I’m hoping Robert is referring to this exchange. The funny thing is that Robert and I were immediately laughing together at the TechCrunch party, just an hour or so after the big fight on Friday. He apologized. I apologized. Then we shot some video.

I am in Seattle now, preparing for the casual gaming conference tomorrow. Anyone in town know of a good place to hear some live music on a Sunday evening? If we figure out a place, I’m buying the first round.

Update: Mike Davidson from Newsvine recommended Paragon. That’s were we’ll be around 9:30.

I’m just an observer in this particular battle, but it appears that the WSJ sort of flubbed it today with a hastily written article on the history of blogging. Duncan Riley writes a response and points to his earlier post saying that blogging began much earlier. He also notes that wikipedia disagrees with the WSJ.

Obviously someone is wrong here, and I suspect its the journal. Credit needs to be given where it’s due.

Heather received the email below today from a Chinese national who is trying to buy two tickets to TechCrunch20. She’s having some trouble with Google Checkout, which doesn’t offer China as an option, and has to get a visa. Seeing something like this totally re-energizes me after a long week – there are at least two people in China who are willing to spend a tremendous amount of energy to attend the conference, and it really reinforces (to me) what we are trying to do – giving all startups a level playing field to launch their products.

And to the woman who sent this email: no worries. We’ll refund your ticket price if you can’t get that Visa.

—–Original Message—–
From: XXXX
Sent: Sat, July 14, 2007 9:22 am
To: reservations@techcrunch20.com
Subject: TechCrunch20 – Question from XXXX

I have just registered and paid for 2 tickets to attend the conference via “Google checkout”. The problem is that on “google Checkout” I could not choose the correct country (China) for my mailing address, I had no choice but to choose Hong Kong as my “country” in order to get through. Does it matter? Do you really mail the hard copy tickets to me or it’s a kind of electronic tickets?
2nd question: I need something (such as the tickets) to show to the US embassy to get our visas.
3rd questions: just in case we (2 of us) can’t get the US visa and therefore can’t enter the States, can we get refund?
Thank you!

Someone sent out a fake IAC press release under a spoofed email address this morning saying that the company was going to begin a stock buy back program. This is almost certainly aimed at moving the stock price. Paid Content at least briefly ran it, then retracted. A copy of the release is here.

Nothing nearly as dramatic happened this time compared to the Engadget/Apple fake news event that knocked, temporarily, $4 billion off of Apple’s share price. IAC’s stock was up quite steeply during the day, though

As I said when this happened with Engadget, it’s quite common for bloggers to post very quickly when news breaks. A reasonable press release like this one is bound to get some coverage. We don’t cover this kind of thing on TechCrunch, but if we did it may have been posted briefly. The important thing is to fix it as soon as possible.

Glad to see Steve Gillmor doing something creative again, this time with video. The first episode of Bad Sinatra is live, and features a very uncomfortable interview with yours truly about midway through. Terrible stuff, but Steve’s a friend and so I have to post a link.

…and I’m kidding of course. This is great footage, and it will only get better over time. Congrats Steve.

If your customers are calling customer service too often, it may be a sign that you suck. And if you terminate those customers who complain too often, it’s an absolute confirmation that you suck. Sprint will regret this decision.

The Times and a Wellington, NZ newspaper cover the theme of blogging as a hobby turning into a full time job. The New Zealand article covers Richard MacManus and talks about his rise to fame over the last three years. The Times article, written by Michael Parsons, expands on the article on TechCrunch in this month’s Wired magazine.

There’s a line in Parson’s article, “If you’re a journalist reading this and thinking, ah, time for a nice lunch and then perhaps this is the day to knock off early, take a moment to think of the bloggers out there who want to eat that lunch” that I agree with completely. You have to eat, drink and sleep what you are writing about to get ahead in blogging. This creates conflicts, because the people you are writing about naturally become your friends. How to deal with those conflicts? I say disclose them and move on….but mainstream press loves to sink their teeth into it as a way of saying blogs aren’t as good as the old school guys.

The New York Times David Pogue, already under fire for conflicts of interest with Apple, does this:

Perhaps its time for the Times to turn that critical eye, currently aimed at the blogosphere, back on itself.