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Hires: The Huffington Post has named former CBSNews.com ...
The Huffington Post has named former CBSNews.com chief Betsy Morgan will become the political blog's new CEO, replacing cofounder Ken Lerer. One hopes that, unlike the site's columnists, she'll actually get paid. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Stats Feed: Today's most popular headlines are Amanda ...
Today's most popular headlines are Amanda Congdon bounces back with best video ever (1,091 views today), Om Malik stays in (and out of) the picture (881) and Kathy Griffin seduces Steve Wozniak (763).

Surly Adopter: GOOG-411 would be great if it would shut up
I spent a half hour speed-dialing Google's new phone directory service, 800-GOOG-411. The verdict? Google's speech-recognition and geo-mapping algorithms outperformed Verizon and AT&T's humans this afternoon. GOOG-411 figured out that "Dover-Foxcroft" was a town in Maine rather than bouncing me to an operator. It deduced that "H H Brown Shoes" meant a store in nearby Dexter. It let me talk with my mouth full. But the service makes an irritatingly un-Googly first impression on callers.GOOG-411 answers not with a hello, but with a forboding, "Calls recorded for quality." It then adds audio injury to insult by playing a randomly-selected voice actor enthusiastically shouting "GOOG-411!" The very first time I called, my right eardrum was nearly punctured by some bratty boy-child's shriek.The service's designers seem overly smitten with their archive of voice snippets, which cover a wide range of ages and international accents. Perhaps they meant to draw a human smiley-face...

Xobni: Email startup takes on filmmaking
A note to venture capitalist Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. Remember the cash you plunked down on Xobni, the party-throwing email startup? This is where your money's going.Email startup Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) has released a short film aimed at recruiting new engineers to join their team. Filmed with a clear nod towards Reservoir Dogs and Office Space, the clip includes an efficient German manager, gratuitous toilet humor (the bathroom stall is labeled "Outbox"), an Indian-accented sock puppet, and an appearance by Y Combinator guru Paul Graham, who bought the cameo, in a sense, by providing Xobni's seed round.

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: New York City builds a ring of superfluous surveillance
What's up with the CCTV lovefest? It's already been established that surveillance cameras aren't all that effective when it comes to crime-fighting. Following Chicago's lead, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg says he's looking to emulate the "ring of steel" -- cameras and road barriers -- that London devised to fend off IRA bombings. Bloomberg brushes off all the privacy hubbub by saying, "We are under surveillance all the time." You're naive to think otherwise. Your privacy is an illusion, much like your security. What we want to be a bit less private, though, is who's making bank off this urban paranoia.New York City's network is set to cost $81.5 million and Chicago's cost is unknown, but certainly ungodly. IBM, long drawn to expensive contracts, is in charge of setting up Chicago's system. No vendors have been named for New York's system, but we doubt Bloomberg is picking up supplies at Home Depot. (Photo by Jon Gos)

CEO Pay: Larry Ellison is overpaid, while Steve Ballmer is unmotivated
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, thinks Larry Ellison, his equivalent at Oracle, is overpaid. Ballmer says of Oracle's compensation: "I find it interesting and probably not that considered a decision to do what [Oracle have] done." (Ellison received about $74 million, while Ballmer received less than a million dollars.) Which is probably true, but I doubt Ballmer would be talking about it if Microsoft's own compensation committee hadn't said that he's "probably underpaid." Or if he wasn't already worth $15 billion, thanks to his holdings of Microsoft stock. Ballmer thinks increasing the value of his 4 percent ownership of Microsoft is enough motivation -- but why is the CEO even bringing up the issue?Since Ballmer assumed the role of CEO in January of 2000, the stock has declined almost 50 percent and has gone sideways for the last 6 years post-antitrust. Despite claiming pay should be commensurate with stock performance, Ballmer's compensation actually increased almost 32 percent...

Clips: Email startup takes on filmmaking
A note to venture capitalist Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. Remember the cash you plunked down on Xobni, the party-throwing email startup? This is where your money's going.Email startup Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) has released a short film aimed at recruiting new engineers to join their team. Filmed with a clear nod towards Reservoir Dogs and Office Space, the clip includes an efficient German manager, gratuitous toilet humor (the bathroom stall is labeled "Outbox"), an Indian-accented sock puppet, and an appearance by Y Combinator guru Paul Graham, who bought the cameo, in a sense, by providing Xobni's seed round.

