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Sad: Steve Kirsch, founder of Web portal Infoseek, ...
Steve Kirsch, founder of Web portal Infoseek, is facing an incurable disease. [AllThingsD]

Housekeeping: I need a vacation already
I've had it. Between you vicious commenters and my cold, ruthless overlord, I'm near my breaking point. So Mr. Valleywag and I are headed west for a week on an abruptly scheduled vacation. (What's west of San Francisco? I'll leave that to the geographers among you.) I'm leaving the site in the hands of my former Business 2.0 colleague Evelyn Nussenbaum, pictured here. What really gives me hopes that Evelyn will make it through the week is not her experience at the deuce, as valuable as that is. No, it's the fact that she spent three years at the New York Post, back to back with the Page Six crew. If she can work for Rupert Murdoch, she'll manage just fine. Tip your guest editor!

Party Report: iLike a good mustache, don't you?
ATHERTON -- I'm told I left the party too early, but once Third Eye Blind started playing, Thursday night's iLike bash was pretty much over for me. Don't get me wrong -- I like Third Eye Blind. It's right in tune with my utterly bland and more than slightly gay musical tendencies. But this is exactly why I will never, ever use a service like iLike, which makes a Facebook app that allows you to reveal your musical taste, or lack thereof, to your friends, and find people with similar tastes. Here's the thing: I know my taste in music is egregiously bad. I don't want to advertise the fact to the world, and if anything, I want to meet people who specifically dislike the music I listen to. That's all right, though -- what I really wanted to listen to was the buzz in the room.As I walked into the swank backyard of Marc Bodnick, the Elevation Partners managing director who is, unlike private-equity colleagues Bono and Roger McNamee, not a rock star, I was instantly handed a mango margarita...

Music Video: BurnLounge employee says "Take this job and shove it"
Boy meets startup, startup gets sued by the FTC for being a pyramid scheme, startup lays off boy, boy tapes himself playing poker on his last day and dubs in "Take This Job and Shove It." Wikipedia has the short history of this possibly criminal music store.

To Do: Coming up on the Valleywag calendar
Friday: Anyone heading to Facebook board member Peter Thiel's posh VIP gathering Friday night? Let us know how it goes.Saturday: The Singularity Summit takes place at the Palace of Fine Arts' theater. Be there to hear about the wonderful world of machine learning and how to shape artificial intelligence to avoid a future full of robot attacks. [Singularity Institute]Tuesday: Federated Media's Conversational Marketing Summit is Tuesday and Wednesday at the Presidio. [Federated Media]Wednesday: Stirr is back with another "Founders' Hacks" event, this time up in the city. Schlep your way to Mighty in Potrero Hill to hear founders from Lookery, Vadver, and OoogaLabs try and say their companies names without looking foolish. [Eventbrite]Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal heads up an evening of rock music at the Rockit Room, as a fundraiser for the Girls for a Change charity. [Upcoming]Got an event? Send it in to the Valleywag Calendar.

Popular: Today's most popular headlines are Want green ...
Today's most popular headlines are Want green back for your iPhone? Try AmEx (3,547 views today), My ten awesome ideas for the big Internet sites (1% reward please) (2,545) and Geraldo Rivera looking for iPhone crybabies (1,408).

Quotable: "Facebook is unlike anything we have seen ...
"Facebook is unlike anything we have seen to date because its the first megatech company built by the generation that used the web before they had sex" [A VC]

Videogames: The Governator won't let the California videogame law die
Since the great "Hot Coffee" scandal of 2005 -- when a sex minigame was discovered in the code of "Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas" -- legislators have redoubled efforts to save the children from violent videogames. Everyone from Hillary Clinton to California state senator Leland Yee has attempted to regulate the sale of violent games to minors. Most efforts have died horrible deaths thanks to this little thing we like to call the First Amendment. Just last month California's 2005 videogame law (which would require violent game packages to be marked "adult only" and be plastered with a giant "18," and it would fine retailers who sell games to minors up to $1,000) was ruled unconstitutional in federal district court. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will have none of that. On Wednesday he appealed the decision, stating, "We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultraviolent actions." Of course, for every study...

