Locally, the big news was the second best blog party last Friday thrown by TechCrunch down in Menlo Park. Scott Beale was commissioned to take the photos, including the one above featuring an uneasy handshake between Valleywag's Nick Douglas (left) and his favorite whipping boy, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. Nick had been bumped off the exclusive invite list, but Michel must have relented. If he had been dis-invited, apparently crashing the party was not an option.

What was the party buzzing about? Same old Web 2.0 bulls**t as far as we can tell. People comparing cliched logos, trying to define the term to newbies and talking in hushed tones about Kiko's demise ("But they used AJAX and Ruby!? How could they possibly have failed?"). No word if anybody tried to pick up a date with the line, "Hey baby, wanna ride in my Tesla?"

Speaking of Web 2.0 Bulls**t, Nicole Hanusek has some catty words for design-by-popular-acclaim t-shirt vendors Threadless. Friendster is trying to crawl back into contention with a hot cash infusion of $10 million. BusinessWeek put San Francisco number two behind Philadelphia in their roundup of citywide wifi plans, and Lifehacker is curious as to how it will all work. But if you use the wifi at the Metreon, it'll have to be porn-free.

In other news, the SF Bay View joins a list of local media organizations claiming attacks by hackers, and Tom Foremski also takes a look at Apple's response to the accusations of sweatshop conditions in their iPod factories. Friend of SFist DeWitt Clinton has left A9 search development to work on community project OpenSearch. And famously violent former Raider Bill Romanowski landed the cover for Midway's non-NFL branded Blitz 360 (Go Redhawks! Beat the Bladers!).

Photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.