The new "Google Chrome OS" is a nifty instance of branding, we'll give it that. But stripped of the marketing talk, here's what Google just introduced: A distribution of the Linux operating system, plus a "new windowing system" and a copy of Google's Web browser.

In geek parlance, Google built a "shell," not an OS. The kernel and, almost certainly, a large chunk of the "userland" programs that make up an OS come from elsewhere.

But it's in Google's interests to puff up its new technology. The press loves a nice, simple fight between tech industry giants; Google's branding is thus sure to generate loads of free buzz for Google's "operating system," as programmer and longtime tech pundit Dave Winer has pointed out. Winer:

Let's be dispassionate. Before yesterday's announcement: 1. Chrome ran on Linux. 2. Linux was an operating system. 3. Linux ran on netbooks. However, most people want [Windows] XP on their netbook, not Linux. That was true yesterday and it's still true today.

Maybe Google will eventually develop its new system into something truly revolutionary. Or maybe it will fall by the wayside like Google Base, Google Notepad — or the version of its last operating system, "Android," which was to run on the netbooks now targeted by Google Chrome OS.

No matter what happens, at least one group of users will be thrilled: The press. (Talk amongst yourselves!)

Gladwell begins with a recitation from the May U.S. Senate hearing on the newspaper industry, the one where David Simon spouted nonsense, and the one that has apparently become a sort of media Woodstock, dividing generations in the big ongoing publishing upheaval. Gladwell places himself firmly on the side of the oldies, and draws a tenuous parallel between the hearings and Anderson's book. Both apparently illustrate the stupidity of West Coast reefer hippies like Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington, who just hate selling content, or something.

In Gladwell's review, Anderson is constantly making imaginary pronouncements, which make him look like an idiot. He wants to turn the New York Times into Meals on Wheels, run entirely by volunteers! What a jerk. He says a free price is like "magic!" What?? And Anderson said nice things about YouTube, noted spectacular failure:

When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer... Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is "close enough to free to round down" [according to Anderson,] ...a recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube's bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars.

Of course, Credit Suisse numbers may well be grossly overstated, and Gladwell doesn't mention that YouTube is expected to take in $241 million in revenue this year, twice one estimate of last year's sales.

Which isn't to say he's necessarily wrong about Anderson's book, or about Google's user-generated content being "crap." But it does show that, if you're looking for a long-term investment, a Free poster child like Google is probably a better place to park your cash than the magazine group where the two money-losingest titles have big fights over who has less of a grip on the future.

After all, so much about Tesla is not what it appears. But a lawsuit just filed by Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, who says he was unjustly pushed out of the company, shows top company executives could be as jumpily obsessive about getting their hands on a company roadster as anyone else. That's a vote of confidence on the trendiness of the end product, if nothing else.

Even after he was shoved aside as CEO and left the company, Eberhard desperately wanted a promised Tesla Roadster. He was thwarted no fewer than three time according to Wired's Chuck Squatriglia, who took a deep dive into the lawsuit documents:

Eberhard claims he was to receive the first Roadster to roll off the assembly line, but [Chairman Elon] Musk allegedly insisted it was his. The suit says Eberhard agreed to take the second car - which he says would be worth far less as a collectible - and got the deal in writing, only to see Musk allegedly sell the car to a friend in February, 2008.

At about that time, Tesla allegedly told Eberhard his car was on its way but would have to undergo "endurance testing." Several months later, according to the suit, Eberhard learned an unnamed Tesla employee "had driven Eberhard's Roadster into the back of a truck, almost completely totaling the vehicle." The damage was so bad, the suit states, that the car "required the replacement of no fewer than 75 different parts."

(The crash had been previously reported.)

So far Orlean is doing the punching, and Baum is just lying back and taking it. No fair!

Both Maddow and Thiel went to Stanford. They overlapped for a couple of years in the early '90s. Thiel, who had already gotten his undergraduate degree and was enrolled in law school, had started the Stanford Review, a conservative newspaper, to campaign against the college's move away from a curriculum which favored the great works of Western literature. Maddow was a progressive activist stomping around in combat boots and a shaved head. We hear that Thiel and Maddow had some kind of noisy on-campus altercation. Through a spokeswoman, Maddow says she doesn't remember a run-in with Thiel. Any Stanford grads care to enlighten us on what the two had to say to each other?

Thiel, who has suggested America would be better off if women had never gotten the vote, now calls his views on women's suffrage a "commonplace statistical observation." We think these two school chums are overdue for a reunion. They both now live in Manhattan. Isn't it time Thiel pops over to the studio for an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show? There's so much for them to catch up on!

(Maddow photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images; Thiel by davidorban)

He certainly has the motivation: revenge — and the success which is its best form.

Van Natta joined Facebook when the startup was an also-ran site, limited to college kids and run by college dropouts, and steered it through a period of hypergrowth. He was a key negotiator behind an advertising deal with Microsoft which provided Facebook with a solid financial footing as its user numbers blew up. His payback? Founder Mark Zuckerberg demoted him gracelessly in August 2007, and left in February 2008 — the first of many high-profile departures by executives who had fallings-out with Zuckerberg.

He then spent months hanging out and vacationing before joining a Palo Alto music startup he'd invested in, Project Playlist, as its CEO. Playlist's music widget for social networks had been banned by both Facebook and MySpace as it feuded with the major labels, and while he didn't manage to get it reinstated on either site, Van Natta did strike a deal with EMI.

Deals are what Van Natta built his reputation on. He spent seven years at Amazon.com, ultimately becoming its vice president of worldwide business development. Before that, his LinkedIn profile offers few details. There's a six-year gap between his 1992 graduation from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a BA in English and American literature and his 1998 arrival at Amazon.

