A tipster tells us Muxtape investor Jakob Lodwick has been heard to complain that the site's hosting bill alone amounts to $30,000 per day. That figure seems absurdly high — but could our tipster have misheard Lodwick saying the bill is $30,000 a month? After Muxtape's first day, Ouellette posted the site's stats, reporting 8,685 users uploading and playing 19,731 songs over 35,000 visits cost Muxtape $118.17 with Amazon's S3 online-storage service. Extrapolate that first day over a month, at Amazon's standard rates, and you've got a $3,545 hosting bill. Compete.com confirms that Muxtape's user base has grown at least tenfold since then, making a $30,000/mo. hosting bill not just plausible, but likely.

The bill is also far more than Lodwick or Ouellette seem to have expected. In an accidentally published investment term sheet, Ouellette estimated three months of hosting would cost $18,000. That's about $72,000 off the mark, enough to eat through Lodwick's $95,000 investment and shut down the site, angry letters from the RIAA or no.

IAC is moving ahead with plans to spin off four of its divisions by the end of August: HSN (which includes Cornerstone), Ticketmaster, Tree.com (which includes LendingTree), and Interval Leisure Group, which operates vacation sites including ResortQuest Hawaii. That leaves IAC with Ask.com, Match.com and Citysearch. What's happening? Simple: Diller and company have learned that bundling a bunch of diverse online businesses together doesn't create the promised "synergy" of the Web 1.0 boom. Better to let each site fend for itself. Since IAC got rid of Expedia in 2005 (Barry Diller's still chairman of the board), the travel site's ups and downs have closely followed the travel market. That's the watercooler version. You can wonk out with the full details.

Fraps are easy to shoot — just click record while playing a game on your PC. A 10-minute session at HD quality makes for a Godzilla-sized video file to upload to Vimeo.

But filespace isn't the only issue. Management is refreshingly blunt: Vimeo was meant to be a site to share personal real-world movie camera work with friends and family. Dammit, you kids with your Grand Theft Auto 4 clips are ruining everything. Starting in September, Vimeo will delete previously uploaded fraps and ban new ones. Its users, meanwhile, will just decamp to WeGame.com.

Allison's quest for a geek boyfriend paid off in two regards. Nonsociety's design is strongly reminiscent of Iminlikewithyou, the casual-games site run by her current beau, Charles Forman, and the teaser video is hosted at Vimeo, the online-video site founded by Jakob Lodwick, Allison's ex. Too bad she didn't hook up with a boy more experienced at handling back ends.

He's posted the above image — details of an apparent deal with the devil — to his blog, titling it "For personal reference only, please don’t read!" He's gently mocking his former charge, Ouellette, who accidentally emailed terms of his own deal with the devilishly pranky Lodwick to his blog instead of his own inbox. We're hoping Pile's gag keeps running, and encourage you to accidentally leak all your deals to us.

Pile is in the comfortable position of being able to mock Lodwick, Vimeo's Iconoclastic founder, because according to one source, he's largely responsible for saving the site, growing its traffic 600 percent in the last 8 months. What's Pile done so well? Our source says Pile has kept his team focused on improving Vimeo's usability with tweaks here and there, increasing traffic in 5 and 10 percent bumps that have really added up. But also, our source says, Pile's done a very good job of not being Jakob Lodwick, whose "focuses were kind of on the wrong things."

The suits, it turns out. Without Lodwick at the helm, Vimeo's gone from a flatlining also-ran to a fast-growing alternative to YouTube. NewTeeVee reports that Vimeo traffic more than doubled from February to May. Guess Lodwick just wasn't cut out to be a Killer Diller, after all.

I posted something I didn't mean to yesterday. Pretty embarrassing. I meant to email it to myself, but my reflexes directed me to Tumblr (which is where I’m emailing photos from my phone 99% of the time). Oh, internet. Always double check.

Oops! Doesn't this make you feel better about the time you sent that instant message to your coworker after he'd been chewed out by your boss, saying, "Sorry about that. She gets cranky sometimes," only to realize you'd accidentally sent it to your boss? It does for me!

