Skeet blogged last month about how his new-ish employer Google advised him not to accept his seventh consecutive "MVP" award from competitor Microsoft. Online outrage ensued, and Skeet now reports that he's reached an understanding with Google: Skeet won't sign the Microsoft nondisclosure agreement associated with the program — this just covers pre-release software MVPs get access to, another MVP told us — or accept any of the fringe benefits, like (we presume) the special tech support.

In return, Skeet can accept the award. In other words, you can look, but don't touch. And to think this is the same company accused of digital "promiscuity."

(Pic: Skeet, by Ade Oshineye)

Ornish's appointment as HuffPo medical editor was first reported in Salon two weeks ago; HuffPo issued a formal announcement today. Ornish's practice of taking money from people who make terrible, unhealthy food is controversial but not unprecedented; Ornish's clients no doubt appreciate the title of his book Eat More, Weigh Less, if not the content, which says to avoid meat and simple sugars. The Harvard-trained medical professor is at least open about his deals; his latest HuffPo column openly admits taking money from Safeway, then quicky urges Congress — under lobbying by Safeway CEO Steve Burd — to emulate the grocery chain's health plan.

Safeway cut costs partly by incentivizing patients to exercise and quit smoking. But Ornish never mentioned its less pleasant side: the plan shifted costs to patients, spiking deductibles and requiring people to pay 20 percent "coinsurance" when they got sick. The net impact was to raise costs for many diseased people who, through no fault of their own, were not well enough to meet Safeway's incentives. These problems have all been outlined by one Dr. Don McCanne, who you might know from such websites as.... the Huffington Post. Let's see if the good doctor contributes there again.

(Pic: Huffington and Ornish at Huffington's 2004 book party. Getty Images.)

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.)

According to an SEC filing, Google put an additional $2.6 million into 23andMe, following up a $3.9 million investment in 2007. And Google, which has been laying off workers, is renting space to Wojcicki's firm. On what terms? No one outside Google knows, except for one appraiser whose opinion is unclear. From the SEC filing:

In June 2009, Google also entered into a lease agreement with 23andMe... The terms and conditions of the lease with 23andMe were reviewed by an independent real estate appraiser.

It's not clear whether Wojcicki, who recently gave birth to son Benji, will work from the new digs, but the proximity to Brin — and to Google's free child care — would certainly help her keep child-rearing and a high-powered career in easier balance. Whether the deal is as good for Google shareholders remains unclear.

Consider, first, that AOL is buying Armstrong out of what sounds like a dud company — the sort of startup that can devour an investor's equity entirely.

Armstrong's Patch is a "hyperlocal" news website, mixing reporting from its own journalists with contributions from volunteers. Though it's had precious few successes, citizen journalism remains notoriously tricky from an editorial standpoint, to say nothing of profitability. And Patch has been ambushed with some formidable competition: The New York Times rolled out its own local blogging effort in the exact three communities where Patch debuted.

For this, AOL paid around $10 million, helping Armstrong recoup his otherwise imperiled seed investment?

Then there's the question of AOL's real interest. It's far more likely the company bought Patch to nail down Armstrong than out of some sudden resurgence of interest in local news (as Kara Swisher of All Things D notes, AOL had already been down this road with Digital City and CityGuide).

AOL wanted to hire Armstrong from Google just a couple of months before AOL detached from Time Warner. There would have been negotiations. And what better time for savvy salesman Armstrong to mention his growing interest in Patch than when AOL hoped to focus his attention elsewhere? "Distracted by Patch? We'll take it off your hands for you."

That sort of arrangement wouldn't be particularly transparent for AOL shareholders, who should know where compensation ends and strategic investments begin. But presumably Armstrong can lead them to the same conclusion as his former bosses: That he's worth every penny.

Corporate awards might seem silly, but for some entrepreneurs, they are among the few forms of recognition still within reach. And the Insider's Silicon Alley Awards, intended to "celebrate the resilience of New York's digital industry in the face of the global economic collapse," has its share of obsessives. One even wonders if the selection process has been tilted in favor of nominees with financial ties to the Insider.

Henry Blodget's publication yesterday released its final list of nominees. The nominees were selected by the Insider with input from an online poll.

