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Bad Ideas: The poetic stylings of Sand Hill Road
We're used to venture capitalists having, um, "wild" and "exciting" hobbies in their downtime. Like Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures, who spends his time kitesurfing. Or Kleiner Perkins founder Tom Perkins, the yachting enthusiast. Or First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, who dabbled in indoor skydiving. Venture capitalists are supposed to be daring and innovative, which is why we can't get our heads around this latest trend: VC as poet. After the jump, a brief history of the genre -- and the latest atrocious example.The first dude who did this was Sand Hill fratboy Tim Draper, who penned the lyrics to "Riskmaster," and its Cyrillic sequel "Another Riskmaster." Then, at the Stirr holiday mixer last year, a group of VCs going by the name The Uprounds debuted the atrocious "Jingle Bells, YouTube Sells". At search startup Powerset's party celebrating their series A funding, Foundation Capital partner Charles Moldow crafted a self-serving "Ode to Powerset."The latest entrant is...

Domains: 10 .me domains to rush for
Montenegro starts selling domains with its new .me extension next year. Here's what I'll be trying to buy.1. its2. who3. helpyouhelp4. excuse5. itsnotyouits6. hold7. thrill8. kiss9. kill10. ifyouchangeyourmindimthefirstinlinehoneyimstillfreetakeachanceon

Sponsors: Why tech blogs are thanking advertisers
We may not be a muscular, sweaty, macho jock blog, but we still managed to scrape up a few sponsors to thank:LogitechMioPBSSprintTiVoWant to go mano a mano with us? Read up on how to advertise on Valleywag.

Stocks: Are smartphones driving GOOG, AAPL, and RIMM higher?
It's been a banner day for Apple, Google, and Research In Motion, as shares of all three companies hit all-time highs.Apple closed at $161.45 with a market cap of $140.4 billion. That's just short of Nokia's $143.77 billion .Google shares ended the day at $594.05.Research In Motion rocketed up almost 13 percent to $113.37 after solidly beating expectations.Apple and RIM already build smartphones; Google is widely rumored to be entering the market. Is there, so to speak, a wireless connection here? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Digital Music: Time Warner launches its own music store
Anyone recall Rick Rubin's rant about digital music and how we need to sign up for a subscription service powered by cable providers -- similar to the mumbo jumbo Bill Gate's proposes for the Zune? Well, surprisingly, Time Warner Cable has taken Rubin's bait and jumped straight into the fray with Road Runner Music. For $9.95 a month, you get unlimited access to streaming music. It also will sell digital downloads through its store, and allow you to transfer files onto portables for an additional fee. With all these new entries into digital music distribution -- real and rumored -- it'll be interesting to see if Apple caves to market pressure and either allows flexible pricing on iTunes, as the labels have asked for, or a subscription plan, to stay competitive.

Censorship: China bans all RSS feeds
The Middle Kingdom's net censors have finally patched up a great gaping hole in the Great Firewall of China, its not-so-effective Internet defense against the rest of the world's free press. It's now blocking all RSS feed traffic in an effort to stop the flow of information critical of the Chinese government. The Public Security Bureau has attempted to quash blogs and other forms of forbidden information ever since the great Chinese Internet surge in 2006. Of course, this ban will probably get swiftly dropped once China's intelligentsia discovers that RSS, besides being used for blog-headlines distribution, is also a vital tool for data transfer from Web-based applications. Photo by David Baron)

Montenegro: Meet .me, the best new domain
In a move that nearly makes up for ".biz," ICANN officially phased out the .yu domain of the now-dead nation of Yugoslavia, replacing it with .rs for Serbia and .me for Montenegro. Maybe .me can do for Montenegro what .tv did for the island nation of Tuvalu; for those who couldn't nab an eponymous .com, this definitely sounds classier than .name.