Videogames: We're STILL Upset About Violent Videogames
"It shouldn't be so hard to protect children from the most twisted, sadistic images that the mind can imagine," writes an editorialist for the San Jose Mercury News--giving a shout out to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's appeal of a U.S. District Court judge ruling that California's law banning the rental or sale of violent videogames to minors was unconstitutional. The editorial tries to drum up support for Schwarzenegger by calling upon the oft cited studies that "prove" there's a link between videogame violence and aggression. The jury is still out on that; there are an equal number of studies claiming the contrary--not to mention Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You. Anti-videogame legislation has ramped up ever since the infamous "Hot Coffee" scandal in 2005. Recently "Manhunt 2" (from Rockstar, the same company behind "Hot Coffee"l) was banned in several countries after receiving an Adults Only rating for its extreme violence. "Bioshock" (from 2K Games,...

Number Crunching: Silicon Valley running out of phone numbers ...
Silicon Valley running out of phone numbers -- availability of numbers beginning with the 408 area code might cease come 2010. [Contra Costa Times]

Sweet Charity: Wondering about the status of Google.org, ...
Wondering about the status of Google.org, Google's nonprofit arm? According to tax filings, "In 2006, the foundation had $4.07 million in revenue on its investments, and paid out $2.096 million." Sounds like a better return than most for-profit startups. [Docu-Drama]

Media: The return of The Industry Standard
Could it be true? Eric Savitz of Barron's blogs about the apparent comeback of his former employer, The Industry Standard. The weekly tech trade magazine inflated, and imploded, more or less in sync with the dotcom bubble; shuttered by owner IDG, it's seen a series of mostly pathetic attempts to resuscitate its website, all of which floundered. But the website now promises that the Standard is "coming back." Odd timing, given Time Inc.'s shuttering of Business 2.0, and the discontinuation of the Red Herring's print edition. Founder John Battelle tersely wishes the new Standard luck. I'm betting that the publication bypasses print and goes straight to the Web -- just like Battelle's current venture.

Quotable: "Its hysterical what they are going to make ...
"Its hysterical what they are going to make me wear. Yesterday I felt like they had found Ricky Ricardos garage sale and bought up his clothes just for me." -- billionaire Mark Cuban, on the costumes for his upcoming appearance on ABC's reality show Dancing with the Stars. [">Blog Maverick]

Web 2.0: Bruce Judson puts the "bull" in "bully pulpit"
Bruce Judson, the Internet pioneer, is taking a turn at pretending to be a Web 2.0 expert, blogging on Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider. Yes, the very same Bruce Judson, Time Warner Internet vet turned hawker of free crap we wrote about a week ago, who's pawning his reputation as a marketer and business leader from the first Web boom to pitch his new venture, Free for Today. Why, oh, why, is Blodget handing Judson a megaphone? The fallen star's ruminations on Web 2.0 are obvious and boring, and a thinly veiled pitch for his free-crap website. Ah, yes, this is the real Web 2.0: Garnering attention through self-promotion, no matter how spurious your ideas or transparent your motives. Maybe Judson gets it after all.

Great Moments In Pr: Steve Jobs, CEO, legend, PR flunky
Pity the underworked and lonely Apple PR staffers. Whenever they have a chance to do their job, the boss takes all the action for himself. Following the iPhone price drop and Steve Jobs's Marie Antoinette-esque "That's technology" declaration, a reporter at a major newspaper put in a call yesterday to the the PR department asking for comment. A mere half-hour later, Jobs himself returned the call. Shortly thereafter, Apple posted Jobs's iPhone-credit announcement to its website. Has the man never heard of delegating?

