Folio reports that Time Inc., the parent company of Business 2.0, will be making a decision on the fate of the magazine next week, according to a source. The article, however, then quotes a Time Inc. spokesperson saying that the company "absolutely will not" be making a decision next week. The spokesperson in question is, of course, fibbing flack Danielle Perissi, so take her statement with a very large grain of salt. Heck, store it away in a Morton's warehouse.

There's no official word on the fate of Business 2.0, the Time Inc.-owned magazine where I used to work. The publication, once fated to shut down after its September issue, is still alive, thanks to a hastily granted extension of life support. The staff is working on the October issue, while higher-ups consider offers to buy the magazine that streamed in after word of its impending demise leaked. But they seem to have resigned themselves to the fate of being absorbed into larger sister publication Fortune, based on this sign: A magazine logo near the entrance has been altered to read "Fortune 2.0."

You can count on our froggy friends to scour every word published about them for the slightest sign of discrimination. And indeed, a French blogger has detected what he dubs "l'américanisme 2.0" in Business 2.0's August issue. The magazine's crime against internationalism: Calling France's Facebook and YouTube wannabes "clones" of the vastly more popular American sites, even though the sites in question, Skyrock and Dailymotion, are older than the sites they supposedly copied.

An aside: While working on this morning's item about the back-from-the-brink reprieve of Business 2.0, I phoned Time Inc. flack Danielle Perissi, whose ostensible job is to represent the publisher's business titles. As usual, she issued a denial that any changes were afoot. Well, no, that's too kind: I should say, rather that she lied baldfacedly and, what's far worse, unconvincingly about the matter. I don't know why I bothered to call her. Or why colleagues at Time Inc., a company full of journalists with no patience for inept flacks, tolerate her. Oh, right — they don't.

Everyone was expecting Business 2.0, the Time Inc.-owned tech magazine where — full disclosure — I used to work, to shut down this Friday after staffers sent the September issue to the printers. But that is, as of last night, no longer the case. Time Inc. is giving the magazine an eleventh-hour reprieve, in the manner of the governor calling in a pardon just as a sentenced prisoner is being strapped into the electric chair. Top execs at the publisher are now, instead of arranging funeral plans, sorting through a flood of offers to buy the magazine. Here's what's changed — and why.

On Thursday, Om Malik is going to make a big announcement about GigaOm, his tech blog network. How do we know this? Because he's cancelled still throwing a swanky party to be held this Wednesday at San Francisco's De Young Museum and briefing journalists afterwards. (Update: Turns out the party's still on. Personal to Om: Dude, my invitation appears to have been lost in the mail. Ahem.) Which partner is Malik announcing a deal with? Not Time Inc., apparently. Malik, a former senior writer at Time Inc.'s Business 2.0 magazine, held acquisition talks with his former employer a few months ago, but they went nowhere. (Vivek Shah, the newly appointed head of Time Inc.'s business publications, even joked about it with Malik when they ran into each other at Fortune's iMeme conference.) I gave Om a buzz, but he couldn't talk when I reached him. I'll update when I know more.

Fortune's summer party, scheduled for today, has been postponed, ostensibly for weather reasons, as New York is under siege from a nor'easter. With sister publication Business 2.0 on the rocks, it might have been seemly to cancel it altogether. We've learned, however, that the all-day shindig has been rescheduled for tomorrow. So, as Fortune staffers party, Business 2.0 employees will continue huddling under a storm of their own. Rumors, true and false, are flying. (I should note that I'm covering this as a former Business 2.0 editor who worked at the magazine for seven years — but events are moving so fast that all of this comes from new reporting since I left, not any knowledge I acquired on the job.) Here's what I know, and what I don't know, so far:

Looks like the Save Business 2.0 Facebook group might be in vain. This just in from a tipster, confirming the tech title's rumored demise:

Can a Facebook coalition of the willing save Business 2.0? [AdAge]

Fans of Time Inc. tech title Business 2.0 have taken the bold step of starting a Facebook group to show their support for the troubled publication. So far, the group has amassed over 50 members, including Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, Quittner's wife, New York Times columnist Michelle Slatalla, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, and LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. Oh, and former Business 2.0 editor and my new boss Owen Thomas. Let's hope this roster of Valley luminaries is more effective than other futile Facebook groups, such as the 29,359 people who believe strongly in removing the "is" from the Facebook status message.

Technology-oriented magazine Business 2.0 might publish its last issue in September. [New York Times]

• In an interview with the Guardian, Conrad Black calls his fraud trial "bullshit" and announces that he's at war with the U.S. government. The paper also has an excerpt from Black's forthcoming biography of Richard Nixon, which praises the former president's "surpassing dignity." Read into that what you will. [Guardian]
  

NICK DOUGLAS — After "radiosurgeon," "robot programmer," and other jobs, "Second Life lawyer" is one of Business 2.0's "new new careers." The occupation's poster boy is Stevan Lieberman, who (according to B2) made $7k in his first two weeks of meeting clients online. Of course, since Second Life only has so many members, this is a "new new career" with a tiny cap on its practitioners. What with this and "Twitter politicians," just thank God no one's written about "MySpace bail-bond firms."

PAUL BOUTIN - Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner has an exit strategy: He's placed himself in the running for dean of UC Berkeley's journalism school. J-school wonks respect him for his decade with TIME, but I remember Josh Quittner as the guy who used a QuickCam to give me the finger online in 1995. That grainy photo, plus a timeline of JQ's decade of misbehavior after the jump. (You can attend Quittner's public presentation to the school on March 21. Don't be late - this is the guy who once made Steve Jobs reschedule a keynote.)

PAUL BOUTIN — Engineers use Greek letters like alpha and beta to be specific. But the fuzzy logic of marketers and magazine editors (me included) has rendered them meaningless. SVUG defines proper jargon after the jump.

Business 2.0 gets all Web 1.6 by vomiting forth 16 new blogs, each less required-reading than the last. They can be consumed individually or in best-of form, by way of a digest called "Business 2.0 Beta." Does that make any sense? Isn't Business 2.0 out of beta yet? Ah, nerd humor. Anyway, choose among a typical mix of biz-oriented blogs along with some highly tangential candidates, such as futurist trivia, or "humor," or the tamest vice industry blog you'll ever see, or ... water technology? Who cares, book deals for everyone!

• Man, this is not the New York Times's best weekend. Their latest gaffe: calling Peter Hirshberg, chairman of blog search company Technorati, the CEO. Poor tech blogger Om Malik was afraid CEO Dave Sifry had been ousted. But Sifry replied on Om's blog that he's still in charge. He tells me the mix-up was probably an innocent mistake by the Times; no one interviewed Sifry for the article. [GigaOM]

Hey, nothing against the eleven corporate leaders profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine's latest feature, "The Disruptors." (Except you, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Nobody likes you.) It's just that "glory stories" like this make us giggle, because by definition they have to play down the arguments against their subjects. And B2 added Wired-worthy hero shots like the one shown here. So here's a guide to the most egregious idolatry:

Why, Forbes, that is a clever theory on "waves of computing" you have there! It reminds us of the theory published last July in competing magazine Business 2.0!

The Business 2.0 September cover, picturing Fark.com owner Drew Curtis surrounded by falling cash, was cute, but it just lacked oomph. So Gawker Media designer Jennifer Thorpe punched it up a bit, adding TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington in the process.