Foolish disregard for his severance agreement aside, one has to ask this about Lodwick: What kind of entrepreneur or investor puts his deal terms online, in napkin or any other form? That's an easy one: the same kind of entrepreneur or investor who would relentlessly blog his sad relationship with noted New York nobody Julia Allison, quit the Internet over its injustices, rejoin the Internet in an effort to spread Ayn Rand's message, and then, in a huff for the ages, quit the Internet once more.

Update: Ouellette has taken the memo down, saying he posted it to the Web by accident.

I closed my blog on June 26, 2008. I could no longer handle the relentless, vicious, public attacks from a digital lynch mob towards the personality traits I have no intention of changing, such as my curiosity and my self-confidence.

The humility here is staggering in its profoundity.

I may be a millionaire but I this sort of thing still hurts... You may conceptualize the Unites States as a great nation. But it’s also a big tribe, with its own irrational taboos. One of them is: don’t talk proudly about your achievements.

We feel for young Lodwick, we really do: it's just so hard at the top taking risks when at any moment you have the choice to live comfortably, unlike 99.9 percent of society.(Photo by Nick Gray)

This afternoon, someone gained access to our server and caused some problems. We are investigating and will have more information soon.

When asked about his involvement with Muxtape, Lodwick first denied it before backtracking. Then, after sources told us Lodwick might have broken his severance agreement in hiring Ouellette away from Connected Ventures to start Muxtape, Ouellette emailed us to say: "I created Muxtape by myself, thank you very much." We emailed back: "Who pays the bills at Muxtape?" No reply, but we've heard the answer is Lodwick.

Here's how this posting should really read:

I am seeking someone with currently high in demand skills to help me build something I hope to make a profit from for free. I am able to invest in websites including muxtape and tumblr, but not the people needed to build them.

Specifically, marketing and distribution can now be achieved at less than one percent of the old cost - especially when you get free labor.

I want to support musicians retaining control of their work while you web minions give me yours for lunch and a subway ride. Try not to think of how I pay my rent while you struggle to pay yours.

BEASTIALITY from HolyHoly on Vimeo.

Former Vimeo Web designer Justin Ouellette quit Connected Ventures on April 4 to work full-time on Muxtape. Ouellette says he's Muxtape's CEO and founder. In his blog post announcing the project, Lodwick claimed he was "hired" by Ouellette.

But we hear that Muxtape is just as much Jakob Lodwick's company as it Ouellette's. Lodwick may well be footing the bills. After Muxtape's first day, Ouellete wrote that server costs had already reached $118.17. Ouellette can't afford that kind of charge for very long, from what we hear about his finances. Lodwick, who with three other cofounders sold Connected Ventures to IAC, can.

And likely does. We're not surprised. Since shortly he left Connected Ventures, Lodwick has publicly sought to own and operate a music service on the Web. Lodwick is also an active investor in Web services he appreciates — such as David Karp's Tumblr. Lodwick has also served as Muxtape's chief marketer since its launch. (Our coverage of the company began when Lodwick posted about Muxtape nine days before Ouellette quit Connected Ventures.)

Asked if it's good for Connected Ventures and IAC to have departed execs poaching current employees for new startups, Connected Ventures president Josh Abramson told us, "No, it definitely isn't. But to the best of my knowledge that isn't what happened."

If Abramson's knowledge suddenly expands in the coming days, Lodwick wouldn't be the first engineer to get in hot water for poaching talent from an old company while starting a new one. Netscape founder Jim Clark hired away top Silicon Graphics engineers when he started Healtheon. But perhaps Jakob Lodwick isn't Jim Clark and Muxtape merely rhymes with Netscape.

I have a long history with mix tapes...ask my wife. It was the beginning of our relationship...I loved to make mix tapes that were fast-paced on Side 1 and slower-paced on Side 2 (especially for the ladies). I was what one could call a Mix Master. But the iPod has come into existence and tapes faded into the twilight. A gaping a void was left until now...

Muxtape is a website that resurrects the mix tape online. Upload MP3's into a mix tape and share it with friends. So here's mine...enjoy and maybe make your own too.

Update: Allison says these emails were "taken out of context."

(Photo by Somewhat Frank)

Lodwick argues that Gates is "doing us a disservice by undermining the moral base of capitalism: by justifying it as a means of helping others. Microsoft thrived by caring about itself first." Which is what we should all do, Lodwick explains. Why? Because "putting altruism second is what allows someone to make enough money that he has the option to help others." And that's nothing like "undermining the moral base of capitalism: by justifying it as a means of helping others," of course. For another glimpse into Lodwick's political inspirations, check the clip above from "Nintendo Wii Rejected Game Concepts" a CollegeHumor.com video.

