Silicon Valley powerbrokers can stare down old economy CEOs without flinching. But put them in front of celebrities and like anyone else they go a bit gaga. That's lead to poor celebrity backed investments in past years. Like this one

But Michael Arrington , of TechCrunch , and Jason Calacanis , of Mahalo , think it's different this time. And the two guys should know a bit about this culture clash: Arrington is 100% Valley, likely to Twitter on a Friday night about a blog post, while Calacanis lives in LA and is likely to Twitter about a club where he just spotted Lindsay Lohan. So it's no surprise their TechCrunch50 conference will be littered with Hollywood types trying to exploit the Web.

TechTicker has been promised an interview with Ashton Kutcher, but until then, you'll have to be satisfied with Arrington and Calacanis for another clip!

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Every five years or so in the Valley there's a lot of hype about mobile being the next big thing. Only it never quite pans out. This is one of those times, and while skeptics are still out there, there are also a lot of believers. Why? The iPhone. It's far less about the glitzy hardware than the software and developers platform that for the first time enables not only Web-like experiences but applications we've never even seen on the Web, thanks to that GPS chip.

Web kingpins Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington are two of the believers. At their TechCrunch50 conference on Monday, they plan on showing the valley several new companies that prove it.

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It's been a few years since Second Life went from hot to over-hyped, but overall investment and interest in virtual worlds is growing. Really. Not only is investment in the category up, as we last reported in April, but it was one of the biggest categories of innovation when Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington evaluated thousands of companies for their TechCrunch50 competition. Expect examples of new virtual world technology and ideas to demo at the conference next week.

The biggest stunner? It's already a multi-billion business globally.

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What happens with two bombastic, larger-than-life Tech personalities join forces? They infuriate some people, delight other people and generally shake up an industry. When Jason Calacanis, of Weblogs and Mahalo fame, and Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame decided to launch the TechCrunch40 conference last year, they were hardly subtle about it. Urban Valley legend is that Arrington rudely announced the conference on the floor of the venerable--and competing-- Demo conference where hallowed products like TiVo and the PalmPilot first debuted to the masses. He says he actually blogged about it in pajamas from the hotel room, because he was too bored to even stay at Demo. But either way, the gloves were off.

The conference is back on Sept. 8 and now dubbed TechCrunch50 for the 52 companies debuting at it. (Don't ask.) It's being held the same day as Demo this year and tech folks are choosing sides carefully. For a two-year-old conference, TechCrunch certainly has some big-name loyalists. Among its panel of experts are Marissa Mayer of Google, Marc Andreessen of Netscape, Opsware and Ning fame, Mark Cuban, Chad Hurley of YouTube, and some of the Valley's most powerful investors. Not bad.

Center stage are the startups. Both Calacanis and Arrington are known for rubbing some people the wrong way, but even critics admit these are two guys obsessed with helping fledgling entrepreneurs. They don't charge companies to present and spend hours with each one, helping founders hone their pitches. They require that the VCs sponsoring the event give the entrepreneurs a private audience. And they award the winning company $50,000. Most notable: This isn't the insider crowd. The bulk of the startups are outside of the Valley game, with one-quarter of them coming from outside the U.S. If they've stepped on toes and bruised industry egos in the last two years, Arrington and Calacanis shrug that they're doing it for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are the life blood of the Valley and the greater tech economy.

We snagged the entrepreneurs just before the conference kicks off Monday Sept. 8, to tell us what to expect and why they picked such a nasty fight. TechTicker will be on scene for much of the conference too, so stay tuned.

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Typically reporters have the regular weeks of run up to Apple's World Wide Developers Conference or MacWorld to speculate on exactly what wonder device Steve Jobs will unveil. But Apple has sprung an event on us next Tuesday called "Rock On." It's not a stretch to think it's iPod themed and indeed some schematics of new iPod Nanos and Touches have been making the rounds. ZDNet has a catalog of past iPod announcements and the current speculation here. As the post notes, well known Apple fan boy and Digg co-founder Kevin Rose in increasingly making predictions that include iTunes software updates as well. One example is a program called "Genius" that puts together playlists for you of like-songs.

So what's a stake for Apple? As Kevin Maney of Portfolio points out Apple has been so dominant that it's growth of the music market is slowing. He goes so far as to say the Zune and a forthcoming competitor by Dell are threats, but I'll frankly believe that when I see it.

The bigger question is whether Apple has stolen its own iPod thunder with the iPhone-- complete with an app store that supports a free version of wildly popular Internet radio site Pandora.

One thing is for sure: Given all the recent health rumors, articles and Bloomberg's premature obituary leak, all investors will be eyeing not only what Steve Jobs says, but how he looks.

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Sure, things are going great if you work at Google or Facebook, but what about the rest of the Valley? Since my studio guest Terry Garnett's Valley experience pre-dates the recent hype, I asked him to tell us how the other side of the Valley is faring these days. And whether "real" technology--the kind that built the Web's infrastructure-- is due for another hey-day.» More

Back in 2004, Valley venture capitalists David Helfrich and Terry Garnett embarked on a new way to invest in high tech. They called it "venture buyout" and the idea was the carve out multi-million niches of bloated, over-consolidated corporate computing companies and re-cast them as startups-- only startups with huge revenue streams. Companies weren't buying from startups as much as they used to and too much money was in venture capital, and about this time the private equity market was heating up. But Garnett & Helfrich avoided the private equity fall by eschewing debt and making bets carefully. "Spray and pray" it's not: Its inaugural $350 million fund will only invest in about seven deals.

So far, Garnett & Helfrich has done six deals so far and combined those companies are doing about $500 million in revenue. Is fund number two on the way?

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It hasn't been a great year for software stocks, and more troubling the sexy upstarts like Salesforce.com, Netsuite and VMWare seem to be hurting worse than incumbents like SAP and Oracle. What does this say about the future of what was once one of the great golden geese of tech investing?

Joining me in studio to discuss is Terry Garnett of venture buyout firm Garnett & Helfrich. Garnett has played this game from nearly every angle. He worked for Oracle for four years, reporting to chief executive Larry Ellison. He invested in young startups when he worked for venture firm Venrock. Now, at his own firm, he seeks to carve out orphaned product lines from bloated software companies.

Garnett is a believer in much touted waves like software as a service, open source and cloud computing. He just doesn't think it yields many great businesses. His advice on how private and public investors should play this sector on the video.

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One-third of people who bought their houses in 2003 have negative equity, and if you bought your house at the peak of the market in 2006, things look even worse. But what about everyone else? Spencer Rascoff, chief financial officer of Zillow, was my guest this week and we talked about some practical tips to make the downturn work for you. Or at least not hurt as bad.

Related segments:
How Zillow Is Weathering the Housing Downturn
Heads Out of the Sand, Homeowners!

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Is the peak of an epic housing bubble the best time to start a Web business all about real estate? Watching it all implode, Zillow wasn't so sure. But now, two years after the bubble's peak, chief financial officer Spencer Rascoff says yes. Zillow is all about information and community. In a volatile housing market like this one, people are gluttons for data and, well, misery loves company. Its traffic has grown 25% year-over-year.

Monetization is another matter. Zillow is an ad supported business, and even Rascoff admits the market could be more robust.

Related segments:
Heads Out of the Sand, Homeowners!
Housing Has Its Biggest Fall in a Decade. What's in It for You?

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