Week in review: The problem with Dry Erase Girl

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the five most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

The problem with Dry Erase Girl: There’s no business in hoaxes — The men who fooled the Internet with their hoax about a woman who quit her job via a dry erase board say it made some money for their site, TheChive.com — but that attention-grabbing stunts don’t make for a reliable business model for their company, Rober Media.

Lifting the veil on the hybrid processor-graphics chip in the new Xbox 360 — Microsoft and IBM described the two-headed chip that enables the new black version of the Xbox 360 to operate on less power and more quietly than past models of the video game console.

Google tests search that delivers results as you type — Google is developing a new kind of search capability that delivers the results instantly as you type the letters.

Apple applies for patent to kill jailbroken iPhones — Apple evidently wants to have a killswitch to disable “jailbroken” iPhones.

Gmail users place 1M calls in 24 hours — Gmail users are already taking advantage of the cheap calling that Google launched on Wednesday.

And here are five more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen sharking everyone from Apple to Facebook on down — Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft from long, long ago, is now trying his hand at suing the entire Internet over decade-old patents owned by his former company, Interval Research.

Dell’s Aero Android smartphone hits AT&T today — for some reason — Dell’s Aero Android phone has been a long time coming — but unfortunately for the company, the longer it has waited to release the device, the less appealing it has become.

Five new Y Combinator startups to watch — Incubator Y Combinator just held its latest Demo Day, where the current class of startups gave rapid-fire demonstrations to investors and journalists. Here are my choices for companies that deserve a closer look.

Chomp’s iPhone app brings mobile search into modern age — Finally, it looks like searching for apps on your smartphone will go from a terrible experience to a pretty good one.

VentureBeat declares war! Why “Google Beat” is a brand extension too far — Larry, Sergey, Eric: VentureBeat is putting you on notice. This “Google Beat” thing is going too far.