The short version: record label 2.0. Some "newfangled" profit-sharing scheme. Lodwick's charm has managed to hook an entire artist on the premise. Too bad three fatal words have killed Normative before it even got off the ground. "We will promote our albums in new ways that are hundreds of times more efficient; ways that record labels don't understand, but are obvious to a seasoned Web entrepreneur." Spicy.

I try not to blog about Julia. I can't help it. I want nothing to do with her, but she:

• calls or emails me
• ignores that I told her she is a "psychopathic narcissist" who is "evil"
• recently hired my brother to do video work for her
• writes about me on her site
• misrepresents her closeness to my friends
• visits my old office and my old coworkers
• emailed one of my ex-girlfriends
• started attacking Tumblr

I have insulted and degraded her to no avail. She has no value. But every day Julia-related shit pops into my life.

After the Observer ran its article on Karp and Tumblr, Allison wrote:

I would like to take credit for what is SURE to be a domino-effect of the dregs of Manhattan media all jumping on Tumblr's boat together, like little esoteric rats. Sigh. First Doree, now Alex. Who's next, Jeff Bercovici? Rachel Sklar? Emily Gould's new dog?!?!?! MY MOM???"

We know you people prefer schadenfreude to jealousy. So while gazing at this photo of three out of four Connected Ventures founders (Ricky Van Veen, Josh Abramson and Jakob Lodwick plus entourage are present; Zach Klein spent the month in India), recall that despite his success Van Veen rents owns a tiny Manhattan apartment and that this trip cost the recently fired Lodwick his relationship with Julia Allison. He went with another woman. Follow the thumbnail to see the full image on Flickr. (Photo by mareen)

He was fired for "insubordination" — meaning, he didn't agree with the strategy IAC had for Vimeo, and he just ignored them when they told him to do things. He thinks of himself as Howard Roark and IAC's middle management as one huge Peter Keating, so getting fired fit into that storyline quite nicely. I think he saw it as almost heroic.

Also, Jakob has strong body odor, unmasked by Tom's of Maine's natural deodorant — which may have contributed to the firing, not to mention his breakup. I don't remember Ayn Rand making her Fountainhead protagonist's hygiene habits explicit, but I'm pretty sure the architect bathed regularly. Maybe Lodwick would be better served emulating his fictional idol's hygienic standards, rather than "heroically" pissing off the bosses he knowingly sold his company to. (Photo by Noah Kalina)

I'm not involved with Norbum, I don't know what it is, and I would never make fun of homeless people.

CenterNetworks observed that norbum.org, a domain recently purchased by Lodwick, briefly went live with the message:

Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name "Norbum"? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless. We bring to you the latest in urban street fashion from the people who live it. Rather than relying on an elitist group of professional editors, we invite our readers to submit photos of the most stylish street people from around the world. If you spot one of these edgy trendsetters, just snap a photo and email it to 2tvazf87@tumblr.com. We'll post the best ones to Norbum.org.

Students in Wilkinson's class get their grades based on pageviews, number of friends in social networks and Google search result ranks, a formula which is supposed to represent how famous they are on the Internet.

"Actually, we don't call it being online famous; we call it 'famo,'" Wilkinson told Time. Would you be surprised to learn that the most successful students so far are those who resorted to posting videos of near-naked ladies?

The overwrought emotional style parodies Jakob and Julia's. Early on, Jen wrote:

John apparently doesn't always understand that his "internet experiments" aren't priority number one for the rest of the universe. John doesn't always understand that someone else has finals for the next two weeks, and might have some important life responsibilities aside from responding to nonsensical emails and participating in the public airing of our personal "dirty laundry", if you will.

John replied:

Well, I have to admit, that is not what I was expecting for a first post from Jen. It was very angry and, also, alluded to some things that were very unnecessary. Why do you have to bring things like that up in your first post?

John and Jen make constant references to Jakob and Julia (such as the above comparison of Jen's stubbly "pit" to Julia's lasered "underarm"), which are hilarious to the dozen of us who actually followed that relationship.