Called plainly “Cannabis,” a new $1.99 application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch lets you find medical marijuana in the 13 states that have such laws, and lawyers in the 37 others that don’t.

For overseas users, it also guides you to the friendliest Amsterdam hash bars.

The app is the creation of AJNAG, or Activists Justifying the Natural Agriculture of Ganja, a Los Angeles-based online group created in 2006 to “connect, educate and empower individuals on the cultural, economic, and medicinal benefits of legalization, production, regulation, distribution, and taxation of Cannabis sativa,” according to the group’s Web site.

Jonesin’ for some (legal) weed? Yes, there IS an app for that.

AJNAG says it’ll donate 50 cents for every purchase of the “Cannabis” app to an as-yet nonexistent “cannabis non-profit reform fund, which will be set up once the application reaches 1000 subscriptions.”

“Our goal is to put the power of cannabis change in your pocket while you enjoy the most sticky and potent iPhone application available!,” the Web-based brochure claimed.

Requests to Apple seeking comment were not immediately returned.

INDISCRIMINATE gluttons and discerning gourmands alike have long been crazy for pizza. But over the last few years, they have elevated their passion to a vocation, sending pizza into a whole new stratosphere of respect. It isn’t just loved, and it isn’t just devoured. It’s scrutinized and fetishized, with a Palin-esque power to polarize.

Does a wood-burning brick oven yield more flavorful crusts than a coal-burning one? Which flour lends the most character to dough? Is buffalo-milk mozzarella a silky blessing or watery curse?

On such questions the most durable of friendships have foundered and the most principled of pizza makers — pizzaioli, they are now called — part company.

“We’ve gotten all of a sudden into this ‘authentic’ scenario,” said Michael Ayoub, owner of Fornino, a pizzeria in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, referring to the expanding legions of self-regarding artisans around town. “The only thing they haven’t brought over is the water from that polluted Bay of Naples.”

The flashiest restaurateurs want in on pizza; so do some of the most classically trained, critically acclaimed chefs. Stephen Starr, the owner of Buddakan and an owner of Morimoto, two of the grandest and gaudiest Asian restaurants in downtown Manhattan, has lately spent much of his time in New York eating his way through the city’s older and newer pizza parlors, on a gut-busting mission to figure out what works best and how to replicate it in Philadelphia, his base.

Pizza is the latest fascination of David Myers, a celebrated Los Angeles chef who has turned from progressive cuisine at Sona to mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes at Pizzeria Ortica, which he opened early this year in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Pizza is the obsession of Mathieu Palombino, who once ran the kitchen at BLT Fish, an expensive Manhattan restaurant, but now steers Motorino, a modern pizza parlor in Williamsburg, that opened late last year. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, too, has gotten into the act. He’s an investor in Co., the Chelsea pizza place whose debut in January attracted the sort of food-world buzz once reserved for fussier fare.

Pizza connoisseurs bicker endlessly about where to find the best pies. And thanks to the brisk pace of high-profile openings in New York over the last few years — and especially the last six months — they have more serious local contenders than ever to bicker about.

Many give the crown to Lucali, which opened in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in 2006, and charges $34 (cash only!) for a pie with cheese, tomato, pepperoni and mushrooms. Others swear by Zero Otto Nove, which came along a bit later on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

I’ve heard plugs for the misleadingly named Salvatore of SoHo, which began churning out coal-oven pies in a Staten Island strip mall last year, and for Kesté, which unveiled its gorgeous tiled oven in the West Village in March, a pizza-mad month when other instant favorites, including Anselmo’s, in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, made their debut.

Over recent weeks I visited those restaurants and others that belong to this current chapter in pizza worship.

I looked for the most dependable pizza verities and the most enjoyable pizzas, and didn’t confine myself to one style: Neapolitan, Roman (thinner, more crackerlike crusts) or Sicilian (deeper, though not deep-dish, pies).

I did, however, confine myself to places that have opened since 2004, the year that, by my reckoning, inaugurated the chapter in question. That was when Franny’s opened in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn and Una Pizza Napoletana fired up its oven in the East Village. Both brought a new kind of cachet (and vanity) to pizza making and pizza eating in this city. Both changed its demographics.

I did not include predecessors like Patsy’s, Grimaldi’s or Di Fara because they’re products of less self-conscious pizza times. Back then a dismissive telephone greeting like the one I once got at Una Pizza Napoletana (“Hello, Una Pizza, we don’t deliver!”) would have been more surprising, and a recording like the one at South Brooklyn Pizza, in Carroll Gardens, would have been laughable. The British-accented voice in that recording used the phrases “exclusive, votive-lit hideaway,” “hand-crafted” and “custom-made” in the span of 30 seconds, and mentioned an “1890s Napoleon brick oven,” creating ambiguity about whether an Italian region or French emperor was being referenced.

I paid special attention to places less than a year old. There are scads of them.

Why?

“The economy the way it is, pizza’s perfect,” said Mr. Starr, who noted that pizza is relatively gentle on the budgets of consumers and providers.

“I have training at high altitude, with all these big restaurants,” he said, “and this seems a lot easier — less money, less pressure. You’re concentrating on one thing rather than sous-chefs and pastry chefs.”

Casting pizza as art and fostering a cult around high-level pizza making are in the interest of food scribes, whether they work for established periodicals or self-financed blogs, because money is tight in those quarters, too, and it’s much more affordable to canvass the pizza landscape than to mull over Masa.

Pizza suits the casual ethos of the culinary moment, and it fits in with the intensifying reverence for all foods Italian. What’s a French-focused chef to do? Terrance Brennan’s answer at Bar Artisanal, which he opened in TriBeCa in April, is the pissaladière, the French version of pizza given little previous exposure.

On my pizza rounds I developed some firm convictions, but mostly saw that few rules can’t be contradicted, and few generalizations hold.

