Home / valleywag.com rss archive / October-02-2007


Online Video: Slickest thing on Boing Boing TV is the hair
Bloggers turned coanchors Xeni Jardin and Mark Frauenfelder debuted their online show, Boing Boing tv, Tuesday night. Episode 1 interleaves two hosted segments with two video shorts, three minutes in all. Is it any good? For a vlog, yes. A 1960s-vintage clip about a future e-shopping and e-mail system is surprisingly prescient. Xeni's segment on online lists (and in typical Boing Boing aesthetic, a book for making lists offline), is easy to follow thanks to her NPR-seasoned voice, although it won't teach Facebookers anything new. I suspect she's aiming to draw newcomers rather than play to insiders. The theremin-playing robot? That's what Boing Boing does best. In fact I only had one question:boutin: WTF with all the hair gel?xeni: when we are floating around on our spaceshipxeni: IT STILL LOOKS EXCELELNTxeni: IN ZERO GIn boring business news, it looks like the promised commercial from IBM didn't materialize for the launch. Ad buyers better get in line now. BBtv's...

Stats Feed: Today's most popular headlines are Flickr ...
Today's most popular headlines are Flickr founder to leave Yahoo (1,961 views today), Can't spot a good investment, but he can run his mouth (1,017) and Pliant tech press corps bows before Microsoft's Zune (811).

Rumormonger: Six Apart considered a LiveJournal and Vox spinoff
We just heard an outlandish rumor: That San Francisco-based blogging company Six Apart, whose software powers many of the world's most popular blogs, considered splitting in two earlier this year, under former CEO Barak Berkowitz. But the company recently upgraded its CEO, replacing Berkowitz with executive Chris Alden, and a spinoff or sale is no longer on the table. By shedding its LiveJournal and Vox consumer blogging sites, Six Apart would have left behind enterprise blog service TypePad and the Movable Type software product -- exactly the businesses new CEO Chris Alden ran before his promotion, which is likely why this old rumor is gaining fresh circulation. A spinoff would have had financial appeal, of course, given the fad for social networks these days and Facebook's lofty mooted valuation. That is, of course, assuming Six Apart could have come to terms with a deep-pocketed buyer. But taking money off the table is the only aspect of this rumored deal that would have...

Embargo Breakers: Pliant tech press corps bows before Microsoft's Zune
Why, in this age of lightning-fast publishing, do members of prestigious national publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still agree to embargoes? Microsoft, it seems, has placed an embargo on its new Zune models, but Gizmodo already has photos, and the Silicon Alley Insider, too, has already scooped its much-larger business-news rivals, with reports that Microsoft will introduce new Zunes with flash-memory storage, competing with Apple's iPod Nano line. Jay Greene from BusinessWeek, Jeff Leeds, music reporter at the Times, and Nick Wingfield of the Journal, we hear, were among the reporters scribbling away at the Microsoft launch event in the Seattle area today. And what did they get in exchange for agreeing to sit on the news?Why, some attendees were treated to one-on-one meetings with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. We can only imagine what second prize was. Do readers care, though, if the reporters got face time with a billionaire -- or that they...

Online Video: Boing Boing to launch daily Internet-TV show
Is any blogger still satisfied with merely blogging? The quirky alternative website Boing Boing, which claims 7.5 million monthly viewers, will debut a daily online video show Wednesday. After closet negotiations with national networks, the Boing Boingers decided to go it alone and own the show themselves. Robolicious blogger Xeni Jardin (left), whose TV credits include appearances on Dennis Miller and most of the big nightly newsies, will host. Jardin, unquestionably vlog hot, coanchor with fellow BB editor Mark Frauenfelder, best known for his appearance in an Apple ad. The Los Angeles Times got exclusive dibs on the media-centric story. (A couple of goofs in the LAT piece: Editor David Pescovitz is based in San Francisco, not Paris, and Cory Doctorow is in London rather than Tokyo. And here we thought old media factchecked.) But what Net geeks want to know is: Why does Ted Turner's TBS own the boingboing.tv domain?

Second Life: Everyone's coming to Second Life
Except "everyone" is all the other digital entertainment companies gunning for the virtual-world market. A structured Japanese virtual world named "meet-me," covered by the Associated Press, aims for something closer to The Sims than Second Life. Meanwhile, Sony is building Home, a world for the PS3. And of course Google will turn Google Earth into a virtual world. Second Life's first-mover advantage isn't much in the face of such giants.

