Out in Sun Valley at the annual Allen & Co. confab last week, the jolly baby-eating mogul set almost had something regarding conflict, according to Page Six. CNN prince Anderson Cooper was moderating a panel, and Sony king Howard Stringer suggested that Apple king Steve Jobs is greedy. And Anderson was all "peas and carrots, peas and carrots, change the subject la la la" until IAC king Barry Diller said to his yacht-buddy, "Anderson, you're missing something here, Howard Stringer just called Steve Jobs greedy." Now, Anderson has something of a shy streak, but it doesn't show up at work that often, except maybe with Angelina Jolie. Maybe it's getting worse? Is something going on? Can't be good for the job. Does Anderson need some short-term therapy, some assertiveness training? Is he getting weary of this tiresome world of stupid conflict?

Here is the gayest item ever printed in Rush & Molloy in the Daily News: "Every moment of Barbra Streisand's European tour must be preserved for history. A spy reports from the isle of Capri: 'We're having drinks and we see Diane von Furstenberg, Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin and James Brolin hanging out with Streisand's bichon frise. I heard Brolin say, 'She's shopping for shoes.' Five minutes later, Babs struts up with a Stuart Weitzman bag and a schlumpy white linen outfit. She's followed by a guy who's not only filming her but taping the crowd's reaction to her.'" It's like you could read this item to, say, Dane Cook or Bill Clinton, and suddenly he'd be carrying one of those big 48-dollar apartment-sized gold Marc Jacobs totes while shopping for a weekend house in the Swish Alps.

PaidContent runs a fake press release claiming that IAC, Barry Diller's publicly traded Web empire, was buying back shares. Um, no. [PaidContent.org]

You know how all those long newspaper stories about Rupert Murdoch never say where he is at any given moment? It's because, like Barry Diller, he's always on a boat—and because no one who doesn't already know where they are doesn't need to know. Mr. Murdoch arrived to meet his boat on the French Riviera on the 17th, to attend the Scientology wedding of James Packer and Erica Baxter at the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc. (Actually, they had to marry off-shore, because they hadn't been in France for a month and that's the law there.) Hey, small world! You know who just got back from Nice yesterday? New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner and his friend Ivanka Trump!

Hot hot hot profile of IAC head Barry Diller on "60 Minutes" last night. While the luscious boys of his subsidiary College Humor were, sadly, granted no screen time, Barry's wife, the luscious-in-her-own-way Diane Von Furstenberg was all over the place. Here she explains the touching marital bond that she shares with Diller.

Work for Barry Diller, get pet insurance. [Craigslist]

College Humor, a website run by boys who've hung out together since high school in Maryland—back before they were "famous"—has now completed its transformation into the Entourage of the web. First they got a development deal with Paramount, complete with writers from The Office. The early success of their t-shirt and blog empire means they now have to hurdle the vagaries of oodles of money, Barry Diller (who has a controlling interest in their company) and book deals. Yesterday they jumped right through the looking glass. We hear that College Humor ringleader Ricky Van Veen (the Vince of the gang, and surely prettier than Adrian Grenier) "took a meeting" with crazed power-agent Ari Emmanuel, the Endeavor founder on whom Entourage's Ari Gold is based. (College Humor Co-founder Josh Abramson, totally the Eric of the gang, should have been there to police!) Halfway through their pow-wow, Ari calls some producer. "Hey, I have this kid here.... Hey, kid, what's your name again?" Welcome to Hollywood, boys! Don't let all the empty promises go to your heads.

Frank Gehry's IAC headquarters arouses either rapturous mooning or fierce antipathy. Like with pregnant chicks, one is either inappropriately attracted to its curvaceous body or horrified. But when the IAC finally opened on Monday, only one man's opinion counted, that of father, Barry Diller. As the LA Times reports, he did what all dads do: Bitch about stuff.

It was March 29, 2006, that Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers launched Dealbreaker, the first of her grown-up internet ventures. Just a few weeks more than a year later, that new media party is over. From her email, just sent: "My partners and I have an insurmountable difference of opinion regarding long-term strategy for the company and we've come to point where I would like to do some projects that are materially riskier and more experimental than Dead Horse's existing properties, and they would prefer to pull back and focus solely on the sites we have." We always thought the safe, happy years for talent came when you stopped working for the millionaire and went out in partnership. Guess not. (Who were we kidding? Oh right, ourselves.) So how long until Ken Lerer turns on Arianna Huffington? How long until Michael Jackson and Barry Diller turn on Kurt Andersen? Heck, how long until Barry Diller tries to spit-roast the College Humor boys? Jon Fine has more.