Bad Idea: The three worst social networks since HitlerYouth.com
Disclaimer: Someone could theoretically mashup the sex offender registry, Google Maps, and Club Penguin. And that, I'll grant, would be a worse social network than the ones below.QuechupWhoamg! There's like this social site that you can do everything on! "You can use Quechup to meet new people, catch up with old friends, maintain a blog, share videos & photos, chat with other members, play games, and more. It's no wonder Quechup is fast becoming 'The Social Networking site to be on'."I think I heard of this! Only last time it had some boring name like "the book." But this one is named after a mild condiment so I am all fired up! Gawd.As soon as I signed up, Quechup asked me to look through all my e-mail contacts. I didn't want to, but there was no "skip" option. So I put in the wrong password for my Gmail account, which promptly broke Quechup. Now I'm blocked out of the username I tried to sign up with (Bubbalub) and fuck you Quechup.Quechup doesn't cut the mustard is stuck...

Feuds: Google wants you to quit Facebook
Well, this is one way to deal with competition. Spotted, today, on one Silicon Valley office worker's iGoogle homepage, a link to the recommended how-to of the day, a detailed step-by-step process explaining how to quit spending time on Facebook. This could, of course, just be a random headline surfacing on the feeds. But we find it more amusing to surmise that Google is taking a preemptive strike against the social network before they lose all their employees to the next big thing. After the jump, the full screenshot.

File-sharing: If you keep stealing movies, you'll never be a star
The Motion Picture Association of America has, for years, attempted to stop rampant piracy through cheesy, guilt-inducing public service announcements. "You're not just stealing from the rich, you're stealing from the janitors too" -- that sort of thing. Well, the Brits have decided its film industry can only tackle its $18 billion piracy problem by targeting the young. Film Education, as the project is called, infiltrates classrooms to convince kids that piracy is evil by preying on their future hopes and dreams. The message: All those small, independent films that might launch your career in show biz won't get made because of your thieving ways.

Crime: Filmmaker and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola ...
Filmmaker and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola lost 15 years worth of data when thieves broke into his house and stole his computers. Luckily, copies of the script for his next film were saved elsewhere. "If I could get the backup back, it would save me years [of] all the photographs of my family, all my writing." Sorry, Francis, maybe next time, instead of expanding your wine cellar, you might think about investing in some offsite backup solutions. [BBC News]

Mysteries: Why is Steve Jobs cheerleading Yahoo?
When all else fails, bring in a motivational speaker. For last Friday's management meeting, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker went all out, bringing in Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Glossed over in Kara Swisher's otherwise excellent report was the question: Why would Jobs rally the troops at Yahoo? Swisher treats it as an obvious choice, likening Jobs to Oprah Winfrey. But I think there's more to it than that.Look no further than the iPhone for an explanation why. Though Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board of directors and Google pays Apple for the traffic its Safari Web browser generates, Jobs tapped Yahoo to provide email for the iPhone. I think Jobs's appearance at the Yahoo event served as a reminder to Schmidt that Apple's not a wholly owned subsidiary of Google.And there's also the personal connection. Decker used to serve on the board of Pixar, where Jobs was also CEO, before Disney bought the animated-film studio. It can't hurt to keep that relationship warm...

Virtual Worlds: Analysts discover that Second Life is overhyped
Some might assume that the Second Life backlash is merely a natural part of the hype cycle, with disproportional skepticism as the natural stage before widespread, mainstream acceptance. But here at Valleywag, we're hoping that the growing doubts actually are the mainstream reaction. Those who look deeply into the virtual world and come away seeing that it's neither "the marketplace of the future" or the "new branding frontier" are, we believe, merely observant. Like, for example, the analysts at Yankee Group, who think there's more than a small problem with Second Life.Second Life hit its saturation point in October 2006: Growth has slowed to a crawl and users are spending an average of 12 minutes per month in the virtual world. Meanwhile, the firm says that less awkward forms of social networking are seeing increases in both users and "engagement," noting that Facebook users spend an average of 186 minutes per month. Ouch. That's a poke that may have actually hurt. (Photo...