As our tipster notes, the 25 finalists include Gilt Groupe, co-founded by the same team that started Silicon Alley Insider; Huffington Post, co-founded by Insider investor Ken Lerer; and Thrillist, started by Ken's son Ben Lerer.

It's hard to argue with, say, HuffPo's impact over the past year; it pioneered a particularly effective form of citizen journalism and grew both its traffic and profile by leaps and bounds. But, as with the other two nominees, its links to the Insider were not disclosed; maybe they should have been, as our tipster argues, if only to keep the awards above reproach.

Blodget, who says he "understand[s] the concern about disclosures," he since added a note to his nomination post outlining "every possible conflict I could think of." And while he conceded "there was definitely some subjectivity in the selection of the final nominees," he defended his process:

We explained up front that, while we would take the nominations and votes into account when picking the final 5 nominees, the votes would not determine our selections.

The reason we don't use straight votes in these things, by the way, is that we have learned from experience that they are too easy to game...

For what it's worth, we won't be involved in picking the winners [see explanation at bottom of this post].

For those still dissatisfied with the process, just remember: It's only an arbitrary prize. They're a dime a dozen. If you don't win SAI's, why not go for a Webby? They hand those out to practically anyone!

Friedman is set to meet tomorrow with Fox News chief Roger Ailes and John Moody, the news network's executive vice president for editorial, the source said. Friedman will have a chance to plead his case, but the meeting could well end with the columnist losing his job.

Friedman is in hot water for posting to FoxNews.com Thursday a review of the forthcoming movie Wolverine. The freelance columnist based his comments on an unfinished version of the movie that leaked onto the internet last week. "It's so much easier than going out in the rain!" he wrote. "I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer."

You can imagine how this went over at Wolverine producer 20th Century Fox, which last week called in the FBI to find out who leaked the film. The studio complained corporate sibling Fox News, according to Nikki Finke, and parent company News Corp. publicly condemned the review and requested its removal. Fox News promptly deleted the piece.

Finke wrote that Ailes then fired Friedman, a development seemingly confirmed by a statement News Corp. supplied to the New York Times, reading, "Fox News… terminated Mr. Friedman."

But Fox News' only statement on the affair (also given to the Times) is that "This is an internal matter that we aren't prepared to discuss at this time."

And in fact Friedman has not been fired, according to the Fox News source, although he could well be terminated during tomorrow's meeting. The delay in firing Friedman (despite News Corp.'s announcement) could be read as a play by Ailes to assert the news division's independence from film studio 20th within the News Corp. empire.

The meeting also gives Fox News time to reconcile its own definition of journalistic ethics with 20th Century Fox's. The film studio says Friedman shouldn't have broken the law in the service of a story. But Fox News seems more comfortable with such mischief. Network anchor Shep Smith wasn't fired after he was arrested for running over a competing reporter with his car so he could snag parking space, even though the incident resulted in felony battery charges (later apparently dropped without explanation).

When Bill O'Reilly's former producer accused the Fox News host of sexual harassment, producing lengthy conversation transcripts O'Reilly never denied, sibling publication the New York Post slammed her in a story headlined "'Lunatic' O'Reilly Gal Went Nuts in Bar." O'Reilly settled the suit and, of course, retains his job.

And Fox is unrepentant about stalking a liberal blogger, sending a camera crew to tail her from her apartment across state lines to Virginia.

A tipster tells us that Zuckerberg sent an email to Facebook staff reacting to criticism of the changes: "He said something like 'the most disruptive companies don't listen to their customers.'" Another tipster who has seen the email says Zuckerberg implied that companies were "stupid" for "listening to their customers." The anti-customer diktat has many Facebook employees up in arms, we hear. (Anyone care to send us the full memo?)

"Disruptive" is a good description for the changes Facebook made. Unlike past changes, like the controversial introduction of Facebook's News Feed — a summary of friends' activities on the site, including status updates — or the tweaks Facebook made last fall, Facebook's new "Stream" takes away far more than it adds. No wonder even Silicon Valley insiders, normally the biggest champions of anything and everything brand new, hate it.

Damn the critics, full speed ahead! That's what Zuckerberg seems to be saying. if our tipster is right, Zuckerberg would rather Facebook be "disruptive" than, say, popular, useful, or successful.

What's a good example of a disruptive company? Why, Twitter, which Zuckerberg tried to buy for $500 million in cash and stock. Having failed to grab Twitter, Zuckerberg has redesigned his website in its image — a steady stream of real-time updates which are impossible to follow unless you stay on the website all day long. Which sounds great, unless you have a job, a family, or a life.

The notion that Facebook should not listen to its customers contradicts what Zuckerberg was saying just a month ago when he was reacting to a groundswell of criticism over Facebook's new terms of service, which seemed to imply Facebook could keep publishing users' text and photos even after they deleted their accounts. At the time, Zuckerberg took listening to feedback to a loopy extreme, promising the online equivalent of a constitutional convention for Facebook users to decide how the site's legalese should read.

There's no such user convention promised over Facebook's design, however. But who would expect a 24-year-old to be anything but fickle and inconsistent?

Here's the question: If Zuckerberg is no longer listening to Facebook's users, who is he listening to? We hear that Facebook's top executives are furious over Zuckerberg's close personal ties to former Facebook executive Matt Cohler (pictured to Zuckerberg's left, above).

Cohler, an early Facebook employee who helped direct the company's strategy, left last fall to join Benchmark Capital, a prominent Silicon Valley venture-capital firm best known for backing eBay. But he has remained, to this day, on Facebook's payroll as a special advisor to Zuckerberg.

Last June, that seemed untroubling. But last month, Benchmark invested in Twitter at an eye-popping $230 million valuation. And Zuckerberg's conscious, obvious mimicking of Twitter is the best endorsement he could have given the startup.

(Photo via SiliconBeat)

A tipster tells us that "for security reasons," Brin and his wife, who's the cofounder of genetics-testing startup 23andMe, have given their son the official name of Benji Wojin (a combination of "Wojcicki" and "Brin").

And sure enough, someone has privately registered the domain name benjiwojin.com. Of course, the legendarily bizarre Brin, who posted pictures of himself in drag, got married in a Speedo, and had guests show up in diapers to a baby shower.

Papa Brin is already putting his son to work as a test subject for mom's business, according to the New York Times, which reports that he plans to have Benji tested for Parkinson's disease:

Mr. Brin and Ms. Wojcicki said they would check whether their son, who was born in November, also has the mutation, though he will not be able to donate his DNA in the usual way - putting saliva in small tubes, as 23andMe has promoted at celebrity-studded "spit parties."
"Babies can't spit into a tube," Mr. Brin said.

The disease is genetic, and runs in Brin's family. His mother, Eugenia, already has developed it, and Brin announced last September that he runs a high risk of developing it himself.

So Brin announced on his blog that he is funding a study that will subsidize the cost of having people with Parkinson's get their DNA tested through 23andMe; they will pay $25 instead of $399, with Brin's grant, one presumes, making up the difference.

This is at once a noble contribution to science — and an outrageous case of nepotism that raises questions of tax evasion.

23andMe is backed financially by Google, which became an investor as it repaid a personal loan Brin made to the company. (Anne Wojcicki's sister, Susan, is also an executive at Google — a position she got after she served as the company's first landlord.)

Previously, Brin had contributed money to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, a prominent charity backed by the actor, who also suffers from Parkinson's. The Fox Foundation then went on to fund a Parkinson's study at 23andMe.

23andMe officially announced the study today — and confirmed that Brin himself provided the funding:

The initiative is made possible through funding by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Mr. Brin's commitment comes from his personal interest in Parkinson's disease. Brin's mother has Parkinson's and he discovered through 23andMe that he has a genetic predisposition to the disease as well. He explained, "We can make significant progress in understanding Parkinson's disease if individuals join together and contribute their personal experiences to scientific research. Individually, our genes and experiences are lost in a sea of statistical noise. But, taken together they become a high power lens on our inner workings."

Mr. Brin's personal donation substantially underwrites the cost of genotyping the participants, who will pay only $25 compared with the usual commercial price of $399. Individuals who join through the PI and MJFF partnership will have the exact same data, information, tools, and access as individuals who have paid full price for the 23andMe Personal Genome Service.

