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Mahalo: Super-cute bulldog pups to destroy Google
Nothing sends me for my back button faster than another pitch for a new search engine. But wily reporter-turned-ringmaster Jason Calacanis has fooled me into giving his new human-powered search engine, Mahalo, a spin. How? Calacanis cleverly talks up Mahalo between photos of his impossibly adorable new puppies. Just as teenage boys find themselves reading the articles in Penthouse, I've been poring through Mahalo's impressively hand-compiled pages on -- what else -- bulldogs.Search quality report/research [The Jason Calacanis Weblog]New Bulldog Puppies [Flickr]

Earnings: Fox Interactive Media missed its internal ...
Fox Interactive Media missed its internal revenue targets for July and August, so unless they have an extraordinary September FIM will miss for the quarter. Perhaps the Google/Myspace ad deal isn't working out as well as Tom had hoped. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Sponsors: Top-secret sponsors to save Valleywag's bacon?
We don't have a fancy 100-day plan like Yahoo's Jerry Yang. We just plan to thank our kind sponsors:Ask.comCanonEnergizerMioPBSPioneerSprintTiVoVerifyIf you want to learn our secret codenames, read more on how to advertise on Valleywag.

Mahalo: Super-cute bulldog pups will destroy Google
Nothing sends me for my back button faster than another pitch for a new search engine. But wily reporter-turned-ringmaster Jason Calacanis has fooled me into giving his new human-powered search engine, Mahalo, a spin. How? Calacanis cleverly talks up Mahalo between photos of his impossibly adorable new puppies. Just as teenage boys find themselves reading the articles in Penthouse, I've been poring through Mahalo's impressively hand-compiled pages on ... what else, bulldogs.Search quality report/research [The Jason Calacanis Weblog]New Bulldog Puppies [Flickr]

Politics: 100,000 people have joined a Facebook group ...
100,000 people have joined a Facebook group to support the monk-led protests against Myanmar's junta. Sadly, the government has disconnected the country's Internet connections so we doubt they're providing much in the way of moral support. [IHT]

Rumormonger: Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg on his way out ... of Seattle?
Word around Seattle is that Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg is headed out of the troubled job-search website -- for parts east. Sources say that Goldberg's husband, Thomas, has been telling friends of their upcoming move to New York City and, on his last day at Seattle advertising firm Wong Doody, sent out a company-wide goodbye email indicating that he was leaving for geographical reasons, not personal or professional ones. Goldberg glosses over the rumor, telling us "My husband Thomas is applying to graduate-school programs in a number of cities. We currently have no plans to move. And no, I am not leaving Jobster." Though he might be mistaken on that last part. We've heard that the VC community in Seattle is abuzz about the Jobster board's stealth search to replace him. Why is the CEO always the last to know?

Microsoft: Despite the software giant's aspirations, ...
Despite the software giant's aspirations, Windows XP is Windows Vista biggest enemy. It's cheaper, a known quantity, and "good enough." The software developer has, in some measure, conceded by allowing PCs to be preloaded with the older OS for an additional five months and, in emerging markets, until the middle of 2010. Shrink-wrapped copies of XP will also continue to be available at retail. [News.com]

Polls: Auren Hoffman's fine whine
In vino veritas, the college kids say. But Auren Hoffman doesn't think there's much truth in wine. The entrepreneur rails against the practice of collecting and drinking wine in a recent blog post, going so far to call it -- well, we'll just let him speak for himself: In fact, it is a scam. I'm not saying wine is totally useless and that no one likes it ... but I am saying that the great majority of people that like wine, like it because so many other people around them like wine. In this case, the Emperor might have some cloths, but it ain't more than a speedo and some sandals.We think that wine, with its ability to bring momentary but powerful self-confidence and a tendency to make the whole world seem a lot easier to deal with, is far less of a scam, no matter what price you pay, than other projects. Like, say, Hoffman's reputation-evaluation startup Rapleaf. So, we leave it up to the readers. What do you think is the bigger scam, Rapleaf or wine?Gawker Media polls require...

Surly Adopter: iPhone update is just another brick in the wall
Apple fanboys, apparently, do need some education. And Steve Jobs is glad to supply it. A software update has, as promised, made hacked iPhones useless -- "bricked" them, in the modern parlance. Worse yet, the new software has bricked some unmodified iPhones as well. And people are outraged. These are, of course, by and large the same saps who overpaid by $200 to buy their iPhones in June. And you know what? They're getting what they deserve.Yes, that's right, folks. I'm taking Steve Jobs's side on this one. People are buying unproven technology, and some are fiddling with it. And then they're shocked when it doesn't work? Get a Mac, people, and you'll learn that not all of Apple's software updates come out of the lab fully tested. Same thing goes for the iPhone, naturally, which runs a special version of the same buggy operating system. Yes, Apple's products are sleek and charming, but they're technology. And that means they're not perfect. If you expect perfection from a three-mon...

