NYT editor Bill Keller told Clark Hoyt that the paper is "within weeks of a decision" on the long-discussed question of whether, and how, to charge for its online news.

So here is what their decision will be: You will have to pay for their online news. One way or another! Maybe you will pay a $5 per month subscription fee, or maybe you will pay micropayments for every story, or maybe they will roll out tiered membership packages with fancy extras designed to get hardcore fans to pay more in exchange for more access. Probably a certain level of news will be free, and a better level of news will not be free. Or maybe someone there has actually come up with an elegant solution to this mess! Though we doubt it.

But somehow we will all have to pay something, because if we don't, the New York Times is totally going to go broke, bit by bit, by giving its product away for free. Which is something that it and every other newspaper have now come to realize. A more interesting question: Will any of the NYT's star columnists flee the paper if they're shoved behind a pay wall, like Newsday's Saul Friedman just did?

They might! These same NYT columnists sat through the Times Select fiasco and watched their readership drop precipitously. Things are different now though! Because somebody like, say, Thomas Friedman, or David Pogue, or Maureen Dowd, could legitimately decide that their own BRAND would gain more by going off on their own than by sitting behind a paywall at the NYT. Thanks for the help with everything, Times, but we're off to be A Brand Called Me-s! Fewer readers could hurt their speaking fees. Can't have that.

This result would bring in some much-needed fresh blood and get rid of Thomas Fucking Friedman, so let's all pray it goes down exactly like that. We have our (employer's) credit card ready, Bill Keller.

Or so we hear from a College Park tipster claiming to be familiar with the residences of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (paper wealth: $2 billion) and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim (estimated wealth: $64 million). Public records confirm that Karim lives in the two-by-twelve-block Palo Alto neighbohood, adjacent to Stanford University; records indicate Zuckerberg has for months occupied property nearby, albeit in the form of Facebook's new headquarters, a short walk away from Karim.

But Zuckerberg is now a neighbor in a much more real sense, according to our tipster, renting a home right next door to Karim (as in side by side) on the same street. The brief commute would be one good reason for living there. Another: It looks like a leafy, laid back area, according to the ample photographs of the street on Google Maps. Based on Karim's address this is the block they share:

Why are Zuckerberg's neighbors ratting out his address? His employees are taking up the parking, and, we're told, residents complain that the fast-growing company is not providing enough spots (they're apparently not mollified by a proposal to begin requiring residential permits in some areas). You should probably get on that, Mark; these people know where you live.

In the meantime, local residents are missing the real outrage: That, in their 'hood, even insanely wealthy startup founders live in what most American suburbanites would consider modest pads.

Despite the impressive profit numbers, former Valleywag Owen Thomas notes at NBC Bay Area, the internet company's revenue is down 12 percent, which means Yahoo is cutting its way to profitability — rather than growing like Google. "No wonder she's feeling under the weather," Thomas writes, in a refrain that will be all-too-tempting for the financial press. It's enough to make an executive want to suck her thumb.

Realizing that they've lost their edge as the world's great evil empire, Disney has called on Apple overlord Jobs, who joined the board back in 2006, to help them steer a new path toward consumerist greatness. And, to that end, Jobs gave Disney access to his Apple Store blueprints and encouraged engineers to "think bigger," which means stores are no longer retail centers, but "Imagination Centers" that bubble with "Pixar-esque winks and nods."

Yes, gone are the days of plush toy displays and in are the days of video clips on demand, fake trees that sing happy birthday and, while they're at it, olfactory experimentation:

There will be a scent component; if a clip from Disney's coming "A Christmas Carol" is playing in the theater, the whole store might suddenly be made to smell like a Christmas tree.

Wow! This all sounds totally necessary!

Taken with Disney's plans for a brand-centric Comic-Con, it seems the company's poised to recreate the broken world in its own nightmarish image. And, in a move that would finally validate all those "Disneyfication" critiques of New York, Disney may open a new flagship store in Times Square. Sigh.