I believe by and large that Neapolitan pies — if they can avoid soupiness, as they did at Motorino — are the most appealing. Yet the pan pizzas at Veloce Pizzeria, which opened in the East Village a month and a half ago, pleased me every bit as much. Sara Jenkins, the chef who supervises their production, said she isn’t sure whether to call them Sicilian or grandma style. Whatever their proper tag, these denser, richer, square pies were superb. The nicely charred crust — with a dough of potato, durum and fine zero-zero flour — was firm enough to support a generous measure of toppings. Its extra-crisp edges had the salty, zingy flavor and texture of a frico. And the toppings were first-rate, the mushroom pizza showcasing a bevy of hen-of-the-woods.

I believe that firmer, less runny cheese works better most of the time, and yet the Pugliese pie at Motorino, which uses wet-centered burrata, was a masterpiece, the burrata lending the pie an opulence and creaminess.

Crisp crusts, it turns out, aren’t so difficult: most places I visited had mastered that much. But crusts that are crisp without being dry — that have some give and suppleness — are an altogether trickier matter. That’s where Lucali, for example, fell down, though the ratio of mozzarella to tomatoes on its plain pie was faultless, and the tomatoes had a beautiful, round flavor.

Crusts with character and complexity are also rare. Salvatore of SoHo, a charming restaurant whose flame-throwing coal oven gave its crusts a formidable char, was slightly disappointing on this score. The crusts were one-dimensional. And a pie that advertised sausage had precious little of it.

An attractively charred look doesn’t mean an appealingly charred taste, as Zero Otto Nove illustrated. Its pies were lovely to behold — and insipid to eat. Zero Otto Nove illustrated, too, that breathtaking ovens and grandly stated goals don’t guarantee excellence, or even enjoyment. I got almost no pleasure from the soggy pies at Kesté — including one with sausage that could have come from a Jimmy Dean’s freezer package — though Kesté, too, introduced itself as many discerning cuts above a run-of-the-mill slice joint.

Indeed, the wave of ostensibly principled pizza restaurants since 2004 has produced a mixed bag. Along the broad middle stretch of the spectrum, between undistinguished and outstanding, I’d place L’Asso, in NoLIta; Tonda, the East Village redo of the restaurant the E.U.; Toby’s Public House, in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, which has fine tap beers and a pubby warmth; and Luna Rossa, in Carroll Gardens, whose pies are the best in this little bunch.

I put Tonda in the bunch less for its pizza, which isn’t so distinctive, than for its attractive setting, attentive service and side notes like respectable salads and snacks. Such niceties matter: friends who accompanied me to multiple pizza places said they might be most likely to return to Roberta’s, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, even though most of its pies were limp and otherwise flawed. They liked the hipster vibe and ultra-casual outdoor area.

The combination of an utterly soothing or attractive ambience and pizza to swoon over is uncommon, and just as uncommon is consistency, the quality that eludes and bedevils the sporadically transcendent, ultimately frustrating Co., for example.

Co. is the work, principally, of Jim Lahey, one of the city’s master bread makers. His best crusts have a flawless degree of saltiness and are spectacularly blistered. His best pizzas — for instance the popeye, which weds crisp spinach and a molten mix of three cheeses — reflect as much thought for the toppings as for their bed.

But his blisters sometimes cross the line into soot, and on the same recent day when I had yet another terrific popeye, I had an undercooked margherita with a few tiny, shriveled basil leaves and a stingy measure of tomato and cheese, too. What an odd pizza. What a strange place.

The popeye got me thinking about how much some great pizzas and some great salads have in common. The interplay of cheese, leafy green (or other vegetable) and crust in a pizza isn’t so fundamentally different from the interplay of leafy green, cheese and croutons in a salad. There’s just been a reallocation of the starring roles and cameos.

For that matter a great pizza and great pasta are kinfolk. What’s a margherita, after all, but a canvas for tomato, cheese and herb with less slickness, more crunch and more portability than noodles? Many of the flavors are the same.

And be it salad, pasta or pizza, the surest element of success is balance. For pizza that means crispness shouldn’t come at the expense of tenderness, the crust can’t steal the thunder from the toppings, and toppings can’t run roughshod over the crust.

As for toppings, they should add a whisper of sweetness or murmur of heat to the milky, tangy, wonderful white noise of cheese. All of the pizza places in my list of new-generation favorites understand this. And almost all of my favorite pies exemplify it.

Meet Kenny Golde – author of “The Do-It-Yourself Bailout” – in person.

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If you’re like me, you’re debt may come with pain, fear, stress, guilt, shame and anxiety. I was paying nearly $4000 a month in interest. I was losing sleep, losing hair, I even lost a girlfriend. I was overwhelmed with my debt and consumed by the difficulty of figuring out what to do about it.

Finally, I learned about DEBT SETTLEMENT but I didn’t trust paying a disreputable 3rd party agency to do it for me, so I did it myself.

To learn more about “The Do-It-Yourself Bailout,” visit www.settleyourcreditcards.com
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You can be debt free. All you have to give up, is your debt.

Kenny Golde is a film director, writer and producer, novelist, photographer and public speaker. He has appeared on the CBS News in Los Angeles, dozens of radio programs including the nationally syndicated Thom Hartmann Show (both can be seen by clicking here), and has a feature article on “The Do-It-Yourself Bailout” appearing on nationwide newsstands in the September issue of Consumer Reports.

His recent film credits include the WWII drama “Glass House,” the soon-to-be released “Uncross the Stars,” starring Academy Award nominee Barbara Hershey and Golden Globe winner Ron Perlman (www.uncrossthestarsmovie.com) and “The Job,” starring Daryl Hannah. He wrote and directed for the Lifetime Television series “Intimate Portrait,” interviewing dozens of celebrities and personalities including Quentin Tarantino, Billy Joel, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Travolta. Golde lives in Los Angeles (www.kennygolde.com).

Vanessa Hudgens is stripping her clothes off…again.

The “High School Musical” alum is ditching her Disney good-girl image to play a hooker in the upcoming Zack Snyder flick, “Sucker Punch.”

“I’m playing a character named Blondie and it’s set in a brothel in the 1950s, so there’s not a whole lot of clothes,” Hudgens told U.K.‘s Metro.

