• Om Malik, who believes companies don't do anything once, polls his readers: Who will Wired buy next? [GigaOM]
• Hey look, it's Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott playing the banjo and swearing! Ha! Ha! We Valley types sure know how to have fun! [Abazab]
• Reporting Time Warner's falling stock is always tougher when that stock is your retirement fund. [CNN Money]
• Mysterious social network company Socializer says it's been around since 2002 — and invites you to join its private beta. [Socializer]
• the front page at Ookles.com, which used to say "coming soon," is now an empty page. The site isn't stillborn, it's just prepping for public release, says the founder. [Ookles]
• The exec producer of VH1's "Best Week Ever" tells Rocketboom's ex-host, "Get to work - the clock is ticking and 90 days from now, it's going to be 'what the fuck happened to Amanda Congdon?'" [BuzzMachine]

• Bill Gates says Vista will be ready in January. Unless it won't. [MSNBC]
• Boston thinks it has a hard time with wifi bedouins — cafe moochers who suck up table space and bandwidth without buying a thing. Child's play. In Boston, at least the cafes charge. San Franciscans demand free wifi — and then we figure one cup of coffee earns us a full day's rent. Hell, I'm writing this from Coffee to the People, where I've sat for the last five hours. Try that on for size, Boston. [Boston Globe]
• Old-school Netscape fans are calling the new version "New Coke." That's what AOL gets for saddling progressive exec Jason Calacanis with such a fuddy-duddy user base. [Read/WriteWeb]
• Friendster's patent looks familiar, says the entrepreneur who filed a similar social networking patent five years before Friendster launched. [Boing Boing]
• Can Google do anything without pretending it just saved the world? Business 2.0's bloggers note that Google's new HQ in Michigan isn't a philanthropic effort. Google may spin it as "a shot in the arm" for Michigan's lackluster job market. But don't expect it to pay wages like it does in Silicon Valley — Michigan college grads cost just $47,000 a pop. [Business 2.0]

• 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]

• Batting .000 on his New Year's predictions, Firefox developer Blake Ross rushes out a second batch:

  Citizen journalism will finally topple Old Media, ushering in a remarkable new age of incisive journalism—"That Dude Across the Street Walks His Dog;" "Local Mail Arrives Ten Minutes Past 4." Illegal immigrants will protest the discriminatory name, forcing the blogosphere to rechristen the new model "Asscasting," short for "Broadcasting while sitting on my ass, which will never leave this chair."

  [Blake Ross]

• The new site Relishio does a cannonball into the news-aggregation-site pool that's already full with Digg, Netscape, Newsvine, TailRank, and TechMeme. Its founders are either clueless, arrogant, or — oh, the founder is 14-year-old Jake Jarvis, son of blogger and entertainment pundit Jeff Jarvis. We're not going to make fun of an eighth-grader, are we? [Relishio]
• Why is it hilarious that IT titan EMC bought security titan RSA? Because I know at least one RSA employee who quit the company months ago and joined a startup that RSA bought. Life wants some people to work in huge corporations. [EMC]
• Is the Internet down? [Internet Status]

• Apple's iPod maker says the sweatshop story isn't true, and they've vaguely threatened a lawsuit over the claim, made by the UK's Daily Mail. Can we resolve this peacefully so the slaves can crank out more toys? [Apple Insider]
• Props to Gnomedex organizer Chris Pirillo for designing conference tees that we'd pay good cash for (pictured). [Pirillo.com]
• I was utterly remiss not to show you this classic 1998 rant about writing for Wired Magazine. [Boing Boing]
• The "Coolz0r" blog has so far catalogued 54 services using "Flickr"-style names. If anyone wants to use this as a hitlist, the blogger will not be held responsible. [Coolz0r]
• AOL knew it was shady back in 2000. Then again, so did everyone else. [CNNMoney]
• Larry Ellison officially admits — it's not about the sick kids, it's about his buddy at Harvard. Those expecting the Oracle founder's $115 million donation can suck it. More on this tomorrow. [SFGate]

• A guide to Unix becomes the new summer beach read for a topless sunbather in Greece. [NSFW: Flickr]
• A journalist overheard explaining how to pad an article: "But one thing is clear: I have three more paragraphs to fill." "It remains to be seen whether I can meet wordcount."
• Yahoo's photo sharing site Flickr, it turns out, made a simple way to import pics from other services. But co-founder Stewart Butterfield says that management decided to can it 'cause it was too "lame, and mean, and competitive in a bad way." Good thing you got bought, wimp. [Flickr forums]
• Web 2.0 cynic Eran Globen thrills at marketer Seth Godin's ability to sell Google themselves. "You guys have built something for the ages," Seth told Googlers in New York — in 2006 — about decisions made by different people in 1999. All marketers are liars, indeed. [Hellonline]
• Dear Macromedia founder Marc Canter: If you promise not to write free verse and call it a limerick, I'll promise not to make a Flash animation and call it an interface. [Marc's Voice]

