Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

Om Malik sends out cease and desist warnings. Don't Giga anything if you know what's good for you. "Steve Jobs is my hero, and the other night, when I was thinking about Steve, I thought, yes, I should sue too... Steve is an incredibly inspiration," said Mr Malik.

Dave Winer admits RSS not his idea... "Er, ... Yahoo came up with it... I thought cool...I'll go with that."

TechMeme secret algorithm revealed by Silicon Valley Watcher- 60 people in Pune, India put it together for $25 per day. "I"ll have the algorithm ready soon, and then I'll save $25 per day," said Gabe Rivera, TechMeme founder.

New York Times builds $800m skyscraper: "We will rule," says Bill Keller, Editor in Chief of The New York Times. "Jeff Jarvis will man the elevator."

Google News will carry AdLinks of quoted news sites: "Do no evil is fine if you are Sergey, but let's do some good," says Eric Schmidt, demonstrating leadership at the GOOGplex.

Nick Carr admits that IT really does matter. "I was just looking for link love and it was so easy!" he said.

John Battelle says Tim O'Reilly stole his idea for Web 2.0. "Tim is so 1.5... I had to clue him in six years ago. Now he is suing everyone, even I can't say two point oh without his lawyers calling... (you didn't hear me say that, okay?)"

Robert Scoble is giving up Twitter. "I'm going to be changing diapers very soon, and I'd like to spare my Twitter neighborhood the messy details....NOT!" Mr Scoble said that even the first meconium diaper will be Twittered--sign up now or watch the Scoble Show.

Richard Edelman says he doesn't write his blog. "I run the world's largest private PR firm, why would I write it when I've got people to do it, such as Rubel." said Mr Edelman. "BTW, Wal-Mart was Rubel's idea."

Tom Foremski admits that New Media Release was a ruse to help him go home early. "I figured the PR industry should be producing something that was useful to me, and they listened!"

Paul Abrahams, head of Waggener Edstrom in Europe, says he will be proved right. "I stand by my point of view, which I'm entitled to do: Blogging is like CB radio, and where is CB radio today...?"

Carlyle Group leads $180bn private equity takeover of IBM. Lou Gerstner, Carlisle Group Director is the mastermind. "It's time to break up Big Blue," he said.

John Doerr goes 1000 percent carbon neutral. "I've bought $1 gazillion of carbon offsets. That makes me, and my family, and my ancestors going back two millennia, completely carbon neutral! Let's see if Vinod can match that!"

Scott McNealy is coming back to Sun. "Everyone is right, Jon Schwartz just doesn't do it for anyone....  I'm calling up Zander too, and Schmidt... it'll be like the Beatles getting back together, and I'm John... except I'm still alive. Zander can be Paul... Schmidt can be George. Who wants to be Ringo? Gage?"

Cisco sells network equipment business to 3Com for $50m: "We're a media company now!" says chief strategist Dan Scheinman. Wall Street downgrades Cisco.

IBM's 300 swallow poison pill to thwart Carlyle takeover: "Let's see if Gerstner can handle this!" said Sam Palmisano. CEO of IBM  as he and 299 Leadership  IBMers drink the kool aid.

Carly Fiorina met with HP board: Sources say they want her back. "Hurd is an absolute disaster!" said a board member.

Larry Ellison strafes SAP: "I couldn't help myself," said a slightly distraught, Larry Ellison, head of Oracle, a competitor to SAP in the enterprise software applications market. "As I flew over the SAP research facility in my Italian fighter jet I was overwhelmed with emotion and accidentally machine gunned the campus." Silicon Valley police said Mr Ellison was released with a caution.

Chris Pirillo admits to cloning: "Yes, it is true, no single person could be everywhere...I couldn't resist this Canadian team of visionaries, and now there are at least 5 Pirillos, one of them might be at a Peet's Coffee near you right now! There is a sixth Pirillo but we've lost touch with him, nothing to worry about... Just don't invite him home with you."

Mike Arrington steals April Fools joke from Nick Denton: "Nobody reads ValleyWag, he should go back to  New York City, or stay here as my muse," said Mr Arrington.