Acquisitions: 3Com has agreed to be acquired by Bain Capital ...
3Com has agreed to be acquired by Bain Capital for about $2.2 billion in cash -- a 44 percent premium over Thursday's closing price. Included in the deal is a minority stake for Chinese network giant Huawei Technologies, as well as H3C, the companies' joint venture. By shutting out Nortel, which also was interested in 3Com, Huawei prevents its Canadian rival from getting a foothold in its rapidly expanding home market. [WSJ]

Lawsuits: Learn to handle criticism with Video Professor
The Internet has an uncanny ability to draw out the crazies. Movie director Uwe Boll challenged his Internet critics to a boxing match. A biologist wrote a book review and was subsequently sued for "assault, libel and slander." Now the Video Professor, the charming older gentleman who appears in commercials pitching your mom to learn Excel spreadsheets and how to surf the Web with his handy series of instructional DVDs, is suing 100 posters on infomercialscams.com for "unauthorized Internet disparagement." His critics claim that John Scherer's Video Professor has a habit of signing people up for subscriptions they don't want. As punishment for voicing such opinions, Video Professor is trying to obtain the posters' IP addresses so it can sue each one individually. That'll teach you to surf the Web.

Nerdspotting: Removed from his Bay Area fanbase, TechCrunch ...
Removed from his Bay Area fanbase, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington speaks to a mostly empty room at the DigitalLife convention. Valley fame, it seems, does not travel well. [News.com]

Wired: Ziya Tong to break gadgets, geek hearts
More than four decades after the invention of the plasma display, Wired Science, which is debuting October 3 on your local PBS station, arms vlog hot yet approachable host Ziya Tong with a circular saw to explain how these new-fangled screens work. "This," explains communications major Ziya , "is the shape of the future." Based on the name of Tong's segment -- "Exploded View"-- she'll continue to senselessly cut up and smash gadgets to teach the masses about the guts of today's technologies. All the while, she'll be pulling on the easily plucked heartstrings of hard-up geeks. It may be gimmicky junk science, but given PBS's reach, she's sure to break more nerd hearts than Soledad O'Brien did in the '90s, when the TV personality, now a CNN anchor, made a name for herself talking tech to the limited audience of MSNBC's "The Site."

Loser-generated Content: CBS to imitate YouTube
While NBC and Apple bicker about whether iTunes will carry shows from the network's upcoming television season, CBS is plotting its own online-video coup. Convinced that YouTube's success is based on Internet users' short attention spans, it has decided to create faux user-generated content by remixing its own shows into short clips and releasing blooper reels with the help of a dedicated production unit, EyeLab. To ensure "authenticity," CBS has hired six twentysomethings who will work offsite. That's awesome. Because the only thing possibly worse than loser-generated content is poseur-generated content.

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Twitter tracking takes work, fun out of stalking
For the Web's overcurious types, Twitter keeps giving and giving. Sure, Facebook and LiveJournal give professional stalkers a window into their prey's mind and soul, but Twitter is a far more valuable tool -- you receive constant updates on their whereabouts and moods without the long-winded diatribes and tedious application invites. Now Twitter is rolling out a handy tracking service that will help you procure new victims. Now you can simply call up your trusty mobile sidekick, anonymously text, say, "TRACK Arrington", and every little mention of the man will be Twittered your way. If one of your target's pals -- perhaps JasonCalacanis? -- has a particularly juicy tidbit, send a "WHOIS" Twitter, and you can start stalking his friends, too. With the username and identity in hand, you can easily "follow" him on Twitter, or "coincidentally" appear in the same cafe, and pitch the man on your startup with a healthy plying of coffee and pastries. (Photo by Wanda Gould)

Online Video: YouTube bullies a podcaster
YouTube, the online video Web site that rose to fame by making it easy to view the best videos created by others, is, according to this downloadable podcast, upset with Bestofyoutube.com, an aggregation site and podcast run by Lars Thorn. Why? For making it easy to view the best content on YouTube as a podcast. YouTube, which stubbornly claims they cannot properly filter out unauthorized videos, now says they also cannot verify if their users are okay with Bestofyoutube.com repurposing their clips. Of course not. And really, is that YouTube's responsibility? No.However one might feel about YouTube's anything-goes approach to copyright, the law appears to be on their side. Federal copyright law exempts Internet service providers from liability for their users' copyright abuses. No such exemption exists for what Bestofyoutube.com does, however. From all appearances, it's simply breaking a very clear law.The irony is that YouTube may not have much legal standing to tell Bestofyoutube...