Lost In Translation: Facebook might be stronger in a handful of ...
Facebook might be stronger in a handful of countries than MySpace, but not strong enough for their liking. The company is in the process of translating their entire site into a number of non-English languages. How do you say "poke" in Arabic? [Financial Times]

Search: Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive Corp. launched ...
Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive Corp. launched a revamped iWon.com portal. The search engine, acquired along with Ask.com, has always drawn visitors by offering prizes. But it now promises more prizes, a social network and a more explicit link to IAC's Ask.com search engine. I, for one, am excited to have the opportunity to never visit the new site as much as I did the old one. [TechCrunch]

Stats: Techmeme starts tracking the Valley's self-obsession
One could say many things about blog-tracker Technorati and its founder, David Sifry, but the worst charge, I think, to make, is that he helped popularize a delusion particularly congenial to the self-involved world of the Valley: That links to your website somehow matter more than traffic. A newly hired CEO may fix the business, but he's unlikely to repair the damage that idea has wrought. Now, Techmeme has launched a similar tracking service, the Techmeme Leaderboard, that will surely make things worse.Unlike Technorati, which tracked the entire blogosphere, Techmeme only tracks a limited set of tech-centered blogs. And make no mistake, all the tech blogs, Valleywag fully included, scramble for top position in any discussion that appears there. (Techmeme differs from most other memetrackers by presenting stories in clusters, highlighting the original story that generates the most blog discussion, and secondarily listing the blogs that link to it.)The result? The top of Techmeme's...

Domain Names: In 2005 Facebook bought the Facebook.com ...
In 2005 Facebook bought the Facebook.com domain name for $200,000. Now, Facebook has gotten ahold of Face-book.com via a ruling from the World Intellectual Property Organization. So, how much did it cost them this time? Aside from its own lawyers fees, just $1,500 to the WIPO dispute resolution service. [The Register]

Online Advertising: Microsoft's MSN portal is losing money. Lots ...
Microsoft's MSN portal is losing money. Lots of money. "Google's profit run-rate is $4.4 billion on $16 billion of revenue. Yahoo's run-rate is $750 million, on $7 billion in revenue. Even fellow-cellar-dweller AOL is printing cash: $1 billion profit pace, on about $2.1 billion of revenue. All those companies are making money hand over first. Microsoft is shoveling it down a rat hole." [Silicon Alley Insider]

Hires: Technorati attempts to regain relevance
The blogosphere was thrown into chaos when its search king, Technorati's David Sifry, abdicated his throne in August. The search for a new CEO went on for months. Who, after all, wanted to venture into a market increasingly dominated by Google, whose Blog Search was making Technorati increasingly irrelevant? But Technorati's board, at last, has found their patsy.Richard Jalichandra, a former business development guru at IGN Entertainment and Fox Interactive Media, whom insiders believe had a hand in the merger been game sites IGN and GameSpy, the acquisition of film site Rotten Tomatoes, and the company's acquisition by News Corp. for $650 million. Or not.He left mid-2006, enduring his fall from Rupert Murdoch's grace by playing advisor to Pixsy.com, a image and video search, and MyYearbook.com. For his troubles, he seems to have acquired an unhealthy orange glow. Hopefully he'll be able to fix, at the very least, Technorati's appearances, if not its substance.

Second Life: After four years of running a virtual world, ...
After four years of running a virtual world, Linden Lab is finally committing to a long overdue upgrade to its physics engine. Havok 4 should, in theory, make Second Life a little less clunky by reducing crashes, minimizing lag, and improving collision detection (physical interaction between objects) and the world's actual physics. Of course, this engine is already a year old, Havok announced the newest iteration last month. [Worlds In Motion]

Quotable: "Not so well-kept secret in the Valley is ...
"Not so well-kept secret in the Valley is that Google is freaking out because a lot of its folks are vesting soon and these greedy, restless bastards are looking for the next Big Score and right now that's looking like Facebook. So lots of Google talent is going to be streaming out the door to Facebook and all the free bus rides in the world aren't going to keep them locked in." -- Forbes editor Dan Lyons, posing as Apple CEO Steve Jobs. [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]

Digital Music: Radiohead spits in the face of both Apple and Amazon.com
All the record-label kevetching that the Internet is killing their livelihood may actually be true. But it's not college kids sharing files in broadband-equipped dorms that they need to worry about. Radiohead is releasing its new album sans label. Novel, but the interesting bit is that the band is giving a choice to consumers: Pay $82 for a super-fancy, boxed edition of In Rainbows, or download the album -- for whatever you think it's worth. This follows a similar campaign by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails who says once his band's label obligations are completed, it will release digital albums for about $4. Of course it's not just the music industry that should be concerned. Amazon.com touted the fact that it had secured Radiohead for its new MP3 store, after the band had long refused to sell on Apple's iTunes. But how valuable will this relationship be if fans can essentially obtain Radiohead's music for free, with the band's blessing?

