Yeah, the iPhone is pretty and all, but Palo Altans have been more occupied with a proposal to roll out a Mandarin immersion program in their public schools. While similar programs have been approved in San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area, the proposal is likely to get nixed in Palo Alto . We suspect Caucasian…

Laptops explode, corporations hire spies—just your average year. The Top 21 Tech Screwups of 2006 [PC World]

There seems to be no shortage of guys in Silicon Valley who work out obsessively, and even fewer who are shy about showing off their goods.

Michael Stoppelman, brother of Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, is in no danger of being called a manly-man. The Google coder and occasional male model is apparently competing for the wussy title of BlissGuy, in a contest held by swanky Bliss Spa. (The winner becomes the "face" of Bliss' soon-to-be released men's line, a…

Note to big boss guys: If you're going to hook up with underlings at the company Christmas party, try to avoid leaving photographic evidence.

That goes for you Russel "It's-Better-With-Butter" Simmons, Yelp's co-founder, chief technology officer, and hottie in charge.

It's the sort of drama written for Second Life nerds. CNET writer Daniel Terdiman nabbed an exclusive! hot! interview with supposed second-life millionaire Ailin Graef. After the interview started, Terdiman and Second-Life publicist were assaulted with animated flying penises. You can't make this crap up. But virtual…

There are plenty of reasons to hate Google. Aside from the fact that the company has some bizarre aversion to being evil, the people of Google never run out of ways to rub it in our faces that their jobs are better than ours.

Maybe eBay China execs never learned to speak the native Chingchong tongue, or maybe its Chinese auction site sucked ass, but for whatever reason the company's adventures in the Middle Kingdom have been a spectacular failure. Now—"hundreds" of millions of dollars later—eBay is calling for backup.

It doesn't take much to amuse the stock-happy Googlers. Case in point: The company held its first pajama day (a beta test, of course), when workers were "encouraged" to wear their pajamas to work.

I'm Bitter Ex-Dot-Commer and I'll be your Valleywag editor today.
A little about me: I'm a Leo and I come here often. I like pina coladas, but I'm just as happy to chug Robitussin if the occasion calls for it. I'm from San Francisco, but I've been festering in New York for the past five years.
What I'm looking for: A…