• geek love

    Bill Gates in Sweden for dirty old man Simonyi's wedding

    Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi sure likes to live large. He's a space tourist! He dates Martha Stewart! No wait, 60-year-old Simonyi is now marrying 28-year-old Swedish socialite Lisa Persdotter! Let me guess: You don't want a photo of him. You want a photo of her. Here you go... More »

    2:06 PM on Mon Nov 24 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    9,557 views, 18 comments

    Most discussed giddieup: 5 letters comes to mind..... skank more »

  • jackpot

    Is the great Facebook stock sale over?

    Through the golden heart of every world-changing startup pulses an avaricious get-rich-quick scheme. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the billionaire-boy cofounders of Google, established this doing-well-by-doing-good myth. But Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been able to make the same magic happen for his employees. In his efforts to make good by them, he may end up quashing a nascent market in Facebook shares. More »

    1:40 PM on Fri Nov 21 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    8,778 views, 10 comments

    Most discussed growhappy: Facebook should be in the business of licensing their social network code to people and businesses who want to make more »

  • ooma

    How Ashton Kutcher killed a startup guy's Hollywood dream

    It was a fantasy left over from the last boom: Hire a movie star to pitch your startup, and the dusting of tinsel will turbocharge sales. Those William Shatner ads sold plane tickets for Priceline, right? But the career of hard-partying entrepreneur Andrew Frame did not follow that script. We hear he was just fired as CEO of the Internet-phone startup he cofounded, Ooma. His most notable decision, hiring actor Ashton Kutcher as "creative director," did not pan out; Kutcher made a few incomprehensible videos, and then faded from the scene. More »

    11:20 AM on Fri Nov 21 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    15,998 views, 13 comments

    Most discussed ElvisWorley: $250? When I can buy a Magic Jack for a fraction of the price and get the same free service. more »

  • rumormonger

    Google heir born? Sergey Brin spotted at maternity ward

    What to expect when you're expecting a billionaire? A tipster reports seeing Google cofounder Sergey Brin running into a hospital, orange Crocs and all. Here's what that means: His wife, Anne Wojcicki, is nine months pregnant with the couple's first child — who will be born into a fortune still worth $10 billion or more, even with Google shares plummeting. The spot where Brin was sighted, El Camino Hospital, has one of the Bay Area's best childbirth practices, and is close to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. When we last saw Wojcicki, she was on Oprah talking about 23andMe, her genetics-testing startup, with the TV host herself begging Wojcicki to give birth already. It's possible that Brin was just there to tour the hospital, a common practice before birth, but his haste suggested otherwise, our tipster claims: More »

    3:20 PM on Thu Nov 20 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    5,385 views, 7 comments

    Most discussed dingdongditch: El Camino Hospital, not Stanford Hospital? more »

  • virtual worlds

    Second Life's death knell

    Google has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a competitor on the scene: They say it "validates their space." What does it say, then, that Lively is gone? It means that Second Life, the best known of these unreal universes, is doomed, too. More »

    10:40 AM on Thu Nov 20 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    8,562 views, 44 comments

    Most discussed That-Username-is-Already-Taken: If Google shut down Knol, Would Wikipedia need to worry? What about their social network (whose name I can't even remember) more »

  • discrimination

    Gays now entitled to inept online dating

    eHarmony does not hate gay people. It is merely ignorant of them. That is the dating site's excuse for excluding same-sex customers — a practice that led a gay New Jersey man, Eric McKinley, to file a complaint with New Jersey's attorney general which eHarmony has just settled, paying a $50,000 fine to the state and $5,000 to McKinley. eHarmony was founded in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren, an evangelical Christian and a psychologist; he is still the company's chairman. More »

    12:40 AM on Thu Nov 20 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    5,031 views, 54 comments

    Most discussed Drunken Economist: Throw me in a vat of stew, but this is also why Prop 8 passed and the ban on gay more »

  • kevin werbach

    Obama's net neutrality man plays Warcraft

    Supernova conference organizer Kevin Werbach is part of President Change's FCC transition team. I've hung out with the guy, and I never would've guessed he belongs to not one, but two guilds in World of Warcraft. Here's his take on WoW's benefits to grownups: More »

    11:20 AM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    23,051 views, 47 comments

    Most discussed XCha0s: politics and videogames go together like peanut butter and mayonaise more »

  • exits

    Is Yahoo done with search?

    Among the many windmills Jerry Yang tilted at in his brief career as Yahoo's CEO was his devotion to Web search. It veered on an obsession for him. It played into his decision to resist Microsoft's offers to shower him with cash, first for his whole company, then for just its search business. Is it a coincidence, then, that Yahoo's top search engineer has left a day after Yang stepped down? A tipster tells us Sean Suchter resigned yesterday, and speculates that he may be joining Microsoft. More »

    10:20 AM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    11,009 views, 14 comments

    Most discussed CurtisHippomedon: Am I to believe Yahoo doesn't have an iron clad NDA with its employees preventing them for working for the more »

  • internet famous

    81-year-old monk has 1,166 Facebook friends -- and a get-rich-quick scheme

    The Internet is relentlessly eliminating the entertainment value of fame in favor of commerce. In the old days, you'd get a publicist in L.A. or New York in the hopes of garnering the attention of some producer or director and becoming a star. The end result: You get rich by titillating the masses. Now, you hire a "social media marketer" in Malaysia to drum up mentions in blogs to increase your Google rank and thereby win more random Web searches. The end result: Increased online-advertising revenues. At least that's what we think is what Burt Goldman, an author and self-described "American monk," is after. More »

    5:00 AM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    2,514 views, 2 comments

    Latest by michaellamb: how do I hire one of those Malaysians? more »