Quotable: NEW YORK CITY -- "Amazon sells porn?" -- ...
NEW YORK CITY -- "Amazon sells porn?" -- Overheard in Gawker Media's world headquarters.

Exits: Apple's top lawyer turns into a short-timer
The innocent spin being put on top Apple lawyer Don Rosenberg's departure is that he got a better offer from Qualcomm. But Rosenberg, a decidedly gray figure who came to Apple from Big Blue, served as the company's general counsel for less than a year. He filled a post that had been empty for six months after Nancy Heinen left amid a stock-backdating scandal. And Rosenberg's replacement, Dan Cooperman, comes from Oracle, where he worked for Larry Ellison. Ellison, like Jobs, is a famously temperamental founder-CEO. He's also a close friend of Jobs, and used to serve on Apple's board of directors. This all seems quite cozy, and curiously timed. Anyone know the back story here -- and why Apple keeps chewing through its top lawyers?

Capitalism: Why Demo's conference beat TechCrunch40
Techdirt, the ever-opinionated analysis blog, has weighed in and found Demo's lineup of startups and new products more compelling than last week's TechCrunch40. Why? Mike Masnick doesn't come out and say it, but his implication is clear: Unlike the parade of Web 2.0 one-note-Johnnies drummed up by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, most of experienced Demo organizer Chris Shipley's picks were focused on useful improvements to existing technology, not gimmicky new ideas. Arrington and Calacanis launched TechCrunch40 because they felt that it was somehow wrong for conferences to charge startups to present. Nonsense, of course. I think that the fact that Demo charges presenters -- reportedly $18,500 apiece -- was actually what makes it a stronger event.Remember when Bill Gross launched the search engine GoTo.com, later Overture, and shocked the industry by ranking listings by how much advertisers were willing to pay? At the time, his pay-per-click...

I Hate It Here: It's the end of the quarter as we know it
Even in the California-nice cubicles of Silicon Valley, the end of the quarter brings shouty bosses, bursting blood vessels, and migraines. And when the end of the quarter falls on a Friday, it's especially rough: Clients have a way of making themselves scarce right as you're trying to close a deal. Add to that stress the ennui of the inevitable corporate kumbaya sessions, like Yahoo's management meeting today. It's enough to launch anyone into desk rage. So let us know -- is your boss looking ready to explode? Or is the office eerily quiet -- the calm before a layoff storm? Drop us a line and let us know what we can expect from the next round of quarterly earnings. We don't want to have to wait for the SEC filings to find out. (Graphic by CNN.com)

Revolution Money: Former investors avoid new Steve Case venture
You may remember Steve Case from your spam-filled AOL inbox and your junk-CD-filled postal mailbox. The former CEO of AOL and now the head of the Revolution Health, a flailing healthcare startup, is giving it another go. His latest venture? launched Revolution Money, a nontraditional credit card combined with a PayPal clone. The former would be interesting if we didn't already have Visa and MasterCard, and the latter if we didn't have, well, PayPal. The basic sales pitch for the card is, alas, utterly flawed. Sure, it's cheaper for merchants, which may win it some acceptance among businesses. But since Visa and MasterCard make money by charging fees to sellers, not buyers, that price cut won't make any difference to consumers when they hit the mall. This obvious point is perhaps not lost on the star-studded investors Case attracted to his earlier venture.Revolution Health investors and board members included a series of boldface names: Colin Powell, Carly Fiorina, Jim Barksdale,...

Social Networks: Can a Facebook app possibly be useful?
The way people talk publicly about Facebook's application platform, you'd think Jesus used it to invite his apostles to the Last Supper. But some industry insiders quietly say they're not at all impressed with the applications people have developed. "None of the most popular apps actually do anything," a high-ranking Yahoo developer recently told Valleywag. It's hard to disagree: "Top Friends"? "Food Fight"? But Facebook's cornucopia of uselessness may gain some measure of utility on Friday. Friendvox, a new Facebook instant-messaging tool, is going into beta then, according to Blognation UK. It turns your roster of friends, instantly, into a buddy list, and lets you exchange messages without the tedious back-and-forth of Facebook's built-in email system. It's a great idea -- so great that we're sure that Facebook will, in short order, steal this idea for itself and build IM functions into the site.

