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Marketing: At last, Google gets a brand man
It's a dilemma for Google: It spends very little on advertising, preferring to let its products speak for themselves (and leaving its marketing chief, David Lawee, without much of a job). And why not, since that's given it the world's most cost-effective brand. But that has left the company tone-deaf in speaking to Madison Avenue, since it hardly practices what it preaches. Finally, as I've advised for ages, Google has hired a brander-in-chief, Ogilvy & Mather's Andy Berndt.Berndt will work with agencies on using Google's new ad products -- which now range from text links to banners, video, and radio ads -- more creatively. He'll also, most importantly, work on Google's own marketing efforts. Only one problem, as I see it: He'll report to Lawee, whose job now becomes even more pointless with Berndt doing all the work. If only Google followed my Darwinian "Toogle Many Googlers" principle, which would require the axing of some Googlers -- say, Lawee -- to make room for new...

Media: Perhaps influenced by The New York Times ...
Perhaps influenced by The New York Times recently setting its Web site free, Rupert Murdoch chimes me too. He's still leaning towards banishing the Wall Street Journal's online subscription model. [Reuters]

Quotable: Overheard at the TechCrunch40 presentation ...
Overheard at the TechCrunch40 presentation for adults-only social network Zivity: "Isn't this just crappy user generated soft core porn?" "Yeah, but it's got tags. Everything's better with tags."

Digital Music: Real dumps Gracenote music service
Gracenote runs the service that automatically fills in song names, musicians, and album names when you rip a CD to your PC's hard drive. Without it, we'd be stuck spending years entering CD track data manually. But the company is no longer without competition -- and it just lost a big client to a rival. Gracenote has been discreetly dropped by RealNetworks. A tipster alerts us that RealPlayer and Rhaposdy are now using All Media Guide's identification service, Lasso. Real joins a growing list of AMG adopters, including Sony and Apple. It's no surprise that the music services, facing thin margins, are shopping around.

Party Report: Liquidating the TechCrunch40 at Fluid
My fellow Valleywaggers Owen Thomas and Nick Douglas were banned from the TechCrunch40 conference, and, odds are, I would have been banned from the afterparty at Fluid nightclub, had I asked permission to attend. So, I didn't bother asking, and scrounged up a ticket though back-channel connections, instead. Specifically, through the generosity of my new crush, the mysterious "TechCrunch40" Twitter guy, who left an envelope with an extra ticket and a cryptic note with the bartender at the House of Shields around the corner from Fluid. (Turns out "TechCrunch40" is a group effort -- the note was signed by Rick Diculous, El Guapo, Mr. Gray, and Harvey Farquard.)galleryPost('tc40afterpartyfluid', 8, 'TechCrunch40 Afterparty');So, how was the crowd? Michael Arrington was there, of course, holding court and greeting well-wishers. TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde overviewed the event. Lots of TechCrunch40 presenters and DemoPit participants showed up, including Powerset CEO Barney Pell,...

Founders: Credit where credit's undue
Facebook isn't the only social network over whom people are scrapping for credit as founders. Brad Greenspan, the former CEO of MySpace parent Intermix Media, disputes Brett Brewer's claim to having founded MySpace. What's more amazing is that the founder-status mention appeared offhandedly in a TechCrunch company profile -- but Greenspan nonetheless found it, and left a comment. One wonders -- does Greenspan have Google News set to email him an alert whenever someone uses the words "MySpace" and "founder"? At any rate, Valleywag's reinvention of the old saying remains true: success has many founders.

Techcrunch40: The TechCrunch40 attendee who's been brutally ...
The TechCrunch40 attendee who's been brutally parodying the conference on Twitter as "Techcrunch40" says that the service -- whose founder, Evan Williams, is a TechCrunch40 panelist -- abruptly changes his username to "NotTechcrunch40." [Twitter]

Confonz: Brits act like twits at Intel event
CONFONZ -- The Conference Fonzie was certain that Britain was known for its manners. Those beloved British boxing boys are supposed to be well behaved and polite in all social situations, aren't they? Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to apply to imported Limey tech journalists. To their credit, Intel's international press day, a preface to the Intel Developer Forum at San Francisco's Moscone Center later this week, is a somewhat dull event.But if you're tasked with covering the year's most important event for processor-geeks, you can damn sure shut the fuck up while Intel engineer James Reinders explains how multi-threaded programming hurts like 8 bitches on a bitch boat.Intel did its little dance, talking about how more power and more cores can help businesses. And, yes, Reinders is no Steve Jobs. But compilers that support software transactional memory are still really fucking cool.These sniggering Brits obviously didn't attend AMD's new processor launch last Monday night....

