Home / valleywag.com rss archive / September-13-2007


Clips: Wozniak donates car to charity, laughter to us
To the tune of Weird Al Yankovic's "White & Nerdy," Steve Wozniak is pimping his 2005 Nissan 350Z Anniversary Edition at Hotswap.com. The Apple co-founder thinks America is losing its engineering and technological competitiveness, so he wants to donate the proceeds to UC Berkeley's Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The lucky buyer gets the pick up the car at Woz's pad and join him for lunch (and hopefully a Segway ride). He'll even provide his autograph (hopefully on the car, not lunch) and talk to you. But his generosity doesn't stop there -- he's created a parody of a Datsun 280Z commercial he starred in back when his hair was a healthy brown and he was half as wide. Unfortunately, Hotswap is rather protective of their embed code, so you'll have to jump over there to see Woz in his Segway riding glory. For comparisons sake, take a gander at the 280Z commercial.They see me roll on my Segway. I know in my heart they think I'm white and nerdy.

Feuds: iPhone vs. gPhone vs. the telecom industry
Even with the controversial price cut and an impending European launch, the Apple's iPhone is so pass. Why? The entire Valley (or almost everyone) is convinced search giant Google is about to enter the telecom business in a big way. They just have no idea what way: A software platform? Their own handsets? A significant wireless services revolution using the wireless spectrum soon to be auctioned? No one seems to be sure, but -- just as everyone was confident Apple could deliver a better, consumer-focused handset -- they're also sure that Google will do something that will overturn the existing mobile apple cart. And do so in a way that others can capitalize for themselves unlike Apple who prefers to keep profits to themselves. And while some hope to see an unlikely battle between partners Apple and Google, what they really hope to see is one of these giants break down the walled gardens controlled by the telecom carriers.

Online Video: Yahoo Web show to appear on MTV
Yahoo is distributing its Nissan Live Sets, a Web hi-def Web show that mimics a live concert viewing experience, on MTV's high definition channel. Despite the popularity of Web shows like Prom Queen and LonelyGirl15, studios are so busy trying to get onto the Internet that they don't pull content from it. As the Motley Fool points out, this is good news for Yahoo Music. Recent reports of Yahoo's financial doom put its music service on the guillotine. Perhaps some MTV eyeballs will spare it from the block.

Online Video: MySpace spending gobs of cash to win YouTube audience
MySpace is taking a new tack with video in an effort to lure away YouTube viewers -- it's developing a catalog of professionally produced videos. The social network has announced it will distribute Web production quarterlife, a series about show biz wannabes, developed by the producers of Blood Diamond. The real surprise is that each episode will cost more than $500,000 -- roughly 100 times what Michael Eisner's Vuguru spent on each episode of Prom Queen. MySpace's is praying that original, professional quality content will be enough of lure to sell mad ads against. But the kind of cash thrown at this project could have been much better spent, by say finally fixing the perpetually broken site.

The Chart: Valley morale continues to sag
In June, when we crunched the numbers provided by a Vistage CEO confidence survey showing declining business confidence in the Valley, commenter edmDusty argued, "Most industries are cyclical. I doubt you can find any significant trends just using two quarters." While unlikely to satisfy edmDusty, we can now report that the trend has continued into the third quarter. In the second quarter, the margin between those Northern California business leaders who saw profitability improving versus decreasing was 32%. This quarter it has declined to 27%. Previously, the margin between those who saw revenues increasing versus decreasing was 54%, it is now 44%.Additionally, Northern California business leaders, which are a fair barometer for the tech industry, were far less optimistic than the average American business leader:63 percent of all Northern California firms anticipate an increase in revenues during the third quarter, which is slightly lower than the national reading of 67 percent....

Venture Capital: Entrepreneurs to VCs: Stop sharing my ideas!
The anonymous entrepreneur behind VC-rating site TheFunded.com put together a memo telling Sand Hill denizens how to "be a better VC." In short, it's a list detailing the most common complaints users of his site make about venture capitalists. We got our grubby little hands on a leaked copy. The lessons? Entrepreneurs want a better communication, firmer answers, and for VCs to want them for their companies, not their business secrets. The biggest complaint? That VCs regularly leak business plans and confidential documents to other startups, even potential competitors. We ask: Is this really a new phenomenon? VCs are typically exempt from non-disclosure agreements, something entrepreneurs should always keep in mind. The threat of an idea leak seems to be the price to pay for the pleasure of doing business with Sand Hill Road. Is the shocking part that VCs "cross pollinate" the competition using ideas swiped from pitching startups? Or that some entrepreneurs are such dumbasses...