Mark Cuban: Dotcom billionaire thinks he can dance
newVideoPlayer("Dancing_With_the_Stars.flv", 475, 376);The brash Mark Cuban, who sold his Internet-video company Broadcast.com to Yahoo at the peak of the '90s bubble, has found old-media fame on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." His star turn -- which, of course, he promoted on his blog -- was both charming and cheesy. Okay, he hardly pushed himself on the dance floor, but he looked suave in brown coattails, grinned the whole time, and exhibited a cunning use of jazz hands. Despite our misgivings, Cuban won our vote.

Blogging For Dollars: Huffington Post raises more cash
At PaidContent, Rafat Ali picked up this interesting fact from a perfunctory USA Today profile of Arianna Huffington: Her company, The Huffington Post, has raised another $5 million in financing. With blogging companies in vogue with big media, though, that strikes me as small change. Huffington doesn't even pay most of her celebrity bloggers, so it's not clear what she would need the money for. But one wonders why she didn't take more money off the table. Could it be that, despite all the buzz, the Post's blog-for-free business model isn't all that hot?

Irrational Exuberance: Even in Silicon Valley, you can't expense tuition
It's easy to get a little expense report-happy when faceless shareholders are footing the bill, but $90,000? That's no round of after-work drinks. Bernadette Escue allegedly wracked up these exorbitant fees on her Network Appliance corporate card. A travel manager at the Sunnyvale data center, Escue came under suspicion on allegations of wire fraud after a $12,000 tuition charge for San Francisco's Drew Preparatory School showed up on the corporate tab.

AOL: Ted Leonsis just keeps smiling
Ted Leonsis, the semi-retired AOL executive, is drawing fresh attention for a blog post he wrote last week insisting that all was fine at the Internet giant, citing a raft of lofty numbers. As rumors of new layoffs have bubbled up, commenters on his blog are tearing Leonsis apart for his sunny claims of AOL's health. Leonsis's shiny, happy mantra: AOL has huge traffic. His detractors' retort: Yes, but it's stagnant or declining. Leonsis has yet to respond. Perhaps he's too busy puzzling over buddy Steve Case's perplexing new credit-card startup.

Web2ooh: Overstimulation at the Web 2.0 Summit
As the Web 2.0 phenomenon grows long in the tooth -- some might say this year's TechCrunch40 conference was its official jumping of the shark -- its most venerable proponents are struggling to create a sense of excitement around it. But for this year's Web 2.0 Summit, organizers John Battelle and O'Reilly Media are trying, perhaps, a bit too ... hard. Get an eyeful of the slogan.Where are we most stimulated?At the Web's edge.We can only imagine what Battelle and the rest had in mind when they wrote that. But it puts us in mind, more than anything else, of the AVN Expo, the porn-industry conference held the same week as the CES gadget show in Las Vegas. If the Web 2.0 Summit crowd is so sincere about ensuring attendees' stimulation, perhaps it's time for them to organize a similar companion conference for user-generated adult sites like Zivity. "Web 2.OOH," anyone?

Virtual Worlds: Are Second Life's users brain-damaged?
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- John Lester, Boston operations director for Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life, is giving the standard sales pitch for the virtual world. His claim: "It's full of people." We wonder if Lester (pictured) would so readily say that to Second Life's corporate-marketer customers, who have found their 3-D Second Life "islands" to be virtual ghost towns. Or to Second Life's disgruntled users, who are stymied by the service's struggle to increase its population capacity. "Our brains crave it," Lester claims. His former job? Creating online communities for patients with neurological disorders. That speaks volumes about Second Life's user base, doesn't it?

Quotable: "It turns out that there are a lot of people ...
"It turns out that there are a lot of people who lay out in Amsterdam." -- John Hanke, director, Google Earth, at Technology Review's EmTech conference, identifying his service's killer application: Using satellite maps to locate and annotate nude Dutch sunbathers.

I Hate It Here: When the doorbell rings, pray it's Master Chief
MISSION DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO -- Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that the world's most anticipated game of all time, Halo 3, launched Monday at midnight. The New York Times wrote about it, ferchrissakes. I was forced to spend an entire evening listening to my roommate disintegrate friends and foes with the Spartan laser through our shared wall. TORTURE! I hate standing in line at launch events, so like an idiot, preordered the game through Amazon.com. It's scheduled to arrive tomorrow. All I can think about is finishing the fight. Honestly, who actually cares about tawdry Valley business matters at a time like this? And then ... then visitors arrived. And my life, unbelievably, got worse.The doorbell rings.Me: Thinks: Sweet! The UPS man brought Halo 3 a day early. Standing at the door is a gaggle of old ladies.Me: Thinks: Fuck.Old Lady: I'm with a group of volunteers in your neighborhood... Me: Thinks: WTF do you want!? You're not the UPS man, nor are you...

