We know there's no shortage of young, successful, smart people in this town, but we still turn a little green with envy when we hear about guys like Ben Keighran. The Australia native is only 25 years old. After successfully launching bluepulse in his native land in 2002, he took the show on the road and ended up here in the Bay Area. Like another young tech-maestro we recently spoke to, Keighran houses his company in Silicon Valley (in fact, in YouTube's former quarters), but lives here in the city by the bay....

-- Marga Gomez: Multiaward-wining lesbian/Latina comic makes her Plush Room debut with Joshua Raoul Broday on the ivories, and former Mornings on 2 personality and comedian, Mark Pitta. Show starts at 8 p.m., the Empire Plush Room, 940 Sutter; $20. -- Hard Eight (aka Sydney): Before making Magnolia, the sprawling masterpiece about fate and The Valley, Paul Thomas Anderson made his debut with Hard Eight. The visibly-boney Gwyneth Paltrow plays a cocktail waitress/whore in......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

We checked out the completely re-done Pirate’s Cove trail as we neared the end of our loop hike yesterday in the Tennessee Valley area. Wait…Pirate’s Cove? Yep! This particular little cove was a favorite spot for rum runners during Prohibition, hence the name. The Pirate’s Cove Trail was redone as part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area's (GGNRA) Trails Forever initiative, and they’ve done a fantastic job. ...

SFist interviews Kevin Arnold founder of Noise Pop...

The BAGeL Radio 4th Birthday Party was a blast last Thursday, with great music, cupcakes and even a reunion with one of our childhood best friends who we hadn't seen since we were three and a half feet tall. We saw great sets by Birdmonster and Division Day (unfortunately we missed Two Seconds) and a good time was had by all. Despite the fact that we killed BAGeL Radio for about five full minutes......

We may occasionally bag on BART, but we have to say that in the most cases, we are more than happy with it. Mainly because it's not MUNI but that's a whole other story. We also think everyone else feels the same way because they keep on talking about extending it all over the area. Just look at those BART maps in stations-- there's all sorts of dotted lines representing proposed lines. Well, one of those proposed lines is getting closer to happening as a whole bunch of money was thrown BART's way to extend BART to Santa Clara and San Jose. Like $364 million dollars worth of money. ...

Far be it for us to be the voice of optimism, but, are you ready for this Warrior nation -- the playoffs are doable, this year. Just as others seem to be abandoning ship, we step in to illustrate how miracles can happen.

If not for some unkind scheduling that left the squad trying to keep up with Phoenix on the tail end of a home-and-road back-to-back, a surprisingly frequent scenario that has not been kind to them this year, the Warriors would most likely be sitting at 19-17 right now, two games over .500 this late in the season for the first time since 1993-1994 and in a virtual three-way tie for the seventh and eighth playoff spots. Unfortunately, it's hard to get respect when you haven't even sniffed the playoffs in 12 years.

--Chemo the cancer dog was returned! As was Dixie, the other stolen dog of a sick child. --Intel: Layoffs inside. --HP catches a board member leaking information to the press. --Free wifi throughout the Valley. --You may as well just buy a billboard with your name and Social Security name on it if you bank at Wells Fargo. --There might not be as much fighting on the school board this year. --Willie Brown loses it......

With SFist Rita's report yesterday about Apple settling with Creative, Apple fanboys can console themselves with the news that Microsoft is also getting dinged for even more money in a patent infringment suit. Meanwhile, retail workers who downloaded the development version of Apple's new OS, Leopard, are getting canned left and right (scroll down). But BusinessWeek thinks good iPod news is on the way, while Wired News explores the back alleys of Chennai in search......

We've held out this long, and we're only gonna make this jokes once, but this summer, watch out for... Drinks on a plane! (We'll now run across the street and demand of the priest an appropriately harsh prescription for penance.) But don't worry, technology and, to a lesser extent, the Bush and Blair administrations, are here to protect you. With biometric terrorist detectors, other tech that's been around for generations, and the latest in arbitrary......

It's been a while since we published a tech roundup. But the Internet turned 15 last Sunday, we got a new laptop from an entrepreneur and friend who'll be enabling this 'Fister's addiction to blogging, and SFist Chuck, whom we dearly miss, was kidnapped by Disney, who force him to Imagineer at gunpoint. All the while, you've been lost in the unmapped multiverse, wondering who Supr.c.ilio.us and TechCrunch are, and which is the hipper one......