Madison, a 41-year old self-described anarchist, attended the recent G-20 protests in Pittsburgh and, like a good 21st century rabble-rouser, used Twitter to direct his comrades around the mayhem.

Coppers didn't like that so much, so now they've arrested him for hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime, which we can only imagine means the police radio found in hit Pittsburgh hotel room, and not Twitter, which is everyone's.

Investigators are taking this thing super seriously: they raided Madison's Queens apartment and removed antiquated items, like "newspapers," an "address book," whatever that is, and a picture of Lenin. Anarchists are so predictable.

Barbituates and THC were found in his system, according to the Journal; Pang's family insists he had back pain and would not have committed suicide. They also have said he is an honest businessman, despite SEC allegations he ran a ponzi scheme and funneled investors' money into toys like a private jet. Pang is the second rich person reported to have killed himself amid allegations of financial wrongdoing — the second reported this week.

Pang was the Golden State's answer to Bernie Madoff, accused of faking his educational credentials, diverting money he was supposed to be investing to his private jet and misrepresenting how his firm made money. His death came amid fresh question over whether Pang had diverted some assets to a lover to hide them from authorities.

Pang died after being rushed by paramedics to a hospital near his home, according to the Wall Street Journal. The coroner told the press there were no signs of foul play but will not say more until toxicology reports are complete.

Earlier this summer, Siebel was at a Tanzian watering hole with his guides when an elephant broke from an otherwise quiet pack about 200 yards away, the former software executive told the San Jose Mercury News. He charged Siebel's party; a guide's attempt to hit the elephant with a gun missed.

Siebel said he was trampled and gored in the leg, until he just "curled into as tight a ball as I could." The guide suffered broken ribs and other injuries.

Siebel spent 18 days in four hospitals on two continents and is now using a wheelchair. He follows in the rich-guy-accident of the man who acquired his company, Larry Ellison, who is also Siebel's former boss. Ellison swore off yacht racing after a harrowing 1998 storm off the Australian coast bruised him and the crew of his Sayonara. The storm killed six sailors on other boats.

Of course, there are plenty of not-so-rich people in Africa who are hurt by elephants, and plenty of not-so-rich Pacific fishermen who are hurt by storms. But in America, only a select few are willing to leave perfectly comfortable homes and perfectly safe occupations to actively seek out that sort of danger. And they are backstopped by having the only form of health insurance that is really truly reliable in this country: Being a billionaire.

(Elephant pic via jsrcyclist's Flickr.)

As the CEO of a publicly-traded company, tech stalwart Hewlett Packard, Fiorinia had a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for her shareholders. It takes immense hubris to think that can be reconciled with a future in public service. But then Silicon Valley is a famously arrogant place; that's why this election cycle has two political novices, Fiorina and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, trying to leverage corporate experience into elected office.

Fiorina's having a rough time of it. Her latest problem: defending herself against charges that HP made loads of money during her tenure by selling its products in Iran despite a U.S. trade embargo. "To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran," Fiorina's campaign told the San Jose Mercury News.

Really? Fiorina had no idea? That's odd, since...

• Fiorina in 2003 noted Middle East sales were defying global trends, and, as the Merc notes, HP's partner there issued a press release saying sales topped $100 million and that "the seeds of the Redington-Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market - Iran."
  
• Three of the three HP partners in the Middle East contacted by Christopher Stewart for a story in Portfolio magazine's August 2008 issue readily agreed to ship printers to Iran. Portfolio notified HP of the incidents, but the company didn't condemn them, instead refusing comment. Fiorina was gone as CEO at this point, but Portfolio noted that diversion of American products to Iran trough Dubai had been going strong for many years.
• HP had an office in the Dubai free-trade zones notorious for funneling American goods to Iran, Portfolio reported — so it had ample means to be aware of how its products were being shipped.
  
