Hot on the heels of Valley hotspot #1 is the second in our series of meatspace site reviews. Larry from The Dating Report explains how to pick up an intern in downtown Palo Alto's roomy bar and grill.

Ahh, summer in the bay area. Silicon Valley hosts a migration of college students returning back for break or a fresh flock enters for internships. Where is their favorite weekend spot? Palo Alto's Blue Chalk Café.

We're NOT talking about the mid-week crowd that schmoozefests like STIRR/Under the Radar/SVASE/WVAC wrangle up. We ARE talking about WEEKEND people like 'Melissa' from University of Michigan class of 2004. True story, when I was there two Fridays ago collecting "mall flavored" feedback she came up and mistook me for "Brian," a 2004 MIT grad. Either Blue Chalk is very dark or I have an Irish twin running around (if Irish twins can be staggered by 7 years and Asian).

[ continued ]

Valleywag feature: Chris Anderson's Lost Song Found

"Hits are going to have to share the stage with nonhits," says Chris Anderson in US News, summing up his new book, The Long Tail. Chris's personal long tail stretches back into New Wave. The Wired Magazine editor-in-chief played bass for Egoslavia, a D.C.-based post-punk band that released one self-titled record in '82. Wired contributor Paul Boutin pulled out a copy of "Lost Song," the appropriately named first track. In the interest of rescuing it from obscurity, we're releasing the mp3. It's a real treat.

"Lost Song" by Egoslavia

After the jump, Boutin recalls buying the record, zinesters describe the band, and the man who hired Anderson for Wired makes an Osmonds reference.

[ continued ]

The New York Times documents the backlash against AOL's new interactive edition of Netscape.com in a story of dubious worth. Sure, a little ribbing's fine, but is it really news that the relaunch led by Weblogs, Inc. king Jason Calacanis caused a petition signed by under 2000 members? Not really.

The Times doesn't even bother linking the story to the bigger issues. For one, what does public reception of Netscape.com show about AOL's chances as a new bottom-up media company?

And after falling for two years, will Netscape traffic stop bleeding? Does Calacanis have an escape plan to a better department in AOL? (After all, he's said he wants to run the company one day.)

Interactive Netscape Site Gets Some Sour Responses [NYT]

Not that you care about one startup buying another, especially when it's already on that ubiquitous Web 2.0 blog TechCrunch, but RSS marketing network Feedburner bought blog analytic company Blogbeat. Blogbeat's homepage has a rundown of the deal. (We previously thought Feedburner bought Nooked, as posted here.)

Blogbeat explains that Feedburner bought them for their technology. In other words, look for a couple of layoffs, or people who just plain weren't picked up in Feedburner's purchase, especially outside the engineering department.

Blogbeat says the terms of its deal are "not even whispered in hushed tones among those in the know." Instead, they're sent to tips@valleywag.com.

Feedburner acquires Blogbeat [Blogbeat front page]

I was told that Valleywag would be on Gawker Media's new blog system by today. It is. That should mean that all those comment accounts that kept breaking, work now.

If you find yourself unable to comment, or you see images broken on new entries, or any other problem not related to my own writing, please send a friendly and informative e-mail to tips@valleywag.com. Include the names of your browser and OS, and use the word "please" where you would normally use the word "fuck."

Photo sharing site Flickr Zooomr was supposed to host a party last Friday, at which it would launch its new awesome version. Well, it didn't.

I was confused when, at an unrelated Valleyschwag party in San Fran's SOMA district, I asked some people where the Zooomr party was and they said, "This is the Zooomr party!" It took me a few hours to hear that Zooomr got a denial-of-service attack (known as a DDOS) on the day of the party. The site couldn't exactly launch Version 2 while Version 1 was forced offline.

Granted, this site is under a year old, and it's run by a famously young developer (Kris Tate). Critics say it's just Flickr with a black coat of paint, but it's slowly winning converts. Think evangelical Christianity for shutterbugs.

The history of the site is terribly interesting and storied. For example, the site's new evangelist, photographer Thomas Hawk, just got into an argument a Flickr founder that escalated into a micro-blog-war. In any case, this'll be a fun site to watch, whether it booms or folds before the year is out.

Zooomr [Official site, as long as it's still up today]

The classic web-dev resource Webmonkey taught me how to build my first homepage. Now, after ten years, Lycos will shutter the site and all its content. Webmonkey's editor sent the following message to the site's contributors, warning them to stop all work on Webmonkey and rescue their published pieces before Lycos deletes them. This message was leaked to Valleywag.

-----Original Message-----
From: [redacted]
To: [redacted]
Subject: The Death (again) of Webmonkey
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:00:22 -0700

i could just say "SSAI" but allow me to elaborate. as you may have
heard, Conde Nast (owners of Wired Magazine) have purchased Wired News
and the wired.com domain. here's the news bit:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71366-0.html

now, i'm an employee of wired news, which means that i work on conde
nast properties (wired news) as of this week. webmonkey, being a lycos
property, is off of my desk now. i've asked around about the details,
and i just got word that lycos is mothballing webmonkey. no new
content, no new employees. they say it's "just for now", but
considering that they were never willing to spend a dime to provide me
with any resources for anything relating to site maintenance or
improvement, i can't imagine they'd start doing so now.

[ continued ]

Hm. That sounds like a porno title.

Righto, waggers, see you all at tonight's Valleyschwag Hoedown tonight, where the inexplicably-cowboy-themed schwag-of-the-month club will reveal their new space-themed venture.

Should you be at this party? Yes. It's hosted by these fun people:

You still have time to drive up from the Valley and party at 365 Brannan, San Francisco. You don't want to get stuck partying remotely.

Valleyschwag Hoedown [Valleyschwag.com]
Video: The Schwag Lab [Jumpcut]

Once, ZDNet was a respectable outlet for level-headed journalists. Then it gave everyone a blog and every day was Someone-unlocked-the-madhouse Day. Today, for example:

• Donna Bogatin thinks Google CEO Eric Schmidt is personally telling his minions, "Write about her, but for god's sake, don't you dare link to her column!" [Digital Micro-Markets blog]
• David Berlind discovered the center of the space-time continuum. It's the API for an events database. [Between the Lines blog]
• Steve Gillmor's latest article was just too profound to read, so I ran it through Word's Autosummarize tool and got this:

  This media showdown is getting really interesting. Meanwhile I keep hitting the spacebar with Marshall whenever Mike leaves town. Face it Nick, you're too smart for your own shtick. * Dave Winer * John Battelle -- Pointed prominently at previously described pieces. Om and Mike are carving up the page view widget real estate on their blogs, competing against their deal with Battelle's FMPub.

  This summary actually makes more sense than Steve's column. [Steve Gillmor's Inforouter blog]

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A few readers say Nooked isn't the lucky little company to get snapped up by RSS marketing powerhouse Feedburner, despite an earlier report. It's actually buying a US startup that was once close to a deal with Yahoo.

In fact, the press release for the real story is already in journos' hands, but everyone's obeying the embargo. (Come on, TechCrunch, we all know you're sitting on this.)

If you want to leak the announcement, drop a line at tips@valleywag.com, or ping "heyvalleywag" on AIM.

Earlier: Scoop: Feedburner buys Nooked (No it doesn't.)

It is unfair to pit a former host and current host of a show against one another in some kind of popularity contest, especially when the current host has nothing to do with the fight that ended with the former host's exit.

Armed with that knowledge, check out, say, this archived Rocketboom episode with Amanda Congdon, and compare to today's episode with new host Joanne Colan. Now,

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Yes, yes, they're both so wonderful. Pick one.

Earlier: Rocketboom wants Amanda Congdon back