Facebook: What would a Facebook music store look like?
Allfacebook.com is reporting a rumor that Facebook will take on Apple's dominant iTunes by introducing its own music store. Few details are provided, save that they are actively looking to hire someone to head the project and discussions with studioes have been ongoing. Music applications such as iLike are popular on the social network, and digital music is a natural fit with the site's original college-kid demographic. But could Facebook really pull this off? At this point, we don't really know what a Facebook music store would be. We do know, however, what it's not. Amazon.com has set the example of a Web-based store, unencumbered by annoying digital-rights-management software. By eschewing DRM, Amazon's downloads play well with any music gadget, including iPods. Would Facebook follow this model -- or, like its photos, keep users' content locked into its website interface, playing music, say, on Facebook user profiles? The latter, however, would likely spark a user rebellion,...

Whiners: Read/WriteWeb complains about being forced ...
Read/WriteWeb complains about being forced to register to view content on NYTimes.com. Oh, shut up and register, already. The newspaper releases almost all of its articles for free and you're still not happy? If you're that opposed to giving the Gray Lady your name and email address, try BugMeNot. [Read/WriteWeb]

Fark: It seems that the mainstream media is too ...
It seems that the mainstream media is too busy writing about shark attacks and traffic patterns to review the media-zinger from Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, It's Not News, It's Fark. Luckily, Slate steps up and tells it like it is. Four months late. [Slate]

Online Advertising: Google accounted for nearly 40 percent of ...
Google accounted for nearly 40 percent of the $10 billion U.S. online advertising market in the first six months of this year. I, for one, welcome our Google overlords. [HipMojo.com]

Social Networks: Social networking is twice as popular with ...
Social networking is twice as popular with young women as young men, but adult men are more likely to use social networks than adult women. Young women use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, share pictures and communicate. Adult men tend use it to network and communicate professionally. But what's the end result? Lots of old men and young women. Creepiness ensues! [AdAge]

Everybody's Thinking It: "Facebook isn't the internet, dipshit."
"Honestly? You really, really think that's how it will go? In that case, can I punch you? Please? I mean, I only ask because you seem like the type of person who'd ponder the question and then just blurt out "Yes," and I've been dying to hit something since I pressed '1' to join your conference." Feed your anger at stupid clients by reading this list, "An unordered list of thoughts I had during a conference call with a potential client today," by Joe the Peacock.

Google: Eric Schmidt's outsized reading habits
Recently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was spotted purchasing "Mine's Bigger," the book about the yacht obsessions of Kleiner Perkins founder Tom Perkins. Sure, Perkins's firm invested in the search behemoth. But why would Schmidt purchase a book detailing the methods Perkins used to ensure that he had the most spectacular yacht in the world? He hardly needs lessons on oneupmanship. After all, Schmidt already owns a stake in the Google founders' party plane, believed to be the world's largest private jet. And he's likely helping Larry and Sergey add to their fleet. One can only marvel at how deep Schmidt's inferiority complex must run, if he feels he needs to take tips from Perkins. After the jump, the full nerdspotting episode:I almost forgot about this. Last saturday (22nd) I saw Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) walking towards Kepler's bookstore b/w 2:00 - 3:00 PM in Menlo Park. 20 mins later he emerged out with Mine's Bigger (Tom Perkins) book and another book. He also had a muffin...

Microsoft: World, tell us why Google is better than us?
At least Microsoft owns up to its inferiority. Early next week a band of dejected Microserfs from across the company, from chief software architect Ray Ozzie on down, are meeting to discuss the company's floundering Web services like Windows Live Search and Hotmail. During the two-day powwow, they'll be discussing strategy and trying to figure out how to get Google addicts excited about the Microsoft's Live offerings. To help fuel discussion, Larry Hyrb, director of Xbox Live programming and official videogame-community spokesperson (who posts under the alias Major Nelson) asks Xbox users, "What do you think we don't get? I know Google may be better in some areas, but what makes them better? What makes us not as good?" I'm sure the minds at the Googleplex are resting easy to learn that Microsoft is still trying to figure out how to even copy Google well, let alone out-innovate it.