Here's what we've reconstructed of his background: CNET editor Charlie Cooper recalls him being a sales intern at Computer Shopper in the early '90s. By 1996, he was working at Softbank Expos, a conference organizer. He then joined Zip2, a now-forgotten dotcom started by Elon Musk, now the CEO of Tesla Motors, and became its senior director of network advertising. In 1998, he joined PlanetAll, a nascent social network, as its VP of sales, shortly before it was acquired by Amazon.com.

What this alleged Internet studmuffin's resume tells us is that he's a smart opportunist. Is that what MySpace needs? It has certainly missed enough opportunities along the way. The other skill Van Natta's noted for is the ability, rare among slick suit-wearing dealmakers, to be tolerated by engineers. MySpace has never been a technology-driven company, and that flaw finally caught up with it over the past couple of years.

If Van Natta plays to his past reputation and just cuts some flashy deals, he'll solidify his reputation as a dilettante dealmaker, and doom his career. If he woos the right talent to MySpace and turns the place around, he'll prove he deserves to be a CEO — and rub his success in the face of a certain snotnosed punk in Palo Alto.

Even as Google launched its own browser, it's continued to funnel millions of dollars to Mozilla, the nonprofit maker of Firefox. Almost 90 percent of Mozilla's revenues — last reported at $75 million in 2007 — have come from a search-referral deal in which Google pays Mozilla when Firefox users perform searches in the browser's toolbar. Shortly before Google launched Chrome, Mozilla and Google renewed the deal through 2011.

But a Google-eyed tipster tells us that Google is looking for ways to cut its support of Mozilla sharply. This has top Mozilla engineers spooked, and several of them have popped by the Googleplex to interview for jobs there.

It makes sense that Google would want to support its own Chrome Web browser. And yet bullying a nonprofit would seem to clash with Google's "don't be evil" motto. Perhaps "don't lose money" has become more important.

Twitter, while much smaller than Facebook, competes with the social network in encouraging users to post short "status updates," no matter how banal and meaningless. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg loves Twitter. In fact, he loves Twitter so much he tried to marry it. After Twitter rejected a $500 million offer, he set about copying its look. That effort led to a disastrous redesign about which Facebook users (and employees) are still griping.

Hence the conspiracy theories. Facebook has a Twitter app which takes updates from the service and reposts them on users' profiles, and numerous third-party software applications post updates simultaneously to Facebook and Twitter. Some mechanism responsible for the crossposting seems to be broken, however. A tipster writes:

Rumors on Facebook that Facebook intentionally killed its Twitter application late last night, so that Twitter now doesn't show up in anyone's Profile or Home Page. Jealousy? Revenge?

How about human error? The systems behind these simple-looking sites are increasingly complicated, and at Facebook, almost any engineer can release new code to the site in as little as an hour. If Facebook is trying to displace Twitter, then it has every interest in coaxing Twitter users to share their updates on Facebook, too, rather than driving them away. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Update: Actually, Twitter says it's all its fault, maybe! Aw, that's no fun.

Since assuming leadership of the consumer web team, I started attending the legendary weekly UI review meeting. I did this both as a representative of the web group, and also to help keep my team on track with what Marissa and her team expected of us. By this point in my career I had worked with her many, many times, and I had been attending the review regularly for a couple of months. She had even shaken my hand once to thank me for launching a particularly big and difficult campaign.
One of the last times I sat in that meeting, as we were dispersing, she looked right at me and asked her assistant to "cut down on the number of guests - there are too many random people here." I knew then that despite all the work I had done for her team, she didn't recognize me at all. I had earned no influence. I stopped going to the reviews after that.
A few weeks later, after thinking about my experiences and opportunities there, I decided to resign.

Halsall then calls for a change in Google's "creative leadership" — a veiled way of asking for Mayer's head on a platter.

Her tale comes after Doug Bowman, Google's top designer, criticized Google's obsession with numbers in making design decisions, a strategy advanced by Mayer. Another former designer, Kevin Fox, now at a startup called FriendFeed, doesn't wholly agree with Bowman — but notes that Google's design group has "had a glass ceiling from the very beginning." That, too, seems like a veiled reference to Mayer's iron grip on the look and feel of Google's consumer Web products. It doesn't take a degree in visual design to notice a pattern here.

The redesign is built around a new "stream" of status updates. It closely mimics the "timeline" feature of Twitter, a much smaller service which, like Facebook user, allows people to post short messages which are then broadcast to friends. But in adopting Twitter's simplified look, Facebook threw out or hid a whole host of features users have grown used to. (Try finding upcoming events, for example, or looking for updates on new friends people have made.)

A Facebook application built to poll users on the design is running 94 percent against the new design, with some 716,000 "no" votes against 44,000 "yes" votes.

One might argue that Zuckerberg didn't do the design to please the lowest common denominator of users, but instead was trying to win over the cognoscenti of Silicon Valley, who have been buzzing nonstop about Twitter. If so, he missed that target badly, too.

Facebook has a special program called "Great Apps" to recognize the best third-party add-ons to the social-networking sites. The favored few include iLike, a music app, and Causes, an app built by a startup called Project Agape which helps people rally their friends to various social issues.

Both have close ties to Facebook: Marc Bodnick, an influential Valley investor who sits on iLike's board, is the brother-in-law of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Project Agape is backed by former Facebook president Sean Parker, who still owns an estimated 5 percent stake in the company.

But guess who's been dissing Facebook's redesign on Facebook? iLike CEO Ali Partovi and Project Agape's Joe Green. Green recently wrote:

The stream does not out-Twitter Twitter and under-Facebooks Facebook.