Let's get this straight:

• Brin is making a charitable donation, presumably tax-free, to the Fox Foundation.
• The Fox Foundation is turning around and giving that money to 23andMe, a for-profit startup cofounded by Brin's wife and financially backed by Brin's company.
• 23andMe will get to count the tests paid for by the charity as revenues, thereby pumping up its financial results, directly benefitting Google and Wojcicki.

We can all applaud Brin's contributions to science. But did he really need to go through what looks like a money-laundering scheme to make them?

(Photo via Edge.org)

Television has been distracting people from the written word long before the Internet came along. And while the Internet has been good for reading, it's mostly encourage the consumption of short-form writing.

Print is a much better way to read long chunks of text — fewer distractions, easier on the eyes, portable from room to room, etc. — and to the extent the Kindle replicates these technological advantages, it is basically a crippled laptop.

But Granger imagines an e-reader that advances beyond the "crude" Kindle. He thinks better technology will do the trick:

... as electronic readers improve, as they add graphics and design and, eventually, color, even more people will opt for the more sustained, contemplative experiences more often. And all will be well with the world.

What he forgets: The Kindle has a built-in Web browser, though few people use it because the Web is not particularly attractive in black-and-white. If it adds color, won't people inevitably use it to read websites, and thus fewer books, just like they do on PCs? There goes Granger's theory out the window.

We suspect he has another reason for touting the Kindle, though. Hearst, the owner of Esquire is working on its own e-reader. By paying the Kindle such a backhanded compliment — right idea, wrong device — Granger is carrying water for his publisher's business interests. And not for the first time.

Hearst has invested in E Ink, a Cambridge startup whose low-power screen technology is used in both the Kindle and Hearst's planned reader. E Ink appeared on a splashy, Granger-praised Esquire cover last year. Perhaps this E Ink-stained wretch has even handled the product he envisions killing the Kindle? If so, it's too bad Granger won't tell his readers how much he loves that, too.

Smith is replacing Google.org's current chief, Larry Brilliant, who's getting put out to pasture with some vague job involving "philanthropy evangelism." (In Hollywood, they give retiring executives producer deals; in Silicon Valley, they make you an "evangelist," a flowery marketing title which really means you get paid to give speeches at conferences and have lunch with people who also don't matter.) She'll now oversee do-gooding investments, like Google's push into renewable energy and disease tracking. That's on top of her day job wrangling deals with Google partners like MySpace (a relative success) and Facebook (an abject failure). She's close to founder Sergey Brin, a source of considerable soft power in the supposedly unhierarchical company.

Meanwhile, her spouse, Swisher, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, gets most of her power in the industry from running D, an annual tech-CEO conference she organizes with Walt Mossberg, the paper's powerful gadget reviewer. Mossberg gave Swisher away at the couple's first, unofficial wedding; the couple later got officially married before the passage of Proposition 8, California's gay-marriage ban.

Swisher has a lengthy disclaimer about the relationship on her AllThingsD tech blog, and the couple have wrapped up Smith's Google holdings in trusts so Swisher can reasonably claim she doesn't control them. People in the industry still look askance at the relationship, questioning how Swisher might have an ulterior motive when she's tough on Google competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft. As Smith's ambit grows, those questions will rise in volume.

But Swisher causes as much trouble at work for Smith as Smith causes for Swisher. The latter's savage reporting on the antitrust implications of Google selling ads on Yahoo helped derail an agreement between the companies, and almost got Google sued by the government. Smith's job makes things difficult for Swisher as a reporter; Swisher's reporting gets Smith's bosses in hot water with the feds. If these two are still together, it must be love.