Stats: Apple is, once again, big man on campus
Apparently college kids are warming up to Macs again. While Apple's share of the overall computer market is about 5.6 percent, lots of students are picking up Mac notebooks. 40 percent of Princeton students have Macs, up from 10 percent four years ago. 55 percent of Dartmouth freshmen are using them, up from 30 percent two years ago. The study also mentions that The University of Virginia and Cornell are seeing upticks in student Mac users. This is a complete turnabout from the situation a decade ago, when Yale told incoming freshmen not to buy a Mac. Why the dramatic comeback? The iPod, of course. AdAge cites a study of college students' preferred brands -- the iPod is a 65 percent favorite, which actually seems low to us. The iPod been touted as having a "halo effect," reminding users of Apple's other products. You buy an iPod and like it so much that when it comes time to buy a new computer, you pick up a MacBook instead of a Dell. The third calendar quarter for student purchases...

Yahoo: Breaking up is hard to do
Is Yahoo due for a breakup? Of course not. A recent report by Sanford Bernstein, a Wall Street research firm, has sent the stock sailing, but in practice, it's a silly idea. How one would actually separate the display-advertising business (worth $25 billion!) from the search business ($15.6 billion) seems questionable, and selling off Yahoo's stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba would mean shutting the company out of Asia's largest markets. Besides, we think Bernstein's analysis undervalues some of Yahoo's assets.Why, cuddly, adorable Flickr, Yahoo's photo site, surely deserves a few billion dollars of its own. Likewise Web 2.0 properties Jumpcut and Upcoming, judging by the way South of Market hipsters won't shut up about them. And if TechCrunch is worth $100 million, shouldn't we assign the same valuation to Yahoo's in-house blog, Yodel Anecdotal? Lastly, there's CEO Jerry Yang's awkward charm, and president Sue Decker's Machiavellian, company-destroying will to power. Those?...

Pay Per Post: TiVo pays to get "hooked up"
TiVo's latest advertising campaign, "Hook Up with TiVo," personifies the new Tivo HD as seeking personal companionship. The taste is questionable; the feel, desperate. Could it be that TiVo's marketers are realizing that the company's buzz is fading? The ads themselves, featuring Chris Harrison, host of ABC's "The Bachelor," to select the perfect match for the device, are bad enough. But it gets, unbelievably, sleazier than Harrison.TiVo, you see, has tapped Pay Per Post, the controversial startup that pays bloggers to shill for advertisers' products, to help boost a YouTube contest accompanying the campaign, The contest purportedly called on TiVo users to post video testimonials to TiVo. The problem is that their testimonials are fake, generated by TiVo's cash, not customers' passion. The move was revealed when Sarah Hendrix opted to disclose she was being paid through Pay Per Post for her video. TiVo, we thought, already had a substantial community of fanatically loyal users....

Online Video: Virgin America delivers captive audience to Boing Boing TV
God, I love scooping John Battelle on his own business. If you've been wondering when the hell you'll have time to sit still long enough to watch Xeni Jardin talk about vaginal ads and butt-biting bugs -- they're big in Japan! -- here's your answer. Virgin America, crazy billionaire Richard Branson's irreverent new airline (Branson toyed with the idea of renaming coach class to "Riff Raff"), will carry the equally iconoclastic tech blog's new video venture, Boing Boing TV, as part of its in-flight seat back programming. We should've seen this coming when Virgin asked Boing Boingers to name one of their planes. Until Virgin's promised inflight Wi-Fi networks are deployed, this'll be the next best thing to surfing YouTube from 30,000 feet over Illinois.