Partovi snarkily noted that the new design inspired him to join Twitter — and employees at Slide, another Facebook-app maker, applauded his wit:

And mind you, these are people who make a living off Facebook. If they hate it, what friends will Zuckerberg have left?

Poor Williams! He's just the latest target of Winer's wrath. The irascible Internet fussbudget has gotten mad at Jason Calacanis for being self-promotional, mad at Internet commenters who do not acknowledge his contributions to the Internet, mad at Twitter for not doing what he says, and mad at Hillary Clinton for being alive. (We've also long suspected that he is secretly mad at the New York Times because they will not hire him as a columnist and run his verbal spew unedited.)

But Winer's latest rant is hilariously hypocritical.

Williams's sin, according to Winer, is playing favorites with Twitter's "Suggested Users" page, a feature meant to help bewildered new Twitter users navigate the messaging service's real-time, 140-character spasms of pointless puffery. He writes:

I pour a lot of effort into Twitter, and while I wasn't in the top tier of users, I was solidly in the second tier. I wasn't doing the things you have to do to get the most followers, or I didn't have a powerful media presence like Leo or Shaq to get me up there. ... It's now approaching 20,000, which I am proud of, but it's not very much compared to the numbers of some people who did nothing other than be friends of Evan Williams to get hundreds of thousands of followers. ...

Think about it this way — do you know who wrote Apache or PHP? Do any of them have the power to deliver so much flow to an installation of their software? Imho, that's exactly the relationship Twitter should have with its users. Or the phone company and users of phones — they shouldn't jump into a conversation and say (for example) "We know someone really cool you would probably like to talk to. We're connecting you to them now.

Makes sense! Who would want the phone company to do that? Except Winer did the exact same thing himself with his own blog-software company, Userland Software, in 2003, writes former employee Rogers Cadenhead. Moreover, unlike Twitter's Williams, he actually took money to promote a blogger — former MTV veejay Adam Curry. In 2003, Curry wrote:

Time to come clean on an investment I made a year and a half ago. At the time, UserLand software had released a Mac OSX version of Radio and I was totally digging the built in news aggregator. I came up with a cunning plan: I asked Userland if I could purchase a pre-installed feed on their aggregator, which supports RSS xml feeds. I paid $10,000 for a one year license. To date I've been delighted with my purchase and although I haven't checked recently, I'm pretty sure Userland still has me in the defaults. ...

The $10k didn't 'just' give me an automatic base within the userland community, it got pasted on web pages all over the world and I've built up an audience that consists of 50% aggergator users.

Williams hasn't said anything about charging for placement on the Suggested page, but it can generated tens of thousands of new followers a day for featured Twitter accounts. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis — yes, the one Winer feuded with — has offered to pay $250,000 to get featured on it. Which makes us think: Winer isn't mad at Williams because he's playing favorites. Winer is jealous because Williams is far more effective at playing favorites than Winer will ever be.

Grandiosely ambitious, and grandiosely inexplicable. Put simply, Wolfram Alpha, due to launch in May, will "compute" answers to questions, where Google and other search engines merely trawl the Web for pages which might hold the answer.

To do this, Wolfram has had a small army of researchers working on systematically analyzing and structuring the corpus of human knowledge so that a computer might be able to answer questions with concrete answers, such as, "How far will the Earth be from the Sun tomorrow?", a question Google completely fails to answer.

The blogosphere has exploded in a jargongasm, with normally sane reporters pretending that sentences like this are English:

Notably, the engine is not built using standard semantic web languages such as RDF, OWL and Sparql, in part because these ontologies are too difficult to build and curate for such a wide field of knowledge.

Whatever. What's important to note here: Where Google's founders have long assumed that computers were the best tools to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible," Wolfram thinks that humans can actually do the job.

In the tradition of the great French encyclopédistes of the 18th century, his Wolfram Research has employed in stealth dozens of brainiacs translating specialized databases into machine-computable form. His approach is a riposte to both Google's idolization of algorithms and the fetish for crowdsourcing that swept Silicon Valley in the middle of this decade. Sometimes the best way to get an answer is to ask someone really smart. Like the Wizard of Oz, Wolfram's researchers lie behind the curtain of the answers Wolfram Alpha will provide. How comforting: What the babbling geeks are calling the next great leap in human knowledge actually has a human side.

This sporting matchup may well be the one area where Microsoft is beating Google.

Mayer, 33, (top photo) complained to the Times:

"It hasn't shown up anywhere that I am really physically active," she says. "I ran the San Francisco half marathon this year. I did the Portland marathon. I went skiing just yesterday. I'm going to do the Birkebeiner, which is North America's longest cross-country ski race. That just shows you how much there are gaps."

Contrast that to Melinda French Gates, 44, (bottom photo) the former product manager who married billionaire cofounder Bill Gates and now helps run the couple's gigantic charity, who is far more modest, according to a profile in the March issue of Vogue:

Gates is a trim, athletic woman with luminous chestnut hair that falls freely to her shoulders. She has run marathons and climbed mountains, but one senses she considers such achievements too frivolous to dwell on.

Mayer placed in the bottom 10 percent of the Portland Marathon, and dead last in the Birkebeiner women's ski competition. Gates ran one leg of a three-leg relay marathon in 1:23:40.1, a respectable showing which placed her 37th out of 102 contestants.

Not to mention this: Mayer also dated her company's cofounder. But unlike Mrs. Gates, she didn't get him to put a ring on it.

"Good students are good at all things," Mayer said in front of a Times reporter. Silicon Valley's elite is still collectively howling with laughter over that line. It makes you wonder: In the school of life, which other classes is Mayer flunking?

