*Which means it's probably a marketing ploy for something.

Has a real media job. Lazar has already achieved something beyond the reach of most fameballs: Steady employment with a large, traditional media business. She hosts Open House LA and First Look LA on KNBC, the Los Angeles-based NBC station. (She's also a host on the Reelz channel, whatever that is.)

Has lived in LA since 2004. Lazar is something of a personality in the self-proclaimed L.A. tech/blogging scene. (In this photo, she attempts to interview Perez Hilton.)

Dov Charney's stepsister. Lazar, described as a "hot peppy Jewish girl from Montreal" by one YouTube user, went to the same Canadian school as Charney, now the CEO of American Apparel, but 14 years apart. When she interviewed her scandal-plagued stepbrother last August, she did not mention his history of sexual-harassment lawsuits, or, in fact, any relationship to Charney at all. That's family loyalty for you! Also not disclosed in the video: Her habit of picking up free clothes from American Apparel. (TV stars get tons of free clothing from airtime-hungry designers, but not usually from their stepbrother's firm.)

Went to Emerson College. Bachelor's degree in TV/video.

Participated in the 2005 Ujena Bikini Jam.

Flirted with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington. Lazar showed up at a TechCrunch party last July. The doughy blogger accosted her and asked her why she was there. That encounter begat a working relationship where she tried making a few video clips for him. The talks never went anywhere, as she's on contract with NBC through February.

Began dating Rose near the end of November. No professional interest here: "Rose just wants to bang hot chicks off his Twitter list," says one informant who has observed their relationship closely. He does have a large online following, thanks to the popularity of Digg, his news-discussion site, and Diggnation, a companion online-video series where he drinks and discusses Digg headlines on camera. Could Lazar be hoping to leverage Rose's crowd?

Drew controversy at the Sundance Festival. Arrington — perhaps miffed that his play for Lazar went nowhere? — complained that Lazar had cheated to win 24 Hours at Sundance, a competition organized by Rose and Kutcher — and also claimed she'd been bragging about dating one of the organizers. Assuming Demi Moore has nothing to worry about, that would be Rose.

Went to Barack Obama's inauguration with Julia Allison. Allison, the Time Out dating columnist who briefly pursued Rose and remained obsessed for months afterward, claims she's over him. Curious, then, that she cozied up to Lazar in Washington, D.C., offering Lazar her spare ticket to the inaugural. Aubrey Sabala, a Digg marketing manager, may have helped make the introduction hobnobbed with the two in D.C. That's especially curious because I've noticed how extraordinarly protective Digg employees have become about their founder's love life lately. Introducing his girlfriend to the famously indiscreet Allison hardly seems like the way to further that goal. Then again, perhaps that's why Sabala dived between them in the last photo below. Update: Allison, in an expletive-laced IM conversation, informed me that Meghan Asha, her Silicon Valley heiress sidekick, met Lazar at Sundance and subsequently introduced the two.

How serious are they? This is Rose we're talking about, who's not known for his long-term relationships. And the two live and work in different cities. Sean Percival, an L.A. tech personality, says it's over already.

(Photos via Twitpic, Nonsociety, TheChimp.net, LAist, and AnchorBabes)

Our source tells us Laporte gets about 700 to 1,000 simultaneous viewers when TWiT streams over Ustream.tv. TWiT's Ustream profile page says the show has been viewed 647,249 times so far this year, suggesting Stickam plans to pay Laporte a $51 CPM. For a moment, a I felt a jealous twinge typing those numbers. But that passed as soon as I discovered a list of TWiT's regular guests on Wikipedia. They include: "John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang, Patrick Norton, Alex Lindsay, Wil Harris, Jason Calacanis, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and Tom Merritt."

I'm also a fan of her character Addy May — the refreshingly blunt Southern gal dishes advice, and shows what a trained performer with improvisational moxie and deft comedy timing can do. Plus she's cute, she loves L.A., she's a South By Southwest veteran and I'll bet she has a soft spot for bulldogs. I hear if she doesn't get the gig, Jason Calacanis can expect a late night visit from the Ninja. Don't say I didn't warn him. (Photo by James Smith)

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.

The Y Combinator guys may be acting starstruck, but maybe its MC Hammer who's playing the fanboy here. Y Combinator's coterie of entrpreneurs could easily return the favor by providing the rapper with real video services. Everyone, including MC Hammer, knows they can. Why would the startuppers reduce the Hammer to begging for volunteers — if not to subtly put him in his place?

