The New York Times covered a lot of ground in writing about the net this weekend, but I noticed a weird trend:

• "Joining the party, eager to make friends" — Times headline for a story on marketing in social networks. Later, writer Saul Hansell says, "Companies from Procter & Gamble to J. P. Morgan Chase, like so many lonely teenagers, are tricking out their online profiles and trying to make friends on the Web." [NY Times]
• "Wallflower at the Web party" — Headline for Gary Rivlin's article on the fall of Friendster and its CEO, Jonathan Abrams, who turned down a $30 million Google buyout that would have made him a billionaire today. [NY Times]
• "Google is very leading edge, very young and very appealing to 20- and 30-year-olds. If you walked around with a Google T-shirt, people would think that's a hip thing to wear." — a professor quoted in a Times piece on how Google fills young people's lives. [NY Times]

Looks like the Times just wants in on the party.

Mr. Perkins, who was briefly married to the best-selling author Danielle Steel and recently wrote a racy novel titled "Sex and the Single Zillionaire," did not respond to requests for comment. A representative said Mr. Perkins was in the Mediterranean on his new $100 million 287-foot yacht, the Maltese Falcon, and did not want to be disturbed.

The paragraph isn't anything like the business-minded analysis around it, but who cares, the Times has to put its gossip somewhere.

The story ends with:

The search warrant affidavit [against HP], on file in Marin County in California, where Mr. Perkins lives in an expansive hilltop home with ocean views, also reveals that the attorney general and AT&T are considering civil lawsuits as well.

How are Perkins' ocean views relevant here? Did some hapless editor randomly insert pieces of the Lifestyle section? WE ARE SO CONFUSED.

Leak, Inquiry and Resignation Rock a Boardroom [NY Times]

It's another embarrassing incident for HP, which is getting more buzz for this top-level power struggle than for any actual product or business news. But it makes for juicy reading, with everyone looking like a bad guy — director George Keyworth for leaking privileged information, chairwoman Patricia Dunn for snooping his and Tom Perkins's private phone records, and the company for trying to hide the drama. With boards like this, who needs the Sopranos?

A Board in Need of an Emily Post [NY Times, no reg]

Nearby, a stooped woman wearing a smock swirled in purple and red, who insisted on being called only "Grandmother," bundled her silicon pebbles and headed to a silicon bazaar. There, among vegetable sellers and old men who shuffled along selling tin foil, Chinese middlemen perched over rusty metal scales were doling out money for silicon.

"When this mine is finished I hope we can find another one," she said. "Nobody cares about this region. We can all starve to death and nobody will notice our bodies."

There's Money in Dirt, for Those Who Find Bits of Silicon [NYT]

Still, it's a bit worrisome to surf through a blog on the New York Fucking Times and have no clue what's going on.

Screens [NYT blog]

Now, after every news outlet, advocacy group, and government entity sifted through the records, the Times found the one researcher who didn't peek.

Researchers Yearn to Use AOL Logs, but They Hesitate [NYT]

The Times:

So we're picking sides already?

Earlier: AOL sacks CTO (for doing her job) [Valleywag]

Speaking from China to Wall Street analysts in a conference call after the earnings announcement, Michael S. Dell, the company's founder and chairman, said, "We are not satisfied with our performance, and we will do better."

While the company has told analysts for more than a year that it will do better, it has not been able to follow through.

"Also, Dell has shown poor attitude in class and hands in assignments late. Please call 111-1111 to arrange a parent-teacher conference."

Profit Falls by Half at Dell [NYT]

• On Saturday, the Times taught readers how to hide their identities on the Internet. [NYT]
• The same day, it told everyone their lives were "open books." [NYT]
• Monday brought the threat of camphone-wielding tabloid reader-reporters. [NYT]
• Finally, today, the Times reveals that we can all blame the advertisers. [NYT]

What new angle will they think of next?

David Pogue videos [NYT]

The Times decided to hunt down User Number 4417749, who searched for "numb fingers."

Yes, the Times, whose earlier coverage of the AOL privacy violation focused on AOL removing the data (and not, say, AOL putting the data up in the first place), managed to find Georgian widow Thelma Arnold. And they got a photo with her doggie.

Because deep inside every hard-hitting article about corporate wrongdoing lies the soul of an insipid human interest piece trying to break free.

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 [NYT]
Earlier: Find the scariest AOL user search record [Valleywag]

Honestly, what other company gets a story on the front of the New York Times tech section just for apologizing for a privacy violation?

AOL Removes Search Data on Group of Web Users [NY Times]

Now, maybe it was T-B-Lee's decision to explain the telecom industry in 1887 terms, but it seems more like a pattern, judging by a headline about videos in the Times' tech section: "Publishers Try to Sell Words With Moving Pictures."

At least they didn't call them "talkies."

Entangling the Web [NYT]

New York Times Technology section [NYT]

"The battle is about one thing: getting that search box in front of as many people in as many places as possible," said Jim Lanzone, the chief executive of Ask.com

Getting market share advice from Ask is like getting fashion advice from Peter Jackson. But that's not the only deconstructable quote. A former Yahoo exec speaks about experimentation. Google VP Marissa Mayer pontificates on adding features to new products. Yahoo and Google talk about social networking.

