Drew Schutte, the longtime publisher of Conde Nast’s Wired, will now run the sales side of The New Yorker and its website. David Carey, publisher of Portfolio, is adding Wired to his responsibilities. [BusinessWeek]

Source:Valleywag

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After warning me that he was coming to the CES Press Room and to “stay out of his face,” blog blowhard Jason Calacanis stormed over to me to “introduce” himself and slam my boss and brag about how much money he has. Money can’t buy you a snappy comeback, however.

When Calacanis was almost out the door, I yelled across the room, “Google’s better!” — than Mahalo (there’s your link, now quit your bitching), that is, the “human-powered” search engine that’s currently keeping Calacanis off the street. Having no response, he slunk out the door to peels of laughter.

I cracked. I read Uncov’s post on Pownce. I still don’t know what it does. More important is the chart Ted Dziuba posted with it.

Pownce, despite being a shitty service, gives us some insight into the Web 2.0 world. I have described this before, but it is best done with imagery:

• Useless service X is released after 2 months of MySQL/CSS development.
• Arrington covers it, thousands of users signup. Mike takes his ad revenue.
• People either stop giving a shit or realize your service does not solve any problems for them.
• Fail.

Source:Valleywag

The trick to running a gossip blog is to reject most of the rumors you get. Otherwise, no one believes anything. You quickly learn to spot the gullible chatter, the obvious attempts to plant a story, the too good to be true. Well, usually. We blew it big three times this year by trying too hard for the scoops.

“>Fake Steve Jobs is Wired’s Leander Kahney. Former editor Nick Denton’s meticulous analysis of FSJ’s prose leads him to believe a fellow ex-Brit is the pseudonymous Steve Jobs blogger. It isn’t just wrong, it’s patently ridiculous to Kahney’s colleagues — the guy’s just not mean enough.

Drunk employee crashes 365 Main’s colocation site. A tipster uses credible inside knowledge of 365 Main’s operations to pass new editor Owen Thomas a timely, credible story that turns out to be completely wrong. The story delivers 145,000 pageviews worth of wrongness. Lesson: Even autistic sysadmins can be full of baloney.

Mark Zuckerberg cashes out. A rumor published at midnight on a weekend during the holiday season gets sprayed all over the Net inside of an hour. Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher shows up at my door in person to tell Owen he’s a frigtard.

Get a few drinks in freshly departed Valleywag party correspondent Megan McCarthy, and she will start loudly insisting, no matter what the subject of conversation, that she was involved somehow. You’re from New England? She’s from New England. You think your friend is pretty? She’s pretty, too. Valleywag had a scoop? That was her scoop! You played hockey in high school? She played hockey in high school. On that last point, we have obtained undeniable photographic proof. Enjoy! (Photo “courtesy” of jspepper)

Source:Valleywag

“Quick, post the pictures before you sober up!” the ever-helpful Paul Boutin emails me. I’d love to, Paul, but it seems that Brian Lam, gadget expert, forgot to put charged-up batteries in this superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera he lent me. Thanks, Brian. This is why he’s running a gadget blog and I make fun of venture capitalists for a living, people.

I managed to snap this one pics-or-it-didn’t-happen piece of photographic evidence. It proves that good times were had by yours truly and Eric Eldon of VentureBeat. After that, I put down my now-useless, superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera, which if I haven’t mentioned it, was lent to me by my good friend Brian Lam, gadget expert. I look prettier with a lemon drop in my hand than a camera anyway. Flickr photo sluts Terry Chay and Jeremy Pepper were also there, so you can check their streams for more.

Oh, and confidential to Caroline McCarthy of News.com: You were missed. And much discussed. No, we’re not telling you what was said about you. Hope you enjoyed those Mission margaritas, babe, but let me tell you, nothing’s sweeter than Valen’s cocktails, and nothing’s more bitterly delicious than North Beach gossip.

Did I mention that Brian Lam, my good friend, was a gadget expert? And that he lent me a camera?

After a DUI and subsequent probation violation, former Wikimedia COO Carolyn Bothwell Doran left the foundation that runs Wikipedia in July. But that incident was only the latest in Doran’s long history with the law, according to The Register.

Doran’s criminal record actually spans four states — Florida, Virginia, Maryland and Texas — and includes theft, petty larceny, more DUIs, passing bad checks, and shooting her boyfriend in the chest. One of Doran’s DUIs, a hit and run, resulted in a fatality.

At Wikimedia, Doran rose to COO after starting as a temp. As COO, she had control over much of Wikimedia’s finances, an audit of which — due in September — is still pending. “We’ve never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran’s part at all,” foundation lawyer Mike Godwin told the Register. How soon until somebody creates a Wikipedia entry and uploads Doran’s legal docs? That might help Godwin out.

Source:Valleywag

True story — back in October, Valleywag editor-for-life Owen Thomas and I were sitting in a coffee shop in North Beach going over party-correspondent duties and expectations and the future of the blog and all that other stuff that you talk about when you’re talking with your boss. “I want you to do a Valleywag Calendar post every day, he declares. I try to steer him towards an occasional calendar post, because, let’s face it, a calendar post is boring, and it ends up taking longer than it should because sometimes there’s nothing worthwhile going on in this town. Anyway, I’m trying to explain to Owen that a daily post might not be the best use of my time, and, suddenly, he gets all quiet and still and the color drains from his face and his eyes roll up in his head so you only see the milky gray-white underside. And this loud, low-pitched, controlled growl comes out from the space within his goatee: “You will submit a calendar post every day by 11 a.m.” And thus it was decided. So, let’s take one last look at what’s on today’s Valleywag Calendar, shall we?