Showing some skin isn’t unfamiliar territory for the 20-year-old actress.

Hudgens suffered backlash in 2007 after private photos of her in various states of undress, some fully nude, were leaked onto the Internet.

Apparently, public humiliation isn’t enough to stop the actress from doing a repeat performance.

The action-fantasy thriller is slated to open in 2011 and will have Hudgens shooting guns, performing stunts and fighting.

“‘I think this is my time to really step it up and get to grow up,” she said. “It will be somewhat different with the content and a few more foul words but that’s the biggest difference.”

The press material for Lifetime’s new comedy “Drop Dead Diva” contains a lot of accolades from “women’s groups” in which terms like “role model” and “grab your girlfriends” appear with alarming frequency — as if the publicity department were bracing critics for a show that should be viewed through a political or genre framework instead of simply as, you know, a television show anyone might enjoy. (The term “role model” especially tolls in a critic’s ear with as much anticipatory delight as Poe’s funeral iron bells.)

None of which was necessary, as “Drop Dead Diva” is a lot of fun to watch, with the added bonus of introducing TV audiences to Brooke Elliott, a stage actress with fabulous comic timing and enormous dramatic flexibility.

Oh, and she weighs a bit more than 100 pounds, which may explain all that “women’s group” nonsense.

Created by Josh Berman, who has written for “CSI” and “Bones,” “Drop Dead Diva” answers the age old question: What would happen if a dippy but beautiful woman woke up one morning with a brilliant mind but a dumpy body? OK, maybe it’s not an age-old question, but it certainly is an interesting twist on the rather worn pretty-and-witless-meets-schlubby-and-smart-narrative that fuels so much of chick lit.

All this and heaven too. “Drop Dead Diva” opens with two very different women about to meet their doom. Jane (Elliott) is a driven drudge of a lawyer who wears brooches and finds what little joy she experiences in work and carbs. Lots of carbs.

Deb, played by Brooke D’Orsay, meanwhile, is a tight-bodied empty-headed model-actress (guess which one is blond; go ahead, guess) on her way to audition for a job Vanna White made famous.

Both are tragically killed, and we meet up with Deb as she enters the Great Sorting Room in the Sky, where Fred (Ben Feldman), her celestial concierge, informs her that though she has never done an evil deed, she has neither done a good one, making her his first “zero, zero.” Stung, she manages to get sent back to Earth, but via the tragically imperfect body of Jane.

With a setup like this, it would be very easy to fall into a veritable showcase of sexism — How dumb was Deb? How fat is Jane? — but Berman produces a deft juggling trick of heart and humor, balancing Deb’s shallowness with some solid common sense and Jane’s inadequate self-esteem with kindness and legal brilliance.

Almost impossibly, Elliott manages to embody both personalities in a way that, far from some tedious “Inside the Actor’s Studio” lesson in character assimilation, is just delightful to watch. She is aided in this wacky scenario by a serviceable if predictable diagnosis of semi-amnesia and, more important, by Margaret Cho as Jane’s trusty assistant, Teri, and April Bowlby as Deb’s equally shallow but still loyal best friend, Stacy. Both hit all the necessary double-takes and are-you-crazy moments with just the right dramatic frothiness and keep things tethered, if loosely, to the recognizable world.

There’s a bunch of cute guys, of course: Fred has been demoted to guardian angel and gets a job at Jane’s firm so he can keep tabs on his runaway soul. Deb had a boyfriend, Grayson (Jackson Hurst), who has also, as luck and narrative need would have it, just joined the staff (the economic slowdown has not, apparently, hit this portion of Los Angeles).

Despite Deb’s self-centered zero, zero status, Grayson appears to be a peach of a guy, devastated by his girlfriend’s death, but Deb is convinced he wouldn’t look at her twice now that she’s Jane. There’s a scheming colleague, Kim (Kate Levering), a possibly sleazy boss (Josh Stamberg) and a host of upcoming guest stars (Rosie O’Donnell, Paula Abdul). But mostly there’s just Jane, a one-woman, two-woman show, trying to figure out how to accessorize her new life, which comes complete with sugar cravings and a job that requires she think about someone besides herself for two minutes.

If you were of a mind, you could concentrate on all the rather obvious plot devices and general silliness — a female client transformed by a single make-over — and pick “Drop Dead Diva” to death. But why?

Certainly, the show falls more in the fun category than the brilliant, and it’s not going to change television as we know it, but with any luck, it will remind us not to take everything, including television shows, so darn seriously. There is joy to be had in a doughnut, beauty can radiate from a face not made entirely of cheekbones and Botox, but that’s not the point. Deb’s zero, zero has nothing to do with looks but with deeds, and in its own light-hearted and sentimental way, that is what “Drop Dead Diva” makes clear. Not so much that beauty (yawn) comes from within, but that you actually have to do something to put it there.

On second thought, it may indeed change television as we know it.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, “Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it.”

I know that sounds mean, but come on — the list of commercial hits/Microsoft knockoffs is as long as your arm. PalmPilot/PocketPC. Netscape Navigator/Internet Explorer. Mac OS X/Windows Vista. Apple iPod/Microsoft Zune.

You’d think Microsoft would feel a little sheepish after a while.

And now we have yet another me-too effort. It’s something called Bing, and it’s the latest iteration of Microsoft’s multiyear attempt to imitate Google.

The name, presumably, is supposed to evoke the sound of a winning game-show bell. The cynics online, however, joke that Bing is an acronym for “But It’s Not Google.”

Here’s the shocker, though: in many ways, Bing is better.

That’s quite a statement, of course — almost heresy. But check it out yourself. It’s easy to compare the two, thanks to sites like bing-vs-google.com. Here, you’re shown search results from both Bing and Google, side by side, on a split screen.

At first, Bing is pretty much Google. Oh, there’s a big National Geographic-y photo on the home page instead of plain white, but otherwise it’s the same deal: a search box; a menu that offers to complete what you’re typing; and inconspicuous links to Images, Videos, News, Shopping and Maps.

