The TechCrunch50 is out and again the list reads like a self-parody. Shryk? Swype? There is one interesting startup on the list, however: Fotonauts. Not because we know or care to know what Fotonauts does. We're just intrigued by Fotonauts president Keith Teare's habit of saying he owns 10 percent of TechCrunch. Isn't that a refreshing bit of honesty about how a list like the TechCrunch50 gets put together?Arrington himself describes Teare as someone "who formerly cofounded Edgeio with me," leaving out Teare's relationship with TechCrunch. As we understand it, Arrington and Teare swapped 10 percent stakes in their companies. Since Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, went under, we suppose that makes Teare the better dealmaker of the two. He's also more brutally honest. On his LinkedIn profile, Teare says of himself: "I am Mike Arrington's business partner in TechCrunch. I'm the one who advised him not to do it. :-)"

The main thing anyone ever knew about Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, is that it launched Michael Arrington's career at TechCrunch. Desperate to find out more information about this "Web 2.0" thing he kept hearing about, Arrington started blogging, and eventually left Edgeio, swapping a 10 percent stake in TechCrunch for a 10 percent stake in Edgeio. Arrington's stake is now worthless — which I think would actually make Teare the savvier businessman here — and Edgeio's assets have been sold at auction.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington posts about the company he co-founded Edgio's receiving $5 million in Series A funding.

The point of schwag (and the reason the Valley is buried in it) is to remind a consumer of an otherwise ethereal product or service. The less physical (or popular) the thing the schwag markets, the more the burden of cost falls on the schwag giver. (This is why Apple can sell its t-shirts while, say, Browster.com must give them away.)

Valleywag, in a vain attempt at reaching Wall-Street-Journal levels of inaccuracy, ran a non-item last week. Jeff Clavier, one of the SDForum speakers so unfairly accused of non-disclosure, sets me straight:

An attendee of SDForum's monthly Search SIG says some folks aren't disclosing when they give talks.