Geeks Gone Wild: TechCrunch40 is the Comdex of Web 2.0
Only the more grizzled members of San Francisco's press corp even remember Comdex. The once-legendary -- and infamous -- tech expo was hot well into the '90s, but it rapidly fell to pieces as it overexpanded. As desperate gadget hawkers tried to lure attendees to see their wares, they hired comely "booth babes" to staff their exhibits. TechCrunch40, the Web 2.0 startup conference organized by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, is infinitely smaller than Comdex ever was. But the comparison is still apt. Bypassing Comdex's successful years, TechCrunch40 is going straight for the seedy, desperate late stage of Comdex, as these two short-shorts-wearing publicity-mongers prove. (Photo by Myles Weissleder)

Techcrunch40: Michael Arrington's pet photo copier
ProfileBuilder is a sponsor of TechCrunch40, the startup conference organized by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington. It's also the subject of a glowing, "exclusive" writeup in TechCrunch today. Coincidence? I'll let you decide. The writeup celebrates ProfileBuilder's acquisition of ZingFu. Say who buys say whom? Exactly. These are companies you're unlikely to need to care about, ever. Except to note this: The friendly TechCrunch article doesn't mention ZingFu's nasty habit of nicking copyrighted images, like this photo of Arrington by Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale, with no fair-use rationale in sight.

Blogging For Dollars: Do you blog? Want to go to the CTIA wireless ...
Do you blog? Want to go to the CTIA wireless trade show in San Francisco? All you have to do is accept a blind invitation to a media briefing, and the mystery company will foot your hotel bills. Classy. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: How MySpace targets its ads
There's nothing quite like having your online profile mined for fun and profit. MySpace has revealed details of its new targeted advertising ploy to the New York Times. Not only does the system troll for overt clues like occupation, but it also analyzes the kind of music you listen to, the movies you watch, and who you'd most like to meet. From this data it can determine whether you're into indie rap, zombie movies, or have a thing for Samuel Jackson -- and pelt you with advertisements accordingly. The system can even be used to target regional fan of a particular music genre for concert tours. "We are blessed with a phenomenal amount of information about the likes, dislikes and life's passions of our users," says Fox Interactive Media president Peter Levinsohn. Blessed. Thank goodness the Web's denizens are so free with their personal information -- it's considered "digital gold." These targeted ads are projected tol boost MySpace's monthly revenue by $30 million. Maybe it...

Confonz: A tale of two conferences
CONFONZ -- Last week saw two ubernerdy conferences for customers of two big software companies in San Francisco. BEA's conference at Moscone West was completely fucking empty. There were a handful of people on each floor, all looking around wondering why there was no one nearby with which to press the flesh. VMware's conference, at Moscone North and South, by contrast, was hopping. With a massive Treasure Island party and no expense spared on the food and conference bag, VMware sucked in the dollars and attention, while BEA sat unloved across the street, with nary a surly teamster to defend it. Hmmm, what's going on here?No surprise, of course. Isn't BEA a former darling of the VCs and the stock market? Isn't VMware a current darling of the VC's and the stock market? Last week, anyone walking across Fourth and Howard in San Francisco could be forgiven for feeling as though they we looking at "before" and "after" shots. VMware would be the quintessential "before," meaning, they're...

Techcrunch40: Mark Cuban disses Jason Calacanis
So much for old pals. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and billionaire founder of Broadcast.com, was Jason Calacanis's original backer at Weblogs Inc. And Cuban had agreed to show up at Calacanis's latest venture, the TechCrunch40 conference, as an expert judge. Cuban's still listed on the site, but he's a no-show at the conference, attendees say. Why? Apparently he's taping the ABC reality series "Dancing with the Stars." He's surely having a better time being critiqued for his soft-shoe technique than debating the merits of startups like Orgoo, Kerpoof, and ZocDoc. Once again, old media trumps new media.

Picture Of The Day: Letting loose at TechCrunch40
Microsoft executive Don Dodge captures a moment from the TechCrunch40 conference. Or, more specifically, after the conference, in the limo ferrying VIPs from the TechCrunch40 VIP dinner to the after party at Fluid. Pictured, from left, Mayfield Fund VC Raj Kapoor on the floor of the limo; Allen Morgan, also from Mayfield, throwing gang signs; DanceJam cofounder MC Hammer; and angel investor Ron Conway, looking bewildered.

Netscape: The new "old" Netscape, AOL's clone of My ...
The new "old" Netscape, AOL's clone of My Yahoo, is rumored to go live at the classic netscape.com domain tomorrow, September 19th. The old "new" Netscape, Jason Calacanis's clone of Digg, is already accessible at propeller.com.