• SVASE is having a holiday party for “cash-strapped startups and entrepreneurs” tonight at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto. [Upcoming]
• Copyright-challenged a capella group The Richter Scales are having a holiday concert tonight at 8 p.m. in the Noe Valley Ministry. [Facebook]
• What started out as a meeting with my boss to go over expenses and whatnot has turned into a farewell party. (Though if he thinks I’m waiting until 4 to start celebrating, he’s nuts.) Come on down to Moose’s after work and share a drink, and I’ll tell you all the stories I was too nice to put on the blog. [Valleywag]
• Santacon is tomorrow! You have your suit and hat, right? Right?

Got a to-do that’s a must-do? I’m not available to take your call, but you can leave a message after the tone.

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“Here Comes Another Bubble,” the charmingly derivative video by the Richter Scales which satirizes Web 2.0 in the style (and to the tune) of Bill Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” is gone from YouTube. The reason? A copyright claim by an unspecified third party. One possibility: Sony BMG, the record company which owns Columbia, Joel’s label; lawyers there might take issue with the use of Joel’s composition. YouTube and Sony BMG struck a deal last year, though, so that seems unlikely. Another possibility: Lane Hartwell, the photographer whose photo of yours truly was used, uncredited, by the Richter Scales. Hartwell posted about the incident on Flickr. I called Hartwell to ask if she had filed a copyright claim with YouTube, but didn’t get an answer.

From the tone of her Flickr post, though, it’s unlikely Hartwell was very satisfied by the Richter Scales’ response, which suggested that it was simply too difficult to credit everyone whose work they incorporated into the video. I’m not a lawyer, and the role of photo credits in copyright law isn’t clear to me. Giving credit where credit’s due simply strikes me as the polite thing to do. And surely not that difficult.

I suspect that the members of Richter Scales were simply lazy. The photo Hartwell took of me is the first search result for me in Google Images. It’s not particularly apt, either; I was working at Business 2.0 when she photographed me. On top of that, it makes me look even more jowly than I am.

But enough about me. The issue here is credit, and whether it’s hard to give. I’ve reposted the video above for the sole purpose of discussing the works that went into it. Please view it, and if you recognize a copyrighted photograph whose author deserves credit, please name him or her in the comments. I’ll start: The photograph Hartwell took of me was originally published on Epicenter. The iconic photograph of Michael Arrington smoking a cigar was taken by Ramona Rosales for Business 2.0. Those two credits only took a few minutes to identify and write. How hard could it be to do the rest?

I should have taken my colleague Paul Boutin’s recap of the week as a warning. Normally I take the weekend off, and I shouldn’t have made an exception. But that Lucy Southworth is just so geekily adorable in this Stanford-office photo I felt obligated to cover her wedding. If it happened.

Late this night, I got a confirmation that some people I knew had, indeed, traveled to Necker Island for Google cofounder Larry Page’s hitching to the Stanford Ph.D. Okay, the wedding didn’t happen Saturday — yet another error in Wikipedia. This much is for sure: The Clintons didn’t show. As far as I know, the wedding took place today, assuming the celebrity guests weren’t blown down by a gathering storm. I asked Google PR to verify that the company still has a president of products. No answer yet. Which is a problem, since losing Larry is a risk factor the company mentions in its annual report.

The other big nonstory of the weekend? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s sale of exactly $0 million worth of stock. What was I, drunk? Yes. I was roundly and deservedly abused for airing the false rumor. This is what I get for working overtime? That’s it, folks: From now on, I’m taking the “end” in “weekend” seriously.

Bernie Ward, for those of you who don’t listen to local talk radio, is a liberal commentator who won a Scripps award for his investigative reporting on sexual misconduct among the local Catholic clergy. Ward himself was indicted Thursday on two counts of sending and receving child pornography online. Ward’s lawyer claims the former priest made an “error of judgement” while researching a book.

Source:Valleywag

I’m sure TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington was joshing when he threatened “war” on Facebook for hiring away one of his technical staffers. After all, the amount of damage a full-on TechCrunch assault of negative articles about Facebook would inflict on the site’s business rounds off close to zero. Still, even jokingly warning another employer to stay away from “my” employees is a Valley faux pas. Such posturing is seen as a sign of weakness. If you want your tech workers to stay, you just offer them a better deal. Right, boss?

Source:Valleywag

We’ve reported on everyone else’s holiday gatherings. It’s only fair to spill about our own, don’t you think? It’s tonight at Valleywag uberspecial correspondent Paul Boutin’s impressive sky-palace. The dress code is “rockstar,” so expect Paul to be wearing his Armani sunglasses, Owen’s hair to be extra pointy, and Nick Douglas to be in a suit and tie. You want in? IM me with a story I can use for my last hurrah before I shuffle off this bloggy coil and move to a respectable publication. Cheers!

The change came quietly. Few noticed, at first. But yesterday morning, Google turned against its long-held motto and became evil. The appearance of the sign? On every stock ticker.

And even better? The ad Google served up alongside its devilish stock price:

We always suspected that Google was evil, and Googlers were all about the money. But even the company’s own search engine and ad-targeting system confirm it now.

Source:Valleywag

You think you have it rough, little cube farmer? Try working at Valleywag. We ragged on egoblogger Robert Scoble when he became a fan of himself so it’s only fair that we do the same to the Valleywag — my boss, Owen Thomas. I hate Facebook spammers, and he’s become one. Next thing you know he’ll be buying some bulldogs and filming himself driving down the highway. *shudder* I quit. I’m going to go work for Boutin at Wired or WSJ or wherever he’s slacking off today.

At least Mr. Valleywag is self-aware enough to know that he’s a shameless Facetard. The worst part? Owen only has one fan.