Once you hit Enter, however, you can’t help noticing Bing’s more concerted effort to get you answers faster. To minimize the clicking, the hunting, the dead ends.

For starters, how’s this for a dream feature? Point to any search result without clicking; a pop-up balloon shows you the first few paragraphs of text on it. Without leaving the results list, you know if it’s going to be helpful. Simple and irresistible.

Here’s another example. On Google, search results usually appear as a long list of blue text links. Occasionally, a photo appears, too. Or, if there’s only one possible answer for your query (weather, stock price, sports scores, street address), you get that answer right at the top: a five-day weather forecast, a stock chart, game scores, a street map. In those cases, you don’t have to click through to anything on the search results list.

Bing does all that, too. But it also expands those “let me make sense of this for you” results — in a big, beautiful, very successful way — by introducing a new panel to the left of the search results.

For example, if you search for a celebrity’s name, that space offers an attractive table of common-sense links: News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. When you search for a sports team, you see Schedule, Tickets, Stadium, History and Wallpaper. When you search for a medical condition, that table offers Causes, Remedies, Treatment, Prognosis and News.

Aren’t those almost always the answers you’re really looking for?

That panel also lists Related Searches, which require one click and zero thinking. If you searched for “barbecue,” it offers Barbecue Grills, Barbecue Recipes, Barbecue Ribs and so on.

Finally, the same panel maintains your search history, to save you the trouble of reformulating your quests. (It also offers Turn Off and Clear All buttons, for the benefit of — well, you know who you are.)

Yes, that left-side panel creates more clutter; Google’s appeal has always been its sparse, streamlined look. But it’s well worth the space.

Both Bing and Google offer an Image Search page, where you can find photos from the Web of anyone or anything. On Bing, however, the results page scrolls forever — you don’t have to keep clicking Next, Next, Next. More photos fit in less space, too, since all the cluttery text details (pixel size, file name, originating Web site) are hidden until you point at a thumbnail. And you can adjust the thumbnail size.

Options on the left-side panel let you limit the image results in various ways: by size, by graphic type, even “just faces” or “head & shoulders” shots. Amazing.

As on Google, you can search for videos. But on Bing, you can preview the results far more efficiently. Just point to a thumbnail (without clicking) in the search results, and the video begins to play back sample segments, seven seconds at a time, right there on the thumbnail.

The rest of Bing’s advantages are supposed to stem from four huge search categories: travel, shopping, health and local business information. These sorts of searches produce special displays that trounce Google’s eye-glazing text lists — sometimes.

When you’re shopping for a particular product — “Canon SD870,” for example — the top result is a tidy chart, summarizing everything you’d want to know: a photo, price, average rating, and even a Photo Quality graph.

(Bing’s Shopping results also make it clear when you’ll get 1 to 5 percent cash back, courtesy of Microsoft’s Cashback program. In essence, Microsoft passes on to you some of the bounty that it receives from 540 online advertisers, such as J&R, Hewlett-Packard, Gap and others. Paying you to use Bing for shopping feels desperate and even a little sleazy on Microsoft’s part, but it’s real money, and you may as well exploit it while it lasts.)

When you search for a flight, a similar table offers the cheapest fare (“$259 JFK>LAX”) and links to other deals. An icon tells you whether prices are about to go up, down or stay the same. That detail is brought to you by Farecast.com, which Microsoft bought last year for $115 million.

Unfortunately, these features don’t always work. You get the shopping info summary with “Canon SD870,” but not “Nikon D5000,” let alone “Palm Pre,” “TiVo HD” or “iPod Nano.” (Microsoft points out that the summary table appears more often if you click the Shopping link before you search. But come on, who has time for that?)

Similarly, it’s hard to predict when those fare-prediction icons will appear. Last week, they were showing up when you searched for “Chicago to Atlanta,” but not when you use the corresponding airport codes (“ORD to ATL”); Microsoft fixed that this week. But fare predictions aren’t available for smaller airports (Cleveland, New Orleans, Washington National).

In short, these much-vaunted Bing specialty searches feel a little flaky.

Google is still way ahead on other kinds of searches, like movie showtimes: You get a complete table of nearby movies, complete with trailers, reviews and even links to IMDB.com (the Internet movie database).

Google also wins with maps and driving directions; it offers features like Street View (actual photos along your route) and the ability to drag the colored route line to alternative roadways with your mouse (to avoid a traffic jam or take a favorite shortcut).

On the other hand, Bing wins on traffic searches (such as “traffic nyc”), where you get a color-coded map of current traffic speeds without having to dig. It also excels with company name searches; the 800 number for customer service appears right in the results list.

But search services are constantly in flux. They’re online, so their creators can keep refining them without making you install anything. Bing will keep getting better — but so, inevitably, will Google. If Google doesn’t eventually respond by making its own results more manageable in Bingish ways, I’ll eat my hat.

Furthermore, beyond the basics, Bing is still just a baby. It lacks some of Google’s mature additional services like book searches and Google News (built-it-yourself online newspaper).

People won’t start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit. Everyone already knows how to work it, and it may be built right into your Web browser. But if you value your time, you should give Bing a fling.

Put another way, even if Bing really did stand for “But it’s not Google,” that is not necessarily an insult.

Before he started Summit Series, an informal society of some 200 of the world’s top young entrepreneurs, Elliott Bisnow was just the head of a $2 million-a-year start-up facing a common challenge for a 22-year-old chief executive.

Like many of his peers who were writing ground-breaking software code in high school or orchestrating financing rounds from campus entrepreneur clubs, he was well -versed in the ways of the digital economy. But that didn’t mean he had any clue about how to choose the best health care plan for his 20 employees, or whether to pay his sales people salaries or put them on straight commission, or how to dress so that clients and staff members didn’t dismiss him as a child.

“I just had all these questions,” recalled Mr. Bisnow, now 23, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Bisnow, a Washington-based publisher of e-newsletters.