Crime: Three men have been charged for the January ...
Three men have been charged for the January murder of PC World editor Rex Farrance. According to the prosecutors, the men were after his son's medicinal marijuana plants, and Farrance was an innocent victim. [AP]

Videogames: Flying in the face of stereotypes, advertising ...
Flying in the face of stereotypes, advertising firm JWT found that more women own videogame consoles than men. Of course this is the same "Denizens of Digitivity" study that concluded that the Internet is better than sex. [MediaPost]

Venture Capital: Draper Fisher Jurvetson continues its venture ...
Draper Fisher Jurvetson continues its venture tourism, opening up an office in Russia. Are there actually interesting startups in Russia, or is this just an excuse to stick DFJ's investors with the bill for Tim Draper's round-the-world plane tickets? [DFJ.com]

Wtf: Armani sets up shop in Second Life
Obviously unaware that fashion trends in Second Life tend to be less "chic" and more "chicken," Giorgio Armani has opened up a store in Second Life. Well thank jeebus. Now avatars can get decked out in Armani duds -- horridly pixelated Second Life versions of them, anyway -- and if they so desire, connect directly with the online store to spend money on actual goods. Mr. Armani, you may have a sense of style, but you don't have any business sense. The people who hang out in virtual worlds aren't the type to wear your clothes -- let alone fit in them. And by buying into the metaverse hype, you're just postponing the day Second Life goes out of style once and for all.

AOL: Laughing through the layoffs
AOL employees, apparently, have not lost their gallows humor in the face of what most in the industry now believe are impending layoffs. For one thing, some have taken to referring to CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant as "Smithers and Burns," the curiously close assistant-and-boss couple from "The Simpsons." But also, according to one tipster, they're volunteering to tell people, falsely, that they've been laid off -- a prank so successful that it may have generated the rumors of layoffs that reached our ears late last night. How the prank supposedly went down, after the jump.I heard that some people that work there decided to play a joke and see how far it could go. So they told a few people that a few middle managers that would be fairly well known within AOL were let go and those people were also in on it, so when they were asked if it was true yesterday, they said yep. This morning they apologized to at least one person for playing the joke. No one else I know has heard...

Crime: They've caught the infamous tattooed man ...
They've caught the infamous tattooed man -- the dude who allegedly stole some laptops in Vancouver. After having his photo plastered everywhere, thanks to an inadvertent Flickr upload, he turned himself in. He claims he bought the computer off of a friend who bought it from a friend. [Canada.com]

Deathwatch: Yahoo has given podcast haters a Halloween ...
Yahoo has given podcast haters a Halloween treat: On October 31, it will discontinue Yahoo Podcasts. That you likely have never heard of Yahoo Podcasts speaks to the wisdom of the decision, and the new bouts of rationality sweeping the company under Sue Decker. [Read/WriteWeb]

Dumb Idea: It's like a ringtone but worse and purposeless!
"You've got a MySpace profile, an Open ID, a Gravatar, tons of indie badges. Anything missing? Yep: Your sound badge." I've got to admit, the pitch appeals to the target market: breathless widget collectors and the sorts of people who glitterfy their MySpace and play the "zombie" app ("You've been bitten by a pyramid game!") on Facebook. Here's the idea behind Soundbadge.1. Answer some quiz questions to make generalizations about your personality.2. Push a button.3. Hear a crappy loop that has nothing to do with your personality."Like you," says the site, the sound badge created for you is "absolutely unique." Unfortunately we're all uniquely like this:Every sound badge is a similar uninspiring MIDI loop. It's the opposite of a custom ringtone or MySpace soundtrack, and it doesn't even serve a social purpose.Odd that such a decent interface should produce such an awful "product."Oh, also, is it "soundbadge" or "sound badge"? It's spelled either way several times on the site....

Charles Simonyi: Martha Stewart's geek-genius boyfriend has another good thing
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Here's what you need to know about Charles Simonyi: He made billions by inventing what later became Microsoft Word and Excel, he paid $25 million for a flight into space, and he's dating Martha Stewart. Oh, about that last bit? We wonder if Stewart knows about Simonyi's dinner plans. He's in Cambridge for Technology Review's EmTech conference, where, we hear, he's meeting with Victoria Gray. Gray is an event organizer and rumored to be an old flame of Simonyi's. Of course, perhaps the dinner conversation will be all business: Simonyi is reportedly an investor in a venture run by Gray. After the jump, a paparazzi snap of Gray by Valleywag intern Jordan Golson.(Photo of Simonyi and Stewart by Dan Farber; photo of Gray by Jordan Golson)

Stats Feed: Today's most popular headlines are Dotcom ...
Today's most popular headlines are Dotcom billionaire thinks he can dance (1,440 views today), The stock, at least, is looking up (977) and Former investors avoid new Steve Case venture (688).

