jkettnich@stepstoneglobal.com

British investors in BP are growing increasingly frustrated with the White House’s involvement and comments about the company’s efforts to clean up the oil spill. And they are “furious” over suggestions that BP not pay a dividend until it cleans up its mess. Way to endear yourself to Americans, British investors. Apple’s Safari 5 browser allows users to strip out ads from Web pages, pissing off content creators that rely on ad revenue. Emerging markets are going mainstream. How you know when you're really in love in 2010. George Soros on “Act II” of the economic crisis.

The Private Equity Council warns that the proposed increase in taxes on carried interest profits could cost tens of thousands of jobs, cut the overall value of the nation’s commercial real estate, cause default rates on commercial mortgages to rise, and even, possibly, to incite a plague of locusts. Newsweek’s Dan Lyons goes for the jugular (of Microsoft’s PR machine): “You Stay Classy, Redmond.” Massive flow of bullsh_t continues to gush from BP's headquarters, according to sources familiar with bullsh_t. Speaking of BP, it's buying up search terms like “oil spill” and “oil spill claims” via the sponsored links programs of Yahoo and Google. BP says it’s trying to disseminate useful information about its response efforts. Critics say it’s pushing out its version of events before anyone else.

Facebook just created a cutesy video to explain their social plug-ins, replete with folksy sounding voiceover. (If you weren't creeped out by Facebook already, you will be after watching.) Does Microsoft need to sack Steve Ballmer? Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky thinks it's high time. Goldman tries to run out the clock. “We did not ask them to pull up a dump truck to our offices to dump a bunch of rubbish,” says Phil Angelides, the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Rumor has it that Apple announced something today. Countrywide Not On Your Side agrees to pay $108 million for collecting excessive fees from cash-strapped homeowners. The FTC says it's one of the largest judgments in its history. Ponzi schemer Ken Starr is "all anybody is talking about in the Hamptons or California.” Too bad, too sad for Marsh and McLennan, which sells the analysis and security firm Kroll for a huge loss just six years after buying it.

Is the Facebook insignia -- revealed when CEO Mark Zuckerberg peeled off his hoodie -- evidence of a, mmmmwhahahhahahah, “secret Facebook ritual?” Decide for yourself, using this elaborate dissection of the illustration. No one could blame PayPal and Tesla Motors cofounder Elon Musk for sipping a tall bottle of champagne this afternoon. After a nail-biting delay, the Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX -- Musk’s commercial space exploration company -- lifted off successfully earlier today from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Yelp and OpenTable are teaming up, making it easier for users to book a table after deciding where they want to eat. Supercomputers are giving some traders a material edge. Can Warren Buffet restore his beloved image, after refusing to take any responsibility for the failings of Moody’s (in which Berkshire Hathaway is the largest shareholder)? Felix Salmon thinks not. It looks like a real recovery, and it's no mirage, insists Newsweek.

LinkedIn will almost double its headcount in 2010. What does it mean? Google caves, giving European regulators rogue data it intercepted and that authorities have been clamoring to have. Damn them. Goldman and JPMorgan just pay too much to leave. Well, that's creepy. San Mateo County tells CNet it has appointed a “special master” to search the items seized from the home of Gizmodo writer Jason Chen, who famously wrote about an iPhone prototype in March. Is KKR getting into the talent agency biz? It's looking that way, reports Dealbook. Anyone want to buy BP? Going once, going twice…

* Benchmark-backed Zipcar has finally filed to go public. TechFlash’s John Cook isn’t thrilled about the news. We’ll soon see what the public market thinks. The company won’t see profitability for a long while according to its S-1 but revenues are climbing at a nice clip -- reaching $131.2 million in 2009, up from $13.7 million in 2005. * The mainstream media rips off Danny Sullivan; he returns the favor by calling them out individually. * Tonight at the D8 Conference, Steve Jobs takes the stage. Click here to see what happens. * Oops. CNN inadvertently reveals the email address of a newly separated Al Gore. * Case dismissed: Moodys and S&P aren’t liable for lost billions in mortgage-backed debt, rules a federal judge. * Apparently, Facebook is right now screwing up the Internet with its "like" buttons.

I first met Alex Rampell in early 2007, six months after he’d launched TrialPay, a payments and promotions platform that had already recognized the lucrative potential of getting online users to try one product in order to get another one for free. At the time, Rampell was 25 years old and TrialPay employed just 13 people who worked out of a couple of small, windowless conference rooms in Mountain View. Roger Lee of Battery Ventures, who was with me on my visit, had said that he’d courted Rampell aggressively, including presenting Rampell with a preemptive offer at a nearby bistro and, when that didn’t work, introducing him to potential customers. At the time, I was baffled by Lee's obligingness; now it's easy to understand.

CEOs tend to get all the credit, but as many of them would likely admit, it’s countless invisible yet talented individuals who make up the vast amount of value in Silicon Valley. Beginning this week, we're hoping to shine a light on some of these unexposed stars through a regular new feature called Behind the Screens. Kicking off the series is 28-year-old Erik “Dutch” Vanbragt, the franchise lead of technology on Mafia Wars, an enormously popular multiplayer browser game from the social networking game company Zynga.

Shiv Singh is a vice president and the Global Social Media Lead for Razorfish, one of the world’s biggest interactive agencies and home to a long line of Fortune 500 clients, including Levis, McDonalds, Starwood Hotels and Victoria’s Secret. Yesterday, before Singh caught a plane out of his headquarters in New York, we discussed how Razorfish's customers are approaching the explosive growth of social media and the new class of influencers born of the boom. Singh also shared some of his most recent data discoveries with me, what new techniques companies are using to boost customer engagement across social media, and why he thinks Twitter has some growing up to do.

Last year, self-made Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban quietly entered the business of venture capital, adding an early-stage digital media practice to his seven-year-old, Los Angeles-based investment company, Saban Capital Group. Today, I caught up with the head of that practice, native New Zealander Craig Cooper, who’s also been a venture partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners and a founding partner with Softbank Capital. Cooper also co-founded Boost Mobile, a teen-focused wireless startup that sold to NexTel in 2003 for an undisclosed amount. Among other things, we talked about what it’s been like working for Haim, whose net worth has reportedly dropped by a third in the last year, what Cooper makes of friend and former colleague Eric Hippeau becoming CEO of Huffington Post, and how the economy has impacted what a year ago was a vibrant venture scene in sunny Southern California. (Hint: it’s gotten bushwhacked.)