Banksy: millionaire street artist, fierce cultural critic, celebrity darling of the art world. The man's prestige has been immeasurably enhanced by his anonymity. He insists on it, and it gives him an air of mystery that only increases his allure to the media, fans, and collectors alike. An alleged photo of him was widely circulated last year, but it certainly didn't result in his real name being printed in his omnipresent media coverage. Those in his inner circle insist on strict concealment of his identity. Theories, of course, abound. But today, Bucky Turco at Animal NY believes he's stumbled upon Banksy's true identity. Combined with some corroborating evidence we got ourselves, the case is plausible—though far from proven. Now this would be big news:

Terrance Dean, the former MTV producer who's about to release his hotly-anticipated-by-us book on the gay secrets of hip hop, has provided a few more details on "Preston," the mystery pro athlete who Dean says he had a fling with at an island resort. So all of you who guessed football players, baseball players, or Mike Tyson: wrong!:

I've long been fascinated with the ubiquitous gladhandery of Pete Cashmore, the 22-year-old founder of Mashable. And I've been meaning to ask Cashmore what, exactly, he does. Al Gore's cable channel, Current, has saved me the awkward moment. As a video clip shows, Cashmore talks on his cell phone, takes cabs, and meets with Internet luminaries. He claims that this process helps Mashable "get the news." For example? He interviewed Bebo founder Michael Birch days before the company's $850 million sale to AOL. Did his facetime land him the scoop? No. For that matter, Cashmore really hasn't written anything for Mashable in ages. Understandably. Appearing to be a blogger is a full-time job. The full clip:

Just yesterday, the single most popular episode of any of the fantastical tv shows available for on-demand viewing at Hulu was some utterly random selection from a forgotten '80s detective show called Simon and Simon. And today, it's gone. Just like that. WE DEMAND ANSWERS, NBC/UNIVERSAL (AND FOX). [Hulu, Previously]

It has been almost eight months since Google CFO George Reyes turned in his resignation. (Under pressure and personal disdain, we hear; his fellow executives routinely called him an "idiot" behind his back.) Since then, at least two people have been offered the job and turned it down. Even if Google were to announce a new CFO tomorrow in its earnings call, the delay will have gone past embarrassing and into mystifying. Who wouldn't want to help run the world's fastest-growing big media company, which has minted an army of billionaires? We'd heard rumors that Reyes was digging into matters that CEO Eric Schmidt didn't want him involved in. Did Google's prospective CFOs, once they started going through the books, find something frightening enough to send them fleeing from a dream job?

The American Apparel ad spoofer is still at large, and he or she has been following the news. The newest posters to appear in downtown Manhattan feature a simple Woody Allen face, along with a cute little slogan. No porn this time! Allen is suing AA in real life for using his image without permission; now his lawyers have another target to hunt down. Click through to see a large version of the other Allen ad spoof [Stereohell via Copyranter] after the jump.

Isn't it crazy that the BIGGEST MYSTERY OF OUR TIME—whether or not hip hop/ R&B royalty Jay-Z and Beyonce actually got married last week—hasn't been officially solved yet? On Friday you guys were sending us all those tips about the crowd around Jay-Z's building for a rumored wedding, but we still don't have confirmation! The onstage yammerings of Mary J. Blige about the "wedding" are just not as good as a publicist's statement. And today the Daily News shows Jay-Z with no wedding ring on! What are all those so-called journalists doing these days? Elsewhere, gossip types say Beyonce is pregnant already. That would mean they had sex! We demand the national media drop everything and confirm this story, even if it means drawing every last reporter out of Iraq and stationing them throughout the Marcy Projects. Priorities, people.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has the best job ever: Flying around the world on other people's dime, getting drunk with worshipful fanboys, and bedding women who want their online-encyclopedia entries edited. His latest globetrotting gig: cochair of a World Economic Forum event in the Middle East. ("Has Jimmy been asked to attend because of his deep understanding of the cultures and economics of the Middle East, or is it because the organizers think that like Wikipedia, they can edit the history and change things at a whim, without anyone being accountable?" asks former Wikipedia administrator Danny Wool.) How can he afford to pursue such sidelines?

[Anderson Cooper Effects speculates that the dapper (and gay! probably!) news anchor stayed out all night on Wednesday. They noticed Anderson wearing a black suit/green tie ensemble on Thursday morning's "Live with Regis & Kelly" suspiciously similar to the one he sported on the previous evening's "Anderson Cooper 360." Was March 12th a lucky night for our silver haired friend? Intrigue!]

