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Lost In Translation: "Hulu," the name for NBC Universal and News ...
"Hulu," the name for NBC Universal and News Corp.'s new online-video site, means "butt" in Bahasa Indonesia, the language spoken in the southeast Asian archipelago. [Webster's Online Dictionary]

Great Moments In Pr: How Yahoo botched its reorg news
Rumor among the tech press corps is that Yahoo was set to hand the announcement of Sue Decker's big reorganization to Miguel Helft of the New York Times. It's a standard move, when a company has delicate personnel matters to unfold, to find a friendly, prominent outlet, and hand them an exclusive in exchange, it's hoped, for kinder treatment. But the PR strategy, executed by a department that's seen considerable turnover recently, failed. Unfortunately for the Times, but fortunately for our readers, Valleywag broke the news of Decker ally Hilary Schneider's rise and sales chief Gregory Coleman's fall, while AllThingsD reported other details of the reorg. The Times, a day late, now has a mostly inoffensive report. The story doesn't say this, however: You read it here first.

Comebacks: Nirav Tolia goes to Benchmark
The rehabilitation of Nirav Tolia is not just complete -- it is, at long last, confirmed. The cofounder of Epinions, though tarred by old controversies, will announce tomorrow morning that he has, indeed, landed a long-rumored spot at Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence. (Back in March, Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton was told by several people Tolia was heading to Benchmark.) He'll be joined there by Sarah Leary, a former Epinions executive, and both hope to look at startup ideas having to do with online community and user-generated content. (We'll hold our tongue.) Tolia called Valleywag to share the news. Of his past transgressions, which included doctoring his resume to say he worked at McKinsey (he hadn't) and completed his Stanford degree (he later finished it), he had this to say: "I did it, it was wrong, it was dumb, I won't do it again." And he had news of interest to Valley oldtimers: He's thinking of restarting Round Zero, the '90s boom-era networking...

Reorg: Sue Decker takes over Yahoo
Victory is sweet. Redoing the org chart so suit your whims? Even sweeter. While Yahoo president Sue Decker may not have the CEO title yet, thanks to a sweeping reorganization, she has practically all the power. Kara Swisher at AllThingsD got a copy of Decker's memo to the staff. As we reported earlier, Hilary Schneider is running all of sales -- in fact, anything that even vaguely looks like sales -- and ad-sales chief Gregory Coleman is out. What's more fun, though, than that confirmation, is trying to figure out what functions don't report to Decker now. As best we can tell, the outliers, left to cofounders Jerry Yang and David Filo, include legal, HR, finance, and tech. The full memo, after the jump.Update on President Organization -- CONFIDENTIAL and PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD.Fellow Yahoo!s,Over the past two months, Jerry and I and the rest of the management team have been taking a close look at our business - from top to bottom - and have been working hard to refine Yahoo!'s...

The Man: Burning Man arsonist has exceptionally large balls
Paul Addis, the man accused of setting fire to The Man, the totemic woodenstatue at the center of Burning Man, has a history of pulling pranks in the Nevada arts festival. Insiders believe that Addis was responsible for a 1997 prank in which giant silver balls were hung -- rather well, we might add -- from the groin of The Man. (Photo by LadyBee)

Social Networks: MySpace attempts to win back popularity
How to lure back social-network users lost to the shiny, pimply new face at school? MySpace could, we suppose, give its user interface a good scrubbing. But no, instead, the aging, News Corp.-owned website is trying to prove it's still hip by hitting the road. MySpace is hosting the eponymous MySpace Music Tour, on which headliners include Hellogoodbye and Say Anything, who both credit (or blame) MySpace for their popularity, and Polysics, which is on MySpace's in-house music label. With sites like YouTube and Facebook crowding in on MySpace , the social network is performing all sorts of stunts to prove it's still a hot property. Anything, that is, but fixing its actual product.

Bad Business Models: Bring out your dead textbooks
Not every great idea should be copied. But thanks to NetFlix, which proved that DVDs could, indeed, be rented profitably by mail, people are now trying to rent anything and everything through the mail, with orders placed over the Internet. Purses, videogames, and now ... textbooks? Bookrenter.com is one such venue, claiming that it wants to "shift purchasing power back to students." It recently pitched Valleywag -- always a dangerous sign, in and of itself -- claiming to be the first textbook rental service on the Web. First, well, no. Secondly, any student who hasn't learned to scour eBay, Half.com, and a slew of online used-textbook sites deserves to be gouged by campus bookstores. Heck, most campus libraries have multiple copies of textbooks in their collections.But what Bookrenter will learn the hard way is that a business model that works well for movies and videogames won't necessarily work well for textbooks. We asked an actual college student why, and the answers were...