Fauxlanthropy: YouTube offers nonprofits free service for free
So let's get this straight: As part of its newfound commitment to philanthropy, announced at the Clinton Global Initiative, YouTube is giving away video hosting to nonprofits. As opposed to the video hosting it gives away to everyone else, of course.

Social Networks: Sky Dayton just wants to be your friend
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Could it be that Sky Dayton is feeling a little lonely? EarthLink, the company he founded, refused to participate in the latest round of financing for Helio, the upstart wireless carrier he now heads. In a keynote speech at Technology Review's EmTech conference, he touted his company's service not as, say, letting you make calls and surf the Web, but "connecting you to your community of friends." So it's a social network! Ah, but a social network that requires buying a phone (as much as $295) and signing up for service ($85 to $90 a month, on average). No wonder Dayton's ersatz social network, cleverly disguised as a cell-phone company, only counts 140,000 users, and is losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Somehow I don't think Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sweating over this one.

Deals: How a cop almost kiboshed the Google-YouTube deal
Google's purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion last year birthed the current climate of Valley exuberance. Without that purchase, it's hard to imagine seeing, for instance, Facebook valued at a lofty $15 billion. But we hear that the deal hit one last-minute, off-the-wall snag.It's common knowledge that the deal between YouTube and Google was consummated at a nondescript Denny's restaurant in Redwood City. What hasn't been told is that David Drummond, pictured above, Google's head of corporate development, and Gideon Yu, then YouTube's CFO, now Facebook's, spent the night hashing out the deal in the restaurant. They then began signing the term papers in Denny's parking lot around 3 a.m. A local police officer was patrolling the area at that same moment. The cop saw the Asian-American Yu and African-American Drummond, dressed casually in jumpsuits and baseball hats -- standard uniforms for late and long negotiations -- huddled over the hood of a car signing the paperwork. He...

Politics: Why Brazil's not buying Negroponte's laptops
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- The chasm between Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project's lofty goal -- putting computers in the hands of children across the developing world -- and its actual achievements is staggeringly wide. Instead of millions of computers, it's struggling to put in an order for a hundred thousand or so. And rather than commanding larger orders from third-world governments, Negroponte is now trying to get first-world consumers to donate laptops instead. A speech by Brazilian culture minister Gilberto Gil Moreira at the EmTech conference gives a pretty idea why no laptops per child is today's reality.Says Moreira:[OLPC] is a magnificent revolutionary project. I visited one of the schools that is testing OLPC in Brazil. It was a deep emotional experience to see the intimacy of these 400 children with their personal laptops -- laptops that they can also bring home to introduce the parents and the rest of the family to this new world of technology. At this...

Deals: The value of a Facebook application
Widget-maker RockYou may be willing to spend millions on Facebook applications, but bidders at eBay are a little more discerning. Michael Zhang was first to auction a Facebook application on eBay, and the bidding on his Logbook app closed yesterday. Logbook documents movies, music, and books and ties into Amazon's affiliate-marketing program as a source of revenue. It's less popular and viral than spraypainting your friends' walls -- on the other hand, there is the potential for actual revenues -- an unusual feature for Facebook's hangers-on. So how much was the winning bid for Logbook?A mere $2,550. Zhang surpassed his asking price, so he can't be too unsatisfied by the outcome. We should give him credit for knowing the value of his work. But other developers dreaming of much richer valuations are unlikely to be satisfied by an efficient, transparent marketplace like eBay. Take, for example, I Am Hungry, a completely useless app on which the bidding, with three days to go,...

AOL: Erick Schonfeld follows up on Jason Calacanis's ...
Erick Schonfeld follows up on Jason Calacanis's rumor via Twitter: AOL is considering a spinoff of Platform A, its new combination of its Advertising.com business and its conventional ad sales force. Why just the ad business? Online ad networks are hot, while no investors want AOL's dial-up or portal business. [TechCrunch]

Virtual Economies: Acebucks, the developers of a virtual currency ...
Acebucks, the developers of a virtual currency for social network Facebook, has raised real cash -- $1.5 million -- from a group of uberinvestors -- Wallstrip's Howard Lindzon, Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Tribe.net founder Mark Pincus, among others. Why? Because virtual currencies like Flooz, Beenz, and several other Web currencies proved so successful, we're sure. [All Facebook]