Blogging For Dollars: Cory Doctorow's blogging advice, don't be Gizmodo
Thomas Crampton, a former International Herald Tribune reporter turned extremely amateur videoblogger, cornered spunky Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow to discuss how to be a better blogger at a conference in China. Doctorow's advice was rather straightforward: Write headlines as if you work for a newswire so search engines can figure out what you're writing about. (We wish he had offered Crampton advice on shooting video interviews instead -- or rather, how to pick up a laptop and type notes for a written blog entry, so search engines can figure out what your interviewee is talking about.) But Doctorow couldn't resist a competitive swipe at Gizmodo, the gadgets blog Boing Boing is now taking on.Gizmodo, we'll gladly disclose, is owned by Gawker Media, Valleywag's publisher. Doctorow, however, did not disclose that Boing Boing had just launched Boing Boing Gadgets, a blog written by former Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson. Doctorow's advice to Crampton is to avoid hiding necessary...

Online Video: Apple and NBC's iTunes soap opera
We have a great idea for a new drama to fill NBC's faltering fall lineup: "iTunes," the TV show. The public soap opera over negotiations to keep NBC's TV episodes in the iTunes Store catalog is sparking more drama than a season of "ER" -- and more comedy than "Scrubs." Sure, NBC is looking for creative ways to gouge consumers. But Apple is equally to blame. Apparently it wants to chop the price of TV episodes in half to 99 cents a download. The way it sees it, studios will make money on volume than on keeping margins high. NBC and other studios worry that a 99-cent price point, though, would anger important DVD distributors like Wal-Mart and Target. So many partners to please! The threat of pirates looming in t he background! Will NBC be able to woo Apple into tiered pricing with a flutter of its eyelids? Will Apple slash prices to bolster its video store? Find out as the world downloads.

Surly Adopter: Geraldo Rivera looking for iPhone crybabies
Fox News television host Geraldo Rivera is looking for offended iPhone early adopters. If you're aggrieved by Apple's price cut and not satisfied with the $100 Apple Store credit, then a Fox producer wants to talk to you, like, now for tonight's 8 p.m. program, according to this Craigslist posting. We can't wait to see who Fox drums up to whine like a little baby, on air, over the time-honored custom of getting royally soaked when buying brand-new technology.

Apple: Want green back for your iPhone? Try AmEx
There's one class of privileged iPhone buyers who are going to get all of their money back: Those who bought the phone with an American Express card. Extending its usual price-protection policy, the card issuer is refunding $200 back to anyone who paid the old $599 price for an iPhone, blogger Muhammad Saleem reports. All they need to do is call customer service. (It's not clear what's going to happen to people who bought the cheaper 4GB iPhone, since that was discontinued, rather than reduced in price.) Some Visa and MasterCard issuers have 60-day price-protection policies on their cards, but for early adopters who waited in line to buy the iPhone on June 29, that window has already passed.

Online Advertising: Apple's retaliatory Google ad, countering ...
Apple's retaliatory Google ad, countering a Nokia ad and congratulating "late adopters" on getting a lower price for the iPhone? A fake. [Gizmodo]

Netscape: Calacanis's Digg clone finally dead?
Tom Drapeau, the current head of Netscape at AOL, is finally admitting that Jason Calacanis's jealous attempt to clone Kevin Rose's Digg was a failure. Sort of. Calacanis, who left AOL earlier this year to launch Mahalo, an also-ran Web directory, had hoped to persuade Netscape's loyal but dwindling base of users to embrace Digg's social-news model, where users submit headlines and vote on them to determine their ranking on the site. Drapeau confirms what TechCrunch predicted weeks ago -- after initially denying it: Users do not want the Netscape brand associated with Calacanis's social-news experiment. But Drapeau continues to stubbornly insist that Netscapers "remain committed to delivering a compelling social news experience for our users." They just don't know when the site will be available, what it will be called, or what they'll do with it. Netscape will revert back to what Drapeau refers to as a "traditional news" site -- in other words, a portal site. But not the 2000-era...

