Valleywag
-
Disabled vet nominates self for Yahoo CEO [Mike Murdock]
How sad that no one convincing has stepped up to run Yahoo! Pursued then spurned by Microsoft, the company is looking to replace founder Jerry Yang. Mike Murdock, a disabled Navy veteran, has raised his hand. The name sounded familiar. That's because Murdock is the same guy who campaigned for the jo ...
-
Google executive gives perky take on recession [Marissa Mayer]
506, 423,""); Want to know what worry-prone consumers are looking for online? Marissa Mayer, the search engine's prettiest vice president, went on Today to reveal its top searches for 2008. What better spokeswoman than the ex-girlfriend of cofounder Larry Page, who's worth hundreds of millions of do ...
-
Yahoo's sad, sad state [Acquisitions]
Another day, another hare-brained scheme to buy Yahoo. This time, the player isn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but former AOL CEO Jon Miller, who now runs a venture-capital fund. But the prospect of a deal seems as far off and fanciful as Microsoft, which spent most of the spring and summer trying ...
-
Credit-card hackers in new attack [Hackers]
It's the last thing cash-strapped banks need right now: Holders of credit and debit cards are reporting an epidemic of unauthorized charges on their bills. It could be the sign of a massive card-fraud operation in the making. A company called Adele Services, based in Melville, N.Y., has been chargin ...
-
The bubble that wasn't [Web 2.0]
Jason Calacanis, the mop-haired founder of Mahalo, an overfunded Web directory, is musing on Twitter about "tickers and rallies past" — a Proustian substitution of stock markets for madeleines. But what, exactly, does he have to be nostalgic for? Web 2.0 was a bubble that never inflated &mdash ...
-
Twitter's bad news is a bad business [Twitter]
People who use Twitter, a service which posts short updates to the Web and cell phones, love nothing more than to Twitter about themselves, and the medium they've so enthusiastically adopted. If you go by the Twitterers' collective reporting, every event, from an earthquake in Los Angeles to terrori ...
-
Temptress of Silicon Valley shuts down useless site [Pownce]
Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressivel ...
-
Google's censors really sorry about violating freedom of speech [Censorship]
If a YouTube video gets yanked, if a Blogger blog gets deleted, if a website disappears from Google's search results, chances are Google lawyer Nicole Wong had something to do with it. Wong has kept a low profile, aside from the occasional post on Google's official blog, but after a profile in Sunda ...
-
Recession officially a year old [Meltdowns]
What, now they tell us? A recession is not a recession until the number-driven meritocrats of the National Bureau of Economic Research declare it to be one. And now they have. The current recession actually began a year ago, in December 2007. The past 11 months? Blissful ignorance. [MarketWatch]
-
Cyber Monday crashes an online-shopping tradition [E-commerce]
As white-collar workers return desultorily to their desk jobs, they waste time by shopping online. To capitalize on this, a group of online retailers invented "Cyber Monday," a day of Internet discounts to match Black Friday's in-store deals. You'd think that the planned traffic from such a staged e ...
-
We can't even afford chicken feed [Meltdowns]
The recession has an upside, right? As consumers cut back, austerity trend pieces told us chicken was supposed to supplant beef as what's for dinner. But Pilgrim's Pride, the large poultry producer, has gone bankrupt right after Thanksgiving. The Chapter 11 filing was brought on by high feed costs, ...
-
Why Facebook wants to spam your News Feed [Social Networks]
Social networks have a lifecycle: They start with a small core of early adopters, swell as mainstream users get pulled in by their friends, and then see growth taper off as people get turned off by spam. That's why Friendster is forgotten and why MySpace is looking increasingly stagnant. The price f ...
-
Go forth and network [Valleywag Calendar]
Now that the calendar is walking out of your life, here is a quick and dirty guide to how you can stay up to date on tech: Gary's Guide: This is by far my favorite. It's not only easy to navigate, it's industry specific. As long as the site isn't down, you'll save time and effort with Gary. Upcomin ...
-
On Mumbai tragedy, Twitter proves useful in its uselessness [We Read Twitter So You Don't Have To]
Can't stand CNN? Don't want to keep Googling for news? Pop open a browser window and leave a Twitter search for "mumbai" running. People are posting photo links and group-sulking, rather than the usual sort of "if only they had used Twitter more in Mumbai, none of this would have happened" chatter. ...
-
Mahalo motormouth to launch mystery product in December [Jason Calacanis]
I'm taking guesses now. What's "Project A," the seekrit product being talked up by Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis on his private mailing list? A recap of recent events: He launched a human-powered news feed at a time most companies were planning layoffs. After that, he performed a layoff, then troll ...
-
Sometimes atoms are better than bits [Quotable]
"If you've ever tried to download a dildo, it probably didn't take you long to realize the futility of the task." — AVN blogger Tom Johansmeyer, on the resilience of sex toys and strip clubs to piracy.
-
Icahn buys more Yahoo shares, considers H-P exec for CEO gig [Yahoo]
Jerry Yang's least favorite investor bought nearly seven million more shares of YHOO. BoomTown reporter Kara Swisher did my homework for me again: Todd Bradley, head of H-P's $28 billion Personal Systems group, has been added to the list of potential Yahoo CEOs. Just to keep things complicated, the ...
-
Woman who hoaxed suicidal teen found guilty of three misdemeanors [MySpace Suicide]
Lori Drew (right), the 49-year-old Missouri mom who posed as a 16-year-old boy on MySpace, has been convicted of three misdemeanors, but no felonies, in the case of 13-year-old Megan Meier — a former "best friend" of her Drew's own daughter Sarah — who committed suicide after being rejec ...
-
Which founders frolicked in Cancun while you cleaned out your desk? [Summit Series]
Last weekend, around 60 entrepreneurs under age 35 flew to Cancun for a retreat informally dubbed Summit Series. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy was one of the press attendees who agreed not to name names. Nice try. The list of attendees identified below includes Dave Morin from Facebook, Joe Green ...
-
Is the Demo conference still worth $18,500? [Conferences]
For nearly twenty years, the Demo conference has been considered the place to be for tech startups seeking attention for their new products. Instead of speeches, companies are required to give live demos of brand-new products, basically launching them onstage. Demo organizer Chris Shipley has a repu ...
Valleywag
