We told you a few weeks ago about Platinum Studios' "American Idol"-style contest for comic creators, through which the winners will get a "multimedia development and publishing deal" based on their concept. At that time, we spoke to local guys Kevin Buckley and Marcus Thiele about their entry. We've just talked to another local writer/artist team with an entry in the Top 50: Navin Prasad and Chris Weiermiller....

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... ...

It looks like Larry & Sergey have themselves a nice new pet as they went and bought YouTube today for $1.65 billion in stock. And it's even housebroken too. You could look at it a couple of ways-- two great tastes in one or the Borg about to assimilate somebody. All this for a company that has yet to turn a profit. ...

We've always wondered what would happen if there was a power outage somewhere in Silicon Valley. Would the stock market crash? Would we not be able to surf porn? Would we no longer be able to download "Buffy" reruns over iTunes? Well, we're about to find out as there's a blackout in one of the hearts of Silicon Valley, that being San Mateo County. ...

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Yahoo CFO Susan Decker said that Google has the dominating market share in Internet search, and it's no longer Yahoo's goal to be number 1 in the field. Last week, after Yahoo's share price dropped when the company's profits failed to reach analyst's expectations, Chairman Terry Semel conceded in an interview with SFGate, "Frankly, Google has done a better job than us." Bloggers are talking about Decker's comments......

Our heart sank when we saw that we were number 664 on the online reserve list for the new Harry Potter, so we were especially happy to receive Jon's detailed (and blessedly spoiler-free) assessment of the book. We told ourselves that we wouldn't break down and buy it (though if we did we would do so at one of our fine local independent bookstores) Until then, we've reserved Jeremy's pick below, which is already......

We're sure there are some people out there who are all interested in the AT&T/SBC merger because of what it means to the stock market. And we're sure there are some of you out there who are interested in the merger because of what it means for your job. But we here at SFist are interested in it for only reason -- what name will the Giants now call home? While the people behind......