Digg: Imitation is not always flattery
Social news filter Digg has spawned imitators, including Reddit and Slashdot's Firehose. Oh, and the late, unlamented Netscape. "Ripping off" is practically a core tenet of Web 2.0, though we suppose it sounds nicer if you call it "iteratively evolving industrywide best practices." One creative Web designer and Xbox fanboy, though, decided the Internet needed a Digg dedicated to Microsoft's Xbox consoles, so he created Diggxbox. As you might imagine, it uses its own version of Digg's user-driven filtering to sort the day's Xbox-related news. It's even adopted cute videogame touches like the Xbox's "red ring of death" as the "bury" button (as Digg's mechanism for voting "no" on a story is known). Cloning Digg is easy, but attracting a fanatical userbase like Digg's is another thing altogether.Digg, of course, has its own thriving videogames subsection -- so Diggxbox's creator posted an advertisement for his site on Digg. His Digg account was subsequently banned. Apparently founder...

Online Advertising: Glam Media, the online-ad network spuriously ...
Glam Media, the online-ad network spuriously posing as a women's destination site in an effort to raise $200 million in private financing, is hiring new sales staff and executives. [Silicon Alley Insider

Silverlight: Microsoft's attempt to catch up with Adobe's ...
Microsoft's attempt to catch up with Adobe's dominant and newly updated Flash has reached final 1.0 status for Mac and Windows. Novell will bring Silverlight to Linux for Microsoft. A handful of obligatory partners were announced, and of course, several Microsoft Web sites will be using the browser plug-in [Scott Guthrie's blog]

Schemes: A Facebook app that makes money?
Facebook may be the hottest development platform on the Web, but it has yet to answer a very important question: How are companies making money off Food Fight and SuperPoke? After it was revealed that the "Where I've Been" app wasn't sold for $3 million, one has to wonder if these developers are gaining anything more than exposure. Well, a tipster claims that one Facebook app, Free Daily $5,000 Poker Tourney, is making money. Naturally. PurePlay's poker application requires users to download a proprietary poker client, which serves advertisements to anyone who wants to partake in its free, cash-prize tournaments. And it makes some cash off people who pay to remove ads and receive a crappy newsletter. There's a lesson for all you Facebook developers -- make "applications" that are just giant advertisements for your company's real moneymaker.

Feuds: Facebook repeats Google's ultimate humiliation
After a 15-11 loss in an ultimate frisbee match against a team of scrappy Facebookers, disc-flinging Googlers swore revenge. But the social network left the search engine, again, unable to find victory, dishing out another 15-12 tromping earlier this week. "All that free food weighing them down," snipes a Facebook-employed spectator of the match. Other Facebookers are more modest, crediting the Googlers for strongly competitive play -- though some believe the Googlers may have brought on ringers who don't actually work for the company. Word is the Googlers want another rematch. What, are they trying to go for 3 out of 5? Have they seen what happened to Orkut? (Photo courtesy of the Ultimate Players Association)

Sponsors: Valleywag sponsors get the crown
Dear advertisers, if Valleywag were a powerful tech CEO, we would shower you with diamonds, get you an office and a desk, and a plum PR job. But we're not. Instead, gentle sponsors, all we can do is thank you:Ask.comBank of AmericaMioSprintTechSmithTiVoVerifyInformation on how to advertise, if not how to become our on-the-job mistress, can be found here: Advertise on Valleywag.

Ideas: My ten awesome ideas for the big Internet sites (1% reward please)
Hi, I am a young person who goes to major web sites! I am "in the know" about technology so I have several good ideas for these sites, and I will list them here. ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR THESE SITES: If you read my idea and you use it, you have to pay me for it with 1% of your company. My first idea will finally make Yahoo a popular web site.1. Make Yahoo cooler for teens and young peopleYahoo is this portal site that used to be a search site. Now I think only people like my mom use it for maybe recipes, and a game that is totally a ripoff of Scrabble (but they call it Literati). Now Facebook has Scrabble (only they call it Scrabulous which is closer I guess), so I bet all those moms will go play it there because it's realer Scrabble. So if Yahoo wants to really be a big site, they should have things that people my age might like, such as some Kanye West music and Transformers. (Sorry Yahoo, Transformers is already out so maybe ask Michael Bay what his next movie will be...