Mr. Bisnow dropped out of the University of Wisconsin in 2007 to run the company with his father, Mark Bisnow, a longtime radio host and political insider (he was communications director for John Anderson’s 1980 presidential bid), who is chief executive. “My dad was very helpful, but he’d never had his own business before either,” he said. “And I couldn’t really talk to my friends about this.”

So Elliott Bisnow did what any self-respecting, hyper-ambitious entrepreneur two years removed from his last spring break might do: he organized a group ski trip to the Alta Ski Area in Utah, and he drew up a list of some of the better-known entrepreneurs of his generation, people like Ricky Van Veen, 28, and Josh Abramson, 27, founders of CollegeHumor.com; Joel Holland, the 24-year-old chief executive of Footage Firm, a royalty-free stock-footage house on pace to generate upward of $10 million in sales this year; and Ryan Allis, the 24-year-old founder of direct bulk e-mail service iContact, which claims $30 million in annual revenue.

“Instead of calling them and trying to get a meeting,” Mr. Bisnow said, “I decided to convince them all to come to Utah with me. I told them, ‘I will fly you for free and pay for the trip if you come.’ “ Needless to say, he did not have the money to do that. But that’s what credit cards are for (or at least used to be).

From that somewhat dubious proposition Summit Series was born. The members now include Evan Williams, chief executive of Twitter; Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook; Tony Hsieh, chief executive of Zappos; Ivanka Trump, vice president for real estate and acquisitions in the Trump Organization; and the heads of a lot of other companies started in dorm rooms over the last several years. The group meets every four to six months at the urging of Mr. Bisnow to compare notes, raise money for charitable causes, work on big problems facing the world and hang out.

It can all sound like a middle-age conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare. Earlier this year, 35 Summit Series members met for a day of private briefings with senior White House staff members to talk about entrepreneurship and the economy. On July 20, another three dozen Summiteers will convene at the private residence of the entertainment mogul Russell Simmons in Manhattan’s Financial District (with the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio doing the cooking) to brainstorm with former President Bill Clinton and raise money for the Clinton Foundation.

On a recent gray, muggy afternoon, Mr. Bisnow and two other Summit Series organizers — Brett Leve, 25, and Jeff Rosenthal, 24 — were sitting around a long wooden table at the TriBeCa co-op they have sublet in Manhattan for the summer. As they talked about plans for the coming Clinton meeting, another of their colleagues groggily shuffled from one of the three bedrooms in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Six guys are staying at the apartment, crashing in children’s bunk beds and on extra mattresses on the floor.

“We decided we each had $1,500 a month to spend on rent and for that either we could each have a bedroom and stay in Hoboken or be right in the middle of everything in TriBeCa,” Mr. Bisnow explained.

There is no blueprint for what Mr. Bisnow and his associates are doing. Perhaps the closest analogy is Davos, if the yearly forum held in Switzerland for billionaires and heads of state were somehow crossed with MTV’s “The Real World.” Most attendees seem to derive at least as much benefit from the gatherings as Mr. Bisnow.

“So often, as a young C.E.O., you feel like an island,” said Ari Goldberg, 27, a former vice president of LRMR, the brand-management company owned by the basketball player LeBron James, and the recent founder of a fashion social-networking site called StyleCaster. “Then you get to Summit and you look around the room and you see all these other islands. Suddenly instead of being alone it’s like you’re part of the Bahamas or something.”

Summit Series has evolved. Attendees now arrange for their own transportation and pay $2,500 apiece for room and board. Sponsorships from the likes of Staples, Goldman Sachs and the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle cover the rest and subsidize all or part of the organizers’ salaries. With the next multiday event, planned for Miami in early November, the organization should be “well into the black,” Mr. Bisnow said.

Still, Mr. Bisnow said that his first priority remains his e-newsletter company. The lively electronic sheets of industry happenings and gossip (there is one for the Washington real estate scene, one for lawyers, another for government tech workers and so forth) show up in 100,000 inboxes several times a week. The company is projecting revenue for 2009 between $2 million and $3 million.

After getting to know his fellow young entrepreneurs in Summit Series, Mr. Bisnow moved the company’s offices from stuffy sublet space in a downtown Washington law firm to a former storefront on Dupont Circle — and he stopped wearing suits.

Where things go from here is less clear. Mr. Bisnow says he plans to continue splitting his time between the ventures. In particular, he emphasized the importance of Summit Series’ philanthropic mandate. At a meeting in Aspen earlier this year, a seat at the United Nations board dinner with Ted Turner, Kofi Annan and Queen Rania of Jordan was auctioned off, raising $150,000 to benefit the Nothing but Nets campaign to fight malaria in Africa.

Clearly, if one event propelled the organization into the sphere in which Mr. Bisnow hopes to operate, it was the White House meeting. Several Summit members have since opened up direct lines of communications with high-ranking White House economic, environmental and digital policy advisers. There has been talk of follow-up sessions later in the year. Interestingly, though, the event might not have happened if Mr. Bisnow hadn’t listened to his mother.

Late last February, Margot and Mark Bisnow were at an Oscars party in Washington when Ms. Bisnow spied Yosi Sergant, then of the White House Office of Public Engagement. “I wasn’t even going to go,” Elliott Bisnow recalled. “I’d been playing tennis and I was tired, but my mother called and said, ‘Elliott, you really need to get over here.’ ”

The next week, Mr. Bisnow, Mr. Leve and Mr. Rosenthal were working late on a Friday evening on logistics for the Aspen meeting when Mr. Bisnow’s phone flashed with Mr. Sergant’s number. Not only had the administration green-lighted hosting a Summit Series event, Mr. Sergant had already locked them in for the following Friday.

“I looked at Elliott — our jaws dropped,” Mr. Leve recalled. “Yosi is saying, ‘We’re taking a shot on you guys. We really need you to bring the heat here…. And we need all 35 names and Social Security numbers by end of business Tuesday.’ Mind you, this was after hours on Friday. Elliott expressed a little concern about whether we could make the turnaround, and Yosi said, ‘Listen, Elliott, when the president’s office calls, you answer.’ “

2008 StartUp Nation Top 10 Winner David Cosgrove Los Angeles Web Design continues to deliver high quality Web Services to the Glamorous and Talented. 2009 brings new clientele and the launch of HollywoodWorx.com where many of Cosgrove’s clientele receive increased internet exposure.

