Congratulations to Matt Marshall, who’s left his job as a full time journalist and writer of the popular SiliconBeat blog at the Mercury News to launch VentureBeat. The site, which was created by RubyRedLabs in San Francisco, is well designed and I can tell this will be a daily read in addition to Alarm Clock and other sites covering the venture backed startup world.

We’ll be linking to VentureBeat often at TechCrunch. Welcome to the world of independent journalism, Matt!

We just got an email from Apple regarding a YouTube video reposted on CrunchGear:

VIA E-MAIL

NOT FOR POSTING

Re: Apple Computer Copyrighted Material Illegally Disseminated by Crunchgear.com

To Whom It May Concern:
We represent Apple Computer, Inc. (“Apple”). It has come to our attention that your website, at http://crunchgear.com/2006/08/28/how-expose-works-with-spaces-in-mac-os-x-leopard/, is posting a video demonstrating certain features of Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 (aka “Leopard”). While we appreciate your interest in Leopard, it has not yet been released to the public. The software demonstrated in the video must therefore be running on a pre-release developer’s build of OS X 10.5. All such builds have been distributed to developers under strict terms of confidentiality that prohibit the dissemination of screenshots or other displays of the software. The builds are also copyrighted by Apple, and U.S. copyright law explicitly prohibits unauthorized displays of copyrighted works.

Apple therefore requests that you remove this video from your website and take steps to prevent any further distribution of videos or screenshots of Apple software without Apple’s authorization. If you are represented by counsel, please provide me with the identity of that counsel.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation,

/s/ Ian Ramage

Ian Ramage
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Embarcadero Center West
275 Battery Street, Suite 2600
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 984-xxxx (direct)
(415) 984-xxxx (fax)
xxxx@omm.com

DMCA Certification: I hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that your activities are not authorized by Apple, that the information in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on behalf of Apple in this regard.

This message and any attached documents contain information from the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP that may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not read, copy, distribute, or use this information. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and then delete this message.

Ian, it a YouTube video. That’s at www.youtube.com. Get them to take it down if it’s a violation of your IP and it will stop showing at crunchgear and the other sites.

And Ian, when you are done, please take the time to send your client, Apple, a similar email for posting basically the same material on their own site.

Noah Kagen of Entrepreneur 27 is holding a small event at my house this Thursday, August 31. I’m associated with this only in that it is at my house, but it’s going to be a fun event. Noah is bringing in some really good wine and food and will also have a wine tasting challenge.

It’s invite only, but Noah is auctioning off the last ticket on ebay. Just a couple of hours left – the auction ends at 5:30 PM PST tonight.

i’ve had this amazing feeling of calmness all weekend. I’m pretty sure the reason is that I hung out with some really smart people at Foo Camp, slept under the stars in a tent (something I haven’t done in years), and was offline and away from all the TechCrunch stress while I was there.

Getting away from my computer was good for me. I did things I don’t normally do. Like figure out how to put that damn tent together. Or when I built a USB battery powered booster under the watchful eyes of Limor Fried (pictured here). If you want to make one of these yourself, the instructions and kit are available here.

I listened to developers, designers, and entrepreneurs discuss politics, play jam sessions and hack apart Chumby’s. I spent 5 minutes talking with Jeff Bezos, and our entire conversation consisted of how much he likes TechCrunch (15 seconds) and how cool it is that you can buy fresh milk on amazon (4:45). I met dozens of people I know online but never see in person.

It was fun, interesting and peaceful. I loved it. Part of what makes Foo special is that it’s held at O’Reilly’s compound in Sebastopol, well away from the hustle of silicon valley.

Foo Camp is something incredibly special, and I want to thank Tim O’Reilly for inviting me to come. My Foo Camp pictures are here.

While reading Red Herring’s take on the job board proposals being thrown about (see my previous post and comments), I couldn’t help thinking that Om, Jason and I are negotiating through press quotes. Jason has clearly stated his intention to keep his toys to himself and play in his own space, Om’s keeping his options open and I’m just hyping this like hell to anyone who’ll listen. The fact that our job boards aren’t any of our core businesses means we can have a bit of fun with this too. For those of you who are interested, I think this is a fascinating example of “negotiating via the press”.

Update: Mini Om weighs in.

Om Malik launched a job board today. I first found out about this when I called Om a few weeks ago to tell him we were launching the CrunchBoard job board. Om congratulated me, and said he’d cover it, but I could just tell by the way he spoke to me that he had something cooking, too. A few phone calls later and it was confirmed.

One thing we want to do with CrunchBoard is create a decentralized job board for tech. Right now it’s completely centralized, other than the fact that RSS feeds are available if people want to read them in a feed reader or re-post them on a website (like we do on CrunchGear and TechCrunch UK).

I didn’t want it to be centralized, though. The first thing we did when we decided to start building CrunchBoard was ping Jason Fried at 37 Signals to talk to him about partnering with their job board. I imagined an API for entering jobs, and an API for outputting jobs, that could be displayed anywhere. Jason didn’t want to partner beyond having me post his listing on TechCrunch, so we built our own.

