A Daily Show producer got caught listening; McSweeney's got caught exaggerating; and some nerdy erotica got caught being awesome. The Twitterati were sooo busted.

Valleywag Friday travels to the future this week, and finds it glamorous. Our guests of honor at Moose's in San Francisco: The girls of io9. Editor and surly media nerd Annalee Newitz will be there, accompanied by Charlie Jane Anders, senior editor and author of "The Dumbest Space Gods in Science Fiction." (That's Newitz peeking out from behind Anders's boa-bedecked bod. She's shy!) Wear a fedora, a feather boa, a white latex rubber suit, whatever — as long as you have a convincing alternate-history timeline to explain why the look is fabulous. (Photo by quinnums)

Kinky but reliable io9 editor Annalee Newitz, in her latest column for the communists at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, confesses her contempt for Facebook. Our dark media overlords at Gawker force us to use Zuckerberg's creation to stay in touch, so I feel her pain. I whacked Annalee's 723-word fumefest down to the naughty bits.

I'll admit it, I'm jealous: While Valleywag remains stuck with a logo that looks like an IBM monitor from 1982, io9, Gawker Media's newly launched sci-fi site, has gotten a wickedly cool illustration. The future is coming, and it is diabetically adorable. I quizzed site editor Annalee Newitz on the origins of the logo.

Valleywag dwells on sex, greed, and hypocrisy. That leaves little room for the merely quirky, edgy, and unprofitable. For that, we present to you io9, a new sci-fi blog published, like Valleywag, by Gawker Media. All of our colleagues are dutifully saying nice things. There will be none of that from Valleywag, thank you very much. Don't get us wrong: We are grateful for the existence of io9, run by surly media nerd Annalee Newitz ("sparkly-crap mobile circuit-board garbage gizmo mass-produced by machines").

NICK DENTON — I am, says Jacob Weisberg, doing a "Cheney" — heading the search committee for a new managing editor of Gawker, and choosing myself. Thanks for that. Yes, Brian Stelter had the story right. The site won't change much: it will remain focused on media gossip and pop culture; Alex Pareene will blog the breaking news; Maggie Shnayerson will continue to embarrass the magazine industry and permalancer-abusing media conglomerates such as Viacom; and Sheila McClear will cover book publishing. We'll be adding some new contributors over the next few weeks. To begin: Richard Morgan, who'll focus on the TV networks; Nick Douglas, a Gawker Media veteran, as our early warning antenna for Youtube clips and other pop culture phenomena on the web; Richard Lawson, better known as the commenter lolcait, will be running the site's new photo caption contest. Oh, and there's a surprise guest, this afternoon at 2pm, in the comments. After the jump, other new year changes at Gawker's sibling titles, if you're interested.

sparkly-crap mobile circuit-board garbage gizmo mass-produced by machines that stole jobs from nonunionized workers who stole jobs from the natives. I want a Nintendo Wii.
biosphere-destroying violent imagery consumer electronics death monster truly represents the future of technology Wii DJ Bluetooth just another thing with built-in obsolescence consigning it to an unknowable half-life as indigestible silicon shards. It sucks when great future innovations are doomed to become garbage. Donating to cool charities and supporting local artists is something you should be doing all year. capitalist juggernaut. Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd.

Everyone's famous on the Internet! And the webstars really shine in Scott Beale's Wednesday photos from O'Reilly ETech 2006. In this edition, Ted Rheingold of Dogster, 3/4 of the Boing Boing crew, and an episode of escalating violence.