• Jeff Zucker may take over for Bob Wright as head of NBC by the end of the year. Honestly, you get the feeling that Zucker could rip the head off a transgendered prostitute and skullfuck it in the middle of a board meeting and he'd still get promoted. [NYP]
  

When Lou Reed performed last night at the Web 2.0 Summit dinner, it felt more like "All Tomorrow's Parties" than "No Money Down" — such a sign of excess that some vets recalled an Elvis Costello performance at an Ask.com party in the first dot-com boom.

• No badge, no pass, no problem: Hang out in the Sonoma conference room, which Mashery rented out as soon as it heard O'Reilly was holding its conference here. They're handing out margaritas, and I hear the wifi's better than the sketchy conference connection. Hell, I'm walking down there as soon as I finish this list. [SF Gate]

The founders of the Weblogs Inc. Network sold their Blogsmith blogging platform to AOL (who bought WIN in 2005) last week, according to founder Jason Calacanis. Sounds like AOL paid $4-5 million. The deal wasn't public until now.

• Mika Salmi, the new head of MTV (Global Digital Media) will be an "enabler," helping MTV's various websites work better together. [NYP]
  

• Damn, YouTube really knows how to play it! After Viacom made the site rip down some videos taken from Comedy Central last week, the two companies talked, and the clips are going back up. [Adweek]

Each Yahoo acquisition prediction — will they buy Facebook? YouTube? Ebay? Will they sell to Disney? — is followed by expert analyses of each theoretical deal's implications. So now that Fortune says Yahoo wants to buy AOL from Time Warner, let's list the...

• Om Malik discusses Microsoft's fear of online apps. Apparently they've never been to Ning, home of web2.0 abandonware, with notable apps like Who's a Bigger Douche. [Business 2.0]

The world's biggest Internet service provider keeps getting smaller, this week announcing that offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona will close in December and 1400 workers will lose their jobs. AOL will also sell its 400-person Ogden, Utah call center, with no guarantee that those employees will keep their jobs.

Oh look, a New York Times piece about AOL customer service reps!

In next week's fall issue of Ms. magazine, there's a cover story called "We Had Abortions," featuring the names of thousands of American woman who signed a petition and knowingly, intentionally volunteered their names in support of the pro-choice cause. You know the rationale: real women, unashamed, stepping forward to declare that they made the choice and were not struck by lightning on their way out of the clinic. Naturally the story is causing all sorts of pro-life hysteria which, on the upside, means people might actually start reading Ms. again. On the downside, AOL posted a lovely poll yesterday asking readers: "What do you think of Ms. magazine's naming of women who had abortions?" Not exactly a straight question, since the women outed themselves. Late yesterday afternoon, Ms. complained, and AOL changed the question to something "more fair" (above), though it doesn't strike us as much of an improvement. But you have to admire AOL's restraint in not asking "What do you think of Ms. magazine's list of sinners, harlots, and whores?" You know their subscribers were clamoring for that one.

"Where do you want to go today?" "Think Different." "No wonder it's number one." The tech world's vague slogans may seem interchangeable, but if they're applied to the wrong product — even within the same company — they could prove disastrous.

While AOL's chief speaks at MIT,

Ten points for customer service, AOL! Mercury News blog Good Morning Silicon Valley found this statement in AOL users' new class-action suit against the company that released their search records.

• IBM will start putting its patent applications online, hoping to rise above the morass of the U.S. patent system. [NY Times]

• MTV, in an effort to prove that the level of discourse in a virtual world can indeed get stupider than World of Warcrafters asking "how i mine for fish," will launch "Virtual Laguna Beach" for boob-tubers who can't be sexy and carefree beach-goers in the real world. [NY Times]

AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis announced today that on January 1, he'll "retire from active management" while keeping his job title.

Time Warner's stuck at a $16 stock share value, says Variety, and AOL is partly to blame.

Remember how, in the aftermath of AOL releasing the records of 500,000 users, the New York Times found the one searcher who didn't look for filth?

Wired News lists ten famous privacy violations, pegging them to AOL's recent release of 500,000 users' search records. The incidents are impressive — the laptop theft that threatened the information of 25 million U.S. veterans, the murder facilitated by an Internet investigation firm — but they shouldn't overshadow three privacy fiascos that could happen any day now: