Mark Pincus says goodbye to his beloved dog Zinga

Plus je vois l'homme, plus j'aime mon chien.

Anyone who has loved a dog can appreciate the old French saying, which roughly translates to, "The more I see of man, the more I love my dog." And of this, there is no question: Mark Pincus, the well-known San Francisco Internet entrepreneur, loved his American bulldog Zinga.

She lent her name to his company and her company to his days.

In 2007, this is how I led off a story about the emerging Facebook economy:

Mark Pincus may hold a winning hand with his latest Internet venture.

More than 130,000 Facebook users a day play an online version of Texas Hold ‘Em that the San Francisco entrepreneur created at his kitchen table while his American bulldog, Zinga, slept at his feet.

Zinga, who appeared to be happiest at Pincus' feet, beat cancer three times, the first at the age of 6. She finally succumbed last week. "She died with her head in my lap as I watched her big smile turn into a quiet rest," Pincus wrote on his blog.

Zinga was 13 years old and had watched as Pincus built several start-ups. She counted among her admirers Craigslist's Craig Newmark. She had graced several publications, and Pincus named ...

Around the Web 1.8.09: In the land that CES forgot

-- Happy new year, and welcome back to the daily bogus Yahoo rumors. Boomtown

-- Google is tightening its belt; will it pull back on all these products that don't make money? Google Blogoscoped

-- No technology venture is immune to the economic maelstrom. One Laptop Per Child

-- Never fear, Obama's new technology czar is almost here. Daily Beast

-- Dilbert for technology czar! The Internet will transform our economy. Scott Adams

-- Renkoo reinvents itself -- again? GigaOm

-- Blimey, Yelp expands to London. Financial Times

-- The recession can't take the bite -- or the bark -- out of Dogster. VentureBeat

-- Microsoft gives us something to sing about in the shower. ReadWriteWeb

-- And there will still be parody videos to watch: JibJab raises $7.5 million (thank Sony and Will Smith). TechCrunch

-- A Google search guru paints us a picture of his ideal conference badge. Matt Cutts

-- So don't let all the belt tightening get you down: Now is your moment of belt-expanding Zen. SkyMall

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. Credit: Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Friending Sci Fi's 'Battlestar Galactica'

Talk about frakin' cool.

To help die-hard fans count down to the final episodes of "Battlestar Galactica," Tara Gelsomino has created Battlestarbook: the epic Sci Fi Channel series told through faux Facebook status updates:

"Kara Thrace has changed her status from Single to It's Complicated."

"Lee Adama has changed his status from Single to It's Complicated."

"The Cylons created an event: The Destruction of the 12 Colonies."

"Commander Adama became a fan of Earth."

"Dr. Gaius Baltar became a fan of himself."

The Facebooking of "Battlestar" has become an Internet hit, much to the surprise of Gelsomino, an imaginative acquisitions editor for an audiobook publisher.  Ironically, the 33-year-old Rhode Islander was never much of a sci-fan fan until last spring, when she was persuaded by relentlessly glowing reviews to rent past seasons of "Battlestar" on DVD and catch up on the cult series. Soon she was hooked just as surely as Apollo on Starbuck.

"I was blown away by what a smart, character-driven show it was," she said. She also liked the reverse gender politics and feminist portrayals, particularly what she called Katee Sackhoff's "fearless and phenomenal" portrayal of Starbuck.

Soon after reading DeeDee Baldwin's Austenbook and observing a flurry of friends changing their relationship status to "It's Complicated," she decided to spoof the ever increasingly complex web of relationships on "Battlestar" with a specific news feed for the show.

"I couldn't help thinking that if they were all on Facebook, every single one of them would have an 'It's Complicated' status," she said.

The result was Battlestarbook. The response from sci-fi sites such as i09.com and The Escapist stunned Gelsomino, who has been lobbied for sequels. "Battlestar" concludes its run this spring -- unless the Cylon regeneration ship turn its sites on extending the life of the cult series.

"I'm considering doing more episodes," Gelsomino said. "Colonel Tigh is just itching to be Superpoked -- pre-eyepatch, of course."