Online Video: Revver shares a million in revenue with video producers
Online video platform Revver announced it has paid out $1 million dollars to video producers from its ad revenue sharing program, just in time for its one year anniversary. That puts Revver's total revenue at around $2-$2.5 million, since it splits fees 50/50 after paying 20% to a distributor. Sounds great. But it doesn't prove that Revver has a sustainable, profitable model--not after the year it's had, losing key staff, being banned from MySpace, losing LonelyGirl15 and several other notable video producers like Ze Frank and Ask A Ninja, and a rumored buyout. Why?Repeat after me: REVENUE IS NOT PROFIT. And Revver is competing in a sea of also-rans. VuMe and Metacafe also have producer reward programs, and DailyMotion and YouTube are about to launch their own programs. Lots of sites are about to start competing for the few uploads that will have money-making potential.And it turns out that $1 million, impressive as it sounds, is not so great if you're a vidoe producer,...

Social Networks: Your online friends aren't real
New friends acquired through MySpace or Facebook may as well be invisible. England's Sheffield Hallam University, studying whether social networks ease the friend-making process, has concluded that "online only" relationships are extremely shallow. It determined that 90 percent of close online connections met in real life. Well, duh. Most use networks to keep in touch with people they already know, or, perhaps, reach out to friends of friends. Who actively cultivates all those unsolicited Facebook friend requests from total strangers? (Photo by ellectric)

Quotable: Quincy Smith, head of CBS's online business, ...
Quincy Smith, head of CBS's online business, on competing networks News Corp. and NBC's online video play Hulu: "I love everything about the joint venture and the notion of syndicating content with distribution partners that are already proven in the business, both in the video-destination and the widget business. But why--why still hold on to a destination [Web site]? That's a huge amount of infrastructure, that's a huge part of investment and frankly, a huge distraction." [Forbes]

Google: Mountain View's search giant is funding the ...
Mountain View's search giant is funding the quest for robot-conducted moon exploration. Google is teaming up with the X-Prize Foundation to offer a total of $30 million to private firms that can land a rover capable of documenting its moon roaming. [BBC]

Followup: Fark vs. Fox: here come the lawyers
Valleywag first reported the allegations last month, and now lawyers for news aggregation site Fark.com have made it official. This week, a lawsuit was filed in a Lexington, Kentucky courthouse allegating that a Kentucky-based Fox News reporter attempted to hack into Fark's servers. The one surprise -- the defendants are named as "John Does 1-10," instead of an individual person. But that doesn't mean that the main suspect, Fox News reporter Darrell Phillips (pictured above right), is off the hook. "We needed to be able to file subpoenas to get the final information from his net service providers," Fark.com founder Drew Curtis (pictured above left) IM'ed earlier today. Have more information on this developing story? Let us know.

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: When bank accounts run dry, phishers attack videogame consoles
Anyone with an email address has encountered fraudulent requests for online banking info and Paypal logins -- but the new phishing target is Microsoft's Xbox 360. Microsoft confirmed today that subscribers to its Xbox Live online gaming service are receiving emails linking to a cloned Xbox login page. Since Live accounts are tied to your Microsoft Passport, these attempts are clearly attempting to access stored credit card and billing info.

In Brief: The Federal Communications Commission has ...
The Federal Communications Commission has ruled that cable providers must support analog television sets until 2012 to help ease the strain on the estimated 40 million homes that are not digitally compatible. The switch to digital broadcasts is still slated for February 2009. [Ars Technica]

IPhone: Sick of those $3,000 bills for international ...
Sick of those $3,000 bills for international iPhone data roaming? AT&T has created a data plan that is slightly less wallet- gouging at a generous $25 a month for 20MB of data transfer. [The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

Quotable: Fake Steve on Justine Ezarik aka iJustine ...
Fake Steve on Justine Ezarik aka iJustine aka the hot chick lifecaster and her new Apple logo tattoo: "I know it's wrong for us to use women's bodies to sell our products. Is it also wrong for this woman to use our products to sell her body?" [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]

Clips: Internet People
From Amanda Congdon to Tay Zonday -- virtually every inane, pop culture Internet video "star" of the last few years who have made YouTube indispensable to millions of... Internet People! Depicted in Flash animation in under three minutes by Dan Meth, music by Dan Meth and Micah Frank.

Picture Of The Day: The Google Jet cockpit
This picture is the closest you will ever get to the controls of the Google founders' Party Plane. Snapped three years ago, it shows the cockpit of the then-Quantas-owned 767 waiting on the runway in Australia before a flight. While Sergey Brin and Larry Page redecorated the rest of the plane we suspect the cockpit remains unaltered, save for cosmetic decorations. Perhaps they changed the color scheme to a white backround with primary colors? Anyway, we hope all those buttons and screens don't distract the pilots too much. After all, someone needs to keep the ride smooth enough for Larry to make out with his girlfriend.