Online Advertising: AdBrite, AVN kiss and make up over porn
Philip Kaplan seems to have patched things up with AVN, the porn-industry trade publisher with which his company, AdBrite, runs an online ad network for adult websites. Earlier this month, AVN had abruptly yanked the AdBrite-run version of AVNAds.com offline and replaced it with its own hastily-built site for selling ads. In response, insiders said, Kaplan was readying to launch BlackLabelAds.com, AdBrite's own porn-ad network. Now, however, the AdBrite-run version of the network is back online. The spat however, came with a heavy financial price.Rumors reaching Valleywag from adult-industry sources indicate that Lehman Brothers was weighing a large investment in AdBrite -- as much as 10 percent of the company -- but decided to pass. That's a heavy blow for both AdBrite and its lead VC investor, Sequoia Capital, which frequently partners with Lehman. The reason for Lehman's cold feet? Apparently, AdBrite's involvement in the porn business was larger than bankers there had been...

Software: Microsoft is finally rolling out a beta version ...
Microsoft is finally rolling out a beta version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and promises that the official release of the set of Vista fixes will be out next year. Maybe. But only if those other guys release their software on time. [Windows Vista Team Blog]

Linkedin: David Pogue of the New York Times questions ...
David Pogue of the New York Times questions the need for the popular business-oriented social network: "What I don't understand is: If somebody knows me well enough to e-mail me with an invitation to join, why doesn't he just e-mail me directly with whatever his problem or offer is?" [Pogue's Posts]

Yahoo: Watch out Yahoos, here come the consultants
Get your resumes ready, Yahoos, if you haven't already. That rumored Yahoo reorg? Oh, it's on. We've heard that Yahoo has hired consultants Stone Yamashita Partners to help streamline the organization. And you know what consultants mean, right? As Mike Judge's cult classic Office Space reminds us:TOM: We're all screwed, that's what. They're gonna downsize Initech.SAMIR: Oh, what are you talking about Tom? How do you know that?TOM: They're bringing in a consultant - that's how I know.Stone Yamashita, of course, isn't the big-bad downsizing kind of consultancy Tom and Samir are talking about -- that's more the McKinsey type. But Valleywag has heard Stone Yamashita has been working with Yahoo since the ouster of former CEO Terry Semel. The firm's known for assisting companies in defining what they do -- exactly the kind of help Yahoo really needs. If Stone Yamashita also helps Yang figure out that the newly redefined Yahoo doesn't need so many layers of executives, all the better.

Copyfight: Open source blogger takes on Google
CNET blogger and supposed open-source expert Matt Asay tragically misreads Google's terms of service for Google Apps. An admittedly scary patch of legalese suggests, to Asay, that Google will take all of your private data, take over its copyright, and make it public. But in fact, it just says that if you use Google to host, say, a word-processing document or spreadsheet, and you want said document to be publicly available on the Web, you must agree to let Google, you know, make it public. Why Asay is resorting to scare tactics over this is beyond me. Is he pursuing an anti-Google agenda? Or is he just sloppy? I'm voting for just sloppy.

Robert Scoble: One small problem, Scoble's readers hate Kyte.tv
Videoblogger Robert Scoble's future employer may well turn out to be Kyte.tv, the website for which he's dumped ostensible paycheck-issuer PodTech to carry his video screeds. but there's one small problem with this plan: The loyal readers of his Scobleizer blog hate Kyte. Moreover, they claim Scoble is losing his way. They want the old Scoble back -- the blogger who actually, you know, wrote blog posts. They want full text that they can scan, consistent with Scoble's diehard stance in favor of full-text blog feeds, rather than sitting through minutes of pointless video. Scoble's readers say Kyte's video quality is horrible, bogs down Internet Explorer, and isn't searchable. It doesn't matter that Scoble, compares it favorably to PodTech's video technology and concludes "I loves Kyte and will keep using it." His audience, for once, disagrees. And without an audience, there'd be no Scobleizer. Can't we dream?