But best of all, Google co-founder Sergey Brin blurted, "It's getting hard to follow all the different products."

Yep, co-presidentin' is hard.

In the Race With Google, It's Consistency vs. 'Wow' [NYT]

The Times doesn't even bother linking the story to the bigger issues. For one, what does public reception of Netscape.com show about AOL's chances as a new bottom-up media company?

And after falling for two years, will Netscape traffic stop bleeding? Does Calacanis have an escape plan to a better department in AOL? (After all, he's said he wants to run the company one day.)

Interactive Netscape Site Gets Some Sour Responses [NYT]

A Dell notebook computer that burst into flames last month in Osaka, Japan, has damaged more than just the conference table where it sat smoldering. The incident, publicized in photos on the Internet, has also hurt Dell's recent attempts to improve its image.

The company said the incident got more publicity than such incidents usually do when they happen to other manufacturers.

Some of us forgot to learn in grade school: When everyone singles you out for mockery, complaining about it can only hurt.

Dell's Exploding Computer and Other Image Problems [NYT]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

• New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]
• So some big-city bloggers had a party for Six Apart's new Vox blogging service, right? And some guys sat in a hot tub on the roof? And probably someone called this the bubble? Hon, it's not a bubble until what's in the hot tub can get you drunk. Anyway, click through for topless shots of Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele. [Teen Drama]
• Damn it, Gawker's stealing all the tech news today. As our catty sister notes, the New York Times is proud to name-drop Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley, the man responsible for every New Yorker and San Franciscan constantly updating their friends on how drunk they're about to get. [Gawker]
• Pictured: The Times also uses a photo illustration to remind everyone of those wild days of free drink coasters for all. [NYT]
• Mooching off the "Get a Mac" commercials: You can make a clever parody or a creepy knock-off ad. (Please make the parody.) [iLoad]

A $31 Billion Gift Between Friends [NYT]

New York Times, yesterday:

Business 2.0, last year:

Way to keep up with the times, Times.

As Online Ads Grow, Eyeballs Are Valuable Again on the Web [NYT]
Bubble-era buyouts are back [Business 2.0]
Earlier: Bubble Watch: We're back to selling body parts [Valleywag]

[T]elecommunications and cable companies, and other Internet service providers [...] want to impose a new system of fees that could create a hierarchy of Web sites. Major corporate sites would be able to pay the new fees, while little-guy sites could be shut out.

New York Times, 16 May 2005, showing what it thinks of the democratic medium:

The New York Times announced today a new online offering called TimesSelect, which for a modest fee will provide exclusive access...

Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End [NYT]
The New York Times Announces TimesSelect [Press release]

>To the Newsroom:
>
> Business Day has an opening for a technology reporter in the San
> Francisco bureau. For more details from Larry Ingrassia and Kevin
> McKenna, click on Ahead of The Times.
>
>thanks,
>grace

The tipster, tapped into a whole different gossip stream, says, "Good news for all those WSJ bureau reporters about to be axed!"

After the jump, header info for curious data-miners.

>X-Authentication-Warning: ml1.nytimes.com: majordomo set sender to
>[xxx]@nytimes.com using -f
>X-Sender: [xxx]@smtp-store.nytimes.com
>Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 10:07:23 -0400
>To: [xxx]@nytimes.com
>From: Grace Wong <[xxx]@nytimes.com>
>Subject: Technology Reporter Wanted in Business Day
>X-NYTOriginatingHost: ml1.nytimes.com, 170.149.207.45
>Sender: [xxx]@nytimes.com
>
>
>To the Newsroom:
>
> Business Day has an opening for a technology reporter in the San
> Francisco bureau. For more details from Larry Ingrassia and Kevin
> McKenna, click on Ahead of The Times.
>
>thanks,
>grace
>

The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
212-556-xxxx
917-453-xxxx

• Yahoo gets an NYT section cover story for, um, improving its ad program. Thrilling. [NYT]
• Cry baby cry: Apple (the White Album one) loses its case against Apple (the White iPod one). [BBC]
• The New York Times starts its E3 coverage. A week of coy euphemisms for "booth babe" commences. [NYT]
• Tech Memeorandum is now Techmeme. Given that creator Gabe Rivera lives with TechCrunch creator Michael Arrington, this is all kinds of wrong. [Techmeme]
• Big-time graphics firm Silicon Graphics Inc. goes bankrupt, just a couple months after picking a new CEO who cut an eighth of the team. One assumes the government won't be subsidising SGI to protect the economy. [CNET]

"But enough about Web 2.0..."

