Grab some coffee and thank the gods you weren't replaced by a temp in Bangalore. It's a happy happy Monday, because:

Geek Entertainment TV's Eddie Codel and Irina Slutsky took great vids of last night's Digg party, where founder Kevin Rose introduced the social news site's next version. Here's the 15-minute presentation:

Everyone appreciated a break from sucking down coffee at conferences to suck down free martinis at the Anu Bar for Digg's San Francisco party. The social news site previewed its next version, launching Monday. Thanks to Laughing Squid's Scott Beale for these shots!

TechCrunch interviews Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, co-founders of Digg. The hour-long podcast covers the rise of the social news site and where it's going after the new edition's Monday release. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington pulls some great info from the Diggers. But if you don't have time to listen, just read these WagNotes.

"All anyone sends on the WIN-wide mailing list is, 'Please digg my article.'" So says a member of AOL's blogging arm, Weblogs, Inc.

Thirty-six hours after AOL's "Digg killer" launches, this is still the site's top story, with three times the votes of any other.

In the booming Silicon Valley economy, everyone's looking to buy or be bought. But not all offers are equal. How do you politely turn down a lowball without burning your bridge? Let's take a look at three turn-downs — none of which were publicly reported.

Diggsketeers! When we last left our hero, his news-gathering site Digg.com was under attack from Dr. Netscrape's AOL NegaDigg Machine (Issue #47). But help was on the way, with a new Diggmobile — the post-Crisis-on-Infinite-Earths Digg 3 (Issue #41)! Will Diggman succumb to the cosmic powers of the evil Dr. Netscrape? Or is the Power of Digg stronger than the AOL Force? While the battle unfolds, watch the superbattler stat sheet!

You weren't on your computer night, you were at some kick-ass party. So you're just now finding out that AOL launched its highly anticipated clone of social news site Digg.com at Beta.Netscape.com.

Welcome to the new Netscape. Today's hot stories — voted on by you! Here's the top story on AOL Digg clone Netscape Beta, from midnight:

Oh boy, AOL's Digg rip-off is here! (That's unfair. It's more a rip-off of Social Porn.) AOL exec Jason Calacanis links to Flickr'd photos tagged "NNLaunch," where members of his "Project X" work on AOL's "Digg killer." (That's Jason's heavily rumored Netscape revival.)

• Creative Commons Salon: Hang with master archiver Rick Prelinger and others at San Fran bar Shine. Starts at 6, drop in any time by 9. [Upcoming.org]

[Update: Digg, meet AOL's Digg killer.]

Are you coming to this Thursday's Web Infinity Plus One SloshCon? Of course you are! It's free and there's an open bar!

So Google counts over 23 billion pages on the Internet — who cares? Nothing's really online until it's been "Dugg," "Farked," and "Boing Boinged." And when your new quirky blog post ("Meta-Katamari George Bush MacBook Pro Naked") gets passed around the memepool, it'll be surrounded by John Battelle's ads.

Someone runs up a false Digg item about a Google acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Turns out that not everything linked from Digg is true. Huh. Who knew? In any case, the lesson here: Digg may be big, but it's not exactly at stock-manipulating level. [Silicon Valley Sleuth]
So tech site CNET bought dating site Consumating in December, and it picked up food site Chowhound just this month. Anyone have an idea what the plan is here? [Chowhound interview]
Ouch. Tech blogger Om Malik's great Andrew Mclaughlin (pictured) quote ("The FCC sucks") comes undone when the Google senior policy counsel writes to Om:

PaidContent.org has new deets on Jason Calacanis' upcoming takeover of Netscape.com. The Weblogs, Inc. founder plans to turn Netscape into a Digg-like site.

Om and Niall PodSession: Om Malik promises a "big surprise" at the end of the latest episode. OMG MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: Google News picked up Om's blog. Yay. Weird thing is, he thanks the Google News and Blogger teams. Actual people update Google News sources? Don't they have robots for that?

Any dumb schtick will work the second time around, right? Like The Hulk 2? Someone tell this desperate dot-commer that Silicon Valley may be gullible, but it ain't that gullible. [Web 2.0 Million Dollar Homepage]
Favorite PR headline in the Valleywag inbox: "New Local Search, [redacted], Offers New Twist." Not on anything, mind you; just a new twist. On everything.
Just some maintenance: Here's Valleywag's Technorati Profile.
This girl digs Digg, in that slightly NSFW way. [i dugg the digg man on Flickr]
Today in Google brilliance: leaked slides make analysts wet their pants and give CNNMoney yet another chance to use that Google rollercoaster graphic. [Google's latest goof]

Megite Technology sent a little PR intro touting itself as "the newspaper for anyone interested in what's happening right now." (The news is, of course, gathered from actual newspapers. And knitting blogs.)