(Photo of Mayer via Action Sports International; Gates via Vogue)

The Recorder, a San Francisco legal publication, has details of the case, which is now being considered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Eulonda Skyles (left), the first black woman hired in Yahoo's 200-person legal department, says she was mommy-tracked after a maternity leave in 2005, and treated worse than white women who had also taken time off for pregnancy and childcare.

Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan told the Recorder that Skyles's charges were meritless. And yet Yahoo pushed Skyles's supervisor, Reggie Davis, out of the legal department altogether and into a dead-end job hundreds of miles away from headquarters. Callahan claimed that Davis's new job was "a great career opportunity." Another lawyer, Lynn Loeb, left the company after Skyles pointed out that she was overseeing work by an outside law firm where her husband works, a possible ethics violation. Again, Yahoo said that was unrelated.

And now we hear another top Yahoo executive may have lost her job over the Skyles case.

The Recorder article, written by Zusha Elinson, has a detailed, negative account of Skyles' on-the-job performance which comes from a document generated during confidential settlement talks between Skyles and Yahoo in 2006. (Skyles disputes Yahoo's negative claims about her, as do former colleagues who worked with her at Yahoo.)

How did Elinson get his hands on the confidential document? We're told that Callahan, the Yahoo general counsel, provided it to Jill Nash (left), Yahoo's top flack, and from there, it made its way into the reporter's hands. According to an email Skyles sent to Bartz, that leak was a violation of both the confidentiality of the settlement and labor laws restricting what an employer may say publicly about an employee's performance.

Skyles sent the email the morning of February 2 — more than two weeks before Elinson's story would be published — demanding that Bartz take action against the person who leaked the document.

That afternoon, Nash announced her departure from Yahoo. A flack always chooses words carefully; in her goodbye email, Nash did not say she had "quit" or "resigned" — only that she was leaving. She had no new job lined up, nor did she disclose any future plans.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Nash had worked under three different CEOs in the space of two years, and dealt with a hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft and a bruising proxy fight with corporate raider Carl Icahn. But, significantly, Bartz has launched a fearsome campaign against leaks inside Yahoo, going as far as to offer a $1,000 reward to any employee who snitches on a leaker. If Nash really left Yahoo because of the Recorder, we think Bartz needs to write Skyles a check.

This mad:

George-Cosh's bosses posted an apology. He has since taken his Twitter account private. If only he'd thought of that before using it to invite the entire Internet to listen in on his tirade against Dunford, who has all but declared Twitter victory.

We would suggest that George-Cosh consider exile, except he's already decided to leave Canada for a job in Abu Dhabi. Or so he told Twitter and Facebook. We're kind of sad, because it would be more entertaining if he and Dunford kept sparring! They have Twitter in Abu Dhabi, right?

The evidence that the two have ended their feud, which began when they were both students at Harvard and Facebook was just getting off the ground: Saverin is now listed as a company founder on Facebook's website.

There's an excellent reason for Zuckerberg to make nice with Saverin, though: Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House, is writing an account of the founding of Facebook which relies heavily on Saverin as a source. Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing creator, is already planning to adapt the book, which doesn't have a publication date yet, into a movie.

If Saverin has made up with Zuckerberg, he may not be as willing to cooperate with Mezrich. One hopes the author got his interviews done before Saverin's name went back up on Facebook. A book proposal leaked to Gawker last year has some factual errors — Zuckerberg and Saverin dined on the yacht of then-Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who says he has never owned a boat. But even if it gets close to the truth of Facebook's origins, it will be embarrassing, since it claims that Zuckerberg and Saverin set up the website to meet girls. The feud between the founders was central to the plot.

It has been almost five years since Zuckerberg has acknowledged Saverin as having anything to do with the company, which Saverin incorporated and managed for Zuckerberg from their college dorm. According to Rolling Stone, Zuckerberg reincorporated the company and squeezed Saverin out after he accused Zuckerberg of spending company money on personal expenses:

In July, Zuckerberg and Saverin had a mysterious falling out. Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit, claiming Saverin jeopardized the company by freezing Facebook's bank accounts. Saverin countersued, claiming that Zuckerberg never matched his $20,000 in seed money and, further, used that money for personal expenses. That summer, Zuckerberg transferred all intellectual-property rights and membership interests to a new version of the company in Delaware.

Saverin reportedly told Cameron Winklevoss, another student embroiled in a legal dispute with Zuckerberg, that Zuckerberg had "screwed him, too." Zuckerberg moved the company to Palo Alto, Calif., and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, making the company worth a notional $15 billion on paper. Saverin saw none of that.

With hard feelings seemingly over (possibly smoothed over by some cash or stock), Facebook flack Brandee Barker explains Saverin's official co-founder status this way:

We made the change recently to make sure Eduardo gets the credit and visibility he deserves for his contribution to Facebook.

That's quite a change from Facebook's official stance in 2007, when Barker herself denied on the record that Saverin cofounded Facebook, even though he was listed in the company's documents of incorporation.

Since the lawsuit centers around who did what for Facebook when, it seems absurd to think that Zuckerberg would publicly acknowledge Saverin with a lawsuit hanging over his head. Barker repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the status of the lawsuit. Saverin and his lawyers did not return inquiries. Now, with an ending that seems to have zipped Saverin's lips, will Sorkin and Mezrich have any story to tell?

Ouch! That's almost as bad as the time someone asked Dell what he'd do if he ran Apple, and he said he'd shut it down and return the money to shareholders. Apple is now worth four times as much as Dell's company.

(Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Bono is a founder of Elevation Partners, the Silicon Valley private-equity firm named after the U2 song. And Elevation just sank another $100 million into Palm, the troubled smartphone maker. Palm, which waited too long to switch its product lineup from electronic organizers to souped-up cell phones and whose Treo smartphone is showing its age, lost more than $500 million in the most recent quarter. Bono's firm now owns 39 percent of Palm.

