We never touch our PC screen, and we hate it when other people touch our PC screens.... We're not particularly anal, and we polish up our Blackberry every thirty seconds or so.... So excuse us if we don't jump up and down in excitement at the thought that people are going to feel better about jabbing their fat, greasy fingers into our PC screens.

Could it possibly be because she's not happy with the numbers that ComScore is reporting for her client — or, worse, the numbers NextNewNetworks is asking her to pitch? I'd like to point out the Association for Downloadable Media is giving a presentation on video advertising standards tomorrow at Ad:tech. Maybe Hammerling should give them her support instead of taking passive-aggressive stabs at companies working in the space. That seems easier.

Then Calacanis turned away from Frommer and spotted me. A look of recognition came over his face. "I just made all that up," he told me. Was he covering a slip? Or toying with Frommer — and extending the gag to me? Or seeing if he could spread a rumor sure to drive Arrington, his TechCrunch40 conference partner, completely bonkers? Calacanis is known to invent stories just for the fun of it. I asked SAI managing editor Peter Kafka. "On the record," he told me, "we're going to take the $12 million and buy a third of TechCrunch. But don't tell anyone!"

For the record, Valleywag is seeking to raise $10 million. What? For an equity stake in this blog? Are you an idiot? Nick Denton doesn't toss around shares like that Craig Newmark twit. We're hoping someone will just give us the goddamn money and go away.

On his blog he reports that "the real news was YouTube's announcement of an impending launch of advanced analytics tools."

You'll be able to see where video views are coming from (geographically and site-wise), as well as many other data points. This will be a huge help to advertisers trying to extract more success metrics and data from their YouTube efforts.

For Content Partners/Creators

• Get ready for active sharing.
  
• Get ready for upgraded video editing tools.
  
• YouTube will be launching video recommendations based upon your viewing preferences (like Amazon Recommendations).
  
• Content will be distributed on multiple platforms, from mobile to TV (Steve Chen is excited about content on really, really big TVs).

Tent pole Content Initiatives
• The YouTube Games — some kind of takeoff on the Olympics. Looks to be a kind of wacky wide world of weird sports.
• Living Legends — content featuring, well, living legends. The first legends featured will be The Rolling Stones. This looks pretty great.
• The YouTube Global Gathering — simultaneous events worldwide, broadcast on YouTube.

It would not be much of a story that Federated is repping Blodget's blog, save for the identity of Blodget's backer: Kevin Ryan, the cofounder of DoubleClick, one of the Internet's first online ad networks. Embarrassing: It seems Battelle knows something about selling ads that Ryan doesn't.

Swisher, aggrieved at the lack of recognition for her scoop, accused BusinessWeek and the Times of running "hand-fed" stories, a charge Lacy and Stone's editor denied. (Lacy told me she'd known since the previous Sunday, but had held the information for her column; Stone's editor told Swisher his meeting with Slide that morning was previously scheduled.)

PaidContent.org clearly felt left out. After one of its writers filed a me-too post, editor Rafat Ali skewered Lacy in a followup post, calling her a "doting, in-awe poseur."

On Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget, Lacy's cohost on Yahoo's soon-to-be-launched TechTicker finance show, came to her defense, dismissing PaidContent as an "aging, LA-based digital news blog."

Oh, and somewhere along the way, I managed to write a story on the subject without calling anyone names.

All of which shows how petty bloggers can be, and none of which answers the question of whether this matters to readers. My suspicion: Only to the extent that they may pass over a story they feel they've read elsewhere first. Google News actively punishes scoops, presenting news on a given subject by the most recent article written, a practice which encourages follow-on news articles and blog posts — and, for that matter, makes it hard to discover who actually broke a given story. Techmeme tends to favor the person who writes with most authority, drawing links from other blogs.

Although there's evidence of many fake press releases floating around the Internet, the scam first came to the attention of Silicon Alley Insider because one particular release mentioned Internet television, a must-cover topic on its beat. But "the world's first broadcast-quality Internet television service" raising an alleged $45 million, profitable and yet no one's heard of it? SAI managing editor Peter Kafka's eyebrows were raised.