Geeks Gone Wild: Dance, Mark Cuban, dance
His ability to seduce Yahoo into paying $1 billion for Broadcast.com shows that entrepreneur Mark Cuban already knows how to dance his way around the negotiation table. Now the general public will be able to see the Dallas Mavericks owner attempt to do the cha-cha and Texas two-step. Mark Cuban will be on this fall's version of ABC reality series "Dancing with the Stars," competing against such luminaries as a Spice Girl and that chick from 90210. While we won't be tuning into the premiere -- come on, who in Silicon Valley still watches regular TV? -- we fully expect to see clips of Cuban twirling, lifting, and (we're hoping) falling on his fat ass, replayed over and over on your favorite video sites. Like Broadcast.com ... oh, wait. Photo: Shoutfan.com

Stats: As the Ethernet cable replaced those 56Kbps ...
As the Ethernet cable replaced those 56Kbps modem phone lines, Wi-Fi will overtake Ethernet in the next few years, says research firm Burton Group. This projection is based the growing number of laptop and mobile data users. As far as we can tell from Ritual Roasters, this happened years ago. [News.com]

Burning Man: Oh, right, this is an "arts festival," isn't it?
BLACK ROCK CITY -- Here we are at Burning Man, deep in the Nevada desert. It's billed as an arts festival, held every year in the name of counterculture, mind expansion, loving your neighbor, and paying a lot of money for coffee at an event that purports to have a noncommercial, barter-based economy. Black Rock City, the festival's temporary locale, is laid out in a rough half-circle, with streets labeled from 2 to 10, in the style of a clock face. The vast, open expanse of lung-clogging, sunbaked wasteland in the center is reserved for a very special type of self expression: large projects that cause their makers massive frustration, huge amounts of debt, and the destruction of every sort of personal relationship in the space of a few dust-filled, windswept days. Yes, folks, we're talking about art.In between battling for an Internet connection, twitching from dehydration, and telling random people who wander in that no, they may NOT use our Internet to send that "really,...

Burning Man: Who's having a hissyfit on the playa now?
BLACK ROCK CITY -- Here at Media Mecca, the press center for Black Rock City, site of the loosely countercultural event Burning Man, the usual travails and torture of being in the middle of harsh desert conditions -- spotty Internet, no beer left in the cooler, subpar fare in the commissary, failing air conditioning -- are beginning to wear on the whine-prone members of the Burning Man press corps. Answer us this: What correspondent for a well-known tech magazine was freaking out the other day over a compilation of playa frustrations? The Internet connection was going down, he had to be three different places "right now," and he was sitting in the corner, muttering threateningly to himself, "bad choices," "you're fucking kidding me," and "god fucking dammit"?. The desert takes its toll, friends. Guess the identity of the hissyfitting hack in the comments.

Feuds: Facebook delivers ultimate humiliation to Google
Bad enough that Facebook has stolen Google's buzz, recruited away top engineers, and dashed its hopes of being a player in social networks. Now, Valleywag has learned, a team of scrappy Facebookers has dealt those smug, self-satisfied, arrogant, overfed Googlers a humiliation where it really matters -- on the ultimate frisbee field, that is. Ultimate frisbee, a sport mixing soccer and frisbee-tossing, is popular on the college campuses where Facebook first grew popular. Google's team, unwisely, challenged their Facebook counterparts to a game on the Stanford campus. The result? A 15-11 win for Facebook. Carolyn Abram, Facebook's resident blogger and a team member, adds a first-hand report:I heard you heard about Facebook's ultimate frisbee game with Google last night. Just wanted to confirm that this was the first of many Google-Facebook matchups. We're looking to hire great engineers. Please let people know to include ultimate experience on their resume when applying.So there...

Self-referential: Slammed by Valleywag? Join the self-help ...
Slammed by Valleywag? Join the self-help group on Facebook where you can bitch and moan among sympathetic brethren. Later we'll mock you derisively.

Yahoo: Sue Decker loses a lieutenant
We hear that Mark Rubash, left, a Yahoo finance executive hired by Yahoo president Sue Decker in February, is already leaving the company. Rubash, a favorite of Decker, was apparently the loser in a turf war with fellow finance executive Rachel Glaser, pictured here to his right.. We can't help but wonder if Glaser, a commuter from Los Angeles who's widely disliked on the Sunnyvale campus, will last much longer, as Yahoo undergoes a top-to-bottom reorganization. "She has no financial acumen," whispers one tipster -- a fact that, if true, can't be lost on Decker and her recently hired ally, CFO Blake Jorgensen.