He's also lassoed several former Apple executives into the Palm corral. Fred Anderson, a former Apple CFO and board member, is an investor at Elevation. Jon Rubinstein, a hardware executive who served as Jobs's right-hand man at Apple, resigned in 2006 — one day before the company's 30-year anniversary — and joined Palm a year ago. Rubinstein, the company's executive chairman, is working on a new family of devices that will compete with Apple's iPhone; the big unveiling is planned for the CES computer trade show next month.

The last CES was also the scene of the latest dig by Bono at Jobs. In January 2008, he appeared in a farewell video for Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Later that month, he shilled for Michael Dell, the founder of the eponymous PC maker who once called for Jobs to shut down Apple and "return the money to shareholders." (Apple is now worth far more than Dell. Ha!)

And to think they were once so close. At an Apple event in 2003, Bono called Jobs "the Dalai Lamai of integration." One year later, Bono and Jobs introduced a U2-branded edition of the iPod. Jobs, who is rarely seen in public, attended a U2 concert in 2005, and Bono praised Apple as being "more creative than a lot of rock bands." In 2006, Bono promoted a red iPod for his Product (Red) charity scheme.

So what happened? The falling out has never been publicly explained, but I have a theory on what happened.

Apple's board of directors fingered Fred Anderson, the former Apple CFO, in a probe over stock-options backdating at Apple. In a public statement, Anderson blamed Jobs. Things got messy, and Anderson resigned from the board after reaching a settlement with the SEC.

At that point, Anderson was already at Elevation helping make Bono, whose net worth is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, even richer. So Jobs wasn't just messing with Bono's pal; he was messing with his pocketbook.

It hardly squares with the Irish rocker's saintly save-the-children image, does it?

The Journal reported today that Google is rethinking the issue, known in wonkish circles as "network neutrality," and approaching telecom companies about paying them for access to their networks. Richard Whitt, a Google lawyer who works on telecom issues, called the article "confused," and conveniently forgot uttering a statement he was quoted as saying. The Journal is standing by its story.

The only confusion here is whether Google thinks reporters need its permission to uncover important stories.

The arrangement is clever enough; it involves placing Google servers deep with the telecom companies' networks, reducing the cost to the telcos for carrying Google content over their wires. In theory, anyone can do it — which is why Google spokesman Richard Whitt is claiming it doesn't violate their stance on network neutrality, a cause célèbre of Silicon Valley which has failed to resonate farther than 50 miles from the campus of Stanford University.

Some say Google's proposal, dubbed OpenEdge, is clearly malicious, a contravention of its corporate slogan, "Don't be evil." But I'd argue that Google's use of network neutrality has always been evil. Google has not advanced network neutrality because it believes in some namby-pamby principle like the openness of the Internet; it is a cudgel with which it has beat the telecom companies over the head, threatening government regulation if they did not cut Google a deal on favorable terms.

Googlers are intelligent sorts, well-trained in the arts of Big-Brother doublethink. (I almost expect them to change the motto to "Don't be ungood.") Whitt argues that Google's caching efforts aren't evil, because anyone can pursue the same arrangements. Anyone who, like Google, has $14 billion in the bank, that is. Google isn't evil. It's just fabulously rich. And Googlers believe in a level playing field — for anyone who has as much cash to throw around as they do.

(Logo by Gevil.org)

"Every day, you need to create a to-do list," Rose told Kendall. "You put the items you need to do on the list, and you need to review the list with me every day. As you do them, you need to cross them off." Kendall's retort, which he delivered not to Rose but to friends within and without Facebook: "No shit Sherlock, I didn't get to where I am today without knowing how to manage a to-do list!" What's odd about this rumor: Rose doesn't have a reputation as a micromanager, and the two both worked at Amazon.com before joining Facebook. They put on a convincing buddy act for the New York Times recently, too. Anyone care to play Encyclopedia Brown and help piece together this puzzle? My only conclusion: The best algorithms can't predict what will break a friendship.

(Photo by Chris Pan)

Eberhard and Musk have long feuded, even before Musk ousted Eberhard as Tesla's CEO. But I'd note that for once, they're not outright contradicting each other here.

It's far more common for Musk to have a version of events that conflicts with everyone else's accounting. His history of events at PayPal, the electronic-payments startup he cofounded, seems to be shared only by him. And Musk has been telling everyone who will listen that SpaceX, his rocket startup, has a "Nasa contract to build the Space Shuttle replacement after 2010." If you ask Nasa administrators, they'll say that's more than a stretch of the truth. (In fact, SpaceX is competing for a contract, but it has only hit some of the milestones; Nasa is currently planning to rent out space on Russian rockets to supply the International Space Station, and a future supply contract for SpaceX is a possibility, not a certainty.)

So Musk has a tenuous relationship with reality. Is this a handicap in his business? Apple CEO Steve Jobs is famous for his "reality distortion field" — a charisma that leads others to believe the most exaggerated claims, because the vision behind them is so compelling.

Of course, Jobs actually has brought his outlandish vision to life four times: With the Apple II, the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. Musk has realized the Roadster, and SpaceX has managed, after several crashes, to launch one lone rocket. He's also got SolarCity, a startup which installs solar panels on roofs.

If in 2011, we live in a shiny future where we drive Tesla cars powered with clean electricity from SolarCity panels, and SpaceX's Falcon1 rockets are supplying orbital space stations, then we will be living in a reality of Musk's making — much as Jobs envisioned the iPod in the dark days of October 2001, and then, three years later, saw them everywhere on the New York subway.