Alas, no eyebrow raisings took place at VentureBeat or PEHub, which were suckered despite PaidContent's observation that the HD AmeriTV announcement was a ripoff of a Joost release.

The confusion was exacerbated when these bloggers contacted First Mutual Credit, the only real company listed as an investor for confirmation. Two separate sources initially confirmed First Mutual's investment, but the New Zealand company has since denied any involvement. (Maybe it was that strong Kiwi accent.)

Several other fake companies and fake press releases have been identified. But what is the scam in advertising a nonexistent company? Peter Kafka, who has been closely tracking the story for Silicon Alley Insider, is stumped, but we think he's already stumbled upon the answer: Fake press releases get picked up by a host of PR-aggregating sites that profit off of Google AdSense ads.

Fake blogs already remix existing blog posts to generate nonsensical pages that nonetheless turn up in Google search results and display Google-sold ads targeted to relevant keywords. Press releases filled with buzzwords make even more lucrative fodder for AdSense.

So who makes money here? Press release aggregators like PR Leap would never admit it, but their cash register rings whether or not their press releases are accurate. And the perpetrators of the HD AmeriTV press release? There's no proof, but we smell a search-engine optimization scam, where they get paid by clients to try to improve the ranking of websites by seeding the Web with fake pages.

There's a simple solution, of course: don't read press releases ... real or fake.

Disclosure: Yes, yes, we know, we're conflicted up the wazoo here. Gilt's chairman Kevin Ryan is our chairman, Alexis Maybank, Mike Bryzek, and co are basically colleagues, etc. Whatever. You want pure objectivity without a hint of favoritism, emotion, or relationship conflict, visit TechCrunch.

Update: Henry Blodget responds.

Notorious nobody and Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison has swanned her way in, as has Erik Sofge of ... Popular Mechanics? So much for the event's glam factor. Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer is being held at the door in, after receiving a self-righteous lecture at the hands of a very nice if overly empowered Google staffer. Also in: Sam Gustin of Portfolio.com, and vlog-hot Caroline McCarthy of News.com, who'd rate as one of the Valley foxes if she weren't based out of Gotham. Apparently, though, the business reporters who get past the gate are being told not to take pictures. Got more reports on who's in and who's out? Let us know.

Update: Google executive Marissa Mayer, another overly empowered sort, has shown up wearing what sounds like a hideous outfit: "black pants black shirt with purple and bue polka dots and black shoes that show off red toenails," according to one eyewitness. Anyone daring enough to violate Google PR's photo ban and send in a pic?

Update: Douglas Merrill, Google's VP of engineering, is wearing a "hideous red paisley shirt," our unofficial fashion correspondent reports.

Frommer asserts that Apple will need to sell 78% more iPhones to recoup lost profits from the iPhone price cut, but his assumptions are so broad and flawed, his analysis is pointless. Not only does he continue to assume consistent sales — even after finally admitting that several factors will boost sales, he uses iSuppli's assumed bill of materials cost and Gene Munster's unsubstantiated AT&T subscription fees. He ignores R&D, marketing, and other expenses when these expenses should decline over time. And worst of all, he assumes the cost of producing the iPhone will remain static! In Frommer's world, components do not get cheaper. Increased volumes do not result in cheaper prices. It doesn't matter that Apple is the largest consumer of NAND Flash (and likely the touchscreens used in the iPhone and iPod touch), that they get the best pricing, that they just further increased their consumption of iPod and iPhone components by expanding the iPod line.

While any analysis will have its assumptions and early iPhone predictions were over-ambitious guesses, what is the value of such conservative and flawed attempts at analyzing the iPhone numbers? Particularly when Frommer's own conclusion regarding profits contradicts his conclusions about unit sales. Maybe Apple will ultimately be disappointed with its iPhone strategy and results, but it will not be as big a disappointment as Dan Frommer's analysis.

Watch out, though, Google PR. You think by inviting people from "consumer-focused" women's magazines, you're going to avoid hard tech questions and be able to give them the cutesy party line about the greatness of Google? It's not going to work that way. You're just opening yourself up to questions about Eric Schmidt's gal pal Marcy Simon. These magazines don't know much about tech, but they sure do love a good scandal.