Don’t call it an app store — it’s an open content distribution system. Android Market will be Google’s version of the iPhone App Store. A PR-speak description of the site emphasizes that posting apps for sale will be a lot like uploading videos to YouTube. But with iPhone app developers already posing as punk-rock heroes, how much more developer-friendly does Google really need to be?

A screenshot from the not-yet-launched store seems designed to appeal to wonky coders, not the mass market of non-technical buyers Google will need to attract. My guess: Google will fall all over themselves insisting it’s all about developers and Freedom, until the store is ready for launch. Then they’ll shove ZeDev Tools and Murderdrome aside for Bingo and FlipBook. At least with a YouTube-like rating system, there’s a chance of surprise hits that aren’t chosen by app store curators with a canned idea of what a smartphone is for.

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Why would anyone not think Aaron Sorkin is working on a movie about Facebook? “You can’t handle the truth!” That’s the line Sorkin penned for Jack Nicholson in 1992’s A Few Good Men. Nicholson might well have been speaking to some of our readers, who reacted poorly to the news that the West Wing writer was working on a movie about Mark Zuckerberg’s creation. One begged us to uncover the fraud: “The BBC, the Guardian and New York Magazine are all over the totally fake-seeming Aaron Sorkin movie about Facebook. Please get to the bottom of this horrible joke.” Sorry, you’ll have to handle this: Sorkin himself confirmed that he is indeed planning a movie about how Zuckerberg and his Harvard classmates created Facebook.

Rather, Sorkin’s publicist, Joy Fehily, tells us, on his behalf. Or whoever answers her email. With all the layers of secretaries and managers and representatives in Hollywood, you can never tell. Yesterday, Sorkin’s agent’s assistant issued a nondenial, before politely informing us, “I have to hang up on you now.”

Likewise, the skeptics will have to hang up on any remaining doubts that Sorkin is behind this movie. Really, could anyone else do the movie? Sorkin is the master of the office drama, picking up on the details that make an inside-baseball story at once believable to insiders and entertaining to outsiders. If it had been anyone but Sorkin, we would have scoffed, too.

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To hear iPhone-app developers tell it, VCs are circling and the end of days is nigh. Some developers can push out at an app in four months for less than $5,000, so why play with other people’s money at all? “Fuck the VCs” says indie developer John Casasanta, of Tap Tap Tap. “What we’re about to experience in the iPhone world is going to be a bubble along the lines of the one in the late ’90s/early 2000s.” Echoing that is Mike Lee, cofounder of iPhone app development team Tapulous, who raised $1.8M in angel funding this summer. This week, Lee, one of Tapulous’s nine employees, was told to exit his own company. Lee left a depressingly cocky send-off to his team in his wake. It’s hardly the rallying cry to go it alone that he meant it to be.

When I spoke to each of you about Tapulous, whether I recruited you, or inherited you from GoGoApps, I spoke of an engineering paradise where smart people would come together to ship beautiful applications, to lead a computing revolution, and to become a real force for world change.

It’s a blustery start, yes: app development is world-changingly romantic, but romance rarely pays the bills. Still, it’s not as silly as when he starts to channel Steve Jobs:

So what now? I’m going to work on my autobiography and come to terms with being ejected from the company I helped build. I’m going to spend time with my wife, and continue to fret over Madagascar. Then, when the next interesting project comes along, you’ll hear about it here. So in closing, my team, my friends, I must leave you to the fight.

Who can resist a tease about their next act when they’re headed out the door, right? But Lee doesn’t stop there. No, his new project comes pitched in his very next post:

Yesterday I said I was going to hang out and write and figure out what I want to do, but it’s kind of obvious what I want to do… Forget professional CEOs. I’m an engineer, and a company is a just a project with formal ownership. Let’s engineer a better company… Here’s an idea — I could take my newly minted Silicon Valley Veteran badge and appeal to investors who are personal heroes, like Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Guy Kawasaki, Paul Graham, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Alison Jolly, Richard Dawkins, and Wil Shipley.

As iPhone developer (and former Apple developer) Buzz Andersen points out as a friendly counterpoint, Lee isn’t doing anything all that revolutionary by taking a comparatively stupid amount of money to make iPhone apps.

But that’s what developers really want, to be the celebrities in their own rockstar scene. And that requires the kind of ineffable “indie cred” taking VC cash could tarnish.

But do they want to put out a good product, or just a product that makes themselves feel good? Maybe “doing it punk rock-style,” as Andersen suggests, isn’t just a glamorous way to frame bootstrapping. It also allows coders like Lee to pose as uncompromising revolutionaries. Right: Uncompromising revolutionaries who help Steve Jobs sell millions of iPhones out of the kindness of their hearts.

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Executives at Sony are forecasting 100,000 sales for this week’s release of Afrika, a game where you play photojournalist and shoot photos instead of bad guys. It’s a major departure from exploratory games of the Myst genre, or the build-your-own landscape of Second Life. Afrika’s premise is that the high-definition animals will be so much fun to watch that you won’t be bored out of your mind. What I want to know: How long until the furries hack their way into the scenery?