A curiousity in our inbox: Meghan Asha, the Silicon Valley heiress who formerly dated TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, may not actually be Meghan Asha. A tipster says Asha's last name is actually Parikh, and her father is Mihir Parikh, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. One piece of evidence that suggests Asha is actually Parikh: A friend congratulated Asha on running the New York Marathon last fall. But no one by the name of Asha ran in the marathon. Instead, a Meghan Parikh did. Asha's — rather, Parikh's — close friend Julia Allison also changed her name. But one wonders if Parikh was doing more than just following a friend's fashion. Update: More evidence, courtesy of the enigma herself:

Click to viewWe count six recording devices in the hands of the woman on the right. Why? Is she covering for five colleagues on a smoke break? Is she presenting them as an offering to Press Corps God Barack Obama? Do some of the devices pick up secret messages spoken in registers too high for normal humans to hear? Is one of them a tricorder? And what's up with her arms? Can human fingers even do that? Please speculate wildly in the comments. [Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images, Via]

About.com, the '90s-vintage mess of protoblogs the New York Times Co. paid $410 million for three years ago, has lost its CEO, Scott Meyer, left. The departure is characterized as "amicable"; the circumstances, curious. The Times has been rumored to be shopping About.com, though the company denies it. Regardless, Meyer is not being replaced. Instead, Martin Nisenholtz, the digital chief at the Times, right, will run it directly. There are two interpretations here.

We are growing concerned. After her career as an ABC nonjournalist fizzled, the formerly famous, generously-racked host of Rocketboom has been absent from her own blog since November 27. An "under development "show with HBO has gone nowhere. On January 23, Congdon Twittered that she was "writing monster blog post reflecting on ABC and talking about what's next." Amanda, 28 days is more time than even Scoble puts into a post. Just press Publish, ok?

Software developer and essayist Joel Spolsky went dumpster-diving into Microsoft Office's intractable file formats, the curse of freedom-loving Unixtards like me. Spolsky's findings? The formats were designed to make Office run fast on 20-megahertz CPUs with 1 MB of memory, yet to also remember all the options set on each file by years' worth of menu-addled Office applications. This is great news — it means someday I may get Word 2007 to stop unchecking my template options on me every. Single. God damned time.

The departure of Brian Valentine, a 19-year Microsoft veteran before he left in 2006, has always been a bit of a puzzle. In August of that year, Microsoft management told his staff he was taking a new job within the company after shipping Windows Vista. A month later, he left for Amazon.com. Now, Amazon.com has cleared things up with a belated SEC filing: Microsoft lied to its employees. Here's the timetable:

Has anyone seen Sue Decker? Yahoo's president, Jerry Yang's right-hand woman, has vanished from sight. She was last seen delivering Yahoo's dismal quarterly earnings. Decker, a former Wall Street analyst and previously Yahoo's CFO, ought to be at the front of the fight with Microsoft. What is she good for, really, if not courting restive shareholders? She can't have been a victim of this week's layoffs, though we hear some of her favorites got the chop. A favor, Yahoos: If you spot your president on campus, please send in a snap, just so we know she's still alive.

"Does it remind you of the Foleo?" Palm's never-released "smartphone companion" laptop, killed on the eve of its introduction last September, does look a bit like Apple's new MacBook Air, though the latter is thinner yet and far more powerful. Under the casings, there's little comparison. Which raises a question: Did Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple executive who's now Palm's executive chairman, get some inkling that Apple would be coming out with the MacBook Air?

Why is entrepreneur Loic Le Meur grinning from ear to ear? VC Fred Wilson declares that he's getting addicted to the "video Twittering" provided by Seesmic, Le Meur's new startup. But it's not clear that Wilson's going to put his money where his mouth is.

Larry Ellison's likely too busy counting all the money he made today to ask this question, but we will: Why did NetSuite's shares rocket upwards in the final hours of trading today? The company went public with a Dutch auction, a process meant to get the best and fairest price for the company shares. This morning, it seemed like it had gone off flawlessly: The stock opened at $26, the auction-set price, and traded near there all morning. Then it suddenly raced upwards to close at $35.50, making the whole company worth $2.1 billion, and Ellison's stake $1.3 billion.

I don't compare Creative Commons licenses to the Codex Seraphinianus just to be cruel. True, cruelty is part of the fun, but I'm honestly confused. It comes down to one word I don't grok. Here's your chance to explain it to us idiots.