[Warning: social satire ahead--for entertainment purposes only! The only genuine quotes in this are from Tom Foremski, who also wrote this piece under his alter-ego A. Tom.]

By A. Tom for AP (Apparent Parody newswire) and SiliconValleyWatcher

Amidst the mourning for the loss of their top visionary, A-list bloggers began to maneuver for Dave Winer's abandoned audience.

"It would be a shame to have those eyeballs go to waste," said Doc Searls, Mr Winer's loyal right hand man for years. "Dave would have wanted me to take care of his beloved readers."

But others, such as Om Malik, who writes the popular GigaOm news blog said that he was Mr Winer's natural successor. "It's time for the old guard to shuffle off and join Dave Winer in the offline afterlife. I've sucked up to those bastards for years, I've got the worn-out kneepads to prove it. I've been waiting for this to happen and I've got a dozen stealth blogs ready to roll at a drop of my hat. I'll help them get on the Cluetrain and get out of here."

Mr Malik won't be the only one trying to scoop up the millions of eyeballs looking for a new home following Mr Winer's sudden departure from the blogosphere.

[Warning: social satire ahead--for entertainment purposes only! The only genuine quotes in this are from Tom Foremski, who also wrote this piece under his alter-ego A. Tom.]

By A. Tom for AP (Apparent Parody newswire) and SiliconValleyWatcher

In the wake of the loss of Dave Winer from the blogosphere, experts fear copycat behavior... "they often act as lemmings" says a leading sociologist.

Robert Scoble, the MSFT A-list blogger could be next to jump and friends are worried because he has exhibited symptoms similar to that of Mr Winer, such as criticizing tech.memeorandum, just before he disappeared from the blogosphere.

[Warning: social satire ahead--for entertainment purposes only! The only genuine quotes in this are from Tom Foremski, who also wrote this piece under his alter-ego A. Tom.]

By A. Tom for and AP (Apparent Parody newswire) and SiliconValleyWatcher

This Monday, March 13, started off as a normal morning in the blogosphere--there were a lot of top bloggers convening at the South By South West conference in Austin, Texas and the mood was a happy one.

Yet within minutes word had started to spread that Dave Winer, the inventor of Internet 2.0 and its greatest product: the blogosphere--had announced he would leave the blogging community and blog no more. Bloggers were seen wandering around aimlesslly in a daze, while others were overloading an already fragile WiFi network and frantically IM'ing colleagues to find out more.

At the scene of his disappearance from the blogosphere, investigators found this note typed into the last remaining disk sectors on Mr Winer's server on his Scripting News blog:

"I've done it all, I invented everything of value, my work here is done. And now I want to go home and get a life. My fame has brought with it tremendous opportunities to occasionally share a hot tub with someone other than Robert Scoble or Doc Searls," he wrote.

[Please see the real words of Dave Winer here: Why I will stop blogging.]

The news of Mr Winer's disappearance from the digital ether brought a mixed reaction from other bloggers.

"I think it is a blatant attempt to boost his PageRank," said one blogger, who declined to be named. "It was no secret that his Alexa ranking was slipping, he lost an egoSurf contest with a relatively newbie blogger, so he wanted to go out at the top of his form--I can't blame him for that. He represents that old Geek guard and the blogosphere is going mainstream at a supernova rate and leaving them all behind. Nobody cares anymore about their esoteric religious debates over nuances in blogging."

Others were angry that Mr Winer, who had hyped and promoted blogging and the blogosphere for so many years, and had helped to convince tens of millions of people into becoming bloggers--no longer wanted to be a memebr of the community.

"I feel betrayed," said Mary Highground. "I got into blogging because I truly believed in what Dave was saying, and he was the first man I thought I could trust, that he would always be there. Now he just cashes out and walks away and I am stuck with feeding my blog several times a day--I have no life left at all. He's probably sipping pina coladas and partying with super models somewhere tropical."

In October 2005, Mr Winer sold his company, Weblogs.com, an innovative RSS ping service to VeriSign for several millions of dollars. [Please see SVW: Selling the BlogoSphere Part 2: Why are the Geek new media/blogging pioneers selling out to the big corporates?]

And in recent weeks, people close to Mr Winer said he began showing disturbing signs of restlessness and lack of interest in geek matters.