Quotable: "I am the luckiest dude alive tonight. Had ...
"I am the luckiest dude alive tonight. Had dinner with john dvorak and don Clark of WSJ and bill watkins, CEO of Seagate, among others." -- Blogger Robert Scoble, the personification of self-promotional hyperbole, waxes overenthusiastic about his tablemates. [Twitter]

Apple: French wireless company Orange is sparring ...
French wireless company Orange is sparring with Apple over the terms under which it will sell the iPhone in France, and the disagreements may not be resolved in time for the holiday shopping season. We suspect Apple CEO Steve Jobs is remembering, too late, why he once called wireless carriers "orifices." [Reuters]

Videogames: Yes, the tiresome comparisons between movie ...
Yes, the tiresome comparisons between movie and videogame revenues have resumed: Microsoft's Halo 3 scored $170 million in sales on its U.S. debut. The biggest weekend box-office opening was $151 million for Sony's Spider-Man 3. We look forward to the day when the phenomenon of videogames outselling movies is unremarkable. [Next Generation]

Toogle Many Googlers: Google's bloat crosses the Atlantic
Google is hiring engineers in Europe, with the intent of one day having as many coders there as they do today in North America. But wait, doesn't this contradict Google CEO Eric Schmidt's promise to Wall Street to cut back on the pace of hiring? For our part, we're fine with the notion of Google adding more engineers, as long as they cut back on some of the bloat in headquarters. Fire away!

Crime: Hey, Big Brother -- you lookin' at me?
Twenty-three years too late, Chicago is gussying itself up with Orwellian flair. In a bid to secure the 2016 Olympic Games, the Windy City is installing a state-of-the-art surveillance system. Beyond recognizing the sound of gunshots and automatically dialing 911, the system is promised to identify license plate numbers, notice forgotten packages, and even recognize cars that continually circle the block. The video-recognition system would always be on, and alert law enforcement of suspicious activity. Too bad there's no evidence that security cameras actually deter crime. Somehow it's fitting that all this being paid for by the Department of Homeland Security.

Wireless: World too small for Disney Mobile
Disney has learned a harrowing lesson: Breaking into the wireless business is no Mickey-Mouse affair. Since it's too expensive to compete with the big carriers, Disney Mobile is shutting down. Instead, it will focus its efforts on licensing its Family Center suite, which provides services like child tracking and phone disabling, to other carriers. You'd think Disney would have already learned this lesson with its ESPN subsidiary's defunct wireless service, which found last year that it was too late to get into the game.

Yahoo: Top-secret Project Apax to save Jerry Yang's bacon?
After Terry Semel abruptly resigned as Yahoo's CEO, founder Jerry Yang promised precipitous action -- the hackneyed "100-day plan." But now, we hear that his new strategy is anything but swift in execution. Codenamed "Project Apax," the solution to Yahoo's woes centers around building a better version of Google's AdSense. AdSense, of course, is the service that places ads on third-party websites, matching the ads to their content. Yahoo already has a similar service called Yahoo Publisher Network, but it's "a clusterfuck," according to one Yahoo insider. The only problem? Yahoo's tech team thinks they can finish it in three years. Three years! (What's the average tenure of a Yahoo executive today? Will anyone be around to see this through?)Project Apax, which may be the subject of a rumored Yahoo leadership meeting set for tomorrow, is not to be confused with Panama. Panama, if you haven't heard, is the recently released but also painfully long-in-the-making supposed Yahoo savior,...

Palm: How low can they go?
Palm is diving from the high-end smartphone market, where some devices sell for an iPhone-like $600, deep into the low end, with the $100 Centro. Kids, that's why they post warning signs around the pool. But we suspect shareholders are the ones who are going to end up with a pounding headache.

Martha Stewart: Wenda Harris Millard, the abruptly ousted ...
Wenda Harris Millard, the abruptly ousted Yahoo ad-sales executive who left the Internet company for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, reveals that her new employer made a big mistake by designing its website for beauty, not utility. A pretty, video-filled front page made it too hard for users to find recipes and tips. [Reuters]

Politics: Web 2.0 doomed without government help
Apparently the Internet-access crisis has finally bounced above Threat Level Orange, forcing the Federal Communications Commission (well, two of its commissioners, anyway) into action. They're advocating a "national broadband strategy." The United States doesn't even rank in the top 10, worldwide, for broadband penetration. It's unacceptable to contemplate the notion of millions of Americans living without the ability to watch YouTube videos and upload photos to MySpace. The commissioners' proposal: Tap into the Universal Service Fund, a rural telephone subsidy program, to ensure everyone is wired into the great intarweb. It's the only way to spur entrepreneurial activity. Because what we really, really need is more people writing Facebook applications.