There's another possibility, however, which would also make Musk like Steve Jobs — the Jobs of two decades ago, who was forced out of Apple by the CEO he hired. Tesla could go under, SpaceX could fail to win the Nasa contract, and SolarCity could get beaten down by rival cleantech startups. And then Musk, driving his Roadster on the lonely roads of Silicon Valley, would find himself facing a reality not constructed in his mind. An unpleasant thought, that. Far easier just to succeed.

But confronted by Mashable about his relationship collection, Alsop freely fessed up: "In his mid-50s, Alsop reaches out to young attractive women and asks if he can be their friend. Many say yes. Alsop says he's an old guy and it makes him feel as if he's got something going on. There's no downside for Alsop. Some may think it's weird, but it doesn't change anything for him."

In case you had any doubts on how free-thinking the Bay Area is on such matters, Robin Wolaner, Alsop's "No. 1 girlfriend" and the CEO of social network TeeBeeDee, supports her man's Facebook habit. Even though, in the same Mashable article, she recommends against accepting friend requests from people you don't really know. Like, say, her 50something venture-capitalist boyfriend.

If you've already hooked up a Web server to your garage door opener you're waaaaay down the path to madness, so you know, why the hell not build a mobile app to control it?

Sippey should be aware of just how far down the path to madness Fitzpatrick is; the two worked together until last year, when Fitzpatrick left to join Google and Six Apart sold LiveJournal to the Russians.

Charles Forman (URL) said:Oct. 13, 5:59 PM
I don't like my name being dropped this many times without a picture of my pretty face attached.

Ah yes. The alley insider is up to rousing rabble for page views from my Google Alerts? Awesome. What's this? Detective Retardo is on the case - the champion of the underdog, and the morbidly obese? Totally fucking awesome.

Did I fail to entertain you? Did I fail to show something interesting? Of
I spent 2 days preparing my presentation so everyone wouldn't be bored to death. I doubt there has been another presenter that has put as much love into their presentations as I have.

Do you not understand what we am trying to do? Of course you do. You know how difficult and truly amazing it is.

I think the real problem is that you are jealous of my ability to run a mile in under 3 days. Maybe its that I date hot girls? Honestly, I don't understand how your beef with me - or your petty, passive aggressive approach.

If you have a problem with fairness, why aren't you paying $20? You very realistically take up 2 seats.

Seriously, if you have such a problem, why don't you just do your own democratic tech meetup and watch as no one shows up?

You are a sad, lonely, disgusting man. I hope you don't die of a coronary before we have a chance to patch things up.

*Kisses*

(Photo of Forman by Charles Forman)

If so, the peacemaking attempt failed. Lindzon has made no secret of his dislike for Calacanis, on his blog and on Twitter after Twitter after Twitter. In a post discussing the bailout, Lindzon gratuitously dissed Calacanis as someone who "started a bad business (Mahalo.ugh) at the top and now is scared and panicking to his e-mail list." Calacanis extended an olive branch:

Actually, we agree that value is built in the down market. There is less competition for talent, customers and market share in down markets, so it is the ideal time to start. However, many of the A/B round Web 2.0 companies are going to run out of cash before they get to the promised land, and my email newsletter was a to try and help those folks who are struggling.

Lindzon replied:

Actually, stay off my blog.

Does staying off Lindzon's blog include Silicon Alley Insider? No wonder Blodget, always eager to please, would just as soon stay out of this fight.

Google's mistake: Creating a PowerPoint presentation and posting it to a site with the search-engine-optimized name "Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement." In the presentation, which we've embedded below, Google explained that the deal is not a merger and that Ford uses Toyota engines in some of its cars. It also misquoted Swisher, making her really mad.

The presentation cites Swisher as saying:

There’s not a whole lot for the Justice Department to hang a case on, in contrast to its case against Microsoft, which landed in court because of bullying behavior that actually took place before the case was waged.

What Google's presentation doesn't say is how Swisher prefaced the post from which that quote was taken:

I and many others–advertisers, publishers and state and federal regulators–are a bit nervous about further concentration of market power in one set of hands, even if they are such Googley hands. But in the interest of fairness and because I like to argue with myself here is a counterpoint with three key reasons why Google and Yahoo might hold firm in launching the partnership.

"I feel like one of those misquoted movie critics in newspaper ads!" Swisher writes in a post today:

("Go…see…it…quick!!!," when the entire quote was "Go home before you see even a second of it or you will be sick quick!!!”)

(Photo by Joi)

CBS chairman Sumner Redstone walked past him at the Bel-Air Hotel, shortly after CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion. Minor hasn't been at CNET since 2000, and wasn't involved in the sale. So why would he expect Redstone to recognize him? Nostalgia? Pity? Portfolio reports on Minor's many difficult relationships; he told the magazine that Gateway founder Ted Waitt, formerly an investor in one of Waitt's startups, is no longer a friend. Add to the list of those difficult relationships: Minor with facts.

(Photo by Rob Howard/Portfolio)

Block has since confessed to the stunt. In a post on Lam's hire, Block says "Brian Lam and I are actually pals outside of work — have been for years." But back in 2006, a tipster told Valleywag, Block created a blog called Boycott Gizmodo! and a Digg account with the same name that he used to promote blog's one and only post to Digg's front page. "The time has come to Boycott Gizmodo," reads the post. "Not only did Brian Lam and Gizmodo purposefully deceive long standing readers such as myself about the iPhone, they did a terrible job of covering their tracks." (Lam's post promised readers news about an "iPhone" device on a Friday, before the launch of the actual device — and then, on a Monday, revealed that Cisco owned a trademark on the term, long attached to speculation about an Apple cell phone, and had released an iPhone-branded product. The companies long since settled the matter, giving Apple rights to the iPhone name)

We asked Block if he was the author of the blog. In response, Block told us, "Brian and I have always been friends who knew where to draw the line." Block also just published a confessional blog post titled "Bygones and rivalries," in which he confessed to authoring the "Boycott Gizmodo!" blog. He also offered another anecdote from a rivalry we're all going to miss.