Great Moments In Public Relations: Starbucks has a rumor response website that ...
Starbucks has a rumor response website that it uses to dispel nasty gossip about the company. We wish all companies had this sort of thing so mock scandals can be quashed before they get out of control. [Barron's]

Art: Yahoo has gotten itself into trouble with ...
Yahoo has gotten itself into trouble with Sunnyvale and an artist whom the company hired to satisfy a public-art requirement of new corporate property in the Silicon Valley city. It turns out that the grass-cum-wire landscape became more overgrown than intended, so Yahoo took a weed whacker to the whole thing. The butchery "devastated" the artist. Maybe she can get a motivational speech from Jerry Yang as a pick-me-up? [WSJ]

Geek Love: New York faux-celebrity Julia Allison and ...
New York faux-celebrity Julia Allison and online-video entrepreneur Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo, are back together, following Lodwick's public posting of a pseudo-apology on his blog. Of course, Allison had to nudge him by text message to write it. We hear the makeup sex was anything but virtual, though. [Obeastiality]

Acebucks: A loyalty program without much mileage
According to Mike Lazerow, the founder of Buddy Media, creator of Facebook application AceBucks, his company's virtual-currency service is just misunderstood. The "boo birds" just don't get it. Lazerow & Co. aren't competing with PayPal, Facebook's own rumored micropayment system, Beenz, or Flooz. Acebucks is not a payment processor and its not an online currency that translates into real goods or real money. So what the hell is it? It's a "loyalty program." In other words, it's a frequent-flier program -- without the free plane trips, though. Remind us why Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus, Howard Lindzon, and other net bigwigs invested $1.5 million in this company?

Videogames: The Electronic Software Ratings Board's control ...
The Electronic Software Ratings Board's control over a videogame publisher's content extends beyond deciding if a violent game is safe for minors to play. It also governs in-game advertisements. Lately everyone from behemoths like Microsoft to the Lilliputian startup 3D Realms have been accumulating infraction notices -- which could lead to fines -- for failure to comply with advertising guidelines. [1UP]

Facebook: Tech satire is all the rage. Forbes editor ...
Tech satire is all the rage. Forbes editor Dan Lyons parlayed Fake Steve Jobs into the book Options. Now two Harvard grads, Greg Atwan and Evan Lushing, have received "in the range" of $50,000 to lampoon everyone's favorite social network in The Facebook Book, to be published next spring. [The New York Observer]

Geeks Gone Wild: Even with the wonders of YouTube video, lawyers are still lawyers
Lawyers The ">feigning cool are the latest YouTube phenomenon. Why? Recruiting. Apparently the only way law firms can attract young lawyers-to-be is to blatantly hype the fun level at the workplace through "Mac vs. PC" parodies and bouncing about, Google-style, on giant rubber balls. But what will clients think when they get a look at all the tomfoolery? Check out Choate Hall & Stewart's campaign. Two questions: Would you work here? And would you hire these people to represent you in court?

Exits: Skype rains on eBay's parade
Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Skype, and eBay are paying the price for the disastrous acquisition of the Internet telephony service two years ago. The Skype cofounder has stepped down from his CEO role, and eBay will take a $1.4 billion asset-impairment charge -- more than half of the $2.5 billion they paid for the company. The silver lining? eBay only has to pay $530 million of a potential $1.7 billion earn-out to Skype investors, since Skype is performing so poorly. With the shareholder payment out of the way, eBay can more easily put Skype on the auction block. And Zennstrom can focus on Joost, his new online-video venture.

Advertising: Google plasters the countryside with billboards
As much as we'd liked to believe the 800-GOOG-411 billboards are Google's bid to take over another part of the advertising world, its sudden advertising blast is more benign. Google simply wants drivers to dial GOOG-411. Since it can't beam the message straight into your brain, and the Web, Google's home turf, isn't the best way to spread word of a toll-free number, Google is plastering the countryside. That's a lot of cash being pumped out for marketing a free service. Google, no doubt, is trying to drum up a user base before rolling out some sort of advertising scheme. Perhaps it'll be based on ThePudding's spooky audio version of AdSense, targeting callers based on their spoken words. (Photo by Nick Starr)

Geeks Gone Wild: Kathy Griffin seduces Steve Wozniak
newVideoPlayer("griffinwozapocalypse2_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Comedienne Kathy Griffin describes her post-Emmy Awards date with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak: "He downloaded my private parts."

