(By Eyleen Tavy) Don't ask us what we were doing reading the Wall Street Journal this morning (aside: have you ever looked at Kevin Sprouls', the guy who does the Journal's portraits, other work? Love it!), but when we read this article on how those damned Bulgarians are stealing American web ad production jobs our blood started to boil. Until recently, Web ads were produced mostly by creative types in downtown lofts in places......

So, you didn't like Microsoft, did you? Well, how about News Corp.? In an attempt to rejuvenate Yahoo and fend off Microsoft's advances, Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate is reportedly in talks to purchase Yahoo. Although claiming that his company is "not interested in buying Yahoo," the Merc reports: The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp., reported Wednesday that its parent company is considering taking a stake in Yahoo that could exceed......

It looks like Sunnyvale-based Yahoo plans on rejecting the $44.6 billion rose Microsoft offered it earlier this month. A move that would have merged the two tech giants won't happen, it seems, and we were so sure this relationship would've worked out swimmingly. Sniff. But all is not lost. According the Gate: Yahoo's board, which met Friday, has determined that the $31 per share offer Microsoft made is inadequate. The Wall Street Journal reported......

The Wall Street Journal ran this piece by Ted Nugent yesterday. If you're at all inclined to check it out, do so soon, because the password protection will kick in at some point. More or less, Nugent uses the 40th anniversary of "The Summer of Love" to rail on against drugs and "stinking hippies."...

Photo of a skilled fixed gear bike rider sliding down Oak Street in traffic. ...

Playing the role of Shawn Fanning, minus the curls, the real estate retraction appears to be stealing theoretical dollars from the pockets of a member of Metallica. According to The Wall Street Journal guitarist Kirk Hammett has cut the asking price of his Pacific Heights mansion to a mere $10.5 million from the $12.5 million he'd been seeking since 2005....

Trying to figure out what your house is worth in today's real estate market is only slightly less difficult than practicing haruspicy to predict what will happen next week. Articles like JFN6OzQPpdZZs_20061011.html?mod=mktw">the one that appeared in today's Wall Street Journal can only add to that uneasy feeling in the guts of anyone who was counting on their improving equity to bail them out of their adjustable-rate mortgage. According to the research firm Moody's Economy.com, homeowners......

This HP story is getting crazier and crazier. Today, the NY Times is reporting that HP was thinking about planting spies in at least two publications to figure out what was going on. The idea was to either place undercover admin temps or cleaning crews at CNet and the SF office of the Wall Street Journal who would then do a bit of snooping and eavesdropping. Another memo uncovered mentioned planting HP spies next to certain people to tag along and investigate them. Wasn't there an episode of "Alias" like that where Sydney Bristow dressed up like an Office Temp complete with iPod and back tattoo to shadow some reporter only to discover they were really their long lost second cousin removed who supposedly died in a fiery motorcycle accident but really used it as a ruse to escape the Chinese? ...

Hewlett Packard takes us back to 1981 with the recent revelations that they hired private eyes (clap clap), to watch their board -- they saw their every move. (It is totally time for the Hall and Oates revival to begin! They made our dreams come true!) So this all started back in 1999, when former CEO Carly Fiorina moved forward with her controversial plan for HP to acquire Compaq, despite strong board opposition. After......

While the San Francisco Public Library site is up, their search is not! Far be it from us to criticize anyone for the occasional technical bobble. Get well soon, SFPL search! SFist Rita just finished Fantasyland by Sam Walker, a book about how the author (a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal) did in the most competitive fantasy baseball league in the country, in 2004. It's pretty hilarious even (or especially) if you don't know......

We've had a few weeks to digest the news that there's a better than 50/50 chance of home prices falling in the next year, and today's news from the Wall Street Journal only piles on more of the same: housing inventories are rising pretty sharply in some markets. Although the closest the WSJ gets to the Bay Area is Los Angeles -- which saw an 88% surge in inventory compared to a year ago......

We're thrilled to the gills that the dailies are learning about this cool new sex podcasting thing all the kids are doing with their computers. While we loved the SF Bay Guardian's podcasting piece last year, we felt kinda like the Chron needed a pat on the head and a cookie when they ran yet another lame duck piece on sex podcasting last weekend telling us for the second time that our friend Susie......

Dan Gillmor bows out of Bayosphere in Businessweek -- reactions from JD Lasica, Jonas Luster and Thomas Hawk. Blogger Tom Foremski says he's doing just fine, claiming to be more popular with PR folks than the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg. Hey, at least no one has had to resort to astroblogging (astroturfing + blogging, natch). John Paczkowski is afraid, very afraid about rumors that boo.com is back. "Best Headline in a While" award......