Robert Scoble: One small problem, Scoble's readers hate Kyte
Videoblogger Robert Scoble's future employer may well turn out to be Kyte.tv, the website for which he's dumped ostensible paycheck-issuer PodTech to carry his video screeds. but there's one small problem with this plan: The loyal readers of his Scobleizer blog hate Kyte. Moreover, they claim Scoble is losing his way. They want the old Scoble back -- the blogger who actually, you know, wrote blog posts. They want full text that they can scan, consistent with Scoble's diehard stance in favor of full-text blog feeds, rather than sitting through minutes of pointless video. Scoble's readers say Kyte's video quality is horrible, bogs down Internet Explorer, and isn't searchable. It doesn't matter that Scoble, compares it favorably to PodTech's video technology and concludes "I loves Kyte and will keep using it." His audience, for once, disagrees. And without an audience, there'd be no Scobleizer. Can't we dream?

Digital Rights: Google, Yahoo join children's copyright crusade
Backed by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group, is targeting everyone from Hollywood to book publishers in its Defend Fair Use crusade. The CCIA is trying to drum up popular support for its allegations, submitted to the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month, that corporations are misleading consumers about copyright law. Copyright holders may not condone certain uses of its material, but that doesn't necessarily mean those uses are illegal. Fair use, an abstruse area of copyright law meant to encourage scholarship and journalism, is widely misunderstood. It's certainly a curious standard for CCIA's supporters to bear, since Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all implement fair-use-defying digital-rights-management software, and comply with "takedown" requests from copyright holders without considering fair use.

Wealth: Hey, America, the Bay Area could OWN YOU
An Associated Press article, citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, has named San Jose as the "wealthiest urban center in the nation." San Francisco and San Diego round out the top three. The wealthiest county? Haughty Marin, across the Golden Gate Bridge, finishes first, while Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County, comes in second. What's that? No New York? Aw, you so-called titans of industry will have to try a bit harder next time.

Conflicts Of Interest: Is Scoble dumping PodTech for Kyte.tv?
Why is Robert Scoble, videoblogger, using the immature, unstable Kyte.tv website to host his latest videos, when he's a vice president of PodTech, a rival video venture with its own video-hosting infrastructure? Isn't that a bit like Valleywag's Megan McCarthy, say, cracking jokes on Julia Allison's blog when she should be filing party reports for Valleywag? Clearly, PodTech is going under, and Scoble needs to keep his options open. His delusion that he can work anywhere he wants has been dashed -- his dream job at Facebook doesn't appear to exist. Jason Calacanis's Mahalo may be a perfect match, but we suspect that Kyte is Scoble's emergency backup. Scoble even hints at such, ">telling readers, "I'll have more to say about Podtech soon."

Social Networks: Facebook app displays MySpace profiles
It's either News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's worst nightmare -- or his wet dream. Two recent college graduates, Jess Martin and Drew Chen, have launched, as we predicted, SpaceLift, an application on Facebook that takes a chaotic, ugly MySpace profile page and displays it in Facebook's spare, blue-and-white layout. For Murdoch, who's voiced admiration for Facebook, even though News Corp. owns social-networking rival MySpace, this could be disastrous.Why? If users are able to port their MySpace pages to Facebook, friends and all, then Facebook could gain further momentum in its battle for users. On the other hand, if the application gains popularity on Facebook, it could just provide more proof of MySpace's unassailable top spot among social networks.Of course, SpaceLift is not that sophisticated. It allows anyone to pull any MySpace page into their profile, without performing any kind of check to see if they actually own that profile. And it doesn't match up MySpace friends with...

Burning Man: Scott Beale commits LOLson
Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale has exploited the LOLcats meme to mock Paul Addis, the would-be arsonist who tried to burn down The Man, the wooden statue at the center of the Burning Man arts festival in Nevada. Inevitable. Brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it first. (Image by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Second Life anonymity be damned
Second Life, the virtual world we love to hate, announced it's rolling out the beta of its Identity Verification system today. Sick of the constant name-calling afforded by the virtual world's anonymity, Linden Lab is taking steps to police its surreal estate through a voluntary registration program. VP of marketing Robin Harper revealed that the identification system will "independently verify certain aspects of their identity (their name, age, location and sex)" and "establish trust by removing a layer of anonymity." The move, of course, essentially destroys that which is valued in Second Life -- freedom to do anything (except gamble). Linden Lab's hope is that landowners will put age gates on their islands, and this system will prevent minors from entering sex dungeons. Of course, minors looking to enter sex dungeons will be too smart to volunteer that information.

