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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/costume_box.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”450″ height=”300″ style=”display:block;float:none;” //p pA gentle reminder from the City-sanctioned a href=”http://www.homeforhalloween.com/”Boo Tube/a: There is no fun in the Castro in the tonight. I repeat. NO FUN. So take your decked-out self downtown. E-storm International has teamed up with a href=”http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1170404/”Lunch 2.0/a to bring a very special Halloween Edition of free food, games, candy, horror movies, and, of course, beer from 12-2 p.m. After the you’ve gotten your fill of afternoon trick-or-treats, head over to Otis Bar for the afterparty. Going to be in the Mission? Head over to Amnesia for its a href=”http://www.amnesiathebar.com/Amnesia/Amnesia_-_Home.html”"Buckets of Blood” Red Lagerparty/a with a back-from-the-dead Led Zeppelin cover band and shadow puppets. em(Photo by a href=”http://flickr.com/photos/erikogan/184522405/quot;”erikogan/a)/em/p piframe src=”http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/valleywag.com/embed?title=Valleywag23999999src=valleywag.com_qf5t82ftrvf9s8f0472f4bak1o23B1365Fctz=America20aug20220Google%20DocsLos_Angeles” style=”border:solid 4px #777″ width=”463″ height=”200″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”/iframe/p pGot something to add to the calendar? Send it to a href=”mailto:calendar@valleywag.com”calendar@valleywag.com/a./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/sugarlayofftwitter.png” width=”365″ height=”174″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Brian Sugar, cofounder of San Francisco-based blog network Sugar Inc., a href=”http://twitter.com/briansugar/status/982953356″sent/a a href=”http://twitter.com/briansugar/status/982915470″two ominous Twitters this afternoon/a: “Sad day.” “First rain, will last for 5 months.” Was he just talking about the weather? Less than an hour later, he’d gathered his staff into a conference room and told them he was laying off nine employees, mostly in editorial mdash; 11 percent of the company’s 80-person staff. What’s worse: More layoffs could come over the next two quarters, if ad sales don’t improve./p pSugar’s CEO may have aimed to put employees on notice, in hopes of motivating them to perform. But leaving a shoe to drop is the worst mistake one can make in cutting employees, the meltdown’s self-appointed layoff pundits agree. Sugar Inc.’s real problem may be self-inflicted: It took ad sales in-house from partner and investor NBC a href=”http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-sugar-inc-taking-back-ad-sales-from-nbcu-but-investment-remains/”this summer/a, leaving it with a sales force still in development, right as the online-advertising market got a lot tougher./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/quincy-smith.jpg” width=”244″ height=”183″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Kara Swisher’s new pet media blogger Peter Kafka a href=”http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081030/cnets-debut-at-cbs-pretty-good/”praises CBS executive Quincy Smith, shown here, for picking up CNET/a. Revenues were up 6 percent in the most recent quarter, with a 12 percent increase in display advertising. But wait a second: Aren’t display ads most of CNET’s revenue? The company also makes money through e-commerce referrals and the sale of marketing data mdash; which suggests something went wrong enough in CNET’s other businesses to blunt the welcome rise in advertising./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/amc_01.jpg” width=”300″ height=”226″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Ana Marie Cox, the original a href=”http://www.wonkette.com”Wonkette/a blogger, left our cozy Gawker family two years ago for a big gig with emTime/em. A regular on TV and in wonky political magazines I don’t read, Cox has been a href=”http://swampland.blogs.time.com/”blogging for Time/a from John McCain’s plane. But now Ana Marie is in trouble: Turns out her $1,000-a-day expenses on McCain’s plane weren’t fully covered by emTime/em. Cox was making ends meet with paychecks from emRadar/em, a pseudoinfluential New York magazine. emRadar/em goes out of business every couple of years to stay trendy. Last week, the mag dutifully shut down for a third time. Cox, despite a “mid-six-figures” book deal in the works, was reduced to a href=”http://www.niemanlab.org/2008/10/ana-marie-cox-asking-the-audience-to-pay-for-journalism/”pleading for donations/a on her personal blog. There’s a big lesson here, and I think it’s: Owen, I want my travel paid in advance./p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/scareware.jpg” width=”300″ height=”130″ /Bakasoftware, a Russian operation, a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/technology/internet/30virus.html?ref=technology”makes $5 million a year/a pushing its Antivirus XP program on Windows users. At least, that’s the estimate based on internal files obtained by another Russian hacker. John Markoff’s report explains scareware for NYT readers. Best part: When Bakasoftware’s malware program launches inside a PC, it checks the Windows registry. If the PC’s default language is Russian, the program shuts down, rather than draw the attention of Russian law enforcement. Obligatory emTimes/em-speak: “Bakasoftware, which may be based in Moscow according to Internet domain name records, did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment.”/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/kilar.png” width=”256″ height=”286″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Jason Kilar, the CEO of online-video site Hulu, has a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29adco.html?_r=1ref=technologyoref=slogin”rediscovered a truism/a: less is more. Hulu, which is mostly owned by NBC and News Corp., runs fewer ads on the TV clips it licenses from its TV-network parents than they air when they broadcast the same shows. And yet the ads are more effective. This could simply be a novelty effect; everything about Hulu is new, so the ads also draw more notice. But Hulu may be onto something. Why don’t networks try running fewer ads on air, too? em(Photo via a href=”http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/06/newco_taps_amaz.html”Alarm:Clock/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/kilar.png” width=”256″ height=”286″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Jason Kilar, the CEO of online-video site Hulu, has a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29adco.html?_r=1ref=technologyoref=slogin”rediscovered a truism/a: less is more. Hulu, which is mostly owned by NBC and News Corp., runs fewer ads on the TV clips it licenses from its TV-network parents than they air when they broadcast the same shows. And yet the ads are more effective. This could simply be a novelty effect; everything about Hulu is new, so the ads also draw more notice. But Hulu may be onto something. Why don’t networks try running fewer ads on air, too? em(Photo via a href=”http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/06/newco_taps_amaz.html”Alarm:Clock/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/commenter/130000/138197_300.jpg” width=”100″ height=”100″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″Is hogging elevators evil? a href=”http://valleywag.com/people/rhymephile/”RhymePhile/a is today’s featured commenter for a href=”http://valleywag.com/5070227/google-new-york-hit-by-cost-cuts#c8612730″suggesting/a that Google’s kitchen cutbacks could lessen the environmental impacts on fellow tenants of its New York office building:/p blockquotepGood. Cut down on those damn kitchen hours so those Google bastards don’t clog the elevators ALL DAY every day going between the eighth floor (where the lunchroom is) to their offices on 4, 6, and 10./p pYou can’t get out of this damn building some days!/p/blockquote br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/commenter/130000/138197_300.jpg” width=”100″ height=”100″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″Is hogging elevators evil? a href=”http://valleywag.com/people/rhymephile/”RhymePhile/a is today’s featured commenter for a href=”http://valleywag.com/5070227/google-new-york-hit-by-cost-cuts#c8612730″suggesting/a that Google’s kitchen cutbacks could lessen the environmental impacts on fellow tenants of its New York office building:/p blockquotepGood. Cut down on those damn kitchen hours so those Google bastards don’t clog the elevators ALL DAY every day going between the eighth floor (where the lunchroom is) to their offices on 4, 6, and 10./p pYou can’t get out of this damn building some days!/p/blockquote br style=”clear: both;”/
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