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Katee Sackhoff as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Jamie Bamber as Lee "Apollo" Adama. Credit: Carole Segal / Sci Fi Channel

Steve Jobs disclosure won't quiet health worries

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs broke with his usual code of secrecy Monday to explain his health problems, but the disclosure that a hormone imbalance was causing his noticeable weight loss will probably do little to tamp down concerns.

Medical experts said a hormone imbalance in a pancreatic cancer survivor raises red flags about a possible recurrence. Jobs said in 2004 that he had undergone surgery to treat a rare form of the deadly disease.

Although Jobs is known as one of the nation's most intensely private corporate leaders, he issued an open letter Monday in which he tried to assure Apple investors and customers that he was healthy enough to lead the pioneering technology company he co-founded.

The 53-year-old CEO said his doctors discovered his condition had been "robbing" his body of proteins needed for good nutrition. He is undergoing treatment, which he described as simple and straightforward.

He did not mention cancer in his letter.

"I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this," Jobs wrote.

Several medical experts, who had no access to Jobs' health records, said problems other than cancer could have caused a hormone imbalance. For example, the surgery to remove his tumor could have left Jobs with a pancreas too small to produce the necessary enzymes.

Yet hormone imbalances are common in people who have an active neuroendocrine tumor, not in people who have been cured of the cancer, said Dr. Selwyn M. Vickers, chairman of the surgery department at the University of Minnesota.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment. The board said it would give Jobs its "complete and unwavering support" while he recovered.

Read the full story here.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski and Jessica Guynn

Photo credit: Associated Press

Browsing the career of Mozilla CEO John Lilly

Check out how John Lilly made it.

The Stanford University-trained computer scientist is chief executive of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Web browser, which broke Microsoft's hold on the market so it couldn't dominate the Internet the way it does computer operating systems. About 95% of Web surfers used Microsoft's Internet Explorer in 2004; now 20% use Firefox, and other companies are offering browsers that are smarter and faster than ever before.

Lilly grew up playing with technology. Lilly's father, a physics major and Air Force officer, built the family's first television and computer from kits and taught him binary and hexidecimal numeric systems. Lilly's grandfather was a rocket engineer. While in college, he got his first real job, working on an atom smasher. Being a short-order cook for a Chinese fast-food restaurant and a game monitor at a playground didn't help him figure out what the world was made of in quite the same way.

With 200 employees and a $50-million budget, Mozilla is the for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is "open source," meaning users everywhere are encouraged to improve it. Its success depends largely on thousands of devoted, unpaid volunteers -- 40% of the code is written by people who don't clock in.

"If people participate in the construction of the Web," Lilly says, "it will be better and more robust." He says consumers appreciate the Mozilla mission. "It's like organic food. When you tell people about the values that go into building the product, it builds loyalty."

Read the full story here.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Mozilla CEO John Lilly. Credit: Randi Lynn Beach / For the Los Angeles Times

Facebook gets unfriendly with Power.com*

Power.com has hit a snag in its quest to build a business out of helping people access social networking sites.

As first reported by the New York Times today, Facebook this week filed a complaint in federal court in San Jose against the Brazilian start-up, alleging "irreparable and incalculable harm" from copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act.

Here's how Power.com works: Users provide their log-in information for social networks to Power.com, which then accesses those sites and allows its users to view the pages without visiting them. It used to work for Facebook, but Power.com removed that ability after Facebook complained.

Facebook objects to how Power.com has been soliciting the social networking giant's users and storing its user names and passwords. It asked that Power.com instead use Facebook Connect, its own service for allowing users to access their friends from other sites.

"After discussing the issue with Power.com for about a month without reaching a resolution, we filed a lawsuit to enforce our terms of service, maintain the integrity of our site and to assure our users’ privacy and security is protected," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in a statement.

Power.com founder Steve Vachani tells us the dispute has been resolved and that Power.com will use Facebook Connect starting in late January. "We support mutual industry cooperation to help responsibly create a borderless Web," Vachani said in a statement. "Power.com is focused on providing value-added services to social network users, and it is not necessary for us to store the user's name and password if a site prefers that we don't."

In fact, Power.com says it's going to announce a new industry standard called "Social InterConnect" that the company says will allow users to share their account information for any site with any other site without the host site storing the user name and password.