(SnapLayout Demo Video by Dan Veltri)

Listen to the mp3 here

(Photo by: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. The first dot-com boom brought 24-hour shows such as independent blogger JenniCam (whose webcam posted a photo of her in her room every 30 seconds) and We Live in Public (which filled an apartment with cameras for a more art-project style of broadcast). Both ended: JenniCam because she was just done, and We Live in Public because it was part of an unsustainable dot-com boom, using then-sketchy technology.

The first giddy age of Internet video is over, but live feeds haven't disappeared. Scads of live porn sites feature camgirls in booths chatting for free and stripping for pay. Many amateur broadcasters stream a webcam from their desk or pointing out their windows.

But these are all part-time. Office webcams go dark; camgirls clock out. Justin.tv is the first team to take an all-day show mobile, transforming it from "here's me when I'm at my desk" to "here's me everywhere." This has several consequences:

All the world's the scene. Justin has free run of the beautiful city of San Francisco, and he takes drives (Vehicle sharing company Zipcar is a sponsor) into Silicon Valley. Air travel will mean a few hours of downtime, but Justin says he's willing to sacrifice that in order to "go on tour."

Justin.tv has a cast of thousands. Everyone that Justin sees, we see. The local cafe waitress can be a regular character. So can every drooling fan who bumps into him. This breaks open the show; a viewer doesn't need to like Justin and his entourage to like the show.

Everyone wants in. That cast of thousands aren't all content to be extras. I met Justin at a bar this week, seven days into his live broadcast. He told my friend Melissa that he hadn't yet been kissed on camera. Melissa solved that. As a member of MTV's The Real World remarked, when you're on camera, you feel obligated to step out and be interesting. In fact, that instinct drives shows like TRW. The result is constant drama and happy viewers.

24/7 means warts and all. Speaking of The Real World, ever notice how network TV's reality shows are as heavily edited as any scripted story? There's still a lack of rawness. Justin takes his camera into the bathroom. And as for everyone's favorite question:

Yes, he'll have sex on camera. It's been cute to watch his responses change; by Friday he had moved from "no" to telling Wired News "Maybe we could do it with a half-camera." No, I don't know what a half-camera is either, but by last night he was telling those of use gathered around him that he'd almost definitely have a camera pointed at him during sex (with a girl, if you're wondering).

He's kind of a dick. At least his friends are: they make fun of some people who appear on the show; they swear about their business contacts. The viewers are even worse; one launched a blog giving hilariously cruel nicknames to everyone with a cameo; it was decided that I was a Jewish boy named ShalomBerry, and that Justin was cockblocking me from my friend Melissa. On the way back from meeting Melissa, Justin's crew tried to remember what she does. "She helps sex workers document cases of police brutality," one said about "that girl." "Then she posts it for guys to jerk off to." (The former, yes. The latter, um, no.)

One blogger worried about this behavior, calling it "the dumb leading the dumber, the desperate leading the more desperate, the fame-hungry feeding the fame-starved." But who of us hasn't had such a conversation about a stranger? We're all dicks. The only difference is that when these guys gossip, the subjects can hear it.

Of course, they have to watch the stream to catch it. And that's the draw of Justin.tv: If you turn it off, you'll miss something. As one of the entourage said on the show today, "The interesting things aren't scheduled." That's a problem, but it's also the show's biggest boon: the only way to catch it all is to keep it on for the rest of your life.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He is not Jewish, but he is a bit Jew-ish.

Andy Samberg: Before he was Timberlake's partner in "Dick in a Box" or one of the white boys in "Lazy Sunday," the SNL repertory player posted videos and songs at The Lonely Island. I recommend "The Heist" (a better white rap) and "The 'Bu" (a serial).

That Crazy Lady At Violent Acres: No one knows who she is, but she is insane. At the age of 6, she beat up a boy while screaming "I'LL EAT YOUR EYES!" She hasn't gotten calmer.

Skot at "Izzle pfaff!": A new find. From his blog: "I, however, am a fucking ninja for snow driving. I grew up in Idaho, motherfucker! I took driver's ed in eight inches of snow. How do I know it was eight inches of snow? I measured it with my dick. RAR!"

Ze Frank: The funniest videoblogger out there will end his show in March, and then he's off to Hollywood. While the average daily episode is good, the gold is in classic musical numbers like Hindsight is 20/20 and one-offs like "Fingers in Food."

Brad Neely: I first heard about this guy when he made "Washington," a video in which the first president ate opponents' brains and invented cocaine. (He'll kick you apart!) Neely now releases videos on the new Super Deluxe video site, including the better version of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Iggy Pop's roadie: He wrote a wicked concert rider for the band. "Required: 2 heavy duty floor-mounted fans. So I can wear a scarf and pretend to be in a Bon Jovi video."