David Cosgrove Los Angeles Web Design has been recognized by StartupNation (http://www.startupnation.com) as one of the top businesses in its annual Home Based 100 competition under the category of “Most Glamorous”.

http://www.startupnation.com/homebased100/winner/168/index.php

Many of the StartupNation Home-Based 100 submissions revealed that business owners are bucking the current economic downturn and finding business success in these tight times. Historically some of today’s most well known businesses started in a downturn, including Microsoft and General Electric.

“The 2008 ranking shows that the home-based business is more relevant than ever. The current recession has spurred a new wave of home based businesses as a response to loss of jobs, the need for supplemental income and the sheer passion for blazing your own trail and running your own show,” said Rich Sloan, co-founder of StartupNation.com, one of the leading small business networking and advice websites. “Home based businesses are the biggest block of all businesses in existence and we expect numbers to grow ever greater as extra bedrooms, kitchen tables, basements and garages become host to the innovative thinking and pursuit of success by millions of Americans.”

Website designers are out in numbers these days. But David Cosgrove’s Los Angeles Web Design is different–glamorous you might say–because his clientele includes among other things Hollywood celebrities actors directors films bands professional fitness competitors Major League Baseball players.

How many of us can say that our client list is filled with the who’s who? Website designer Cosgrove certainly can.

The StartupNation Home-Based 100 highlights 10 top-ten lists making it not just your ordinary business ranking. From the wackiest, to the most innovative, to the best financial performers – this unique and diverse list highlights the home-based businesses that usually go unrecognized, but still play a vital role in the economy today. The ten categories for 2008 include:

• Best Financial Performers
• Most Innovative
• Boomers Back in Business
• Greenest
• Yummiest
• Wackiest
• Grungiest
• Recession Busters
• Most Slacker-Friendly
• Most Glamorous

In addition to StartupNation staff, judges for this year’s Home Based 100 ranking included Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method Products, Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks North America, John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing, Mel Robbins, host of Make It Happen radio show.

The full results of the Home-Based 100 ranking are available on StartupNation’s website at:

http://www.startupnation.com/hb100.

About David Cosgrove Los Angeles Web Design
David Cosgrove Los Angeles Web Design (www.davidcosgrove.com) has been designing and building websites since 1993. David has worked with corporations, organizations and friends both local and international; from start-ups to Fortune 20 companies to Hollywood celebrities.

View our Winner Profile on StartupNation -

http://www.startupnation.com/homebased100/winner/168/index.php

About StartupNation
StartupNation (www.startupnation.com) provides over 175,000 pages of business advice and networking for entrepreneurs and serves millions of entrepreneurs annually.. . StartupNation is a free service founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs with the intention of providing a one-stop shop for entrepreneurial success, including blogs from a host of experts, podcasts, webcasts, eBooks, award-winning step-by-step advice, and more.

About the Startupnation’s Founders – The Sloan Brothers
StartupNation co-founders and “chief startupologists,” Rich and Jeff Sloan, are two of the country’s leading Small Business experts and ran their business from home for eight years. The Sloan brothers speak frequently at entrepreneurial forums and act as sources for top media venues nationwide. They are authors of StartupNation: Open for Business, published by Doubleday, and provide their insight online at www.startupnation.com. The Sloan brothers are regularly quoted and featured in media such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Small Business, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News and many others.

For more information, press only:
Kathleen Gratehouse, Borders + Gratehouse (415) 963-4174, kathleen (at) bordersgratehouse.com

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When motion pictures were invented at the end of the 19th century, most films were shorter than a minute, because of the limitations of technology. A little more than a hundred years later when Web videos were introduced, they were also cut short, but for social as well as technical reasons.

Video creators, by and large, thought their audiences were impatient. A three-minute-long comedy skit? Shrink it to 90 seconds. Slow Internet connections made for tedious viewing, and there were few ads to cover high delivery costs. And so it became the first commandment of online video: Keep it short.

New Web habits, aided by the screen-filling video that faster Internet access allows, are now debunking the rule. As the Internet becomes a jukebox for every imaginable type of video — from baby videos to “Masterpiece Theater” — producers and advertisers are discovering that users will watch for more than two minutes at a time.

The viral videos of YouTube 1.0 — dog-on-skateboard and cat-on-keyboard — are being supplemented by a new, more vibrant generation of online video. Production companies are now creating 10- and 20-minute shows for the Internet and writing story arcs for their characters — essentially acting more like television producers, while operating far outside the boundaries of a network schedule.

Some are specifically introducing new shows this month with the knowledge that TV networks generally show repeats and reality shows over the summer.

Yet TV networks get much of the credit for the longer-length viewing behavior. In the past two TV seasons, nearly every broadcast show has been streamed free on the Internet, making users accustomed to watching TV online for 20-plus minutes at a time. By some estimates, one in four Internet customers now uses Hulu, an online home for NBC and Fox shows, every month. “Dancing With the Stars,” the popular ABC reality show, draws almost two million viewers on ABC.com, according to Nielsen.

“People are getting more comfortable, for better or for worse, bringing a computer to bed with them,” said Dina Kaplan, the co-founder of Blip.tv.

Ms. Kaplan’s firm distributes dozens of Web series. A year ago all but one of the top 25 shows on her Web servers clocked in at under five minutes. Now, the average video hosted by Blip is 14 minutes long — “surprising even to us,” she said. The longest video uploaded in May was 133 minutes long, equivalent to a feature-length film.

Dave Beeler, a producer of “Safety Geeks: SVI,” about a threesome who make the world more dangerous as they try to protect it, said the “fallacy that anyone post-MTV has no attention span” is being refuted by the success of original video Web sites.

