Spoke too soon about JotSpot — two sources piped up to say that the wiki company built a software platform that could very well make the company worth the $50kM Google reportedly paid for it. One of those sources is a former JotSpot employee, the other is Netscape creator Marc Andreesen.

A source says eBay is silencing employees from its PayPal headquarters in San Jose, telling them not to talk to friends about HQ getting bombed last night.

"Authorities have suspicions about what may have caused the blast, Guerrero said, but he declined to disclose them."
— San Jose Mercury News, reporting on an October 31 explosion at eBay's PayPal headquarters

Firefighters rushed to eBay's San Jose headquarters last night after an explosion in a four-story eBay building. First thought to be a transformer, the cause is now being reported as a bomb.

It's quarterly report time in businessland, let's check the score!

You think it's over? It's only over when Andrew Krucoff (and his swarm of parasitical pro bono attorneys) say it's over. To recap, friendly Gawker ghost Krucoff won an eBay auction for lunch with Architectural Digest's Katherine Scully. The auction was arranged to benefit a charity called Alpha Workshops, which trains people with HIV in the "decorative arts." However, after winning the auction and paying up, Krucoff was notified by Paypal — days later — that the lunch was no longer available, and his money was refunded. No further explanation has been forthcoming. But given the suspicion that the auction might have been scotched due to Krucoff's tempestuous history with AD owner Conde Nast, the man is in no mood to take a form rejection lying down. Instead, there is hushed, urgent, accusatory whispering about restraint of trade, legal recourse, and loss of work — in other words, can we polish up a teapot for this tempest? The faceless folk at eBay assure that "appropriate action" has been taken after the auction cancellation, and Alpha Workshops appears to have dropped out of the eBay auction business. Let's hope that if the charity wouldn't take Krucoff's money, they at least took Conde Nast's to kill the deal.

We were very much looking forward to friend-of-the-family Andrew Krucoff's lunch with Architectural Digest's Katherine Scully. The occasion was duly won, bought, and paid for via charity auction, but as the man himself reports, manifest shenanigans rule the day:

• There's no way I'm touching this "WebGuild Conference" on October 19, but I can get a press pass if a reader volunteers to ride into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell. In return for the press pass, the correspondent will provide live IM commentary of speeches by Google VP Marissa Mayer, MarketWatch reporter Bambi Francisco, and anyone whose speech is especially interesting (or mockable). E-mail tips@valleywag.com if you're interested. [WebGuild]

Remember yesterday's post about the eBay auction to have lunch with an Architectural Digest editor in the Conde Nast cafeteria? Well, as of this afternoon, the bidding was at a healthy $204.25. And the high bidder? Someone named Krupiter. Hmmm... why does that name sound familiar? Ah, yes, step forward Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff, the former Conde Nast freelancer whom the company escorted from the premises and requested, Oscar Madison style, to never return. Can one fired Conde Nast worker receive a shot at redemption and get back into the building? We're guessing Si's gonna bump up the bid to whatever the necessary figure is, but it should be fun while it lasts.

For Hollywood prop collectors, fans of Mike Myers, and desperately lonely, middle-aged science fiction enthusiasts alike, we bring you this unique eBay opportunity to own a Fembot dummy, complete with original French maid's uniform and perforated breasts for your tommy-gun-rigging convenience:

Feast your lascivious eyes on this, the original "fembot" prop from 1999's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Those unfortunate enough to have seen the movie may recall that the bot was modeled after the Elizabeth Hurley character. So even though this version comes with a removable face (included!) and gun-mountable nipple ports, you can still exult in ample late-1990s Hurley cleavage. Only $1,500 on eBay, and no bids as of this writing. Get everyone in the book club to pitch in.

A tipster directs us to the following (yes, yes, it's for charity, we're terrible for making fun, etc.) opportunity on eBay:

No comment needed.

by Beth Gottfried

Forget Sun + Apple. The next big deal will be eBay's inevitable merger with one of the two search giants. The net commerce company is already in bed with both Yahoo and Google.

Every week brings a new merger rumor, and just like celebrity couples (Bennifer! TomKat! Vive la diff rance!), every merger needs its portmanteau. So remember the official merger names:

It's time again to check up on how the big dogs relate to each other. While blogger Om Malik chooses to say it with words, we chose fingerpaints. That was a disaster, so we made this graph.

Amid all this Redstone-Cruise hullabaloo, it's almost too easy to forget the sweet, sugar-titted pleasures of the last "my, how far the world's biggest movie stars have fallen" sensation to sweep through Hollywood: Mel Gibson's Swervy Joy Ride Through Hebey-Hatesville. Well, not everyone has such a limited attention span: A savvy, web-enabled entrepreneur has managed to score an actual cocktail napkin from Moonshadows, the very Malibu bar where Gibson set the stage for his infamous arrest, and put the specimen up for sale on eBay. Yes, they were napkins exactly like this one that absorbed the sweat off every one of Gibson's libations that ill-fated night, lying just inches away from him as he draped his hairy forearms around the nearest set of giggly blondes and smiled feebly for a nearby camera. The serious collector might well be willing to entertain this flawless reproduction's But It Now price of $5,000.

Failed

We almost missed this blurb from Terry Semel's interview with Fortune Magazine, published Monday. The Yahoo CEO was asked: