Gawker: valleywag, picture of the day

Woz likes Fake Steve Jobs better than real one

Megan McCarthy — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:43:29 EDT

At yesterday's book signing at Keplers in Menlo Park, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak penned this inscription on the pages of Dan Lyons's Steve Jobs parody novel, Options: "I like this Steve J. better than the real one." Was he kidding? Maybe. But many a truth is said in jest.

The PayPal Mafia personified

Megan McCarthy — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:05:56 EDT

Seen here, in YouTube founder Jawed Karim's Facebook profile page, the current Stanford grad student (and former PayPal engineer) dressed in disco-era gangster gear. The reason? Karim comments:

lol — yes there is a story. basically a magazine is doing a story about the "PayPal mafia" — a group of ex-PayPal people who have worked together to create companies after PayPal. they took a group photo of us posing as mafia guys, so everyone underwent a full transformation for the photo ;)

Why Karim? We've heard that YouTube's better-known founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, were missing from the shoot. We're sure that the magazine wanted at least one representative from last year's $1.65 billion acquisition — a purchase price, some have noted, that seems carefully calibrated to be 10 percent higher than the $1.5 billion PayPal went for. We bet Google's unimaginative PR drones nixed the gangster-gear appearance.

While the PayPal Mafia's an old story online, it's hilarious that a print magazine would pick up on the meme and actually get some PayPal alumni to don costumes for it. We're wondering, which other PayPal alum underwent the Donnie Brasco treatment? Are there pictures floating about of Yelp founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons clutching tommy guns? Or a shot of PayPal founder Peter Thiel looking like Al Capone? Please send them in.

Letting loose at TechCrunch40

Megan McCarthy — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:16:57 EDT

Microsoft executive Don Dodge captures a moment from the TechCrunch40 conference. Or, more specifically, after the conference, in the limo ferrying VIPs from the TechCrunch40 VIP dinner to the after party at Fluid. Pictured, from left, Mayfield Fund VC Raj Kapoor on the floor of the limo; Allen Morgan, also from Mayfield, throwing gang signs; DanceJam cofounder MC Hammer; and angel investor Ron Conway, looking bewildered.

The Google Jet cockpit

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:26:54 EDT

This picture is the closest you will ever get to the controls of the Google founders' Party Plane. Snapped three years ago, it shows the cockpit of the then-Qantas-owned 767 waiting on the runway in Australia before a flight. While Sergey Brin and Larry Page redecorated the rest of the plane we suspect the cockpit remains unaltered, save for cosmetic decorations. Perhaps they changed the color scheme to a white background with primary colors? Anyway, we hope all those buttons and screens don't distract the pilots too much. After all, someone needs to keep the ride smooth enough for Larry to make out with his girlfriend.

The headline Mark Zuckerberg deserves

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:53:11 EDT

Legendary satire publication The Onion presents a faux-magazine cover story with the headline every editor in the Valley wishes he could run about Facebook's CEO — but knows he can't. (Image by The Onion)

Computer causes major crash on 101

Megan McCarthy — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:21:10 EDT

The iconic SiliconView electronic billboard, a distraction to drivers since it first went up in 2000, has crashed like a datacenter employee on a bender today. Additional photos after the jump.

(Photos by christophercarfi)