While online video is not going to replace television anytime soon, it is now decidedly mainstream. About 150 million Internet users in the United States watch about 14.5 billion videos a month, according to the measurement firm comScore, or an average of 97 videos per viewer. Although the Web lacks a standard for video measurement, comScore says average video durations have risen slowly but surely in the past year, to an average of 3.4 minutes in March.

To be sure, many of the most-watched videos are still as short as a song. But YouTube, the dominant video destination, recently recognized the trend and added a “Shows” tab to its pages, directing users to long-form TV episodes and movies. Jon Gibs, a vice president for media analytics for Nielsen, said online video — projected by eMarketer to be a $1 billion business in 2011 — is at a pivotal point.

“Historically it has been very much a clip-based experience online,” he said. “We believe we are moving into a transition period where more of that viewership is going toward long-form video.”

Much of the video innovation is coming from people who — empowered by inexpensive editing equipment and virtually no distribution costs — are creating content specifically for an online audience.

“On the Web, producers have this delicious freedom to produce content as long as it should be. They’re starting to take advantage of that,” Ms. Kaplan said.

What took so long? Tom Konkle, Mr. Beeler’s production partner on “Safety Geeks,” suggested that the shorter-is-better rule reflected limitations in Internet speed and server space. As computer power has improved, the video experience has too.

“A few years ago, three minutes ‘watching’ your computer felt like a novelty; now, it’s as familiar as your television set,” he said.

Two years ago when the comedian David Wain was stitching together the first episode of his series “Wainy Days,” he called Rob Barnett, the founder of the video distribution site My Damn Channel, and asked whether a nine-minute video would seem drawn out. Mr. Barnett deferred to the creator, and an hour later Mr. Wain called back with his mind made up: he would slice the first episode into three parts.

“I bet you, if this phone call happened today, we’d go with a nine-minute piece,” Mr. Barnett said. “I think it comes down to quality winning out over minutes and seconds.”

In short, the storytelling is superseding the stopwatch. “If there’s good storytelling and good production values, people are willing to engage with the content,” said Eric Berger, a senior vice president of Crackle, the Sony video site.

More than anything else, the longer viewing spans may speak to the maturation of the medium itself. Mr. Konkle said that the first kinetoscopes, in the 1890s, were about 30 seconds long, because the format required outrageously long strips of film.

“It was also accepted as fact that 30 seconds made for a good kinetoscope. This is what filmmakers thought the audience could handle,” Mr. Konkle said, drawing a parallel to the early days of online video. “It probably felt like a giant dangerous leap to short films of three minutes.”

Blockbuster movies now, of course, are measured by the hour, not the second; the most popular one last year, “The Dark Knight,” clocked in at two and a half hours.

WHETHER the Parisian bistro is dead depends largely on how you define “bistro.” If you need pigeonholes for your napkins, no wine choices because the owner’s brother-in-law makes Beaujolais, a dependable blanquette de veau every Tuesday, and the neighborhood plumber sitting in the corner, you’re out of luck. But if you want a small, cozy place, reasonably comfortable, with reliable and affordable food, it may be that the choices are better than they have been in years.

That’s my experience, anyway. The food in the places discussed here is often inventive but never silly, with the occasional deconstructed classic making an appearance, but a sound one. The atmosphere is friendly enough. You don’t sit shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors as you do in the ostensibly old-fashioned bistros (no one really likes that, do they?), and the places are often quiet enough for people actually to hear one another. The service varies, as it always does in Paris, from indifferent to efficiently friendly. And, at as little as 30 euros, the prices are impressively reined in.

Le Gaigne

Pressed to say why Le Gaigne (12, rue Pecquay, Fourth Arrondissement; 33-1-4459-8672, restaurantlegaigne.fr) is my favorite of the lot, I’d have to admit that it’s simply because it’s the most charming, the kind of place I’d love to see more of. It’s run by a husband-and-wife team, with him in the kitchen and her out front. (He worked with the star chef Pierre Gagnaire, in itself not necessarily a good thing.) They seem to deal with everything effortlessly: the food is on time, it’s hot, it’s good and it’s interesting; the wine list is solid, and even the wine service is pretty good, despite the fact that Madame’s attention is everywhere at once.

It helps that there are only about 20 seats, and seemingly only one seating. It helps, too, that the menu is small, not as small as Les Papilles’ (below) but far less ambitious than that of Itinéraires (also below). Still, it’s big enough, and on my three visits every dish was well executed. At 39 euros for five courses (about $55 at $1.43 to the euro), this is admirable. (You can order à la carte also, and the portions are enormous.) Money, obviously, is saved by the lack of staff, the likely relatively low rent (the location is a side street near the border of the Marais and Beaubourg, not exactly chic), and the décor — which appears to have been planned and executed by amateurs. (Except for the sink outside the toilet, which was brilliant.)

Essentially, the tasting menu is two appetizers, two main courses and dessert. Pig terrine made with foot, ear, jowl and a variety of vegetables — a real country-style dish — was perfect. It was served with little hearts of lettuce, a tangle of julienned ham, a little bit of grilled salami (in retrospect, maybe not that little) and vinaigrette. On the other end of the spectrum was an assortment of spring vegetables, sauced with spinach purée and served with a couple of twigs of thyme, set on fire. I could do without the pyrotechnics, but my companions enjoyed the show. White and green asparagus — lots of them — were served with confited gizzards and greens; the combination was lovely. Tempura shrimp with soy was less successful.

My favorite main course was roast veal with a sauté of mushrooms, potatoes and onions, as simple as could be and strikingly delicious. In a “real” bistro, these ingredients would have been stewed, or served with a sauce; this was better. Sautéed sole with a sauce of mussels and squid-ink noodles was another winner, as was duck two ways (breast and confited leg) with glazed turnips. Desserts are not the strong point, but in general they’re pleasant enough; if there is a good piece of cheese on offer (I had Muenster on one visit), I’d go that route.

