Gawker: valleywag, andy smith

Crowdsourcing experiment seeks to dictate Leah Culver's love life

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:20:34 EDT

We asked which man most deserves Pownce founder Leah Culver's attentions: Googler Andy Smith or Flickr's Cal Henderson? In a late rally, Smith advocates won out. His 48.4 percent of the vote displaced the early leader, none-of-the-above option "cupcakes to face for both," at 43.5 percent. Now a pair of tipsters confirm Culver has, in fact, selected a new man. Has she heeded the wisdom of the crowd?

You kidding? Culver knows better than to trust you people. The Pownce founder's new man is Flickr's Cal Henderson, according a tipster who implores us: "Trust me. You don't get a better source outside of Leah or Cal themselves." Another tipster gives us this eyewitness account from the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami:

I expected that Leah Culver story three weeks ago, since she was all over Cal Henderson at the FOWA beach party. In fact, it was so obvious I expected it to be headlining Valleywag the next day, not the Kevin Rose/Julia Allison stuff (which was barely anything).I don't know if any of you were actually at that party, but she was stumbling around following Cal like a little lost puppy, landing occasional kisses and tugging on his shirt to go out to the beach where they did who knows what. It was almost comically blatant.

(Photos by termie and hyku)

Help Leah Culver pick the right man

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:00:38 EDT

Pownce founder Leah Culver has made more geeks go wild than we can count. For starters: Daniel Burka of Digg; LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick; and Justin.tv's Kyle Vogt. They're all history, however. One tipster confirms our suspicions that Culver and Flickr's Cal Henderson are "definitely dating." But another writes:

I tried to hit on Leah Culver at a party not too long ago but that ended in EPIC FAIL. Apparently she was dating Andy Smith from Jaiku at the time. I have no idea if that has changed, but I wouldn't doubt it.

People, we're sure you're already realize this calls for a poll to settle the matter. Please help Leah pick the right man.

(Photos by hyku, hyku and MrTopf)

The cure for the common hangover

Owen Thomas — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:20:54 EDT

AUSTIN, TX — I almost didn't sleep last night. At 4 a.m., after posting party reports for ~~you ungrateful bastards~~ my gorgeous, intelligent readers, I considered just powering through until my breakfast meeting with the boss, who was flying back to New York in the morning. Instead, I caught a disco nap. Even so, I arrived at the PureVolume ranch looking more rested than the weary souls shuffling in for free breakfast tacos. If you haven't had an Austin-style breakfast taco — soft tortilla with eggs and bacon or chorizo — then you should reflect on the direction your life is taking and what you can do to amend your ways.

Get Satisfaction president Lane Becker and CEO Thor Muller, who bought the tacos, delivered a spiel about their company's widget-based platform for Web-enabled kvetching. (Okay, I wasn't really paying attention, but I think that's close.) I chatted up the likes of Google design czar Jeff Veen and Blogger veteran Jason Shellen, freshly hired at LiveJournal. Shellen talked up the large team of engineers based in Russia now at his disposal. I don't think he liked my suggestion that they develop an algorithm to automatically filter out LiveJournal users based on statistical measures of their irrelevance.