Media Relations: Don't mess with Michael Arrington
Prickly TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is given to griping about PR people and their capricious rules. But he's not above setting his own rules when it comes to his TechCrunch40 conference. Specifically, presenting companies have been required to observe a press embargo until their turn on stage, and violators may be yanked from the lineup. With only 10 companies left to go, it seems like most of the startups have been sheepishly obedient to this rule. Anyone get yanked? Let us know. The full rules and regulations after the jump.Subject: TechCrunch40 Conference: Final Details and Embargoed Information Release ScheduleDear Members of the Press,Michael, Jason and I look forward to hosting you at the TechCrunch40 Conference this coming Monday-Tuesday, September 17-18 at the Palace Hotel. We're incredibly proud of our line-up of start-up companies to be unveiled over our two day agenda and look forward to your critical eyes.As you can imagine, our 40 presenting companies and...

Rapleaf: Can Auren Hoffman's reputation get any worse?
Silver-tongued entrepreneur Auren Hoffman was able to extinguish a growing wave of criticism directed at his people-search company Rapleaf with a single blog post. He promised to mend his ways and bring fixes to Rapleaf's privacy practices. We didn't have much faith in Rapleaf's reform-- Hoffman's post was mostly rhetoric, little change. A week later, Hoffman has gone out of his way to prove our doubts by partnering with MerchantCircle. MerchantCircle, of course, is the local merchant directory we've criticized before. Of course, Rapleaf and MerchantCircle are in some ways a perfect match.A directory on its face, MerchantCircle at its root, it is a cynical, poorly-conceived search-engine-optimization play using deceptive techniques to harvest business data. MerchantCircle is notorious for autodialing merchants to build its database. The recorded message tries to dupe merchants into entering their data with the lie that someone has left a bad review. It's a classic bait-and-switch...

Quotable: Is Zooomr, Kris Tate's Flickr copycat, on ...
Is Zooomr, Kris Tate's Flickr copycat, on the rocks? Tate seems to think so: "I'm working my ass off like you can't believe in Japan. If Japan doesn't go anywhere, you can kiss Zooomr good-bye. Americans don't care about photos like the Japanese -- by embracing Japan's economy, we can save Zooomr financially." [Zooomr]

Xobni: I'm too sexy for my install script
It's traditional for software developers to put their names on a product. When you launch Photoshop, for example, a long list of small-type names flashes on the screen while the product loads. But pictures? That's an innovation, as far as I know. Engineers at Xobni, the email-software startup which just presented at the TechCrunch40 conference and launched its first product in beta, pasted in photos of themselves that display when their software finishes installing. Perhaps they'll get some dates for their trouble. If not users.

Acquisitions: Why Yahoo really bought Zimbra
I've been scratching my head trying to figure out why Yahoo shelled out $350 million -- $350 million! -- to buy Zimbra, a mostly unremarkable, if well-reviewed, email-software startup. True, Zimbra's Web-based email has found a smallish customer base of Internet service providers, universities, and startups -- a customer base which has been turning to Google's Gmail. By buying Zimbra, Yahoo protect its still-popular Yahoo Mail, and perhaps expand it to new markets. But that hardly seems like enough to justify the hefty purchase price. And then it hit me -- this has nothing to do with email. Not really. Yahoo's Zimbra purchase is part of Sue Decker's ongoing upgrade of the troubled company's management.While Kara Swisher got the scoop on the story, posting her item an hour before TechCrunch's Michael Arrington's so-called exclusive, both she and Arrington missed this angle. Zimbra's management team is extremely high-powered for a startup its size, and heavily weighted in the...

Quotable: Apple's Steve Jobs waxing metaphorical on ...
Apple's Steve Jobs waxing metaphorical on playing European carriers against one another during iPhone contract negotiations: "Partnerships take a lot of work -- you want to go out on a few dates before you get married," said Jobs. "Yes, we dated a few people but didn't get married, and so there were a few unhappy girlfriends out there." [AppleInsider]

Acquisitions: Barry Diller camps on GarageGames
Barry Diller is easily bored. First, he was entranced by the promise of e-commerce, assembling an empire that includes such diverse offerings as Evite, the Home Shopping Network, and Ticketmaster. Then he turned his attention to search and snapped up Ask.com. With such a motley portfolio, why not add a jack-of-all-trades videogame company to your portfolio? Diller, the CEO of holding company IAC/InterActiveCorp, is focusing his energies on the videogame sector now. By acquiring a majority stake in GarageGames, which does everything from development tools and game creation to indie game publishing, Diller hopes to complement the yet-to-be launched InstantAction.com. But as usual, Diller's strategic vision isn't matched by his grasp of the technical details.InstantAction, you see, will host 3D browser-based games. It's an effort to find an intersection between the growing "casual" market and traditional, processor-intensive gaming fare. Of course, the main problem is most casual...

