Class of 2029
Every year, we at Beloit College publish a "mindset list" to identify the worldviews of the year's entering college freshmen. The "class of 2029" refers to students entering college this fall, in 2025. Most of these students are 18, which means they were born in 2007. For them, Anna Nicole Smith, Steve Irwin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Saddam Hussein, and Robin Williams's career have always been dead.No one's ever worn a digital watch."I'm Rick James, bitch" is just something old people say.To relax, they've always turned on the nightly news. The news has always been delivered by comedians.They don't know what a LOLCat is or why it talks that way.They've always been able to use a cell phone on a plane.Tattoos have always been normal.Mr. Rogers has never taken them to the Land of Make-Believe.Good sitcoms have never had laugh tracks.Apple has always been a big deal, as have Google and Facebook.They've never paid for a classified ad.They've never danced to "Numa Numa."Who's Mario?Katie...

Deathwatch: Ziff-Davis stanches cash hemorrhage, bleeds people for a change
More bad news for Ziff-Davis, the storied, and troubled, tech publisher: Two executives in its videogames group have left the company. General manager Ira Becker and editorial director John Davison announced they're departing to start a new venture, thought to be a family-oriented videogame site. Opportune timing considering Ziff's uncertain future. It's also sure to dampen any enthusiasm among potential buyers for the technology publisher's shrinking game portfolio, which have been on the block since late last year. Becker and Davison, you see, were responsible for the website 1UP.com, the only segment of the group that has shown consistent growth. Ziff-Davis has been trying to sell off its magazines (Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows) as well as 1UP.

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: "Monster.com waited five days to tell its ...
"Monster.com waited five days to tell its users about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information from some 1.3 million job seekers," reports Reuters. It wasn't until after computer security firm Symantec issued a warning that Monster took action. If no one knows about it, it's apparently not a problem. [Boing Boing]

Conflicts Of Interest: Videoblogger Morgan Webb shows some skin
TechThatOut believes it's caught Morgan Webb, host of derivative, me-too, copycat tech videoblog WebbAlert, exposing her ... scalp? The screenshot is a bit blurry, raising questions about whether Webb is actually missing some follicles or just had her hair pulled back too tightly. But it does make one wonder why TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington went gaga and declared her "fairly hot." A quick survey of Valleywag's temporary officemates got a different ruling: "fairly scary." But there's something equally scary, and even balder, about WebbAlert.WebbAlert discloses on its website that it has "barter arrangements" with other FM-represented sites. But that's not the sales pitch that Webb's husband, Listen.com founder Rob Reid, gave some FM bloggers. Contrary to what the WebbAlert site claims, Reid made suggestions of link-swapping that went beyond mere ad barters. And from the appearance of things, Arrington, among others, took the bait, linking generously to WebbAlert after...

Online Video: Michael Eisner, the Web 2.0 guru
Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO, is turning into a Web 2.0 demigod, claims BusinessWeek. Except it fails to prove any kind of new-media apotheosis whatsoever. Beyond a few cursory details about Eisner's portfolio of invesments -- kid-friendly, just like Disney! -- the majority of the piece details his interest in a potential acquisition of Topps, the trading-cards company. Somehow, in the perfervid imaginations of BusinessWeek editors, the right to print Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trading cards and stickers transforms into "fodder for online shows." But never mind that.What BusinessWeek should have focused on is Eisner's attempt to ride the MySpace wave with his Web-only production company Vuguru. Its first show, Prom Queen, which was distributed over the social network, is considered a mild success -- landing sponsors like the Hairspray remake, Verizon, and Elle Girl. What would make sense is the exact opposite of what BusinessWeek proposes. Instead of...

Federated Media: John Battelle feels like he needs more money
Private Equity Hub reports that Federated Media, the online ad network, has raised $4.5 million in a second round of funding, not long after raising $2 million in venture capital, on top of some seed funding. This, of course, after rumors that FM was "overdue" in raising more funds. We're not sure what founder John Battelle plans to do with all that cash, but perhaps, just perhaps, he might want to bankroll some hair-replacement therapy for FM videoblogger Morgan Webb.

Party Report: Lotus Vodka offers release from the tech scene
A tip for those of you trying to mingle with successful entrepreneurs and VCs: Attend more than just the standard tech meet-and-greets. The people who are really in a position to help you with your startup never go to them anyway. So where to go instead? Check out events like last night's Lotus Vodka release party at SoMa's Euro-inspired restaurant Supperclub. You'll find founders and the moneymen behind them willing to chat and unable to prejudge you based on your nametag. Refreshing. Bonus: The nontech people who attend these things make for a far better-looking crowd. Far better-looking. The full report, and a gallery of photos, follows.galleryPost('lotusreleaseparty', 4, 'Lotus Vodka Release Party');So, what does vodka have to do with tech? Rob Bailey, founder of Delicious Brands, maker of Lotus Vodka, is an ex-Yahoo business-development exec who came up with the idea of creating a vitamin-infused vodka after mixing the spirit with Glacéau Vitamin Water. It's...

Burning Man: Want to save the planet? Stay home, you envirohippies
We've said it before, and we'll say it again: The only green Burner is a dead Burner. This year's Burning Man arts festival in the Nevada desert has an environmental theme. But an environmental analysis has shown that more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide spewed by Burning Man participants comes merely in getting to and from Black Rock City, the festival's temporary site. So by all means, pack up your RVs, buy that planet-destroying bottled water, and run your stereos and air conditioning all week off of diesel generators as you celebrate the greening of Burning Man. Go ahead, claim that you're raising "awareness" -- at the same time that you're raising the planet's temperature. You're not fooling anyone -- least of all Mother Nature.