• After the SEC noticed the prevalance of HP products in Iran, it asked the company about the matter, and got back a letter from the company saying its Dutch subsidiary sold $120 million to Iran in 2008.
• Finally, in January 2009, HP severed ties with Redington Gulf, the distributor that had publicly bragged about its Iran trade six years earlier.
  
  
  

If Fiorina appears to have turned a blind eye to shipments of her products into Iran, that's what she was supposed to do, as CEO; as both the Merc and Portfolio note, the company most likely stayed on the legal — and profitable — side of a gray zone, a loophole in U.S. trade sanctions. But it will be tough to look patriotic while explaining that to voters. Fiorina had better hope her fellow Republicans continue to be more interested by the supposed dangers of universal health care and illegal immigration than by the War on Terror launched by their party's last president.

Brill's latest venture is a completely unnecessary company offering internet micropayment software, which already exists, to newspapers, which emphatically should not be buying it. It's one of the stupidest ideas we've ever encountered. But! Brill says he has letters of intent from 506 newspapers, right in his pocket. "This is a pretty good milestone," one of his partners told PaidContent.

Yet when PaidContent asked for names of a few of these customers, Brill's Journalism Online Inc. clammed up, "after weeks of promising a list." So observers must decide for themselves whether to trust a businessman who...

...Didn't live up to his word on what he was selling. Customers paid $200 for a year-long Clear membership but were left in the cold when the company closed down, even if they'd had only a month of service delivered. "Senior creditors," meanwhile, got dibs on the company's remaining assets.

...Didn't live up to his word on customer privacy. Brill told customers of his last failed venture, the "Clear" airport fast-pass program, that their personal information would be locked behind "two levels of password protection." Then a laptop with personal information on 33,000 Clear customers mysteriously disappeared, and it turned out the data was unencrypted..

Do newspapers really want this man asking consumers to whip out their credit cards? We'll see!

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times did some digging and found several large publishers have NOT signed on with Brill, including:

• Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal)
• McClatchy Co. (30 daily newspapers)
• Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, etc.)

Gannett Co., with 84 daily papers, declined to comment to the Times.

By January 2008 the two companies were competing in cell-phone operating systems, wireless hardware and Web services, and half of Apple's board was Google insiders, a draw-dropping instance of Silicon Valley inbreeding that Apple nevertheless shrugged off. So what's changed? Google has since launched "Chrome OS," but it's doubtful Apple sees the unreleased Linux window manager as a real threat.

The real worry: Two federal agencies are now investigating ties between Apple and Google. Micrososft's high-powered flacks, experts in antitrust who have retained Schmidt's ex-girlfriend, may deny lobbying on the matter. But after effectively buying the future of Google neighbor Yahoo, the Redmond, Washington company must be thrilled to see its longtime detractors in Silicon Valley further splintered.

(Pic: Jobs and Schmidt at the iPhone introduction, Macworld, January 2007. AP.)

TechCrunch has published financial forecasts assembled by Twitter Inc in February and obtained from management's personal files by a computer hacker. They project $400,000 in revenue this quarter, presumably from those adorable "concept definition" ads. Sales were projected to increase tenfold by the fourth quarter, ramping to $62 million by the fourth quarter of next year.

Twitter Inc., which doesn't like people talking about its hacked internal documents, told TechCrunch the numbers are stale and unofficial. But, specifics aside, they leave the unmistakable impression the microblogging service was serious about making money this year. That goal may have been intended only for company backers; now that it has gone public, there will be even more pressure on the company to make its creative approach to advertising pay off over the next five months.

(Top pic: Twitter CEO Evan Williams at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley media summit July 10, 2009.)

Firefly honcho Tom Freston's yoga-loving wife Kathy seems to have forgotten to pack a bra. She seems over it; Tom doesn't.

As AOL's Tim Armstrong learned, IAC chief Barry Diller is entirely comfortable meeting in the bushes.

Rupert Murdoch, after being charmed by Haim Saban and News Corp. underling David DeVoe.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt explains to Microsoft's Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates how his new Chrome OS will reduce Windows to a "poorly-debugged set of device drivers."