Breakups: Halo 3 developer gains independence
Having finished the fight to bring out hot new shoot-'em-up videogame Halo 3, and in the process helping Microsoft rake in $300 million in sales, Bungie has, as rumored, reclaimed its independence from Microsoft, which acquired the studio in 2000. As part of the deal, Microsoft is holding onto a small equity stake and will continue to churn out Halo titles with the aid of Bungie. Meanwhile, the studio will be free to develop new titles and publish games with Microsoft Games Studio -- so there's really no need to overreact. Sure, Bungie put Microsoft's Xbox videogame console on the map -- but as the Xbox morphs into a set-top box for the living room, bringing Internet music and video downloads straight to your flat-screen TV, it's not clear that hot videogame titles are what's going to drive sales in the future.

Real Estate: San Jose office complex Park Center Plaza ...
San Jose office complex Park Center Plaza sold to Philadelphia-based real estate investors for $169.5 million. But here's what really caught our eyes: The building is 26 percent vacant. Startups, here's a clue: Rather than fight with Facebook for downtown Palo Alto space, why not try a boring-but-available office a bit farther south? [San Jose Mercury News]

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook CEO hates face time
At 23, Mark Zuckerberg is already a conference-circuit regular -- seen at last month's TechCrunch40 and again at this month's Web 2.0 Summit. But even fans ding Zuck's presence as dull, wooden and robotic. Is he shy? Nah, "He just doesn't care," says a coworker. Despite his current heavy rotation in the media, he only takes the stage when he's told it's a boost for the company. Don't believe it? Zuckerberg's not even scheduled to appear at the Facebook-themed Graphing Social Patterns conference on Sunday in San Jose. The kickoff keynote will be delivered by linkedIn's more entertaining founder, Reid Hoffman. Aw come on, Mark. After the look-at-me antics and vain false modesty of the tech industry's quasi-celebrities, it'd be a soul-cleansing relief to come watch you stare at your shoes.

Blogging For Dollars: Henry Blodget keeps teasing his critics
I noted yesterday how stock analyst turned blogger Henry Blodget was deftly yanking the chains of tech bloggers everywhere by merely asking, playfully, whether TechCrunch might be worth $100 million. Asking, mind you -- he never once, in his original post, suggested he actually thought it was worth that much. In a followup post that's sure to engender more misplaced outrage, Blodget dives deeper into the numbers and suggests that yes, maybe some day in the future -- by no means today -- TechCrunch could, conceivably be worth $100 million. Conceivably. In the future. Then again, he's functioning under the delusion that the TechCrunch40 conference was a "major hit" instead of a rolling disaster, so who knows? On that line, at least, one hopes he was kidding, yet again. (Photo by Getty Images)

Quotable: "I'm an Internet expert too." -- North Korean ...
"I'm an Internet expert too." -- North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who probably has a side job at TechCrunch. [Associated Press]

Copyfight: The RIAA wins a round
Jammie Thomas, the woman who file-sharers and legitimate music purchasers alike hoped would end the tirades of the Recording Industry Association of America was found guilty of copyright infringement and slapped with a $222,000 fine. Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, the first file-sharing case to actually go to trial, was a rallying point for anyone wishing to listen to music without automatically being deemed a criminal. The case revealed that the industry's lawsuits were, for the most part, a big, costly, unsubstantiated waste of time. But, alas for Thomas, not in this case. The victory will no doubt help the RIAA scare more people it accuses of file sharing into settling out of court. (Photo by Martin Belam)

Quotes: "I'm an Internet expert too." - Kim Jong ...
"I'm an Internet expert too." - Kim Jong Il, who probably has a job at TechCrunch [Associated Press]

Geeks Gone Wild: Larry and Sergey bust a move in Gotham
A tipster just sent in a snapshot of Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin getting their groove on at the Googleplex East party held earlier this week in New York. The pic, after the jump.Okay, not really. But the fact that someone took the time to customize a video of Larry and Sergey dancing to the Scissor Sisters amuses me. Are these two extremely fortunate geeks really rock stars?