David Malki: Writer of Wondermark, one of those delightful "classic clip art mashed with ironic modern sensibility" comics. Except funny.

Matthew Baldwin: The writer of Defective Yeti "puts the 'i' in 'teaim.'" Recent posts include the Pam spray solution to kids opening doorknobs, generational humor, and his ungrateful cats. It's not a gut-buster but a reliable chuckle.

Gabriel Delahaye: Known at his home blog, Corporate Casual, as Worker #3116, Delahaye writes passages like:

"When someone uses the word "funky" I feel like my ears are being date raped by a sad, sad man. Like...you go on a date with someone and they are just really lame and the date goes horrible and then later, when they are forcibly penetrating you, you're like "THIS GUY?! I'M BEING DATE RAPED BY THIS GUY?!" And if you're talking about something for which no other adjective seems appropriate, then maybe you should realize that NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THAT THING."

Daniel Radosh: The New Yorker contributor responded to the magazine's reader-contributed caption contest by hosting his own anti-caption contest. Dig his analysis of Thomas Nelson's audio Bible casting decisions. "Samuel L. Jackson, motherfucker. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Not to mention, I've had it with these motherfuckin' snakes in this motherfuckin' garden."

Ryan North: Dinosaur Comics is, hands-down, the funniest daily comic online. Every day it's the same dinosaurs, in the same poses, with different dialogs.

Bob Powers: Girls Are Pretty, and Bob Powers has a thing for you to celebrate each day. Today, for example:

"Your Boyfriend Is An Expert Juggler Day!

He can juggle up to five small items at once. It is very impressive to children and simpler adults.

'Leave him,' your therapist says. 'People learn to juggle when they feel the need to maintain various deceptions. More often than not, a man who knows how to juggle has a secret wife and kids hidden someplace.'"

"I thought all these egos would be bouncing off of each other," said Marianne from Treasure Island, "but this has been so warm and supportive. It's not about awards, it's more about celebrating new technologies." She was referring to the Vloggies, held Saturday night at the Swedish American Hall, and she was right about the atmosphere.

Going into this videoblog award show, I braced myself for an evening of cinematic navel-gazing, expecting clip after clip of disembodied faces staring into the camera, focused on their own reflection in the lens instead of communicating to an audience. I was pleasantly surprised. To me, the Vloggies clearly illustrated the varied world of internet video and, in a way, brought rationality to a medium easily construed as ridiculous.

On the other hand, Marianne was dressed as a fluffy yellow duck.

Jerry Zucker: "You like these jokes? I got a hundred more that we cut from "Naked Gun 33 1/3." [Laughing Squid]

In a sign of the vlogosphere's influence, actual famous people attended the show. Jerry Zucker, creator of Airplane! and The Naked Gun opened the night with a great speech (recorded here) about the beginning of his moviemaking career, drawing parallels to the world of vlogging. Daniel McVicar from The Bold and the Beautiful (and the McVlog) and Irina Slutsky from the vlog Geek Entertainment Television (who also organized the event for podcast company PodTech) very capably co-hosted the red-carpet affair.

Daniel McVicar shows his "doh" face while Irina Slutsky spies a cute guy in the audience. [Laughing Squid]

The usual group of internet celebrities showed up in support, including Scoble Show namesake Robert Scoble and Diggnation vlogger (and digg.com founder) Kevin Rose. Conspicuously absent from the ceremony were a few familiar Vlogerati, like ex-Rocketboom queen Amanda Cogdon and Favorite Male Vlogger Ze Frank (who sent Marianne the duck in his stead).

Big check, little prize. [Laughing Squid]

Alive in Baghdad was the big winner. This fantastic site - which takes a look at daily life in a war zone through interviews with Iraqi citizens - won a total of 7 Vloggies, including Judges' Favorite Vlog. Along with Josh Wolf, People's Choice winner for Favorite Male Vlogger, Alive in Baghdad demonstrates the capacity for internet videos to go beyond entertainment into true journalistic inquiry. In honor of its win, the Intel Corporation presented vlogger Brian Conley with a scant $2,000. It was enough to fund one Intel Core2Duo laptop, true, but the ridiculous size of the novelty check made the donation look meager in comparison. Given the state of the Iraqi power supply, I hope that Intel can cough up, at the very least, a solar battery charger and satellite internet connection, and throw in a couple flak jackets for the journalists.