Harvey Weinstein demands to speak with the insensitive hack who called him a "stress eater."

Walking alone, Twitter's Evan Williams remains aloof.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg listens as Microsoft's Myhrvold critiques his Bill Gates impression.

Eric Schmidt explains how Larry Page conned him into launching another operating system.

Former eBay honcho Meg Whitman brought her trophy husband, all the better to ask for gubernatorial campaign donations with.

It seems every day brings more stories that help paint the listings website as a cesspool of scams, killers and sexual exploitation. Here's just a random smattering of the coverage from the past week or so:

• Queens woman allegedly rents same apartment to seven people via Craigslist (NY Post)
• Woman reports buying fake tickets to Chesney (Fargo Inforum)
• Two busted in Craigslist hooker scam (NY Daily News)
  
• Nebraska Mom Attempts to Sell Her 18-Month-Old on Craigslist (AP)
  
• Hawaii Craigslist Sex Ring Busted; Woman Wanted (KGMB)

Costs alone don't explain the leadership change. Incoming CEO Eric Hippeau, of Softbank, replaces Betsy Morgan, deemed less capable of growing the Web publication. Morgan was largely ineffectual, one former staffer said. "Generally ignored," said another insider, excepting those occasions when one was across from the former CBSNews.com manager at one of her long lunches.

Huffington, for the record, told us she "loved working with Betsy." That's to be expected, if you believe former staff: Morgan didn't fight Huffington on spending, we're told, but others on the business side have been pushing back for some time, on expenses ranging from new assistants to new computers to travel, accommodations and miscellaneous hiring

The board of directors, nominally in charge of business operations, clashed regularly with Huffington, a HuffPo insider said. "There were moments when the board would say, 'Absolutely no more spending and hiring,' and that would be violated.'"

Arianna is always hiring tons of people — five people to do the job one expert could do.

It doesn't help matters that Huffington has repeatedly used employees for personal errands, according to former staff. Throw in the recession and the earmark on HuffPo's recent $25 million capital round — it's reserved for expansion — and it's easy to see why costs might be an ongoing conern.

Huffington, though, insists there's been no problem whatsoever. "There has never been any concern about expenses," she wrote in an email.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.As if to underline the point, she confirms a bit of news about HuffPo's ongoing expansion into local markets: Helming the Huffington Post's forthcoming New York edition is Dan Collins, the hard news producer of CBSNews.com and husband of New York Times columnist Gail Collins.

The local HuffPo launches at the end of this month with help from Katherine Zaleski, 27, who for the past four years has been gatekeeper over the HuffPo's front page. Zaleski, whose father is said to be good friends with HuffPo founder Ken Lerer, has become Senior Editor for Special Projects.

The Financial Times is reporting an interview in which Schmidt told the paper Google "considered buying a newspaper" and "using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status" before rejecting the ideas:

Google had looked at buying a newspaper but was "trying to avoid crossing the line" between technology and content, Mr Schmidt said. It was instead working with publishers to make their websites "work better" for online advertising.

(Annoying registration-required article at FT.)

Schmidt's just being polite: Newspapers aren't much of a growth industry these days. He seems to have more hopes for the movie business.

Google's YouTube, after all, has held talks with William Morris Agency about buying up rights to original celebrity videos to drum up traffic and advertising on the site. There's been no deal yet, but over several months Schmidt hasn't dismissed the arrangement the way he has for newspaper publishers.

That's probably because Schmidt, who last year bought a house in Southern California and has been cozying up to Hollywood players there, is eager to blur the line between technology and content where video is concerned. He's cut deals to acquire content from MGM and, as of last month, Sony and Lions Gate. Sure, he hasn't gone so far as to have Google itself make video, but the deals put to the lie the idea of a clear line between distributing content and creating it.

Obliterating old boundaries, be the technical (search, email) or social (privacy), is what Google's all about, after all. Provided it's interested in what's across the line.