• Don't worry, Valleywag's sending a correspondent to Playboy's Women of MySpace party. (Don't you wish you were a correspondent?) [One Industry Group]
• Well look who's Mister Celebrity Vlogger! The man who just interviewed famous blogger Om Malik now interviews famous podcast publisher John Furrier. (Connection: Both took VC money for content-based enterprises in competitive markets. Rodrigo.Typepad.com]
• Somehow, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel as the face of technology is not reassuring in the least. [Forbes]
• Web 2.0 snark blog Supr.c.ilio.us's (Supr.c.ilio.us'?) post about Michael Arrington leaving TechCrunch becomes quirkily prescient when Arrington farms out a whole day's posts to writer Marshall Kirkpatrick. [Supr.c.ilio.us and TechCrunch]
• Why aren't all industry explanations in cartoon form like this explanation of the IT process? [Scaryideas.com]

• Today's "Reason that San Francisco is cooler than San Jose" is a warning to vegetarians: In Silicon Valley, waiters forcibly stuff meat down your throat. [Metroactive]
• Apparently everyone who didn't know about the Adobe/Microsoft fight over the PDF format has their heads in the sand. Yeah, they're all probably worrying about obscure news this week, like the US killing the world's leading terrorist. [Planet PDF]
• Thanks again, SloshCon sponsors! To everyone else: If you want to give people money to drink, please sponsor the Gnomedex parties coming up in July. [Ponzarelli]
• Is the Glam.com blog network scamming its writers? (Ha, name a blog network that isn't.) A tipster says, "Apparently their $11m in funding doesn't cover paying out a few cents to their partners." [Celebitchy]
• Songwriter Billy Bragg takes his music off Myspace, saying the site's terms and conditions let Rupert Murdoch's media empire re-use all posted music without paying a cent in royalties. One wonders if News Corp would ever get away with acting on that clause, but either way, YAY FOR LEAVING MYSPACE. [Register]
• Pictured: Best. Caption. Ever. The Register snarks at Dell for throwing Wall Street Journal editor Don Clark...a birthday party. [Register]

• Anything, anything but calling them "vlogs!" A chat where every line is as good as: "i'm so addicted to video journals, i've got vournal disease" [jaschu's record]
• Craigslist gets Cox-blocked. (Heehee! Cox!) [Silicon Valley Watcher]
• Michael Arrington is sick and tired of those giddy Google worshippers. "What drives this kind of blind enthusiasm? When is the last time Google released a product that really changed our lives?" Yeah, startups do all the life-changing stuff, like a news service for MySpace's teenage userbase! [TechCrunch]
• It's slicker, it's eight-bittier, it's a little more emasculating — underrated fake-friends site Consumating just took the bandages off its facelift. [Consumating]
• Apparently SingleStat.us, which was coded over the weekend with no intention of actually getting attention, is now a zeitgeist of our stalkeresque society. [WebProNews]

• The New Yorker publishes a followup six years in the making — the wedding of designer Jason Kottke and Blogger co-creator Meg Hourihan. [New Yorker; Photo source: Kottke]
• Mini-Microsoft blogger stops writing; Microsoft now allowed to be huge and ungainly again. [Mini-Microsoft]
• Publisher Tim O'Reilly writes a lengthy response to the Web 2.0 (TM) shitstorm. The upshot: Yes, O'Reilly wants to own the name "Web 2.0 Conference." He's also disappointed in you all. [O'Reilly Radar]
• Blog mogul Jason Calacanis answers Michael Arrington: Jason meant to defuse the rumor that Arrington's TechCrunch reviews are for sale. But since Mike wants to make a public spat out of it, Jason's only too happy to oblige. [Calacanis.com]
• PR Agency Idea Grove wants to cheat test Technorati. Here's some help, just 'cause their site is pretty. [Idea Grove]
• "In McKinsey space," says VC blogger Paul Kedrosky, "no one can hear you scream." The consultants that told eBay not to worry about Google's PayPal killer, now invites other dot-coms to a bull session. [Paul Kedrosky]
• See, it's funny because Google bought GoogleMastercard.com on the eve of MasterCard's IPO. PayPal is screwed. [Simple SEM]
• Someone forgot the first two rules of Fight Club. [USA Today]