L’Epigramme

Near Odeon, L’Epigramme (9, rue de l’Eperon, Sixth Arrondissement; 33-1-4441-0009) has the most tourist-friendly location of the restaurants discussed here, and yet it’s the least expensive: 30 euros for a three-course prix fixe. And it’s legit. (The chef here worked with Alain Ducasse, which again might or might not be a selling point.)

As at Le Gaigne, little is put into the décor; here it’s almost without decoration and what there is is generic but not unattractive. What money was spent went into very comfortable chairs, which is a plus. L’Epigramme is small — about 30 seats at the most — yet unlike Le Gaigne it has a professional rather than a family feel. This plus the serious food left us feeling that we were served a good, interesting meal at a fair price.

On one visit, following an amuse-bouche of fromage blanc with herbs and garlic, along with carrots and radishes — nothing wrong with that — I gambled on cream of lettuce soup, and won: it was a fantastic purée with bits of chopped lettuce, not at all bitter and instantly recognizable, with a few bits of bacon sprinkled about. Equally exciting was a fricassee of cuttlefish, braised in tomatoes, onions and probably red wine, with that rich, dark essence that stews of cephalopods get.

A boned lamb shank served with ratatouille and couscous was intended to have a North African feel but was a tad short on spice; still, the meat was silky smooth, flavorful and tender as could be. Nicely sautéed scallops on a bed of cauliflower and oxtail stew with vegetables were both better seasoned if not quite as luxurious. There is a sort of lack of surprise about the main courses that is at once comforting and somehow … well, I would have liked just a little more imagination.

I know that salted caramel is the flavor of the moment, so much so that it’s fast becoming a cliché, but on top of super-creamy rice pudding it’s just terrific — declared the dessert of the week by one of my companions, who’d been eating sweets for days. Pain perdu (French toast), made with brioche, was moist and tender, topped with orange marmalade.

Itinéraires

Itinéraires (5, rue de Pontoise, Fifth Arrondissement; 33-1-4633-6011) features a handsome room, a handsome, young, talented chef (who seems to have worked for no one famous!), and exceptionally attentive service under the supervision of his wife. Relative to the other places here, it’s large (maybe 60 seats), bustling and nicely designed. It’s still priced right — 36-euro prix fixe — and, like the chef, the room, the service (and the servers), the food is gorgeous. Good smells assault you instantly upon your arrival.

The food is also mysterious, which is not always something I like, but here the experiments are restrained and flavor remains paramount. Still, because my French is not terrific, I couldn’t always ascertain the details of what we were eating. After one visit, I strolled by the next morning, just before lunch, and asked the chef just what I’d eaten the previous evening.

He was patient enough, and explained that my cooked and raw white and green asparagus (I knew that much) had been served with a foie gras vinaigrette, whipped fromage blanc and parsley gelée; a slow-cooked egg was served cold, with blood sausage, a hot cream of Jerusalem artichokes and ail d’ours (bear’s garlic, ostensibly because the bears eat it); creamy, slow-cooked pork had been cooked with Parmesan, more ail d’ours and very little else — it had a superbly crisp skin and wondrously tender meat.

Some dishes were more easily deciphered: a lovely piece of turbot was served over a delicious “risotto” of farro and vegetables; raw mushrooms came with clams, lemon, fennel and — I’m guessing — tiny croutons of spice cake. The cold poached egg made another appearance in a flan with morels, slow-cooked cabbage and a sweet mushroom chip.

Desserts were straightforward and well executed: mille-feuille with pastry cream, mint and strawberries; luscious, perfectly sweet strawberry soup; unsurpassingly bitter chocolate tart, just right for me; and a superior macaroon with strawberries and pistachio. (Obviously, I was there during strawberry season.)

Les Papilles

Let me quickly get out of the way what Les Papilles (30, rue Gay Lussac, Fifth Arrondissement 33-1-4325-2079; www.lespapillesparis.fr) is not: elegant, quiet, spacious, pretty, flexible, luxurious or even a good-sounding idea. But here’s what it is: an idea that works.

Les Papilles is a wine shop, a provisions shop — you can buy jarred duck confit, for example — and, somehow, a good restaurant as well, so long as you don’t mind the lack of choice in what you eat or people standing with their thighs touching your table while you’re eating and they’re reaching for a bottle of wine they might have with their dinner. Or maybe they won’t, and will put it back, and continue to inspect the racks above your head, talking loudly all the while.

Are you still with me or have you already left to eat at Le Gaigne? Because this odd, always somehow annoying place is worth a visit. The food is often Michelin-star quality, and though the menu offers no choices — everyone gets the same soup, main course, salad and dessert — as long as your tastes are broad (or you’re a not-super-hungry vegetarian) you are going to be not only satisfied but happy. That is, assuming you’re tolerant.

Enough caveats. You can buy wine at retail here (there’s a 7-euro corkage fee), and the selection is sensational and reasonably priced, so between that and the rock-bottom prix fixe (31 euros, which, if I’m reading my notes correctly, is down from 39 euros on my last visit), the place is a bargain, which in part explains its popularity. But there are plenty of less expensive restaurants within a short walk, so obviously there’s more to it than that. And that is the food.

The makings of carrot soup arrive in a bowl: shredded carrots, chive, crisp bacon, herbs; a purée of carrots, stock and cream is ladled from a tureen over this. The soup pattern is repeated with other vegetables (one night I had potato purée, with mashed potatoes stirred into it, one night it was celery and celeriac) and it’s always a classic done right. The main course, also served family style and often out of copper gratin pans, might be a veal-and-vegetable stew with a side of awesome potato gratin, or a lamb shank with what amounts to ratatouille. It’s home cooking, but it’s better than mine, and probably better than that of most people you know.

I am not enamored of the little plate of greens served with fresh goat cheese and a little uninteresting toast spread with tapenade. In fact, I would rather just have a big bowl of greens and good dressing, but then again I’m not a goat cheese fan, and others seem to like it. Desserts can be fabulous — I particularly enjoyed panna cotta with pear and caramel — or not so (pineapple with mascarpone and some foam, for example), but in general the food here is so reliable that I, and many others, keep coming back.