When I realized Om was building yet another job board I told him flat out I wanted to partner with him, offering to make CrunchBoard a new company and splitting equity with him 50/50. Hell, we could even rename it to something more neutral. Given that TechCrunch has more traffic than GigaOm right now, and that we had already built and launched the board, I thought that was a fair offer.

Om passed on my proposal, and I’m sure he has his reasons. But in my mind, this is all a very web 1.0 way of thinking. I don’t want to have my own garden, a sort of mini monster.com. I want to be a part of an ecosystem. There’s no way we can compete with the big job boards fighting individual battles. We need to partner, create a distributed system, and win virally.

To start, I think we should create a single widget that shows all of the jobs listed by 37 Signals, Om and CrunchBoard. That’s the right thing to do for the companies. We also need to allow other websites to join the network and get a fair revenue split (read: large majority) for bringing listings or potential employees to the service.

Job boards are trivially easy to build. The hard part is the network effect. Just as blogs are ripping apart big media, a decentralized approach to job listings and other businesses can win, too.

I’m in. Who’s with me?

A little known secret is that the center of most power in Silicon Valley sits with the Silicon Valley Moms Club. These are CEOs, CFOs, wives of the same, etc. They have a lot of power and influence And they don’t like to be told no, ever.

I heard that a member was upset she couldn’t get into the TechCrunch party last week and wrote about it on the SVM blog. Silicon Valley Moms can’t be bothered with silly things like a wiki to simply sign up (the party was open to all), they go right the source of power – David Hornik. Or rather, David Hornik’s wife.

Why should 700 OTHER people get to play while I am stuck at home watching my kids? I know that invites to Techcrunch were nearly impossible to get – but for god sake, I am best friends with his wife! My kids are best friends with HIS kids! So I may not be a 20 something hip cool blogger, but I am a mommy blogger! Doesn’t that count for something?

All I can say is, I apologize. At the end of the day, who cares if Mini Om has a vendetta against me. It’s the mom’s I’m really scared of.

For locals who are in need of beer, a bunch of us are meeting at BBC tonight in Menlo park. Time: 5 pm.

Update: Since Steve Gillmor only attends events that he is specifically invited to, I just issued him a personal invitation by phone and he says he’ll be there.

Adam Kalsey is a guy that I know and always sort of liked, even though we don’t know each other very well. There are a lot of people in that category for me – I’ve met them and have generally positive thoughts about them, but never get to know them on any deeper level.

Adam slammed me a while back for what he thought was a reversal of opinion on a company called Zoho. He thought I didn’t like them, and then suddenly reversed my opinion once they became a sponsor. He wrote about it here.

It so happens he was wrong. I’ve always written positively about Zoho and I always admired what the company was doing. Adam didn’t accuse me of changing my writing about Zoho, though. He accused me of slamming them at an event as copycats, then taking a sponsorship, and then saying good things about them (ignoring the fact that my writing was consistent about them all along). He said flat out that my approval can be bought.

What Adam never knew, and didn’t ask me before slamming me, was that when I said the company was accused of copying others I was about to say “but the new products look very original”. I was never able to say those words at the event because the founder cut me off and an argument ensued. The argument was later cleared up, but all Adam heard was me criticizing the company. A quick check of my posts would have shown my real opinion, but Adam either never did that or chose to ignore it.

Anyway, that event was long ago in blog-time, and forgotten.

But Adam released a new product tonight, called Feed Crier, a RSS to IM product that I will almost certainly use for certain key feeds. The question was, do we support a startup from a guy that jumped to an incorrect conclusion, slammed me and then never apologized publicly or privately?

The answer is yes. We do. We also use pheedo’s RSS product at TechCrunch Japan, and Adam founded pheedo.

Do I hope that Adam someday shakes my hand and apologizes for incorrectly saying I did something dishonest? Yes. But that won’t affect how we cover his startups on TechCrunch.

And by the way, Zoho is no longer a sponsor, and I still think their products kick ass.

Shel Israel to Dick Carr: “just sit down and shut up”

Nick goes on a rant about how unfair the blogging world is. It’s an easy way to get links (hey, he’s getting mine for the first time), but his post is complete nonsense and shows that he has no idea what blogging is all about. His central thesis is that the big blogs have just replaced old media in trying to create an entrenched, defendable position. The big blogs, he says, are supported by the peasants (small blogs), occasionally throwing them a bone (link) as an incentive to keep linking to them.

None of this is accurate. The “biggest” blogs have changed dramatically over the last year since I started writing. Guys that commanded large audiences have fallen, new people have risen. Sure, there are massive politics and games involved, and a lot of mud gets thrown about. But at the end of the day those people with interesting things to say tend to get listened to. Those that don’t…dont.

Many tools have been created to even the playing field. Digg is the most important one. With Digg, a group of 20 people, bloggers or not, are far more powerful than any single blogger. Those 20 people can (and do) get the content of their choice in front of tens of thousands of people. Blog search engines, TechMeme and other services further the democratization of the blogosphere.

So he’s wrong. But he’s also missing the main point of blogging.