(Photo by Lane Hartwell)

Armstrong, the handsome and high-ranking Google executive who runs the company's advertising operations — that is, the actual business that generates cash — in both North America and South America, is backing a startup called Patch through his personal investment fund. The startup aims to run local websites in small communities. Armstrong's biography on the site makes it sound like this is more of a cause than a cash-in attempt:

Polar Capital Group, Tim Armstrong's private investment company, is an investor in Patch. Polar invested in Patch because Tim believes that Patch should be in every community in America, and wants Patch in his town. He wants to read local news stories done by journalists, make sure that local government is transparent and accountable, see all the ways he can give back to his community, and have his town be as interesting and alive online as it is offline. Tim is also a believer in American ingenuity and knows that products like Patch will help deliver a commercially viable way for communities to support the important work of local journalists, institutions, governments, and businesses. Tim works at Google and his family lives in a Connecticut patch.

The site is presently limited to three suburban towns in New Jersey — South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn. But the company, based in New York, already has 20 employees.

Will this save journalism? A form of it, perhaps. The big-city dailies have been retrenching from the suburbs for years. But Patch is hiring one journalist per town, to cover local news with a heavy emphasis on charities. That's exactly the kind of starter journalism job desperate grads take straight our of J-school, and work like heck to escape as fast as they can. The difference, in this Google-funded scenario, is that there won't be anywhere else to go from there.

And why is Google letting Armstrong freelance as a startup investor? Google's compliance cops have already greenlighted his investment in Associated Content, an ostensibly independent startup which lives off Google ads. Perhaps it's because his startup experiments may well help his employer.

Could Patch be a Trojan horse for Google to get into the local news business? Google has struggled with local advertising, partly because there's not enough obviously local content online to advertise against. Google would spark a massive outcry if it got into the news business directly. But through a trusted proxy like Armstrong, it can keep a close eye — and move in once Armstrong has discovered his "commercially viable way."

Has a real media job. Lazar has already achieved something beyond the reach of most fameballs: Steady employment with a large, traditional media business. She hosts Open House LA and First Look LA on KNBC, the Los Angeles-based NBC station. (She's also a host on the Reelz channel, whatever that is.)

Has lived in LA since 2004. Lazar is something of a personality in the self-proclaimed L.A. tech/blogging scene. (In this photo, she attempts to interview Perez Hilton.)

Dov Charney's stepsister. Lazar, described as a "hot peppy Jewish girl from Montreal" by one YouTube user, went to the same Canadian school as Charney, now the CEO of American Apparel, but 14 years apart. When she interviewed her scandal-plagued stepbrother last August, she did not mention his history of sexual-harassment lawsuits, or, in fact, any relationship to Charney at all. That's family loyalty for you! Also not disclosed in the video: Her habit of picking up free clothes from American Apparel. (TV stars get tons of free clothing from airtime-hungry designers, but not usually from their stepbrother's firm.)

Went to Emerson College. Bachelor's degree in TV/video.

Participated in the 2005 Ujena Bikini Jam.

Flirted with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington. Lazar showed up at a TechCrunch party last July. The doughy blogger accosted her and asked her why she was there. That encounter begat a working relationship where she tried making a few video clips for him. The talks never went anywhere, as she's on contract with NBC through February.

Began dating Rose near the end of November. No professional interest here: "Rose just wants to bang hot chicks off his Twitter list," says one informant who has observed their relationship closely. He does have a large online following, thanks to the popularity of Digg, his news-discussion site, and Diggnation, a companion online-video series where he drinks and discusses Digg headlines on camera. Could Lazar be hoping to leverage Rose's crowd?

Drew controversy at the Sundance Festival. Arrington — perhaps miffed that his play for Lazar went nowhere? — complained that Lazar had cheated to win 24 Hours at Sundance, a competition organized by Rose and Kutcher — and also claimed she'd been bragging about dating one of the organizers. Assuming Demi Moore has nothing to worry about, that would be Rose.

Went to Barack Obama's inauguration with Julia Allison. Allison, the Time Out dating columnist who briefly pursued Rose and remained obsessed for months afterward, claims she's over him. Curious, then, that she cozied up to Lazar in Washington, D.C., offering Lazar her spare ticket to the inaugural. Aubrey Sabala, a Digg marketing manager, may have helped make the introduction hobnobbed with the two in D.C. That's especially curious because I've noticed how extraordinarly protective Digg employees have become about their founder's love life lately. Introducing his girlfriend to the famously indiscreet Allison hardly seems like the way to further that goal. Then again, perhaps that's why Sabala dived between them in the last photo below. Update: Allison, in an expletive-laced IM conversation, informed me that Meghan Asha, her Silicon Valley heiress sidekick, met Lazar at Sundance and subsequently introduced the two.