Bad Idea: America to reproduce industry-changing success of "Next Top Model," "American Idol"
"What does the average person know about venture? Well, maybe a lot. Consider that [venture capitalists] have invested in such bad deals as Webvan and Pets.com." Venture capitalist Mark Modzelewski thus argues that because "experts" suck at picking good investees, we may as well throw it to the swine. Of course, this reasoning is bullshit meant to flatter the public that Mark hopes to interest in "You Be the VC," his new program in which regular people decide which startup deserves an investment. Oh yes, public elections are a perfect way to ensure smart decisions. Just ask Sanjaya Malakar or George Bush.Okay, it's not entirely a bad idea.For one, the investment isn't pure cash. The site's FAQ lists office space, development support, and accounting and legal services as part of the award deal, showing that "You Be The VC" is paying more attention to its investee's real needs than even some real VC firms.On the other hand, the prize requires that the winning startup founders...

Apple: The best place to score a Mac in SF
Apple is continuing their retail expansion with a new store on Chestnut Street in San Francisco's Marina District. ifoAppleStore reports that Apple overcame neighborhood opposition to destroy a previously existing building with historical tiles. Please. Like a few historical preservationists are any match for Steve Jobs's retail designs. A mere 2.8 miles from the Stockton Street flagship, the store gives us another place to get iPhones repaired instead of having to wait in the chaos of the Stockton location. But there's another, smarter option for getting your Apple fix.The best San Francisco Apple outlet is the little-known store in the Stonestown Galleria. That store, while located in an uncool, fogbound mall, isn't packed by tourists who can't figure out their iPod Nanos. The new Marina location will no doubt have its fill of anxious yuppies. And the Stonestown outlet? It has a parking lot. (Photo by maguisso)

Facebook: "I fart in your general direction!"
Britain's Telegraph thinks members of the French government should be concerned, ashamed, and appalled by their children's Facebook profiles. Prime minister Franois Fillon's son belongs to groups focused on the morphology of merde, as they say, and drinking excessively. Kids these days! He also appears in ill health with two women! The horror! President Sarkozy's daughter Jeanne-Marie has the sheer, unmitigated gall -- or Gaul? -- to be friends with her mother's ex-lover. And Nicolas Barnier, the son of the environment minister, poses with "erotic drawings" and firearms. I'm shocked. Rather than the stodgy Brits being appalled on behalf of the French, maybe these French politicians are too busy to care about children behaving like children on a childish website. Or maybe they just recognize that crap, drinking, women, sex and guns are nothing to be embarrassed about.

Google: At Google, the new rule is "don't be stinky"
You're already familiar with Sergey Brin's and Larry Page's brilliant idea of reinventing search. But their business creativity is just getting started. By providing free perks like free gyms, they're not just keeping engineers happy and fit -- they're opening up new revenue sources. Google's latest big brain scheme is Eau de Google, bottled straight from the dripping backs of Googlers as they work off those organic four-course meals on the treadmills. A mere whiff recalls a hundred sleepless nights, coffee, and sweaty gym shorts. Sold through Google's Chinese division, Onshore, Google (pronounced "joo-glay") is currently only available for men. Google plans to release an accompanying "geek sweat" for women early next year, but is still busy trying to clean up the sweat-collection process. Apparently it's not yet fully compliant with the company's strict privacy policy.

Social Networks: Why should Microsoft invest $300 million ...
Why should Microsoft invest $300 million or more in Facebook? Apparently because Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, spotted in the Seattle area earlier this week, is nicer than Bill Gates. And nice people deserve money! That's Fortune writer David Kirkpatrick's theory, anyway. [Fortune]

Quotable: "I'm going to use my $100 rebate I get from ...
"I'm going to use my $100 rebate I get from the I-had-to-have-it-before-my-brother iPhone to get one! And I'll even have a dollar left over for a refreshing can of soda." -- AllThingsD's Kara Swisher on the new, low-priced Palm Centro. Kara, you ignorant slut. Don't you know that you can only use your iPhone credit on Apple products? [AllThingsD]

Bubble 2.0: Cheese plates and interest-rate cuts indicate booming tech economy
An attendee at the EmTech conference reception Wednesday afternoon -- okay, okay, my boss -- noted that he hadn't "seen that many kinds of cheese at a party since 2000." Today the Financial Times observed that in 1998 the Federal Reserve was forced to cut rates because of credit issues and the biggest boom in history followed. So, is all this merely boom-times deja vu or a real indication of the state of the tech economy? All I'll say is if you missed your chance to cash out the first time around, the cheese barometer says to act now, before the opportunities become a bit too well-aged. (Photo by junehug)