Media: Brad Stone of the New York Times has picked ...
Brad Stone of the New York Times has picked up, belatedly, that the Industry Standard, the fast-falling standard-bearer magazine of the dotcom boom, will be reborn as an online-only publication. A source tells us that IDG, the publisher of the new Standard, had pegged a relaunch date in less than a week. One small problem: As Stone points out, IDG has yet to hire an editor-in-chief. In fact, we hear that the initial plan for the website didn't even include a top editor. [Bits]

Breakups: Halo maker could leave Microsoft in videogame hell
Videogame enthusiasts are freaking out over rumors that Halo's proud papa, Bungie, is disentangling itself from Microsoft. But would it matter? Losing a franchise that put the Xbox console on the map and recently sold $170 million its first day would be devastating for a Microsoft division still fighting to operate in the black. But if the two sperate, Bungie would walk away with its independence while Microsoft would walk off arm and arm with Master Chief, since it owns the rights to the Halo franchise. It could find another studio to pump out sequels. As with movie studios, the videogame-playing public pays attention to individual games, not the developers who make them.

Crime: New Jersey's attorney general plays copycat, ...
New Jersey's attorney general plays copycat, following New York in sending a subpoena to Facebook over allegations of sex offenders on the site. [Reuters]

Quotable: "There can't be any more deep technology ...
"There can't be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That's for sure." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Of course! Steve, we eagerly await Microsoft's Facebook killer. [Times Online]

TV: Boing Boing to launch daily online TV show
The quirky alternative website, which claims 7.5 million monthly viewers, will debut a daily online video show Wednesday. After closet negotiations with national networks, the Boing Boingers decided to go it alone and own the show themselves. Robolicious blogger Xeni Jardin (left), whose TV credits include Dennis Miller and most of the big nightly newsies, will host. She'll co-anchor with fellow BB editor Mark Frauenfelder, best known for his appearance in an Apple ad. The Los Angeles Times got exclusive dibs on the media-centric story. (A couple of goofs in the LAT piece: Editor David Pescovitz is based in San Francisco, not Paris, and Cory Doctorow is in London rather than Tokyo.) But what Net geeks want to know is: Why does Ted Turner's TBS own the boingboing.tv domain?

E-commerce: Amazon.com revs up local delivery
Amazon.com, which already offers same-day delivery in New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle, is now offering the service in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. It's expensive: $14 to $19 per delivery, plus per-pound shipping fees. But for Amazon's core user base of the lazy and wealthy, same-day shipping is a no-brainer. Why no same-day service in the Bay Area, though? Unlike the East Coast, served by Amazon's Wilmington, Del., warehouse, and Seattle, which also has a local facility, northern California gets items shipped from Fernley, Nev., outside Reno. A bit too far, we suspect for economical same-day service. After the jump, the notice from Amazon.As an Amazon Prime member who recently shipped an order to Boston, Washington, D.C., or Baltimore, you might be interested in a new service that we've recently expanded to all three cities--same-day delivery through Local Express Delivery. Thousands of items are available. Just order before 9:15 a.m. eastern to ship to a qualifying...

EBay: Skype's failure to make money fast
In an interview just prior to his departure as CEO of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom provided insight into why the internet telephony company was a poor investment for eBay.Some people may want to monetize faster, but the key is to figure out what is the right speed of monetization. If you act too aggressively, there is a real risk you will lose the huge active user base.Implicit in this statement is the recognition that Skype needs to make more money off its users, faster. Quite a trick for a free phone service. But still, not moving too fast? It's been four years and Skype has 220 million users! Would Zennstrom wait until Skype has half a billion users? A billion? The risk of losing users because of increased or new fees doesn't decrease over time. On the contrary; users become more and more used to services being free. Attracted by free services, they come to expect it, and chafe at being charged. Acting as if their is some far off date when increased fees are suddenly more palatable...

Bubble 2.0: Google worth $750 billion? And we thought Facebook was overpriced
Could Google hit $2,000 a share? Henry Blodget thinks so, but I'm not so sure. That would value GOOG at $750 billion -- roughly the same as Microsoft ($279 billion), General Electric ($431 billion), and News Corp. ($70 billion) added together. And that's assuming that none of those companies grow at all -- a highly unlikely proposition. Could Google be the first company worth a trillion dollars? Maybe, but I'm not placing any bets in the "first-to-a-trillion" Valleywag office pool. Remember how well predictions of a trillion-dollar market cap worked out for AOL Time Warner? (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Quotable: "Erick, where do you get these revelations ...
"Erick, where do you get these revelations from? IPO? Just because a still money losing pure content company gets a new CEO? Thanks for bringing this great analytical mind to bear on TechCrunch." A commenter to new TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld on his post about an IPO for political blog network Huffington Post. [TechCrunch]