How serious are they? This is Rose we're talking about, who's not known for his long-term relationships. And the two live and work in different cities. Sean Percival, an L.A. tech personality, says it's over already.

(Photos via Twitpic, Nonsociety, TheChimp.net, LAist, and AnchorBabes)

In late 2006, Gore's Current made an offer for Digg which valued the social-news startup at $100 milion or more. Wonder if Rose and Gore discussed business at all in this interview. As VentureBeat recently pointed out, Digg's traffic is flat, and it hasn't significantly increased its valuation since Rose and Gore's 2006 chat.

Woj's new disclaimer reads:

I am a long time high school journalism teacher at Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, CA, but I also have children who are either employed by or otherwise have a financial interest in Google. I am not employed by Google and own no Google stock.

The disclaimer is true in a Clintonian sense. However, Woj does not say she has previously been employed by Google as an "educational consultant" from 2005 to 2006, creating several programs which promoted Google to teachers. Her otherwise lengthy Huffington Post bio does not disclose this fact.

That's not the end of her conflicts of interest. Woj joined the board of Creative Commons, a nonprofit group which promotes alternative means of licensing copyrighted works, in July. Earlier this year, Wojcicki promoted a Creative Commons project without disclosing any ties to the group — such as whether she was, at the time, in discussions to take a seat on its board. At the least, the appointment has the appearance of a reward for her positive coverage.

Which makes me think that disclosure is simply not part of the journalistic curriculum at Paly. Susan Wojcicki rented out her garage as Google's first office; the Wojcicki family has been entwined with Google practically from its inception.

Woj's Google obsession in the Huffington Post would be less disturbing, perhaps, if she stuck to promoting Google's nonprofit efforts. But some plug for Google's products seems to sneak into her writing, too. Whether or not she's got a current, personal financial conflict of interest, she's clearly got an emotional one. Would Bill Gates's mother-in-law bash Microsoft products?

So perhaps Woj is incapable of seeing a tie to Google as something worth disclaiming. Perhaps she has so internalized its don't-be-evil worldview that identifying oneself as connected to Google feels like bragging that she's a good person. Doesn't every good person support Google, the company of good, and all the good it does in the world?

If that's really what Woj believes, she should exercise the critical thinking she ought to be teaching her in the classroom and recognize that her bias runs so deep that she can't even write a truthful disclaimer. And if so, she should stop writing about Google, Creative Commons, her daughter Anne's genomics startup 23andMe, and the various other investments her extended family is entwined in. I can think of no better example Woj can set for her students.

And if she can't, or won't? Perhaps its time for Paly's administration to stop letting her teach her journalism students the wrong lesson.

Despite the marriage, Swisher's disclosure statement still claims that Smith's wealth in Google shares is not Swishers' as well:

A substantial amount of her income from Google is in shares and options, some of which she has sold and some of which she still holds. Megan makes all her own decisions related to these shares and options, and I do not own or control any of them.

Swisher explains to me that Smith's Google shares are going solely to their kids through living trusts, an arrangement which predates their marriage.

But really, does it matter? I've always felt that Swisher's claim that she doesn't own or control Megan's shares was a bit of a fudge on the real situation; Swisher and Smith share a house and raise children together, and their lives and fortunes are thereby entwined. And their relationship, whatever its legal status, will continue to raise eyebrows as long as Swisher covers the industry. Marriage won't change that. Nor, as much as Google executives, Smith included, might wish otherwise, will it soften Swisher's savage coverage of the company.

(Photo by Lane Hartwell)

We sure do love to watch New Yorkers catfight on Twitter. But if you literally "let everyone get time on stage" you won't have a punk-rock utopia, you'll have a boring parade of bad ideas and worse PowerPoint. Think TechCrunch50 expanded to TechCrunch52,157 and you get the idea. Still, we sense it coming: Look for CenterNetworks' own startup event in early 2009. (Photo by Brian Solis)