Noted neologician Jesse James Garrett, the man who dubbed a set of popular Web 2.0 technologies "Ajax," has announced another project from Adaptive Path, the Web consultancy he cofounded. It's Aurora, an interesting visualization of what a next-generate Web browser might look like. It's user-interface porn of the highest order, with a special bonus if you have a farmer fetish. What the company hasn't announced? The recent departure of COO Bryan Mason, pictured here, who Twittered his resignation on Friday, though he hasn't been filed under "emeritus" on the company roster quite yet. Whoever is named the new COO had better make sure the free-taco truck tradition at the annual company party continues, or there will be hungry-hipster hell to pay. The Aurora browser:

Plurk's "overlord" may have described this startup as a hoax, but Pheltup fever continues to spread thanks to viral marketing like stickers and a a wild launch party last night. Can you suggest a better headline? Do so in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Google begins testing its new camouflage Steath Shuttle." by Swifter. (Photo by Rachel Glaves)

Wondering what Adaptive Path cofounder Jeffrey Veen has been up to since Google hired him away last year? He's helping to revamp Orkut, Google's big-in-Brazil social network. [BusinessWeek]

Social connectivity site Twitter has so far not reported to parents any cases of the service being used by K-12 students to request immediate sexual intercourse during school hours. There also appears to be no connection between Twitter users and attempts to stuff the ballot box for the Vlog Hot poll, since all the vloggers on Twitter are losing in their respective poll heats; most likely, this means that all those on Twitter who say they're voting for friends, are lying. The code word for tonight's Adaptive Path party has been confirmed as "tacotruck." Still unconfirmed is the possibility that "tacotruck" is also neighborhood slang for an extremely polluted form of crystal meth also known as "peanut butter," so party attendees should under no circumstances mention both for fear of confusing the vendor.

Overheard last night from a developer who didn't attend this week's business-development-heavy, techie-light Web 2.0 Summit, referring to the staff of Adaptive Path, who coined the term "Ajax" for a form of dynamic web pages like Google Maps:

Special Valleywag Weekend Updates on the Web 2.O'Reilly shitstorm:

Along with its fellow South Park startups, web development company Adaptive Path has become the reluctant poster child for the bubble. Today, COO Bryan Mason has a special request for his friends.

Welcome to Lazy News, the new Valleywag feature that saves you the time of actually reading news articles. The first article we'll slice-and-dice is the San Francisco Chronicle's business feature from Sunday.

Flickr's renting space at Adaptive Path's San Francisco office (pictured with taco truck). A close source says the deal's been made but no one's moved in yet, as Yahoo establishes an outpost inside the slick SoMA office.

Another bizarre Google hiring story came through the grapevine. When Google bought Measure Map (scooped and reported here), it cut a special deal with the stat service's makers at Adaptive Path.

A certain friend of Valleywag hangs around cynics all day, judging by his three overheard conversations. There's this:

Great party list for SXSWers tonight. Start at the Lifehacker party, hosted by our slick big sister, at The Side Bar (that's 602 East 7th). From 9 to 11, drinks will flow and Gawker Media stars Joel Johnson (the Gizmodo/Consumerist/Gawker-tech-group genius) and Gina Trapani (the aforementioned Lifehacker's lead) will entertain. You might even glimpse some of Gawker's behind-the-scenes folks.

Come see Battledecks!

Okay, Adaptive Path (yes, yes, the people in the tub of lust, everyone keeps bringing it up) is one of the few unmockable San Francisco Internet startups. It puts out an actual service, has actual offices (with REAL DESKS. Really), and it's been up and running for five years. Now it's selling bits of itself to Google and hooking up hook-up artists at anniversary parties.

Told ya. If you haven't already seen Jeffrey Veen's post on the Google Blog, the Measure Map creator just left the UI consultants at Adaptive Path and sold his user-friendly stat-tracker to Google. (Of course, Valleywag readers knew it five days ago.)

Google and Yahoo buy up internet companies like Jerry Seinfeld collects Porsches. One would have thought that one of each model was quite enough, but the internet giants want a garage full of internet companies of every shape and color. So it is with site stats services such as MeasureMap.