The San Jose Mercury News is shuttering its tech blog, SiliconBeat, which (along with Good Morning Silicon Valley) displayed the insight and cleverness that the Merc News itself is missing.

Co-author Matt Marshall is leaving the Merc to launch VentureBeat, an independent blog about Silicon Valley ventures. As of press time, the site's down, so give the site a moment to recover from first-day traffic. Judging by Marshall's past work, it'll be a blog worth following, at least for the laughs.

SiliconBeat to retire...VentureBeat has launched! [SiliconBeat]
VentureBeat Launches [VentureBeat]

"Old girls"? Let's see, SiliconBeat mentions two Valley women. According to the Internets, their ages are:

Jennifer Fonstad (pictured): 39 or 40
Amy Vernetti: 38

You guys are so in the doghouse.

Old Boy Network? Forget it. Try the Old Girl Network [SiliconBeat]

The meta-flipmeat wants to launch 15 dot-coms in the next three years. If Next Internet really plans to be "profitable and constantly growing," those five dot-coms a year can't be some re-microwaved social bookmarking sites or high-risk Webvan clones.

And they're based down in Mountain View, a two-minute drive from Google. That should make a quick afternoon move-in for freshly bought flipmeat.

Next Internet [NextInternet.com]
Next Internet: a new, local Net incubator [SiliconBeat]