Get Ur Geek On

The big news yesterday, which hit our feed reader right before our wifi crapped out, was Google CEO Eric Schmidt driving down the 101 to Cupertino to join Apple's Board of Directors. Considering some of the trouble Apple's been in lately -- suppliers suing newspapers over reports of overworked employees in China, a less-than-stellar environmental record, stock option backdating scandals -- could this be a way for Google to outsource all the evil they're supposedly not going to do? Oh right, this is about taking on Microsoft, kinda. Apple certainly loves to talk trash about Windows.

YouTube actually gained some socially-relevant points with the news that an engineer used the service to post videos in a whistleblower campaign over unsafe Coast Guard vessels. Flickr now allows easy drag-and-drop geocoding to make your Gawker-stalker style celebrity sighting maps that much stalkier. While Zoomr shows off their 'portals' photo feature for zooming into details. Ever wants to know what's going on behind the scenes at Technorati? Ryanne and Jay take you on a video tour. And Tom Foremski says, "Ch'yeah, raaaaight," to the Chron's list of top Web 2.0 startups.

The EFF is trying to lay the smackdown on the infamously vapid purple dinosaur, Barney, who apparently doesn't unconditionally love parody sites on the web. The 'Town is looking to hire an RFP playa who can get some citywide wifi up in they heezy. Mark Pincus has staged a coup de Tribe and taken back the reins. Speaking of Burning Man, if you're feeling guilty about all your fire-and-engine-induced carbon emissions, you can sign up for Cooling Man and pay to offset them. Or just drive there in an electric cupcake. Up to you.

Photo from 2005 by William Keller. Look for a special all-burn Get Ur Geek On tomorrow.