Power.com began publicizing its service in the United States late last year. It has raised money from some splashy backers including Powerset's Barney Pell (his company was bought by Microsoft) and celeb technology analyst and cosmonaut-in-training Esther Dyson. Here's a review of Power.com by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page. Credit: Markham Johnson / AFP/Getty Images

* This post was updated with a link to the New York Times story.

You've got mail wars: Google making an inbox push

Google is pushing harder on yet another front in its bid to dominate all of online advertising: e-mail.

Yahoo and Microsoft still have an edge when it comes to your inbox, but the Internet search leader is pushing to win more share, the Financial Times reports.

Google is reportedly banking on Gmail, the Web service it launched in 2004, to deliver more advertising dollars and get users to spend more time on Google products. To accelerate its progress, the company has been rolling out a steady stream of new features and improvements -- even safeguards for those who are strangers to sobriety.

Yahoo and Microsoft are not sitting idle. Yahoo has pledged a "smarter inbox" that will allow users to add photos, status updates and more. Microsoft is making its Windows Live Hotmail inbox even more social too.

So far, Yahoo and Microsoft each have more than 250 million users to Gmail's 100 million. But Google's service is gaining ground.

Wonder which service Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan would use if "You've Got Mail" were filmed today?

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Tom Hanks as Joe Fox makes a love connection in Warner Bros' "You've Got Mail." Credit: Brian Hamill

Leo DiCaprio gives some love to YouTube froggy style

Leonardo DiCaprio, who is starring in Sam Mendes’ adaptation of the classic Richard Yates novel "Revolutionary Road," gave popular video-sharing site YouTube some love in the December issue of GQ.

"How great is YouTube?" he asked rhetorically. "Endless entertainment. Endless! Every day. What the hell? You can type in anything, like 'frogs getting laid,' and they have, like 70 clips. It's fabulous."

The shout out (not the amphibian mating reference) made our favorite YouTuber Hunter Walk blush -- and quibble just a little.

"I admit we really don't have great results for the query, 'frogs getting laid,'" blogged Walk, a director of product management.

Something to do with that new spic-'n'-span no-pornography policy, perhaps? Maybe there's a Wild Kingdom exemption. So get busy, Kermit.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: A group of swimmers pose with a giant frog puppet during a Christmas race in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP/Getty Images

Now traveling around the Web: hobo code

A shout out to Cockeyed for its latest edition of "Modern Hobo Code."

As the site explains: "Hobo code" was a set of covert markings used to alert fellow hobos to good and bad situations. Cockeyed has updated the code for the modern day. Cockeyed's version was a big hit on Reddit.com. And it got some love from Laughing Squid.

According to Wikipedia: "To cope with the difficulty of hobo life, hobos developed a system of symbols, or a code. Hobos would write this code with chalk or coal to provide directions, information and warnings to other hobos. Some signs included 'turn right here,' 'beware of hostile railroad police,' 'dangerous dog,' 'food available here' and so on."

Our favorite hobo code is in flashbacks on AMC's "Mad Men."

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Maurice "Steam Train Maury" Graham, shown in 1989 near his home in Toledo, Ohio, was a founding member of the National Hobo Foundation and helped establish the Hobo Museum in Britt, Iowa. Credit: Scott Martin

What does 2009 have in store for the Internet?

What will happen to the Internet in 2009?

Standard & Poor's Internet analyst Scott Kessler has a few predictions.

He says Microsoft and Yahoo will "bury the hatchet" to better compete against Google. He doubts Microsoft will buy Yahoo but may pursue a joint venture in search, which would boost Yahoo's shares.

On the other hand, Apple and Google might get out the hatchet. Kessler predicts the companies' relationship could grow "uneasy" as the two tech giants increasingly compete on the mobile front (Apple has its iPhone and Google has its Android mobile operating system). Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board. Awkward.

In last year's predictions, Kessler had some hits and misses. He guessed that Google would continue to make inroads in mobile. Correct. He also predicted that Yahoo would have a better 2008 than 2007. He says "we were painfully close in that prediction but resoundingly wrong nonetheless."

"Painful" seems the most technically correct term to sum up Yahoo's 2008.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Google CEO Eric Schmidt on "Meet the Press" with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images