• Animal Magazine editors sneak into Apple's 24-hour store without waiting in line. Then they pull the classy move of setting its website as the test computers' home page. They also confirm that the SNL staff shouldn't head out without makeup. [Animal Magazine via Blogebrity]
• Boing Boing gets giddy over DRM protestors (pictured doing an Intel ad), because no cause is worth fighting for more than your right to play Beyonce on your iPod. [Boing Boing]
• Web 2.0 jokes make it to the hipster lit comics. LOOK WHAT YOU PEOPLE HAVE WROUGHT. [Cat and Girl]
• Jobster acquires Jobby, making the cutest headline ever. [TechCrunch]
• Streamcast, the guys behind old-and-busted file-sharer Morpheus, have expanded their lawsuit against Kazaa, Skype and Skype's founders to include Skype's new owner, eBay — or as Techdirt puts it, "Streamcast realizes eBay is the one with the money." [Techdirt]

• San Francisco PR firm Bite interviews the San Jose Mercury News senior web editor about the Merc's new media offerings. Sez the editor about the popularity of the Merc's American Idol blog, "Compelling content still rules the day." And by "compelling content," he means "celebrity trash." (Gawker Media heartily agrees.) [Bitemarks]
• A reader responds to the Apple shared bathroom incident: "SCO (a.k.a. Santa Cruz Operation), when it was still in Santa Cruz, posted similar signs after customers on a late tour of the facility suprised a group of nude hot-tubers. good times."
• USA Today manages to sound like it reads books, and it gives tepid approval to Douglas Coupland's JPod, a novel about game developers that outclasses his '95 novel Microserfs. [USA Today]
• SF Chron tech blogger Alan Saracevic asks about the $100 laptop (meant to put a computer in the hands of every child), "Why does everyone need a laptop?" So we can get more blog traffic, Alan. Geez, catch up with everyone, okay? [SF Gate]
• The Boob Nazi battle on LiveJournal — where militant breastfeeders fight LJ's abuse team — gets attention on the LJ Abuse Blog, which calls the affair "Nipplegate." [Exposing LJ Abuse — NSFW]

And in Kotaku's E3 coverage:

• Wii in 15 seconds, by Nintendo chief game designer Shigeru Miyamoto
• Awesome: The Game
• Today's mega-wrap-up

• Thanks to that health nut Steve Jobs, your kids are gonna get Hot Wheels and Barbies in every Happy Meal from now on — just as Jobs becomes Disney's biggest stockholder, the Mouse stops signing Happy Meal toy contracts with McDonald's. [ZDNet]
• With his excoriation of copyright freedom fighter Larry Lessig, pundit Andrew Keen confirms that besides being a flame-baiter, he's kind of a dick. [Andrew Keen]
• As Google gets better and better, the Register decides to take the subtle, calibrated perspective: "The worse Google gets, the more money it makes?" [Register]

And big brother Kotaku gets off the beanbag chair and blogs gaming mega-conf E3:

• Sega's releasing a new Golden Axe. Now that is a classic worth reviving, despite creepy memories of my brother always playing the chainmail bikini girl. [Kotaku]
• Live video of people reacting to Wii. (Dear Nintendo: Stop horning in on the stupid-wimpy-name industry. Love, Web 2.0.) [Kotaku]
• Oh hell, read the whole string of coverage. Tons of video, tons of use of the word "fuck."

• The new "Get a Mac" ads (pictured) starring a dorky office guy as a PC and a generic-Tobey-Maguire as a Mac? Pretty cute. So is that "new camera from Japan," anyone got her number? [Apple]
• TechCrunch celebrates Newsy-Bloggy-Startup Launch Day: 1, 2, 3, Mikey likes 'em! [TechCrunch]
• The Beeb and the Times both dig ATM cards that handle virtual-world money and real-world cash. Sounds fun, until a server crashes and you suddenly can't pay your real rent. [BBC and NYT]
• Jargon watch: it's not just a "schedule," it's a "time map!" [Julie Morgenstern via Cyrus Farivar]
• Intel shoots for the under-$400 PC. Apple continues shooting for the $40,000 Mac. [NYT]

• Board-member-about-town Esther Dyson reminds you — personally — how much cooler her life is than yours. [EDyson on Flickr]
• Avocent to acquire Landesk. After a $415 million deal, both will still have stupid names. [CNET]
• Productivity firm 37 Signals opens a job board for companies scouting out "designers, programmers, or executives who 'get it.'" Executives who don't "get it" may apply directly to Microsoft. [37 Signals]
• Apple can sail through the loss of any exec — except Steve. Then they're fucked. [PC Magazine]
• MediaNews Group snaps up the San Jose Mercury News, with help from Hearst. No word on whether Hearst will order the masthead to read: "Why read this when you could read Hearst's SF Chronicle?" [TODAYonline]

