A guy with a sign is begging Wall Street passersby to fund his iPhone app. He just needs $250,000. And with venture capitalists putting $10 million into a grilled cheese sandwich, is that really asking too much?

Life is different near the center of the tech bubble. Facebook employees, due to earn staggering fortunes, are nevertheless sad. They'll have to wait six months for the money, you see.

It's probably wildly overvalued, so don't buy the stock. But if you're a happy Pandora customer, you can cheer the news that the magical online radio service's IPO went well today. Three billion dollars well.

Someone is aggressively hyping Facebook to the financial community. Investors are being told the social network's value will double in 12 months — and quadruple over 18 months — to $100 billion. It sounds like someone has shares to unload.

Perhaps you think of yourself as a "rational investor," and you're not normally "the type" to make major investment decisions based on the shrill urgings of a pop culture internet blog. Until now. Sell your gold! It's not too late!

A prominent startup founder dramatically unveiled a grilled cheese sandwich at the Wall Street Journal-affiliated "D" conference today and announced that a leading venture firm put upwards of $10 million into the cheese and bread combination. No, really.

Airbnb went from monstrously valued startup to accused unethical spammer in one day. The vacation rental website is taking its investors for a wild ride to the borderline of infamy, just like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and so many other startups.

AOL's Arianna Huffington said at a conference today, "if you buy some AOL stock right now, you're going to make a lot of money." And people actually listened; AOL stock hit a 19-day peak. What is wrong with people?

LinkedIn shares more than doubled in price in their first day of trading, valuing the annoyingly pointless social network at more than $8 billion. Now that the social networking bubble has reached the masses, it isn't just annoying, it's dangerous.

If there is one takeaway from Vanity Fair's long profile of sordid FarmVille pimp Mark Pincus, it's that obnoxiously flaunting your funding and coarser instincts like a blowhard is threatening to come back into fashion, just like in 2000.

Facebook will be worth $100 billion by the time it goes public, sources told the Wall Street Journal, after earning more than $2 billion this year before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Who knew Americans' personal information was so valuable?

The Facebook investment bubble is apparently too inflated for some investors. Owners of close to $1 billion in Facebook stock are slashing their asking price as they push toward the exits, sources tell Reuters.

How do we know Silicon Valley is inflating an unsustainable tech investment bubble? Because Hollywood dope Ashton Kutcher and his technologically enhanced mate Demi Moore have somehow become mascots for tech investment. Sell, by God. Sell!

Nothing loves disaster more than gold prices. Thanks to the unspeakable devastation in Japan, gold prices rose once again today, and investors have high hopes that they'll just keep on rising for the foreseeable future.

According to the uploader of this video—which depicts, in real time, a soap bubble falling victim to the elements and freezing solid—you should be somewhere where the temperature is at least five degrees below zero. Brrr! But... science!

Did you get a raise last year? Seventy-four percent of White House staffers did, according a Gawker analysis of the White House's annual salary reports to Congress. Probably for the great job they're doing with the economy.

The Way We Live Now: huffing and puffing and blowing houses down. We're talking economically, okay? Home equity has evaporated. Deflation is inevitable. Credit card rates are increasingly usurious. Your safe investments are bubbles. And your painting's been stolen. Blows.

Soap bubbles never get old. They're exhilarating to pop when you're a kid, beautiful to watch when you're an adult and twee to play with when you're Zooey Deschanel. But how do they work?

Tila Tequila is too crazy for Gary Busey's safe haven. Michael Jackson hired mad scientists to teach pet chimp Bubbles to speak. Lindsay Lohan dodges "snake charmer" lawyer. Monday gossip is full of peril.

Studies and conventional wisdom tell us that the suburbs are the new slums. But that is not stopping developers from building thousands of brand new houses—with elevators!—among the empty shells of foreclosed suburban homes. And people are buying.