Of course, it went both ways, too. Gizmodo and a lot of other sites were pulling shenanigans day in and out, with the traded barbs pushing everyone harder, thinning out mistakes which could turn into ammunition. The result being better, faster, more accurate gadget sites, of course, but it’s a little funny, because that stuff all seemed so very serious then. Looking at it now, the storied rivalry retired, it’s almost kind of cute.

There was a line to be drawn, too, and to me that line was where real damage could be done. This May, in fact, that line drew itself right in my inbox when a disgruntled former Gizmodo editor pinged me offering a tidy bounty. The full “back catalog of classified Gizmodo emails, some discussing Engadget,” as well as “access to Gizmodo’s tips account [that'd be where you could get all of Gizmodo's scoops, or even turn over their tipsters to the companies they're leaking about]” and the “master list of Gizmodo online sources, which is a great aid.” Without hesitation, I turned this person (and any data they could make use of) over to Brian and owner of Gizmodo/Gawker Media, Nick Denton, for them to deal with as they saw fit.

And the Battle of the Sexes is on! In one corner, @michaellamb states the obvious: that the woman is getting the press because she's easy on the eyes, not because she's competent. @kimbjo wades in and shows her great vocabulary with this zinger: "And enough woman bashing you misogynist misanthrope." Oh, and for the less literate, she has just accused him of not JUST hating women, but hating ALL humankind! @leahculver joins in that said lady is edu-muh-cated, unlike most Valley CEOs????? (That's a story all by itself, Owen!) Oh, and she can't resist calling him a "jealous sexist asshole." @kimbjo also can't resist comparing the WidgetLab guys to a "disgrunted ex boyfriend," a high school one no less. (You don't have fond high school memories, then?) @skycut then confuses the issue by calling Gina a GUY (perhaps this is a creative attempt at staking out neutral territory). @michaellamb, undaunted by this very serious drubbing from the chicks, comes back and basically says, it isn't that she's a WOMAN, dumbasses; it's that she SCREWED UP. And @emnem follows up with the most beautiful, detailed heartfelt rant against feminism I have ever had the pleasure of reading. To which @raincoaster rejoins that she doesn't fuck her boss and none of her friends do either, and that @emnem must patronize two-bit whores. And @michaellamb makes one last plea: it's what she did, is anybody listening?

Terrific wank; good job everybody, and it's a very sad day when I have to satirize the Valleywag commenters. Please don't make me do this again. Thanks.

• Letter 1, August 2 From WidgetLaboratory cofounder Spencer Forman to Ning CEO Gina Bianchini: Widgetlaboratory wants to know changes coming to Ning before they happen and to not be blamed when things go wrong.
• Letter 2, August 2 From Bianchini to Forman: Ning and Bianchini want to talk on the phone clear up any "conspiratorial" thinking. "We just want you to succeed in a way that scales. Time and time again it feels like you are trying to threaten us into something that is never exactly clear." Let's work together if we can, if we can't let's move on.
• Letter 3, August 2 From Forman to Bianchini: We have 1,700 networks and millions of users, when we fail you fail. "Considering the fact that we are the only Network that provides any real products to your customers on the Ning "platform," do you really think we are being unreasonable to believe that Ning might keep us notified before you decide to pull the plug on using Dojo [a software toolkit used by JavaScript developers] in the header of every page?"
• Letter 4, August 3 Bianchini to Forman: I'm happy to talk on the phone, but the sniping has to stop.
• Letter 5, August 3 Forman to Bianchini: "Let's get to work."
• Letter 6, August 3 Bianchini to Forman: BTW, you were right we should have let you know about Dojo. Our bad.
• LetterLetter 7, August 7 Bianchini to Forman: Good talking on the phone. No we can't always alert you to when we're about to pull one of your widgets. No you can't ask your users their username, passwords or pins.
• Letter 8, August 7 Forman to Bianchini: No, please call us before you pull our widgets. Even at 3 in the morning. We have a million users! We're not phishers, please let us ask our users for passwords.
• Letter 9, August 7 Bianchini to Forman: Argh, I can't handle this anymore, I'm delegating.
• Letter 10, August 22 Ning general counsel Robert Ghoorah to Forman: You've been removed for TOS violations.
• Letter 11, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: Our lawyers say: WTF? You can't do this.
• Letter 12, August 22 Ghoorah to Forman: You were booted. "Use of Ning is a privilege not a right. We do not intend to debate our decision."
• Letter 13, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: Please, therefore, provide "any" specific details as to the "unduly degrading" of your network.
• Letter 14, August 22 Ghoorah to Forman: Your code breaks all the time. We called you last night about it. You were mean and unhelpful.
• Letter 15, August 22 Forman to Ghoorah: It took two minutes to fix the problem when you finally called at 3 a.m. last night.

Statistically it's almost certain there will be startups in this batch that go on to be highly regarded. It's a rare skill to be able to judge startups at 10 weeks. I know because I've spent the last 3 years trying to acquire it. Most people who attempt to perform this feat are, like the cranky attendee (and 200 TechCrunch trolls), doomed by not even realizing they lack this skill. But the fact is, most people who'd seen Google at 10 weeks would have thought they were lame too.

"Who's your daddy and what does he do?"

—-—-—-- Forwarded message —-—-—--
From: Chris Shipley
Date: Aug 11, 2008 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: Deb McAlister-Holland

Hey, Owen,

I am unable to find the original article, which again would have been in PC Letter pre 1996.

This is one of the advice pieces we provide to our demonstrators; I certainly wouldn't accuse Jason of plagiarizing this.

—-—-——

As you begin to develop your script, it is important to reiterate a few thoughts about what the DEMO audience expects from your presentation.

A LIVE DEMO

First and foremost, the DEMO audience expects to see a LIVE DEMO OF YOUR PRODUCT. If you are intending to do anything other than a LIVE DEMO you MUST discuss this with Chris immediately. The DEMO crowd will forgive the glitches that sometimes occur when you are giving a live demonstration; they are rather unforgiving when they discover that a company has "faked it." Don't risk your credibility to slight-of-hand attempts to deliver a canned demo as a live one.

POWERPOINT, VIDEOS, FLASH, ETC.

Second, the DEMO audience is very familiar with the "no PowerPoint" rule of the DEMO stage. No slides, no videos, no Flash animations, no clever screen savers or wall paper. You have been invited on the DEMO stage to show your product, not your graphic design skills. That said, in specific instances where the use of a visual aid enhances the audience's understanding of the product or its market, we will make exceptions to this rule.

If you are seeking an exception, keep in mind:

1. The visual must be limited to the bare minimum to communicate a key point.

2. They should always exclude extraneous marketing hype.

3. They should never take more than a minute of your on-stage time.

Remember, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE may you include visuals without prior approval, and then you are only permitted to show that which is approved. Clever ploys to circumvent this approval will be met with profound disappointment.

TIMING

Third, please remember that your time on stage is strictly limited. At the end of your time, we will bring up music to escort you off stage. Don't let your final comments be lost because you've gone over your time limit.

Some of our direction and advice may sound a little harsh and maybe even foils some of your grand plans. But trust us: Over the years, we've seen some big ideas fail miserably . . . and we've seen simple, direct demos succeed beautifully. So, finally, remember that we are here to help. If you have questions about what will or won't work on the DEMO stage, direct them to Karyn Williams as soon as possible (kkw@k2events.com). We'll gladly get back to you with the sound advice that will make your presentation a success.

SUGGESTED FORMAT TIPS FOR DEMO

* The introduction sets the context for your product demonstration.

* Use only 5% or less of your stage time on the introduction.

* Describe the market issue or user problem your product/technology solves.

* Give a brief summary of the history of the product/technology.

* Start your product demonstration within 30 seconds of taking the stage.

* The product demonstration should show the product/technology and

demonstrate its core value.

* 85% of your stage time should be used for demonstration.

* It's best to make only three key points. Remember you can delve deeper in

the Pavilion.

* Demonstrate only features and functions that support these points.

* The conclusion should be used to re-emphasize the benefits of the

product/technology.

* The conclusion should take up no more than 10% of stage time.

* Stress benefits to intended user.

* Stress benefits to industry.

Hruska noted that O'Connor's other blog, Ivygate, had called the twins "spoiled bitches that tried to lay one on the invincible Mark Zuckerberg and failed." We don't see the problem with hiring "spoiled bitches" to work at NonSociety — they'll fit right in with Allison! Had Hruska really been cutting, she'd have asked how Julia Allison's latest BFF, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister of the man the Winklevosses accused of stealing ConnectU's code for Facebook — would feel about the hire.

Critics have lambasted Blue for everything — from seeking the court injunction to having the filing fee waved due to a "credible threat of violence." We can't help sympathizing with her, because we know how difficult it can be to get anyone at Wikipedia to step in and moderate a dispute. There's only one sure-fire way to get your listing cleaned up — sleep with founder Jimmy Wales.

On 07/03/08 at approximately 1610 hours, off Russel at #1030 and I met with (R/V) Blue. Blue stated that approximately one year ago, she and (S)Alter were at an art show together, displaying a mechanical art project with several other people. Violet stated that Alter became jealous of Blue, and began acting very strange to Blue. Blue stated that was the last time she saw Alter.

After this incident, Alter becan visiting a web page on the Internet called Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a web page which the public can access to obtain information on people, places, and events, just like an encyclopedia. The public can add or delete information from Wikipedia, it does not require a password, or any validity to statements placed on the web page.

Blue stated that, because of her celebrity status, Alter has become more jealous and envious of Blue, and accessed Wikipedia and changed, added, and deleted information regarding Blue's information. Blue believes that this is being done out of malice, however, she does not know the specific reason. Blue stated that she had received hostile emails in the past from Alter, however, they have stopped, and the emails were not threatening in any manner.

Blue stated that she is not in fear of her life, or of any physical harm from Alter. However, Blue stated that she is concerned of possible property damage because her vehicle was vandalized approximately one year ago, right after the art exhibit incident.

Blue stated that Alter has gone as far as to contact all kinds of friends of Blue's in order to infiltrate her life. Blue has created a time-line regarding all of the incidents, and friends which Alter has contacted. Blue gave me copies of the time line, emails, and web page printouts which I booked into evidence at the Mission Station. These printouts were not attached to the report on Blue's request because they contain personal information of friends, and because this report is available to the public, Blue requested that they not be attached, and that her phone number and house address not be listed as well. Blue requests that investigators contact her via the email address provided.

I gave Blue a case number and a follow up form. I advised Blue of attempting to obtain a restraining order at 400 McAllister St. Furthermore, I suggested to Blue to inform the web page master of Wikipedia of the incident, give them a case number, and request to have her information on Wikipeida locked so the public cannot alter it in any manner.

(Photo by Joi Ito)