Chinese artists have been painting the Yangtze River valley and its famous Three Gorges canyons for millennia, adhering to the tradition of painting not just what the valley looks like physically, but also aspiring to portray the spiritual essence of the rocks and gnarled trees. (Wow, it's good to see that we totally have not moved beyond our sophomore "Introduction to Chinese Painting" class in our level of art historical analysis.) Contemporary Chinese artist Liu......

This week, the San Francisco symphony was performing an all Russian program which will definitely be one of the highlights of its upcoming trip to China. However, the trip was momentarily on hold, as the renegotiation of the musicians contract was proving unsatisfactory. They just reached an agreement this Monday morning, which they should sign and disclose very soon. The main sticking point: musicians want a pay package in the middle of the zone defined......

SFist Mary-Lynn's on vacation, but we're sure she'll be thrilled to hear that the white knights of Menlo Park may actually be coming to the rescue of beloved independent bookstore Kepler's! A group of about 15 investors has come together to work on reopening the store, which could no longer make their rent payments in their prime real estate space on El Camino Real. The store had been forced to renegotiate its lease in 1999, when, as we all know, real estate was so cheap and plentiful down in the Valley -- and Kepler's landlord, the Tan Group, has been unwilling to renegotiate now that the dot-com boom has ended. The Tan Group will not respond to media requests for comment, but owner Clark Kepler is "optimistic" that something might be worked out. "I don't think any other attitude than optimism is appropriate," Kepler told the Merc News. "It's just an incredible outpouring, and I want to do everybody right by making it work." Follow the news on SaveKeplers.com, and/or write a letter about why you love Kepler's to the Tan Group at 3630 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA 94306. Picture by SFist Mary-Lynn...

So it looks as though there's a little less competition in the Valley, and therefore the world, for portable MP3 player technology. D&M Holdings went and sold the rights to Rio's IP assets to SigmaTel. You may remember Rio as the folks who brought one of the very first MP3 players to market (we bought a 32mb Rio as a Christmas gift for our mom back when we were flush with dot-com boom cash,......

Last week's winner, the cybersquatting Metro! The only thing that looks more obscene than the term "Sfist" is "Sjist" -- we'll leave it at that. Meet the San Jose State contemporary classical music faculty. San Jose City Tow. Cover: The Metro continues to celebrate its 20th anniversary all year! A collection of essays about San Jose and the Valley throughout the years. A variety of arts events around SJSU. And the Straight Dope: does alcohol affect your period? (maybe). Next up: The SF Weekly! A dizzying array of political gossip from Matt Smith (Fifi Ma, SEIU, and Clint Reilly). Infiltrator protests for animals. (We totally saw that "Korea: Stop Killing Man's Best Friend" protestor the other week! Maybe the guy with her was Harmon!). Asian gang gets barber licenses. A play called "I'd Kill For a Parking Space" (heads up, Standing Room!). The Weekly's at the SFIFF, just like us. Cover article: New Order. And Savage Love: tips for 16 year old straight girls. The East Bay Express, the Guardian, and the pick of the week, after the jump. ...

C'mon, Star Trek 4 is all about cops in SF! Yesterday's bomb scare at City Hall was traced to a kook who went up to the security desk on the Van Ness side around 3:30 p.m., put his cell phone down, and said, "I put a bomb in here." After evacuating the building, the po-po shot a water cannon at the phone and determined it was explosives-free. SFist Jackson has an airtight alibi (item 4, around 1:00:00. Thanks for sticking up for the bloggers!) Yet more wacky weed news! Firefighters in El Cerrito that were inspecting a house that had been flooded by a water main break last Friday morning "noticed grow lights, hydroponic equipment and the strong smell of marijuana." Suspicious, they called the cops, who found about 100 plants and a pound of processed pot, and promptly booked the residents. Bummer to get busted at 3 in the morning while your house is flooding. "....No, man! I gotta get the Galactic bootlegs out of the basement!" And South Asian families in the Valley are concerned that they're being targeted by thieves who know that they tend to have expensive gold jewelry in their homes. Fourteen families have been robbed on weekends since December. This reminds us of that spate of burglaries in the Orange County Asian-American community (.pdf), where they figured out the burglars were targeting houses where there were a lot of shoes outside the front door. ...

Techie talk round up....

Russ Meyer dies at age 82....