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It’s time for the annual bacchanal of burning fossil fuel and using drugs known as Burning Man. According to a tipster, “Google has a total of five big-rig hospitality trucks camped out at Burning Man for the Google elite and some other Valley bigwigs.” Hope they stocked up on water, condoms and 2C-B! For those of you who would prefer to stay home and relish the widespread availability of parking, Scott Beale has assembled a handy guide to experiencing the scene on the playa without getting any sand somewhere uncomfortable. [Laughing Squid] (Photo by Dana Robinson)

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In a summary judgement issued today, Judge Howard Lloyd of the Northern California Federal District Court declared that online video site Veoh can not be held liable for copyright infringement in a case brought by the Io Group, an adult content producer better known as Titan Media. Users had uploaded clips of steamy man-on-man action to Veoh, including one clip which ran 40 minutes. Rather than issue takedown notices to Veoh, the Io Group sued immediately for infringement. The judge found that Veoh’s policies and practices in terms of policing the site — both at the time and currently — were “reasonable.” Such practices include fingerprinting video files in order to block identical copies from being uploaded in the future and disabling the accounts of repeat infringers, which the site has done 1,096 times since it’s launch, according to the company. The precedent it sets could very well aid YouTube in it’s defense of similar allegations brought in the suit by Viacom. After the jump, highlights from Lloyd’s decision.

When Veoh allowed adult material on the site, it was all about customer service:

Veoh employees occasionally “spot check” videos after publication for compliance with Veoh’s policies and to ensure accuracy in the description and categorization of the content. For example, Veoh has, on occasion, edited the video description field. And, when adult content was still permitted on veoh.com, Veoh employees sometimes reviewed files to ensure proper ratings on any file containing sexually explicit material and reviewed sexually explicit files to determine whether they should be identified as “gay” or “straight” and added tags as needed.

Lloyd also made it clear that “reasonable” steps to keeping serial infringers off the site does not have to include blocking IP addresses, since those only identify the computer, not the user:

Here, Io has presented no evidence suggesting that tracking (or verifying) users’ actual identity or that blocking their IP addresses is a more effective reasonable means of implementation. There is no material dispute that, while IP addresses identify a particular computer connected to the Internet, they do not distinguish between users (e.g., family
members) who may share the same computer.

The plaintiffs also argued that Veoh, in transcoding video into Flash and pulling stills for thumbnail preview images, exempted it from the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions. Again, the judge disagreed:

Essentially, the issue is whether Veoh is disqualified from Section 512(c)’s safe harbor because of automated functions that facilitate access to user-submitted content on its website. In the context of Veoh’s business, this appears to be a matter of first impression. Based on the record presented, this court concludes that Veoh is not disqualified from Section 512(c) safe harbor on this basis.

In the end, it’s a big win for Veoh and for other online video sites — users can upload all the copyrighted ass-fucking they want, but as long as they follow standard DMCA procedure, they can rest assured that they won’t be held liable.

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Google’s named after “googol,” an incredibly large number — misspelled. Does it surprise you that the search engine makes mistakes with math, too? Just for fun, watch what happens when you use the Google calculator to solve equations involving a Googol (10^100).

Click each formula to see Google’s calculator results:

10^100

(10^100) - (10^6) = 1.0 × 10^100

(10^100) - (10^90) = 1.0 × 10^100

With a few minutes’ patience, you can do any of the above calculations by hand on a white board. A hundred digits isn’t really that many. But Google shouldn’t feel too bad — my copy of Excel failed the test, too.

(Screenshot via Blogoscoped)

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“West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin is still in the research phase of his Facebook: The Movie project, but we thought Valleywag’s readers could help cast the lead role. Take your pick from our list, below.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

(Photos by AP and Getty)

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Ginny-Marie Case wins the prize. While others thumb-type the same old same from the DNC in Denver, she’s Twittering her way through labor. “At 4 cm. Epidural is in. Doing well.” Tweeting your ob/gyn exam during an earthquake is now officially lame. Ginny, when they hand you your lovely newborn? Put down the phone.

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Those Europeans like to make money just like Americans do but this year they’ve been holding off on making as much investments. What’s going on? Today’s featured commenter, Spy from the Land of Rainpeople, pithily explains:

There is a historical explanation for this. All the European venturers had already ventured overseas as far as they could go over the past centuries. They stopped venturing once further travel west/east would start meaning returning home to Europe.

So they stayed put on the west coast of America and the east coast of Asia. And they started looking for the venture opportunities that wouldn’t require any further travel.

Whoever had stayed in Europe must have been already happy there and probably wasn’t looking for a big gain.

I hope I made myself clear.

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“Sure, I know some people at Yahoo,” says an industry executive. “They’re scared. The company’s in Titanic mode.” The latest exec to scurry off the ship: Ten-year veteran Steve Boom, the No. 2 at Yahoo Mobile, says TechCrunch, which broke the story. What prompted his departure? Not sure yet, but we’ve heard Boom’s division talked about as the target of layoffs.

