Why does the tech world get a throwdown in Austin when the banks have had to cancel their bashes? The news out of South By Southwest shows that Web hipsters are every bit as bankrupt.

It's time for the annual bacchanal of burning fossil fuel and using drugs known as Burning Man. According to a tipster, "Google has a total of five big-rig hospitality trucks camped out at Burning Man for the Google elite and some other Valley bigwigs." Hope they stocked up on water, condoms and 2C-B! For those of…

Egobloggers Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble as well as startup PR clearinghouse Michael Arrington all want to know: How amazing is it that after two years of using Twitter, they've each already got nearly half as many "followers" on FriendFeed after just a few months? Asking the question, each offer hypothetical…

Laughing Squid photographer Scott Beale, shooting pictures at this week's Web 2.0 Expo, was rebuffed by marketers staffing the Google booth. Company policy, they said, forbade photography of the booth. Beale complained on Twitter, and word rapidly issued from the Googleplex: It was actually okay, they said, to…

Think of a high-school reunion held the day after you graduate: That was the vibe at the Side Bar Sunday night, where Gawker Media (publisher of fine weblog media products) threw a party for Valleywag and our sister sites, io9 and Lifehacker. We won Twitter praise for the free beer and minimal line out front,…

Laugh with a squid, say goodbye to a Yahoo, and relax with a flick, all in this weekend's Valleywag Calendar.

Remember the power mishap in July that brought down 365 Main, the San Francisco datacenter? A similar incident took place today at the Dallas datacenter of Rackspace, a San Antonio, Texas-based firm which serves several local Web outfits. Unlike the July outage, which killed all the websites we waste time with —…

ProfileBuilder is a sponsor of TechCrunch40, the startup conference organized by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington. It's also the subject of a glowing, "exclusive" writeup in TechCrunch today. Coincidence? I'll let you decide. The writeup celebrates ProfileBuilder's acquisition of ZingFu. Say who buys say whom?…

Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale has exploited the LOLcats meme to mock Paul Addis, the would-be arsonist who tried to burn down The Man, the wooden statue at the center of the Burning Man arts festival in Nevada. Inevitable. Brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it first. (Image by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

BLACK ROCK CITY — Still no real live power-geek sighting yet campers, but you'll be pleased to note that through the miracle of modern technology, you too can be on the playa without actually being on the playa! Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, a Burning Man attendee from way back, shows us how it's done with his…

What's a little startup to do when it's invited to two schmoozetastic parties in one night? Send the CEO to one and the marketing director to the other, natch. Yes, more than one startup actually did this (and several others hit both parties despite the hour commute) last night with Palo Alto's Stirr Mixer and Om…

Okay, since everyone asked, here's your fanservice. Now geez, Robert Scoble, stop with the booty calls.

Everyone appreciated a break from sucking down coffee at conferences to suck down free martinis at the Anu Bar for Digg's San Francisco party. The social news site previewed its next version, launching Monday. Thanks to Laughing Squid's Scott Beale for these shots!

Everyone's famous on the Internet! And the webstars really shine in Scott Beale's Wednesday photos from O'Reilly ETech 2006. In this edition, Ted Rheingold of Dogster, 3/4 of the Boing Boing crew, and an episode of escalating violence.

ETech 2006 rolls on, and Scott Beale keeps photographing the folks who make the Internet. Tuesday's highlights include Tim Bray's Indy outfit, Esther Dyson's spelling, and Jen King's primal scream.

Tired of camps about actual from-scratch products, Valley developers, pundits, and businessfolk mixed it up at Mashup Camp, the two-day "unconference" about remixed tech. Laughing Squid tentaclemaster Scott Beale kindly let me abuse his pics from Monday.