• Nike uses the Don Imus controversy for an ad campaign it hopes "will spark continued conversation about race in America." And sell sneakers. [AdAge]
  

With your help, we've ID'd some of the potentially worst bosses in New York. We'll be parading them in front of you daily, and when we're done, we'll all decide together who's the worst. Feel free to shout out your suggestions if any of these tales joggles a traumatized (or happy) memory!

• CBS News hired Rick Kaplan without consulting Katie Couric. They probably just didn't want her to worry her pretty little head about it. [NYT]
  

· Sharon Stone (who swept the Razzies!) brought the dominatrix-auctioneer routine she perfected in Berlin to Elton John's annual AIDS fundraiser, where "unsteady on her feet and slurring her words, [she] rambled, 'I've been sitting at my table with P. Diddy and Jon Bon Jovi, and I'm a little messed up.'" She did manage to coerce $4.2 million out of attendees, for auction items like a $65,000 soccer lesson from Dave Beckham, and $125,000 to have James Blunt promise he wouldn't perform all evening. [AP]
· Vanity Fair's Little Gold Men blog has updates and photos from the VF party, where they note a preponderance of "impossibly glowy women" and an extremely not-glowy Nikki Sixx. [VanityFair.com]
· Anderson Cooper and Daniel Craig shared a corner banquette at the VF party swapping secret agent tips, while party host Elton John planted a deep, passionate kiss on American Idol judge Simon Cowell, who couldn't help but gush all evening that "the little girl I once accused of being utterly forgettable and dressed like an overstuffed burrito had finally arrived!" [Towleroad]
· Enjoy TMZ's nausea- and seizure-inducing handheld camera footage of celebrities entering the Soho House after party, including "bushy-browed Martin Scorcese [sic] and a boob-a-licious Courtney Love." [TMZ]

It goes without saying that most online video is crap, and will continue to be so for quite awhile (perhaps forever). Undeterred, Barry Diller's Interactive Corp is steadily ramping up video on all its sites. The Wall Street Journal takes notice, particularly of College Humor's efforts, as those are furthest along. Still, it wouldn't be the WSJ without a tut-tut graf, which begins

Since interest continues to percolate regarding the anonymous billionaire discussed in Michael Wolff's (no, not that Michael Wolf) Vanity Fair article, here's another round of guesses. When last discussed, we declared a toss-up between Mark Cuban and Barry Diller. Remember, the two key hints are "appropriately larger-than-life character, remarkably fit" and "he knew nothing whatsoever about the newspaper business, or news." After the jump, a few more names get dumped into the mix.

We asked for your guesses as to the identity of the mystery billionaire mentioned in Michael Wolff's Vanity Fair article, and you adroitly caught on to the resonant void of the name(s) we didn't float ourselves. The key bits of trivia were "appropriately larger-than-life character, remarkably fit" and "he knew nothing whatsoever about the newspaper business, or news. Zip. Nada." Aside from unlikelies such as Warren Buffett and Edgar Bronfman Jr., the most cogent guesses after the jump.

LOCKHART STEELE — This here is the rooftop at the Hotel Gansevoort in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. In official photos like this, it looks sedate and dreamy. In real life, it looks something more like these photos—a sort of body-to-body insanity best avoided at all costs. (Noise from the roof is famous for haunting the neighbors, which won a prolonged battle to make the hotel install "silencers.")

• Supreme Court allows federal prosecutors to look at Judy Miller's phone records. Why do we even bother with a First Amendment? [NYT]
  

• The future is in analyzing social networks, through the totally reliable data from MySpace. Ten points for anyone titling their doctoral study "Thanks for the add, holla at mah peeps." [NY Times]

Pictured is Jakob Lodwick, of College Humor, lurking in the future new office of his InterActiveCorp overlord Barry Diller. Still undecided: where the obsidian sacrificial altar should go. Really needs to be next to a load-bearing wall. On a more sunny though still mystical note, the New York Times peeks into the IAC crystal ball by way of a profile on Michael Jackson, Diller's point man on most things Webward. Nothing shocking, though it's almost comical to consider the vast intellectual resources bent toward the creation and curation of Very Short List — IAC's recently debuted once-daily email of recommended stuff. In addition to Jacskon and, one presumes, Diller, you also have pillar o' the community Kurt Andersen, plus design input (at least initially) Bonnie Siegler and Emily Oberman. We all need smarter people to tell us what to buy these days. Besides the new digs, what's next on the IAC conquest plan?