Ask a Ninja co-creator Kent Nichols shows off his unstoppable "double-fisted statues" maneuver. [Thomas Hawk]

Slight snafus haunted the night. The audio went out on Ze Frank's taped acceptance speech and the dubbing was delayed all night, making every video look like a 1970s kung-fu movie. Patrons at the open bar talked over Brian Conley's moving speech, and an overabundance of hungry party guests picked over scant appetizers at the afterparty at Café du Nord. On the whole, however, the hosts and presenters kept the show moving and the crowd entertained. One person at the mike even offered to tap dance for the audience when a clip refused to play.

Andrew Baron tries to show the ducky what traffic really means. [Chuckumentary]

One thing that struck me as odd: Andrew Baron, the producer of Rocketboom, accepted the Judge's Favorite News Vlog with a dark-haired beauty by his side - curiously, Rocketboom host Joanne Colan was back in New York working on some "TV stuff." Baron won the Ego Prize of the night for invoking Woody Allen in a condescending speech that managed to accept the honor while assuring the audience that he was really superior to all this nerdy stuff. Later on, he continued his pissing contest with Ze Frank by pretending to vanquish Marianne the duck in a tasteless photo op.

Valleywag party score: This event's ready for its close-up.

The "Vloggies" re-used statuettes from the "Goatses." [Laughing Squid]

Unless noted, photos are by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. See his photo gallery: The Vloggies: Photo gallery [Laughing Squid]
Also see Thomas Hawk's gallery: Photos from the 2006 Vloggies [Zooomr]

• Borat's movie premieres tonight! Check your local listings for screens and showtimes. The over/under on when the whole film will be available on YouTube? About a day.
• If you prefer your former Soviets in 3-D, check out Vloggies host Irina Slutsky at the Vloggie Pre-Party, 8pm at SF's House of Shields.

Saturday

• SuperHappyDevHouse 13 is all the way down in Los Gatos, but the trip is worth it for the all-day, all-night session of coding (or writing Chapter 1 for National Novel Writing Month).
• The Vloggies are finally here! Cause...cause you've been waiting for them, right? Come snicker at those silly amateur videobloggers, since in your heart you know you could do better. You know, if you ever bothered.

Sunday

• Mashups are fun until the lawyers step in. Catch the EFF & Calabash Music Mixer at 8pm at SF's Little Baobab.

Daily Vlog for October 20, 2006 [Technorati]

What's wrong with the latest Technorati video

1. Can we do this without it sounding like there's a full cafeteria behind the camera? If you can't get a studio, at least quiet down the office for ten minutes. Clearly that's all it takes to film your show.
2. Aaron and Liz, practice your lines.
3. But get a teleprompter too.
4. "One other blogger suffices to say"? Where did you learn grammar, boy?
5. Didn't you watch the "Get a Mac" commercials? You can't use "touch " unless you make a point first.
6. Liz. Put down your hands until you learn how to use them.
7. Is it the microphone making Aaron's voice come in through the right speaker or did the sound editor have a Bloody Mary for breakfast?

And that's what's wrong with Technorati's video today. Until they post today today's, because I'm writing this at midnight. Okay. Let's do some news.

Technorati vlog for October 11 [Technorati]
Earlier: Technorati's new daily vlog: Less talk, more techno [Valleywag]

Well, It Turns Out That Lonelygirl Really Wasn't [NY Times]

Today, three sources turned up info about LonelyGirl15 — now known as 19-year-old L.A. actress Jessica Rose. First, YouTube user mgpapas posted the following photo montage of Rose as herself and as LG15. (Mute it; the soundtrack is "You Are So Beautiful to Me.")

A blog called "Top of the Tube" spread the video and added Rose's resume. Meanwhile, tech blogger Tom Foremski wrote that he found Rose too.

lonelygirl15 revealed : jessica rose aspiring actress [Top of the Tube]

I don't remember how many [business] cards I passed out. What's my deal? TechCrunch is supposedly silicon valley's #1 party so I had to go. I could not get on the guest list so I decided to crash it.

I put on the wig as my disguise so that I would be able to change quickly if needed. I did change costumes after being kicked out for when I put business cards on the cars. I was in the party for 9 minuets before getting kicked out.

I came on a bike, motorcycle, and just parked right in the back and walked through the back stairwell. I went up the stairs, the same way the dcongo cheerleaders did, where Taste was serving. I was kicked out when the coordinator of the event noticed I was not wearing a name tag. She and guards escorted me to the front where they told me to leave in front of everyone!

Thanks, August Capital security team! If you guys weren't keeping the riffraff out, this party could have accidentally gotten interesting!

Earlier: The vidding crashers: August Capital boots vloggers from TechCrunch party [Valleywag]