Media: Financial Times sets its articles free
The Financial Times has seen the writing on the wall -- the pay wall, that is. That's the term bloggers use for the barrier newspapers like the FT and the Wall Street Journal put up around their content, preventing nonsubscribers from reading it. With the Journal, one of the few success stories in charging for content, contemplating getting rid of its pay wall, it's no surprise that the FT would follow suit. But the British financial daily is taking a surprisingly clever tack in doing so. FT is making the site mostly free, except for the heaviest of readers. Newspaper officials say they did "research" -- imagine that, research! -- and now will allow readers to view 30 articles a month before having to cough up some change.Hardcore readers -- likely current subscribers -- will not see much change, since they'll have to pay to keep up with all of the coverage. But bloggers will be free to link to FT articles knowing their viewers can click through without trouble. This could...

Acquisitions: Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is buying ...
Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is buying Navteq for $8.1 billion. The company's mapping service powers Google Maps, among others -- including the Google Maps application for Apple's iPhone, a competitor to Nokia's handsets. (That's an exceedingly roundabout attack on a rival, but it's so obscure it just may work.) Nokia also says it will provide many more phones with GPS capabilities in 2008. [GigaOM]

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Don't call AT&T the Death Star or they'll cut off your DSL
Folks are working themselves into a lather over an AT&T/BellSouth DSL Terms of Service that may or may not be real. The scary part:AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service... for conduct that AT&T believes... tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.Predictably, the geek squad on Slashdot is all worked up about censorship and freedom of speech and consumer rights. Poppycock.Censorship isn't AT&T cutting off your DSL after you whined about response times, depriving you of your World of Warcraft fix. It's Myanmar turning off the Internet for the entire country so no one will find out they're slaughtering monks. The First Amendment doesn't give you the right to run ATTsucks.com on AT&T's servers. It allows you to petition the government for redress of grievances without getting thrown in the stockade for your troubles.Armchair lawyers throwing out ridiculous accusations...

Videobloggers: Amanda Congdon bounces back with best video ever
Vlog hottie Amanda Congdon has posted her best video in months -- maybe ever. The fact that it's an ad-libbed outtake that could never be featured on a major news network just goes to show that she was never meant for ABC. Maybe her rumored project with the relatively uncensored HBO will work out after all. Of course, I'm still laughing too hard to admit that I'm ignoring some key problems.There's the fact that it's an old joke. That it's mostly humorous because Congdon is usually incapable of humor. That I laughed because she is defying her image as a vacuous, uninteresting shill attempting to make her way in the world of "legitimate journalism." That lightning doesn't strike twice. On second thought, who knows what the future will hold for Amanda Congdon? All I know is that if it looks anything like this, I'm wishing the videoblogger all the luck in the world.

Facebook: Stupid and useless makes for smart Facebook apps
Last week we posted that an eBay auction had set the value of Facebook applications at around $2,000. With another application having been successfully auctioned, the valuation has soared. I Am Hungry, an application that allows users to express their need for food and find other friends with grumbling tummies, fetched $20,100! While I Am Hungry boasts more than 250,000 users, compared to the paltry 134 users of Logbook, it still hasn't cracked the top-100 list of applications. It also happens to be a stupid application. And it drew, predictably, equally stupid bidders.The bid crept up from $1,000 to $2,000 over the course of the week. Bidding then jumped to $3,000, then $15,000, then $20,000 in the last ten hours. Apparently stupid apps attract stupid users which attract stupid buyers. Or, more likely, someone had an interest in seeing the application sell for much more than bidders cared to pay -- like every cliché auction scene you've ever seen. We're not suggesting,...

Crash This Bash: Om Malik stays in (and out of) the picture
A double birthday bash for GigaOm biz-blogger Om Malik (pictured with operations manager Joey Wan) and Spark PR founder Donna Sokolsky fogged up the glass patio walls at Jack Falstaff on Friday. I happened to be at the bar, hoping to catch dreamy god-mayor Gavin Newsom doing paperwork again. After the jump, the best overheards.The boss text-messaged me instructions to report on who was there and who wasn't, but to me all business reporters and publicists kind of look alike. I could only confirm that the lanky guy whom several partygoers mistook for Digg founder Kevin Rose, complete with bedhead and horizontal stripey-shirt, was Not Kevin.Besides the hacks and flacks, any event south of Market Street includes a few self-styled "startup CEOs" who've yet to hire a single full-time employee. Happily, one turned out to be Kyle Shank from Uncov, the cruelly funny site that aspires to be the anti-Techcrunch. (Memo to Kyle: Trade the 1997 orange shirt for some basic black. Sorry,...