• The Guardian confirms: Bloggers are loudmouths, and Glenn Reynolds has an opinion. [Guardian]
• Blog platform Automattic bypasses the usual startup interview question: "But how will you make any money?" [Business 2.0]
• Sick of dumb corporate names? Salon is old-school sick of dumb corporate names. [Salon, 90s]
• Slate performs a mental autopsy of Stefan Eriksson's crashed Ferrari (half-pictured). [Slate]
• Use Firefox, get banned from LiveJournal: The site's new terms of service give them the right to kill your account if you use a pop-up an ad blocker. UPDATE: The lawyers snuck that in, and LiveJournal's gonna fix it. [Slashdot and LiveJournal Support]

• Apple buys land for more offices in Cupertino (having outgrown the ones pictured). I really really hope there's a giant cube involved. [Reuters]
• President Bush comes to the Valley this weekend, just in time to see his hydrogen dream dropped for ethanol. [CNET]
• Porn once again makes technological headway. But a new burnable porn CD service has DRM — get ready for a gangbang of posts from all four Boing Boing bloggers. [LAT]
• If it's called User-Generated when you let your customers do the marketing, what's it called when you let your engineers do it? [Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day]
• That's right, VCs — the money you spent on someone's mash-up went down the big non-patentable drain. [CNET]
• Google breaks down and partners with all the unsexy enterprise companies. [Google OneBox]
• AOL's Jason Calacanis and Jupiter Media CEO Alan Meckler debate: Can bloggers make money? Sure, if you believe writers can make money. (In other words: No.) [WSJ]

• Are you going to eat all that? No? GoDaddy will take it, thanks. [Monkey Bites]
• Bridge-selling for dummies, round one— [Newswire Today]
• And round two. [Inc.]
• Yahoo to go: Soon you can use Yahoo Instant Messenger anywhere — and message your three buddies who refuse to use AIM. [TechCrunch]
• The Onion on iTunes: How is this even fiction? [Onion]
• The Onion on MySpace: Too. Fucking. Funny. [Onion]
• Local event lister Laughing Squid is giving away tickets to this weekend's DYI tech event, the Maker Faire. [Laughing Squid]

• You can't nab a two-, three-, or four-letter web domain. You can't register your first name. And everything sexy is taken. But if your company's named H43Qmxy, you're golden. [Domain name stats]
• Larry Ellison implied Oracle will start selling its own Linux version. Questionnaire: If you're excited about this news, what's your Slashdot user number? [Financial Times]
• Steve Jobs demands some reworking of the titanium on his giant $9 million cube in New York. And with that sentence, Steve's life becomes officially weirder than Star Trek. [ifo Apple Store]
• Thanks, L.A. Times, for taking a look at Valleywag. You're too kind. And to whoever cracked the "he's very young" joke by saying I look 16: we'll see who dies first. [L.A. Times]
• Schwag watch: Getting a T-shirt from Mule coming in. So the next time they get praised here, it's because of the free XS tees, not their own merit. [Mule Design]

• The Valley job market is booming — as long as you have an insanely strong CV and can kick butt at billiards. [Mercury News]
• The real way to make cash from MySpace: by mocking it. [Wired News]
• Meet the jerk who made the cute Google holiday logo that messed up your poorly-written search mashup. [Mirror]
• Vertical search dude Niall Kennedy's life after Technorati: joining the Live Crew at Microsoft. [Niall Kennedy]
• This week's "Who am I" at The News Show: a Hollywood schmoozer who "shattered the glass ceiling." Just Google the line the News Show quotes, and enter to win their prizes. [Who am I?]
• New bullet icons. Thanks, House of Pretty.

Not my argument. Rather, that s the other side s argument, and the one that has to be addressed by proponents of Net Neutrality (like me!). I even later joked about the inevitability of being misquoted. And yes, sure enough.

Oh, it happened more than once, Andrew. [GigaOM]
And so it begins: a judge orders Google to hand a Gmail account to the feds. Suddenly that "delete" button looks a little better than "archive." [Techdirt]
Esthrfication watch: still stripping vowels, and Mark "Zuckrbrg" is a double victim. [Esther Dyson on Flickr]

Update: Thanks to everyone who translated. The caption says, "Google will be very pleased when they see this." Or literally, "Upon looking Google will certainly be happy to death."

Your exclusive Apple event invitation? The one from Steve Jobs and Bono? Yeah, that's fake. [MacNN]
Kleiner Perkins raises a "pandemic and bio defense fund." Says John Doerr, "We hope even a mild pandemic never recurs. But we must prepare to hold the keys to life itself for the worst." [Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers]
The blog AdamNation asks, which father/son pair matches blogger Robert Scoble and his son? The Costanzas? Sheens? Bushes? [AdamNation]
Sometimes, startup founders just hang out at Michael Arrington's place and install alpha projects on his laptop. That's just how awesome the TechCrunch blogger is. If MC Hammer ever shows up at the Arrington ranch, the Singularity will occur. [TechCrunch]