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The antipollution device bolted onto your car’s exhaust pipes contains platinum, an expensive metal. Some recycling shops will pay $200 for a used converter — whether it comes from a junked vehicle or was freshly sawed from beneath a Toyota Land Cruiser at the Stanford Shopping Center. I typed up the best parts of a not-online report by the San Francisco Daily Post:

From San Francisco to San Jose, scores of unlucky car owners are starting their engines only to hear a loud roar that means their catalytic converter has been cut right off the bottom of their vehicles. It commonly costs $1,000 to $2,000 to replace the anti-smog device.

“It’s got to be organized,” said Palo Alto police Agent Dan Ryan. “The thieves have to take it to someone who can melt it down, extract the platinum, and then resell it on the open market.” [Platinum, used inside the converters, sells for above $2,000 per ounce.]

AAA-approved muffler shops have taken to welding steel bars over the converter to protect it — usually after the owner has already suffered one theft.

But the best advice, police say, is simple — don’t park on the street.

(Photo by AP/Robert F. Bukaty)

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Is “West Wing” writer Aaron Sorkin making “The Facebook Movie,” as someone going by his name on Facebook claims? I called Aaron Sorkin’s agent, Ari Emanuel — yes, the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s character in “Entourage” — and got his assistant. She said: “I’m not denying anything. I just can’t comment for the company.” Meanwhile, New York got a an emailed confirmation from producer Scott Rudin. Email? People, Facebook messages are totally the way to go here.

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The brouhaha over Google’s once-legendary, now troubled free-meals perk has bubbled up more charges of wrongdoing in the search engine’s kitchens. An anonymous poster has taken to Craigslist to air charges against Google’s former global food manager, John Dickman. (The post refers to him as “Dick,” but it’s obviously Dickman being discussed.) The Craigslist poster claims Dickman, left, who is married to Lisa McEuen, right, an executive at the parent company of food-service operator Bon Appétit, with leaking inside information which helped Bon Appétit win a contract to run Google’s in-house meal service.

The poster claims Dickman then arranged to get a kickback from Bon Appétit. Google, he goes on to write, investigated Dickman and Bon Appétit, going as far as testing fruits and vegetables, presumably to see if they met Google’s high standards for organic and sustainable ingredients. The implication there: Bon Appétit had been feeding Googlers slop dressed up as fancy fare. The end of the Craigslist poster’s story: Dickman was brought before Google’s board and fired. All juicy gossip — but there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense about this whole tale.

Dickman is now working at Apple, a company with close ties to Google. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors. Apple directors Bill Campbell and Al Gore are important advisors to Schmidt. If Dickman left Google in a cloud, how could he possibly land a job at Apple? Either the poster’s allegations aren’t true — or something darker is going on here. One possible explanation: Google’s leaders might have arranged for Dickman to get a job with their friends at Apple in exchange for buying his silence on other matters.

Here are excerpts from the original post on Craigslist:

Disclaimer: I don’t work at Google. I probably never will. I’m not smart enough. As far as I can tell, almost nobody is. So it goes.

From a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, comes the following strange story …

It seems that once upon a time, there was a guy - we’ll call him Dick.

‘Dick’ was director of food services for a really big dot-com.

‘Dick’ had a wife. She was a highly placed executive at Bon Appetit….

It’s not clear exactly HOW Bon Appetit came to acquire the Go^H^H big dot-com’s contract. Right there, some thorny questions can be asked … like, whether inside information influenced Bon Appetit’s bid? …

It seems that ‘Dick’ negotiated, it is alleged, two deals - the second deal translated into a end-of-the-year ‘rebate’ check being cut by B. A. and delivered to, yes, you guessed it, ‘Dick’.

To make matters worse B. A., it has been said, did not deliver what they contracted to deliver, to big dot-com’s cafeteria(s). Apparently there was a little watering down of quality, a little substitution here and there going on.

Big dot-com, it is said, did an audit. What sort of audit? It seems likely that there were private investigators involved … I’d surmise a few bugs, here and there … and maybe some chemical and DNA profiling of fruits and vegetables.

(If ‘Dick’ was like every other ‘dick’ I’ve ever known, he lined up every week to have his car detailed by the inhouse auto detailing service - so installing a bug in his car, as well as retrieving the audio, would have been child’s play. Note to would-be ‘dicks’ … don’t be a dick.)

‘Dick’ was invited to a meeting of the BoD, I hear, and given two choices - resign, or be terminated. He’s outta there, now….

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Is “West Wing” writer Aaron Sorkin making “The Facebook Movie,” as someone going by his name on Facebook claims? I called Aaron Sorkin’s agent, Ari Emanuel — yes, the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s character in “Entourage” — and got his assistant. She said: “I’m not denying anything. I just can’t comment for the company.” Meanwhile, New York got a an emailed confirmation from producer Scott Rudin. Email? People, Facebook messages are totally the way to go here.

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