confirmed

Owen Thomas · 09/21/07 06:43PM

Sky Dayton's wireless company, Helio, as rumored, is getting new funding without help from co-owner EarthLink, an Internet service provider facing financial straits. Joint-venture partner SK Telecom is investing $270 million in Helio and renegotiating its agreement with EarthLink. [Reuters]

Megan McCarthy · 09/14/07 03:40PM

PRWeek confirms our month-old scoop that Facebook has hired PR firm OutCast to help manage the hungry journalists seeking information on the hot social network. [PRWeek]

Megan McCarthy · 09/08/07 04:45PM

The San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times confirm our scoop that the party plane owned by Google founder Sergey Brin and Larry Page was spotted at NASA-owned Moffet Field last week. According to the Chronicle, officials from one neighboring town aren't happy with the private jet's appearance on the government-owned hangar: "No one has problems with military flights, but it's hard to make a national security case here."

Owen Thomas · 09/05/07 11:38AM

A Google spokesperson obliquely concedes, in a follow-up item on Valleywag's scoop, that Marcy Simon, CEO Eric Schmidt's gal pal, is working as a consultant at the company. [New York Post]

Owen Thomas · 08/31/07 12:45PM

Keith Kelly repeats yesterday's Valleywag report that Mansueto Ventures, publisher of rival tech-business title Fast Company, is negotiating to buy Time Inc.'s Business 2.0, which is in the midst of publishing its last issue under the current staff. CNET, rumored to have also bid, has apparently dropped out of the sale process. [New York Post]

France's Hi-Media buys Fotolog for $90 million

Owen Thomas · 08/27/07 11:28AM

Our tipster was right that Fotolog, the New York-based photo-sharing site had been sold — but wrong, alas, about the buyer, and the price. We'd heard of a Latin American buyer paying north of $100 million. Instead, it's Hi-Media, a French Internet concern, paying $90 million in cash and stock — a rich price for a company with 10 million users but only $2.3 million in revenues projected for this year. Hi-media is publicly traded on the Euronext stock exchange, so its shares are as good as cash. But Fotolog backers 3i and BV Capital say they plan to hang onto their shares and "participate in the development" of the combined company. So now the most interesting question is, who cashed out? We wouldn't be shocked if CEO John Borthwick, above, and founder Scott Heiferman were among those receiving an immediate cash payout. Borthwick has a host of other startup ventures, and Heiferman is the CEO of Meetup.

Owen Thomas · 08/20/07 02:05PM

In a podcast with Leo LaPorte, Patrick Norton admits that he's joining Revision3, the online-video startup staffed by many of his former coworkers at TechTV, the late, lamented nerd-news cable channel. [The Week In Tech]

Forbes' Fake Steve plan revealed on TV

Owen Thomas · 08/06/07 07:21PM

In an interview with CNBC, Dan Lyons, the Forbes senior editor revealed as Fake Steve Jobs, makes two fascinating admissions: First, that he has, in fact, not concluded negotiations with his employer on bringing the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog to Forbes.com. Second, that he and his employer did have a plan in the works to launch a Forbes-backed version of his site after Labor Day. I'm counting that as two hunches confirmed.

News.com fires its video team

Owen Thomas · 07/10/07 05:31PM

Turns out that the rumor we heard was on target: CNET, in an effort to rationalize its video operations, laid off News.com executive editor Harry Fuller and Neha Tiwari, a video producer. "The reasoning behind it is that News.com Video was often competing internally with CNET's video property, CNET TV, and that there was too much content overlap," says a tipster. "There are also indications that Harry had a falling out with [News.com editor] Jai Singh, but the details of this supposed disagreement were not revealed." Sounds juicy. Anyone got more?