Jackpot: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sold $21.8 million ...
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sold $21.8 million worth of Oracle stock in a prearranged selloff. Maybe he can use some of that cash to strike a deal with NASA to park his jet at conveniently located, but normally off-limits to civilians, Moffett Field. [MarketWatch]

Acquisitions: Microsoft shops for an e-commerce edge
Microsoft has bolstered its Internet commerce capabilities by purchasing Jellyfish, an innovative comparative shopping site, for an undisclosed sum. Jellyfish will remain a standalone entity, but Microsoft's Web team has signaled they will be borrowing Jellyfish's technology for use across the software giant's websites. Why? Jellyfish introduces a compelling new twist to comparison shopping. Listed retailers only pay Jellyfish when purchases are made -- the more they pay, the higher they rank. In turn, Jellyfish kicks back half of its commission to the buyer, effectively lowering the price. It's an intriguing business model, taking a page from Google's ad-ranking technology and applying it to e-commerce. Just one problem: Microsoft's unfortunate track record of crushing the life out of small, innovative companies it acquires.

Geography Lesson: China is where Skype really failed eBay
In Kara Swisher's otherwise excellent analysis on AllThingsD of the Skype writeoff's effect on Facebook, there's a string of nonsense that desperately bears correction. Swisher ramblingly suggests that eBay bought Skype for some kind of ability to target ads and premium offerings to the VOIP service's users. Nonsense. It's well-documented that eBay CEO Meg Whitman got the idea on a trip to China, where she saw that users of rival auction sites were using VOIP calls and instant messaging to close sales -- a useful feature in a country still getting used to conducting business electronically, rather than face to face. Adding Skype to eBay's auctions in China, she hoped, would boost its market share. No such luck.Instead, eBay ended up throwing in its lot with a local competitor, Tom.com, late last year. And even that hasn't helped. eBay's market share in China has fallen by more than half this year. I'd argue that Skype's failure to strengthen eBay in China, more than anything,...

Reality Check: Tech blogger on HuffPo: "Can you say IPO?" Answer: "No."
The new editor at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, has gotten a little IPO-crazy in these heady days of Bubble 2.0. The best guess we've seen on a Huffington Post valuation is $60 million which, for a media company, is a drop in the bucket. We can't remember a tech or media company going public with a valuation anything like that. Huffington Post is the most unlikely IPO candidate since Wired in 1996 -- and Wired had substantially more revenues and a real magazine business. Maybe we were onto something with the whole cheese thing. More likely? An acquisition.Yahoo News and Huffington Post have had a syndication deal since launch; buying HuffPo, as it's affectionately known, would boost Yahoo's blogger cred.AOL may be looking to augment its Weblogs Inc. stable with some good political commentary. HuffPo cofounder Ken Lerer was a bigwig at AOL back in the day -- though that may not help him much with Time Warner's current leadershipHuffPo's pseudo-namesake, the Washington Post, already...

Search: Yahoo has found what it thinks you're looking for
In Silicon Valley, if you're not releasing an upgrade, you might as well be dead. So Yahoo is staving off signs of rigor mortis by launching an improved search engine. It promises search suggestions that are marginally less annoying than other search sites' attempts to be helpful, and it also integrates images from Flickr and information from other Yahoo properties. Where the new Yahoo search distinguishes itself is with its suggestions: A search for "valley" suggests "mountains, " a search for "hate" suggests "dislikes" and even "death metal," love" suggests "passion" and "romance." At last, someone in Sunnyvale has found a thesaurus! But where it really shines? For me, it's sports.Search on a sports team, and you'll get the latest scores from Yahoo's sports websites, an area where the competition is weak. It's not clear, however, if any of this will boost Yahoo in the score that matters to Wall Street: revenue per search.As Silicon Alley Insider points out, Yahoo, even before...

Social Networks: AOL wants a tasty chunk of the 9 million ...
AOL wants a tasty chunk of the 9 million people addicted to the massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft. Its rumored plan is to lure WOW players into AOL's clutches with a dedicated social network at its dormant wow.com domain. Oh the cleverness. [TechCrunch]

Guy Kawasaki: Can't spot a good investment, but he can run his mouth
In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, conducted from his home office in ritzy Atherton, Calif., Guy Kawasaki drops a couple of gems. On defending the poor response to his investments while turning down Valley successes: The only thing you can conclude is that it's a crap shoot. You have no idea what is going to succeed.One can conclude that, if one is a self-serving, self-promoting, quasi-successful angel investor. Or rather, one can conclude that Kawasaki has no idea of what is going to succeed. The Silicon Valley Tool's attempts to befuddle his interviewer with truisms only gets worse when he starts defending his startup Truemors.I have a very low opinion of the blogosphere. I think it is made up of about 250,000 people who are mostly 45-year-old men who live with their mother and have dead cats in their refrigerators.Wait. Isn't Kawasaki also a member of the "blogosphere"? And why didn't the Merc interviewer check his fridge? Oh, the horror. the frozen, feline horror.

Geek Pride: Save Mark Cuban!
A tragedy is brewing, folks. The Fort Worth Star-Something -- apparently they have newspapers in cowtowns, who knew? -- reports that Internet billionaire Mark Cuban risks getting voted off "Dancing with the Stars," due to the low scores assigned him by the judges. This is a clear example of the basest kind of antigeek prejudice. "It was like a bulldog chasing a squirrel," said one judge. Whatever! Who doesn't love bulldogs? And the worst thing: California, again, has been practically shut out of the vote, due to its Pacific timezone. The polls closed an hour ago. The Bay Area's nerd-boy hotbed, Cuban's natural constituency, left out again. So unfair! We'll have to watch tonight to see how this turns out.

Deals: Skype's loss could be Facebook's, too
When it rains, it pours. And eBay's recent billion-dollar writeoff of Skype, the VOIP startup it bought two years ago, could have an impact on Facebook's negotiations to sell a stake in the social network, at a high valuation, to Microsoft or another large backer. (Both Bernhard Warner and Kara Swisher make this observation, which I'll attribute to great minds thinking alike.) Skype's financial failure is a sobering reminder of the risks of overpaying for a startup. And all of a sudden, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is playing diffident, saying Facebook "might be a fad." But what may be forgotten in this latest skeptical turn to the hype cycle is that underpaying has risks, too.No one is more familiar with the pains of a lowball bid than eBay itself. It tried, repeatedly, to buy PayPal before that startup went public, finally buying it for $1.5 billion after its IPO. In retrospect, that struck PayPal's founders and investors as low, but it was a good price in the depths of the...

Clips: Mark Cuban's money shot
newVideoPlayer("Dancing_With_the_Stars_Mark.flv", 475, 376);Internet billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban takes the stage again on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." As I watched this, I had three thoughts: "Wow, that outfit is gay, even for 'Dancing with the Stars'"; "Mark Cuban is a really good bad dancer"; and "Those are not spirit fingers! These are spirit fingers!" Still, Cuban is the geekiest contestant on the show this season, so give him a little love, won't you?

Rumormonger: GOOG-411 a victim of Googler vanity
An anonymized correspondent writes, "The reason the GOOG-411 voices irritate you is that instead of spending a few bucks on phone voice actors, the staff recorded all the 'GOOG-411!' samples themselves. They brought in their kids. An utter act of vanity. Yay us!" My reporter-sense says this is a guess rather than a sourced scoop. But it would explain the demographic mix of the randomized, ear-grating "GOOG-411" blurbs that greet each call: Nerdy adult males, a few H-1B accents, and a handful of rugrats. And they do sound like Valley locals. I can't ring up one good ol' red-state country drawl. Saddle up, people! If Google can hire Vint Cerf, how about luring cowboy rockstar Trace Adkins to sing "I got my GOOG on." Shoot, son, I'd put that one on the speed dial.

Stewart Butterfield: Flickr founder to leave Yahoo
At least one key Yahoo executive was unswayed by Friday's revival meeting featuring Steve Jobs: Stewart Butterfield, the founder and general manager of the Yahoo-acquired Flickr photo site. Butterfield, Valleywag has learned, plans to leave to, well, spend more time with his family. It's a pat phrase that always sounds risible, but in Butterfield's case, we'll make an exception: Anyone who has seen photos of Butterfield and his infant daughter Sonnet -- on Flickr, naturally -- can see his complete and utterly genuine devotion. Yahoo, too, might have a claim on Butterfield's devotion, in the midst of a precarious revamp. But Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, while a big supporter of Flickr himself, is not nearly as cute. No word on whether Butterfield's wife, Caterina Fake, now a high-ranking Yahoo executive, plans any move, or who will replace Butterfield at Flickr. (Photo by mylesdgrant)

Too Little Too Late: Revver's video ads point to dead service
Selling ads on videos must be hard. That'd be why Revver, a video hosting service that missed out when Blip.tv monopolized the good web shows and YouTube took the amateurs, is running video ads for a client that no longer exists. While watching my favorite anime parody, I saw this ad for Acceptable.tv, a web-based program by VH1. But that program died out this summer, so the ad points to old episodes. Unless Revver is paying shows to host this dead ad, those shows might as well be on Blip or YouTube.