Crash This Bash: Uncov needs cash to crash TechCrunch20 conference
The crew from Uncov, the sarcastic self-styled anti-TechCrunch, wants to attend TechCrunch20. That, of course, is the conference where TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington will bless us with 20 demonstrations of the hottest new startups. Uncov's editors say they want to ask the hard questions we all suspect won't be posed to Arrington's handpicked favorites. But attendance, alas, isn't free. Each ticket costs $2,495. So the "bunch of poor startup founders who write a marginally popular blog that doesn't have any advertising on it" are having a hard time making ends meet. If you don't want Uncov absent at the TechCrunch20 "jerkoff," you can make a donation. So far, they have raised a whopping $185! So they need your support.Fortunately, we're not the only ones who want to see Uncov asking tough questions of Arrington, Calacanis, and crew. We hear that a wealthy venture capitalist has already pledged one full ticket. But keep donating, the rumored ticket may not materialize, and...

VoIP: Google is continuing its recently acquired ...
Google is continuing its recently acquired Internet phone service GrandCentral's Project CARE, handing out free phone numbers to San Francisco's homeless today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Hopefully these "phone numbers for life" will last more than a few months. [VentureBeat]

Online Video: NBC, News Corp. name joint venture "Hulu"
At last, the online-video joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., long ridiculed for its lack of a name other than "NewCo," has an official moniker, and a website, Hulu. It also has a $100 million investment, besides the backing of its parent companies, from Providence Equity Partners; a CEO, former Amazon.com executive Jason Kilar; and fancy offices in Los Angeles. What it still lacks, of course, is a shot in hell at competing with YouTube.Kilar himself, in explaining the name, hints at the problem:Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it.So, is Hulu a destination site, like YouTube? A video search engine, like AOL's Truveo or Google Video? An online licensing and distribution arm of its big-media parents? Or all of these things at once? If finding a name was this hard for Hulu, just imagine what actually conducting business...

Cutbacks: EarthLink puts more than San Francisco's Wi-Fi network on hold
Earlier this month, Internet service provider EarthLink held San Francisco's proposed citywide Wi-Fi network hostage while asking the city to pony up some extra cash. Turns out that wasn't strong-arm tactics -- EarthLink is in a world of financial hurt. To cauterize the bleeding, it's cutting 900 employees. Among the victims is Don Berryman, the president of municipal Wi-Fi networks. EarthLink won't be filling the position.

Digital Music: Apple event to go on -- without Beatles
Next week's special Apple press event will be disappointing to Beatles fans -- a group that included CEO Steve Jobs. Silicon Alley Insider reports that, despite an homage to the Beatles on the invitation, which reads "The beat goes on," a long-awaited announcement that the Beatles library will be available on iTunes won't be part of the September 5 event. Instead, it will feature, yes, yet more iPods. Are they still making those tired old things?

Comments: We asked if you would pay extra to buy a ...
We asked if you would pay extra to buy a Googler's bookshelf -- listed, for a premium price, on Craigslist. If you work at Cisco, apparently the answer's yes. [Valleywag]

Rumormonger: Yahoo sales chief may be out of the picture
On AllThingsD, Kara Swisher has the scoop on some minor personnel moves at Yahoo. But surprisingly, the reporter who's normally so plugged into the mess at Yahoo may have missed the big news. One tipster claims that Gregory Coleman, the longtime head of sales, is on the way out, to be replaced by Hilary Schneider, who currently runs Yahoo's e-commerce businesses, such as they are. The ad salesforce is supposed to get the word today, with the official announcement coming tomorrow.The rumor makes sense. Coleman led Yahoo's big comeback in advertising in the early part of this decade. But equally, one could say, he's overseen the recent slowdown in banner-ad sales growth. He's been ridiculed recently for his comments about how digital marketers don't know how to reach teens -- rather, some charge, Yahoo ad salespeople, under Coleman, don't know how to deliver teens to marketers.Schneider, meanwhile, is a close ally of Yahoo president Sue Decker. Brought into Yahoo last September...