It’s not so much about how one blog can rise through the ranks and get popular. What I love about blogging is the fact that an ecosystem exists, where conversations spring up about anything at all, involving all who wish to participate (through blogs, comments and trackbacks), evolve and move on to other things. Geography, time zones, and cultural differences are mostly irrelevant. It’s about the purity of ideas and the two-way web, where we get to say what we think when we disagree. And trust me, I see disagreement on a constant basis in the trackbacks and comments on my blog. But I’m just happy I’m part of the conversation. Is the system perfect? Nope. But its the coolest thing I’ve ever encountered, and my non-sleeping life is now dedicated to being a part of it.

Blogging is not about the individual. It’s about the power of the blogosphere as an entity.

Nick, I see you struggle to find your relevance in this new world. Lashing out at people was good for a few links and page views. Now I see you taking on this Robin Hood “defender of the little guy” approach. It’s good link bait, but it’s still nonsense and people know it. You are a kick ass writer, but is there any substance whatsoever underneath it all?

If you find that you are blogging just to get influence and attention, you should stop because you are going to be dissapointed. No one wants to hear about your woeful stories of bitterness, despair and rejection (except Nick of course). If you are writing because you are absolutely passionate about whatever you are writing about, and you can’t stop yourself from writing, keep doing it. You’ll be happy, even if no one is reading.

One day, Google shareholders will stop putting up with stuff like this. It’s one thing to do it, and another to rub it in everyone’s faces.

They’ll argue internally that these perks make people want to come and work for them. But every study I’ve ever read says that people don’t work for the perks, or even for the best salary. People work somewhere because they enjoy the actual work they do. Specially packaged, trans-fat-free goodies do not get better employees. They just make your shareholders think you are incredibly lame.

Google smugness is at an all time high.

Update: A commenter below points to this story about a Windows Vista soft drink, which I have to say is lame, too, although in a different way.

It’s here, finally. Waiting 8 months for this was ridiculous.

I hinted at this yesterday in a post – today we launched CrunchGear, a new blog about new gadgets, gear and computer hardware.

CunchGear is going to be different from the other gadget blogs out there. The team is committed to writing about breaking news but will also be featuring weekly product comparisons in a given category. Expect CrunchGear to look like something between a pure blog and CNET Reviews. Our goal isn’t just to let you know about the hot new stuff coming out soon, but to also help you decide what kind of camera, laptop or MP3 player you want to buy as well.

More stuff coming this month…

I am so behind on email that I decided not to go to sleep last night to try to catch up a little. I got through maybe 10% of my inbox, but I still have emails to reply to going back as far as June 14. Not good.

Of course not sleeping made me a zombie today. And it’s now 2:30 AM and I’m still trying to get caught up. I give up. Going to bed.

One thing that I loved seeing today was Om Malik’s new site. In my opinion it’s stunning, and I think he’s done some really original things with the interface. I love the break out by topics. In my sleep deprived state I found myself staring at it, captivated, loving just the way it made me feel. Hopefully I’ll feel the same way in the morning.

We have a cool product launching tomorrow, hopefully around 5 pm PST. If it’s not up by then, it’s because I broke something. Wish us luck.

Farecast has a good blog post tearing down traffic and blog posts as they launched. They say “TechCrunch and BattelleMedia drove coverage in NY Times”. My only thought is, why would anyone care about NYT coverage?

We just posted a video on TechCrunch of a discussion I had with 13 startup CEOs on just exactly what’s going on with the web right now. Most of these guys have been through at least one bubble and have interesting, and sometimes humorous, comments on web 2.0 v. web 1.0.

Participating in the discussion were Aaron Cohen (Bolt), Scott Milener and Steven Lurie (Browster), Keith Teare (edgeio), Steven Marder (Eurekster), Joe Kraus (JotSpot), Jeremy Verbaa (Piczo), Auren Hoffman (Rapleaf), Chris Alden (Rojo), Gautam Godhwani (Simply Hired), Jonathan Abrams (Socializr), David Sifry (Technorati), Matt Sanchez (Video Egg) and Michael Tanne (Wink).

Om Malik has an insightful post about CrunchBoard called “Niche Job Boards Rising” today where he talks about how niche job sites can be successful, and cites Indeed.com stats on demand in the job market – there are 121 job listings per 1000 people in San Jose, and 74 job listings per 1000 in San Francisco, for example.

CrunchBoard has been live for about a day and a half, and so far traffic and postings are very strong. About 60,000 people have visited the site and 43 jobs have been posted.

We’ve also run into some bugs, almost entirely around taking paypal payments (I also have a hilarious email string with paypal customer service that I might post). People are occasionally getting error messages when they complete a payment, although from our end the payment is received and the job posts normally.

After we have a week under our belt I’ll do a full report on the status of the site. And as soon as it is 100% stable we’ll reveal some additional plans we have for the product.

I wrote about our just-launched CrunchBoard job site over at TechCrunch today. Lots of chatter on the blogosphere about it as well – See Rafe Needleman, Scott Beale, Brian Oberkirch, Frank Gruber, Nik Cubrilovic , Oliver Starr, PostBubble, Supr.c.ilio.us, Phil Bogle, Eric Allam, David Guillocheau and others. I appreciate all of the support from everyone.