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: MediaDefender cracked by more hack attacks
Be careful what you ask for. You may get it. MediaDefender had hoped to lure file sharers using a fake site. It's certainly drawn the attention of sophisticated hackers. The antipriacy organization has been hit twice by hackers since an initial breach spilled 6,000 of the company's emails onto the Web. As Wired News reports, hackers hit the database that holds the dummy files that MediaDefender floods file-sharing networks with -- a tactic meant to discourage use of those networks to download music and videos. The second managed to scoop up a recorded phone conversation in which MediaDefender assures the New York attorney general's office of its security. (Photo by aussiegall)

Second Life: Italian IBM workers, angered by a $1,377-a-year ...
Italian IBM workers, angered by a $1,377-a-year salary trim, will be taking their unrest to the virtual streets on September 25. The grand plan is to converge on IBM's Second Life campus. Of course. If there's any way to raise awareness for your cause, it's in a virtual world where you aren't actually disrupting anything. [Boing Boing]

Stats: The videogame industry will hit $47 billion ...
The videogame industry will hit $47 billion in sales by 2009, says analyst firm DFC Intelligence. Growth will be fueled by PC and portable games. Handheld game sales have doubled over the past few years. [GameDaily Biz]

Hotornot: Dating site not so hot with advertisers?
HotorNot.com, the online dating and rating site run by Jim Young and James Hong, is abandoning its experiment in free, ad-supported user profiles and is reverting back to paid memberships. Is this a sign of failure? According to an email from Young and Hong to past and current members, no. Free profiles led to a flood of spammers that were overloading the website -- an outcome that members had predicted at the time. Plausible. And yet plenty of other sites offer free profiles while keeping spammers at least somewhat in check. Could this actually be a tacit acknowledgement that all the assumptions that cofounder Hong made in a blog post announcing the move to make HotorNot free three months ago were, well, wrong? That online advertising is not, in fact, HotorNot's future? The full email after the jump.Dear loyal HOTorNOT star members,Based on feedback we got from many of you, we have decided to start requiring star memberships on HOTorNOT again. While many of you saw how going...

Acquisitions: Intel paid $110 million to acquire videogame-software ...
Intel paid $110 million to acquire videogame-software toolmaker Havok, according to TVC Holding. The venture capital firm sold its stake for $21 million. [Gamesindustry]

Google: Does Eric Schmidt have a new girlfriend?
Marcy Simon, left, the girlfriend of married Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is no longer a PR consultant at Google. So much for her reign as the Duchess of West Chelsea. The terms of separation are unclear: Simon has maintained to friends that she quit, while other insiders say Google executives Elliot Schrage and David Lawee fired her, with Schmidt stepping out of the matter. Schmidt's recusal may not be the only way in which he's staying out of Simon's affairs. Rumor is that Schmidt is now seeing Kate Bohner, right, a journalist and the ex-wife of author Michael Lewis. No word on whether a Google gig is forthcoming for Bohner, though she does have a channel on the Google-owned YouTube.

Fake Steve Jobs: Options, the long-awaited book by Apple-CEO ...
Options, the long-awaited book by Apple-CEO impersonator and Forbes editor Dan Lyons, gets gently panned by the digerati. The verdict? Airplane reading, at best. [News.com]

Conflicts Of Interest: TechCrunch40's VC sponsors
A Valleywag tipster whispers that a company that had made the initial cut of 20 companies for the Techcrunch40 conference -- back when it was known as "TechCrunch20" -- got bumped when conference organizers "doubled down" and expanded the list to 40 startups. The company's sin? Competing with a startup funded by one of TechCrunch40's four VC sponsors. The competitor got bumped, and room was made for a sponsor-backed startup. "Ah, the Valley mafia at its finest," the tipster concludes. Of course. Sand Hill Road was built on conflicts of interest.If true, then the organizers -- Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington -- have figured out a very clever hack on the startup-conference business model. Instead of charging startups directly, charge venture capitalists to let their favored portfolio companies in. And throw in a handful of unfunded startups to make it all look above-board. Surely the sponsors -- Sequoia Capital, which has backed Calacanis'...

The Chart: Do the TechCrunch40 startups need a $50,000 prize?
TechCrunch40 is different, organizer Jason Calacanis claims, from most startup conferences in not charging companies to present there. Never mind that, in fact, he and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington are charging 100 companies to present at the conference's subsidiary DemoPit. The notion was that TechCrunch40 might discover promising companies that couldn't afford to present at a pay-to-play conference. But in reality, most of the 40 startups presenting here don't even need the $50,000 cash award. For them, at most, it might fund a nice victory bash.If the winner was determined by online votes rather than the expert panel, it's a virtual lock that the winning startup will have millions in funding. So much for the egalitarian promise of the event. Two-thirds of the startups have some form of funding, mostly series A. Of the known funded companies, the average funding is $5.8 million. The top three are, unsurprisingly, all funded. (I'm discounting Viewdle, because late last...