A Valleywag tipster spotted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and fellow executive Kevin Johnson in Palo Alto on Wednesday. Kara Swisher now confirms they were in California for a meeting with Yahoo. [BoomTown]

A tipster writes:

For a province of California, Silicon Valley can be strangely puritan at times. That made it an uncomfortable locale for libertine Libertarian Jimmy Wales, the less-than-saintly founder of Wikipedia. Wales told ex-lover Rachel Marsden, the Canadian controversialist, that he wanted to move to New York to be closer to her. Their affair is over — ended, fittingly, via a posting on Wikipedia — but Wales has relocated to New York all the same. The likely reason has to do with work, or the appearance of work. Although Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, is located in San Francisco, and his ostensible employer, for-profit wiki venture Wikia, has itsheadquarters in a suburb to the south of the city, Wales is charged with running a search-engine project for Wikia which is based in New York.

YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen partied in Las Vegas over weekend, taking to the VIP sections at Caesar's Palace and the Luxor, a nerdspotter tells us. At Caesar's Hurley, Chen and a crew of about 25 YouTubers — early employees, we hear — lounged around Club Pure, taking in a Pussycat Dolls show (an example in the clip below). Our tipster tells us the group partied not like rock stars, but "cool nerds." Anyone have a visual explanation of what that looks like? Send in your cameraphone spy clips of Chen & Co., or better yet, post them to YouTube.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson general manager Steve Jurvetson was wallowing in Estonian pride on Friday at a party held by the Swedish ambassador. Sidling up to chess-playing überhottie Carmen Kass, he even managed to elicit a smile from the thin minx, who is most often pictured with the professionally dour expression demanded on the runway. But just in case the intimate moment might be misinterpreted, Jurvetson seems to be holding up his hand to make sure the photographer catches the glint from his wedding ring. (Photo from Steve Jurvetson)

Google cofounder Sergey Brin is, two days away from his company's first-quarter earnings call, sunning himself in Tahiti. As is Greco-American blog tycoon Arianna Huffington and Wendi Deng, wife of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Huffington is reportedly there on vacation, but it's a stretch to think Brin and Deng are also there by sheer coincidence. Anyone have a bead on what prompted the South Pacific power summit? Do let us know your theories.

A tipster writes in:

I remain utterly obsessed with ubiquinnoying Pownce cofounder Leah Culver and heterofabulous Flickr engineer Cal Henderson, not least because he tweaked my nipples the last time I saw the pair in Austin. A tipster reports spotting the besotted twosome at the Westfield mall in downtown San Francisco, going into a screening of 21, a tale of geeks who used higher math to take the house in Vegas. Could a desert debauch be in their future? (Photo by magerleagues)

Before Lucy Southworth met Larry, there was another man in the future Ms. Page's life: Tom Kretchmar. From a photo album on Facebook, leaked thanks to the site's privacy holes, we can see Southworth and Kretchmar were close. In one photo, she's sitting on his lap. Old college flame, or just a friendly school chum? Never mind: Southworth is too radiantly adorkable for me to pay much attention to Kretchmar.

Forget trying to get a seat, or a power outlet, at Coupa Cafe. The new spot to hang out waiting to meet an investor to fund your Facebook app? Fraiche Yogurt on Emerson Street in Palo Alto. Here's the schtick: Go there and order a $2 cup of custom-brewed Blue Bottle coffee. (The frozen yogurt's okay, but hardly Pinkberry.) Spread out your traffic-stat charts and business plan, then lie in wait to ambush Accel Partners' Jim Breyer, the Facebook board member who's reportedly a frequent Fraicher. Oh, and bring your EVDO card: There's no Wi-Fi.

How did we miss this in December? Kevin Rose, the cofounder of Digg, served as the answer to a question on ABC's Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and the show in which his name appeared is rerunning now on KGO. Sarah Lacy, the BusinessWeek columnist whose upcoming book prominently features Rose, spotted the mention. If you didn't tune in, YouTube has a replay:

When last I saw Valleywag mascot Chadrick Baker, he offered to make out with me. I assumed he was kidding. But then he turned up looking natty in a tux, with a drag-queen bride at his side. Really, Chadrick, we don't care which way you swing — just keep swinging. Chadrick with more brides, after the jump.

So Mark Zuckerberg walks into a bar — sorry, no punch line. According to a "missed connections" posting on Craigslist, Facebook's CEO visited Bourbon & Branch, the Tenderloin speakeasy, on Saturday, and rolled his eyes when he was recognized. The Craigslist user's unfriendly advice for Zuckerberg: "If I were you, I'd appreciate being recognized. You're not Brad Pitt. You're a computer geek (on paper). Don't become such a prick so early in your career." We have a feeling this will cause the straitlaced Zuckerberg to drink even less than he already does.

There I was minding my own business, and up pops Andrew Hyde, creator of VCWear.com, the VC-mocking apparel maker we wrote about recently.

AUSTIN, TX — I've seen Kevin Rose drink beer; I've heard the Digg cofounder likes to drink tea. But plain H20? Unheard of. The audience at his SXSW panel about scalable websites started whispering discontentedly when he paused to fill his cup from the watercooler.

Alas, no punchline. Both the R.E.M. singer and the Digg CEO were on hand at Facebook's Get.friends party at SXSW. Who was treated more like a rock star? Not the guy who beat Wired editor Chris Anderson in a sing-off.

You can't map the most off-the-chain (for you Olds, the new "off the hook") SXSW party on your shiny new iPhone. Ruby Red Labs and their {RV}IP Lounge and Karaoke Cabaret have been rolling merrily around Austin, bringing joy to geeks in need. Last night, after our second visit to the Fire Eagle party, {RV}IP driver and internet impresario Jonathan Grubb took a vanload of us back to the Hilton, blasting "These Boots Are Made for Walking." Watch this video, shot on the fly by Tim Shey of Next New Networks; it's almost as good as being there, but better if you actually were.

Hey, wait a second: Why am I the only one working at SXSW? For everyone else in the Valley, the Austin conference is just a sanctioned spring break party. Clearly, I'm an idiot. I just spent three hours snapping photographs at SXSW's Bit 16 opening-night afterparty, without so much as a beer touching my hands. The Scoot Inn, a dingy dive bar east of downtown, hosted the event. I ran into Julia Allison first thing. I heard Kevin Rose was there, too, but I never spotted him. (Curious.) I chatted up Automattic's Matt Mullenweg, and Mashable's Pete Cashmore, as well as Glenda Bautista, Mullenweg's ballsy Bronx belle (pictured here with friends). It was a good time. But the ROI on SXSWi? Hard to spot, if you don't run an Austin bar, restaurant, or convention center.

Mashable's adorably awkward Pete Cashmore really, really wanted to get a photo with the Valleywag crew during SXSW's opening parties. Lost in the middle-school-dance ambiance of Six, the Austin bar which served as our first stop for the night, I mistook the official Mashable hand mascot for "the shocker." But when Pete popped up again sans puppet at the way more laid-bac Gingerman, he tried again — and lightly punched my tit area . Casual approach, yes, but why not just pitch me like I really was one of the guys? That seems easier. (Photo by mashable)