The Wall Street Journal's East Bay Journal showed us a little love this week with a two-part series on the residential and commercial real estate markets in the Five-and-Dime. See "East Bay: More Affordable, But Only Compared to Its Neighbors" (January 18, 2006) and "California's East Bay Area Offers Relative Bargains" (January 19, 2006). SFist is always interested to read about bargains in the area, if only because they're rarer than a morning when......

Last week, the Governator put an abortion loving lesbian in charge of his Adminstration. The Right was not amused (neither was the Left, but that's neither here nor there in terms of this posting). How not amused? John Fund in the Wall Street Journal not only compares the nomination of Susan Kennedy to Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, but wonders if Arnie Jumped the Shark. That shark was jumped months ago. But wait, there's more. In response, a conservative group is starting a drive to draft Mel Gibson to run against the Governator. They've even set up a Web site with an online petition to encourage him to run. We think is an awesome idea. After all, Arnie and Mel never actually squared off in a movie which means it'll be like one of those Kirk vs. Picard type situations. Just think of it, the Terminator versus Braveheart, Predator vs. Lethal Weapon. We can already picture the debate: as Arnie recites one-liners from his movies for the hundredth time, Mel goes into his "Three Stooges" routine while his aides torture him in slow motion. ...

You know, public schools just can't win. Up here in San Francisco, it's a constant "our schools are failing and segregated," so affluent upper-middle-classers have to spend gajillions of dollars on private schools or leave the city. But down in Cupertino....! The Wall Street Journal reports that Caucasian families are unhappy with their public schools too, to the point where they're also opting out of the Santa Clara public school system -- but not because the schools are bad. Rather, parents are unhappy because the schools have become too rigorous. Is this an Onion article or what? White families in Cupertino complain that Caucasian children are in the minority and the constant academic pressure is bad for their children's self-esteem. Other families complain that there are too many math and science classes at Monte Vista High, and not enough sports teams. One mother says she would never have moved to Cupertino if she'd realized "how much it would change" (now, what do you think that means?), while Asian-American families note that no one in (whiter) Palo Alto seems to have a problem with its competitive high school academic scene and wonder if it's got something to do with race. That said, it's also true that in Cupertino, the lower-level classes are the only ones with diverse enrollment -- and an overall 3.0 GPA puts you in the bottom third of your class. Man, we are so glad we're done with school. This Asian sucks at math. ...

We always thought there was something disingenuous about the conservative letters they published in the Chron! The Contra Costa Times discovered that an enterprising Republican named Kyle Vallone had written at least 200 fake letters to various Northern California newspapers, and gotten at least 20 or so published. Vallone would use fake names, various phone numbers, and free email accounts to write the pieces and then when the fact-checkers came, disguise his voice on the phone. "I'm very good at accents," he said, and noted he was particularly proud of the identity "Batswala Dala." Vallone specialized in conservative letters, noting that he'd gotten seven letters against Barbara Boxer published, but had also written on a range of topics, like recalling Gray Davis and boosting missile defense. Interestingly, Vallone had also been busted (under his own name) for plagiarizing a letter he'd gotten published from the WSJ. Read the article, it's pretty entertaining! This reminds us of that smart kid summer camp class that got 20-some letters published in the New York Times (only without the smart kids). And who can forget the Bay Area's original fake letter-writing crank, Lazlo Toth? (a.k.a. Don Novello/Father Guido Sarducci). And Wonkette on Vallone. ...

We initially passed this press release from the Author's Guild along to Gothamist Jen so that she could get the scoop on Gawker and FishbowlNY. Why? Because it looks like the Author's Guild along with the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, have come through with an $18 million dollar settlement for copyright infringement by companies like Time, Inc., The New York Times and the Wall......

...and this time, at least, that's what we want to hear. John at the Legal Reader points to a piece quoting Terry Gross, partner in San Francisco-based Gross & Belsky LLP, who contends that Apple's case against ThinkSecret blogger and Harvard student Nick Ciarelli is completely without merit. Apple counters that "Apple's DNA is innovation, and the protection of our trade secrets is crucial to our success." They accuse Ciarelli of 'inducing' someone to violate......

Not at all. Armstrong Williams was paid through taxpayer dollars to sell the Administration's terrible No Child Left Behind Act, possibly infringing upon all sorts of anti-propaganda laws and definitely kicking the mangled corpse known as journalistic ethics repeatedly. Berkeley-based Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fully disclosed his relationship with the Dean campaign on his site and in the media early last year. What's turning out to be the real story in all this is......