Next Step for Counterfeiters: Faking the Whole Company [NYT]

• Lloyd Braun comes out swinging today with what the NY Times calls "the most extensive of his initiatives to get final approval:" Yahoo Tech. The top-story panel is sometimes overlaid with an interstitial ad. Should've stuck with puppet-anchored news, Lloyd. [Yahoo Tech and NYT]
• By accusing Microsoft of playing dirty by making MSN the default search tool for Internet Explorer, Google's Marissa Mayer takes a stand against default search engines in browsers. Oh, don't worry, Google's still the Firefox default. Let's clarify: Google's Marissa Mayer takes a stand against default search engines other than Google in browsers. [NY Times]
• Dave Sifry of blog index Technorati reminds everyone that the blogosphere doubles every 5 5.5 6 months (it doesn't). [Sifry's Alerts]
• Napster now offers free songs, five plays each, supported by ads. Bittorrent, IRC, Soulseek, Usenet, and LimeWire continue to offer free songs, infinite plays each, supported by RIAA lawsuits. [CNET]
• Bill Gates is still $3 billion poorer one weekend after a Microsoft stock drop. [MSFT on Google Finance]
• A shame. With that $3 bil, maybe he could've bought Vonage. [Financial Times]

• AOL kingpin Jason Calacanis really loves his new monitors. And I'm not just saying this because he IMed me to brag about them (seriously). [Jason Calacanis]
• New York Times writer Ivan Berger also loves his new monitors — and you know what that means. Yep! TREND STORY. (A story that convinced Calacanis everyone will be double-screening next year.) [NYT]
• And a scoop from a reader: Microsoft admits that the fancy glass monitors (pictured) shown to the Chinese president aren't real — after all, wouldn't Bill Gates trade up from his big flatscreens? The slick frameless panels are just pieces of Plexiglass with screens projected from behind the desk. Microsoft's calling them prototypes for the Home of the Future, but it's really just that Ballmer can't be trusted near large, loose pieces of glass.

To illustrate the point, Mr. Ward raised his right arm in the air, higher than the left. "I said, 'Gang, this is what we are doing,' " said Mr. Ward, slowly raising his left arm to meet the right.

Brilliance.

At LucasArts, No Playing Around in Quest to Be No. 1 [NYT]

There's no end to the possibilities. Why, someone might even post a video of himself reading a newspaper article about recursive videos.

Nice try, Times. But you are still not cool.

People Who Watch People: Lost in an Online Hall of Mirrors [NYT]
I win at Nornna [Pizzelle2 on YouTube]

"...is like a Britney Spears hit without a dance remix."

In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent [NYT]

So the online sharing business is booming. (It's not piracy, it's sharing! It's not socialism, it's Web 2.0!) This is all well and good, but there must be something grander out there...say, a place where everyone would put their media, and it could be shared from this centralized source.

Users could pay a fee when they lived in a city with one of these centers, and then access them for free. Accounts could run on, um, some sort of card system. Yeah. This'll be brilliant! We'll give it a bubbly logo and call it Shareby.

Read It? Watched It? Swap It [NYT]

If I were him, I'd ditch the Playskool keyboard first.

IMMEDIATE UPDATE: Orrrrr it's the keyboard for a Bloomberg terminal, which a reader says is "more difficult to use than the Space Shuttle controls." And since this reader may very well have used the Space Shuttle controls, I deeply apologize to Ryan Jacob and will cancel my gift order of Fisher Price's "Baby's First Computer Mouse."

For a Few Tech Stars, Time for a Second Act [NYT]

The New York Times writer (whose best line to date is "Rims are bling-bling for the car") does a nice job turning some stats into signs of empowerment for black people.

But before we all give ourselves a big hand for Internet equality, can we remember that teens are mostly filling this gap? And black teens are doing the same thing white teens are — trading "What pop starlet are you" quizzes on MySpace. Fun? Sure. Empowering? Only if MySpace says you're Jessica Simpson.

Digital Divide Closing as Blacks Turn to Internet [NYT]

So it's not at whisper-in-the-Graduate's-ear level yet, but ethanol frenzy earned the requisite New York Times trend story. And yes, there are some pretty big Valley names involved.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun and a former Kleiner Perkins VC, is in on the game. (And his SUV photo op screams, "Ethanol fuel justifies driving this behemoth!") So is honorary Valley mogul Bill Gates. And Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin checked out an ethanol factory when they visited those crazy Orkut-lovers in Brazil.

Which means it has to succeed. Techie investments in transportation always do. Ethanol! They'll build cities around it!

On the Ethanol Bandwagon, Big Names and Big Risks [NY Times]
Brazil has head start on ethanol production [CMI Brasil]

Daily Candy wins "Most jackass self-evaluation" for its $100 million asking price. When the Times calls a 10-times-earnings sale price "a conservative multiple by technology industry standards," someone is either still living in the 90s or already privy to some pretty high-rolling deals.
Everyone's "learning from their mistakes" and "not getting caught in the hype" — and "seeing 37% growth a year."
Uses of "Mr.": 16. Uses of "Ms.": 1.

Alive and Well in Silicon Alley [NYT]

Mr. Robertson faced a barrage of withering questions and eventually slunk offstage to mocking laughter from the audience.

When New Yorkers do tech meetups, they do 'em hardcore.

Alive and Well in Silicon Alley [NYT]

Some implications up there for the Valleywag Flip Trifecta — send in your buyout trifecta before Odeo sells and it's too late!