"Sorry for the spam but this is important," random play mogul Marc Canter spammed me on Facebook. "Please check out the video version of my treatise. Its easy! Just sit, watch and listen for 33:33." Dude, like I have half an hour to watch Blip.tv now that they've laid off everyone else here. I never know what Canter's talking about, but I love his manic energy. The first minute or two made me LOL the way we used to, before lulz were invented.

Professional annoyances Chris Saad and Marc Canter argue the obscurities of opening up social-network websites to outside programmers at a meeting of the DataPortability Workgroup. Can you suggest a better caption? Bonus points if you can work in an allusion to the Share Bears.

Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears!

"The problem with most conferences is we don't have enough to do," laments seminar veteran Dave Winer, who admits to Web surfing, emailing and instant-messaging during presentations. In Las Vegas today, speaker Mike Arrington from TechCrunch forgot to show up. [Update: Arrington says he never agreed to do the event.] Why bother? Instead of onstage pony shows and awkward demo booths, conference sponsors should just set up an open bar. Invite potential clients to come schmooze with a few paid celebs and Marc Canter (zzz at left). Think David Hornik's The Lobby for the rest of us. But first, make sure the Wi-Fi's rock solid.

The big brains presenting at tomorrow's Web 2.0 Summit have lots of good ideas. Too bad no one can understand what they're saying. I've got a plan to fix that.

Marc Canter, who once upon a time founded the multimedia-software company Macromedia, but now largely gets attention mostly for napping through conferences, has blogged an open letter to Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Canter misspells his name as "Zukerberg" and refers to him repeatedly as "dude," because that's apparently Canter's notion of the way these kids talk today. That would be enough reason, in our book, for "Zukerberg" to ignore him. But no, it gets worse. Canter wants "Zukerberg" to "do the right thing." By "do the right thing," Canter means, of course, "give away your business."

Rapleaf is bragging that founder Auren Hoffman is an early signer of the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web. That blustering broadside, authored by Plaxo's Joseph Smarr, Macromedia founder Marc Canter, videoblogger Robert Scoble, and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, wants to set your online profiles and friends lists, trapped on sites like Facebook, free. The central tenet of the Bill? That individual users retain "ownership of their own personal information" and that users have the "freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites." Which could come in handy as people begin to question Rapleaf's scraping of profile data from social networks — data these networks claim to own and have exclusive rights to.

Before we show these photos of the founder of what became Macromedia (the creators of Flash, which powers games like these) — before we show photos of the alleged pot fiend smoking a joint, we'd like to note that photographer Dave Winer, who just uploaded them to Flickr, labels them as "A sequence of photos taken in a coffee shop in Amsterdam in February 2000." Even if all the signs in the background are in English.

Can someone give software entrepreneur Marc Canter an advertising budget? Or at least a copy editor? Seeing him pimp his latest startup in everyone's blog comments used to be mildly amusing. Now it's just depressing.

Just sayin'.

Oh dear, I've gone and made longtime software developer Marc Canter (pictured here having a reasoned discussion) mad by printing someone's joke about him. Just as a refresher, here's what someone told me (and what I published yesterday):

Ah, the many myths of conference-hound Marc Canter. Overheard this week:

Here's a hit of news for all you crazy-uncle-watchers out there.

The homepage at Marc Canter's newly launched social service, People Aggregator (user/pass: paalpha/paalpha), promises a "video tour" of the site. Instead, it links to a video tour of Marc's porch.

PeopleAggregator, Marc Canter's startup that gives people another social network they don't need, launched last night with a huge round of unwanted invitations. Apparently, Canter (pictured) sent an e-mail to every person who's ever e-mailed him, inviting them to his confusing social service.

The Three Stooges of Silicon Valley found a Shemp. After Michael Arrington spoke at Dave Winer's BloggerCon, the TechCrunch blogger got sucked into Winer's little club — Winer, Marc Canter, and Steve Gillmor.

• A guide to Unix becomes the new summer beach read for a topless sunbather in Greece. [NSFW: Flickr]

Dropped in on Dave Winer and Niall Kennedy's Blogger Dinner last night. A couple dozen bloggers attended the comfortable little affair at Henry's Hunan. I chatted with one — friend and blogger Nicole Lee — in a day-after dinner autopsy. Apologies to anyone we forgot to smugly name-drop.

What's happened since Tim O'Reilly's lawyers attacked Tom Raftery like a rabid shark attacking a kitten? (In other words, sent him a cease-and-desist against holding any "Web 2.0" conferences because O'Reilly's trademarking that name?) THESE THINGS HAPPENED:

Keeping the usual gang of Gillmors straight takes a full team of analysts, what with Marc Canter in the mix. So thank the Valley gods that a journalist charted them out for Valleywag.