OK. For the rest of you: The New York Times has unmasked the buyer of one of Brooklyn’s most expensive homes.

It’s not, as an astonishing number of people have speculated, actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Instead, it’s an unnamed Google (GOOG) engineer, who bought the place on Prospect Park West last year for $8.45 million.

At the Googler’s request, the Times isn’t naming the buyer, citing “office culture at Google” (more on the Times’s policy on unnamed sources here). But it’s going to be hard to keep this one quiet for long.

For starters, the buyers have already told the paper that “Harken Pretty,” the name of the limited-liability company they used to buy the nine-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot townhouse, is an anagram of their names. They also note that the Googler started working at the company prior to its 2004 IPO.

Assuming that the Googler is based in New York (he and his family are moving from Soho), that’s a reasonably small pool of folks to pick from. Maybe a couple hundred, tops. So this one’s getting out sooner than later.

Meanwhile, Curbed has a full set of pictures of the place, if you’re interested in that sort of thing (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Note that these snapshots were taken prior to planned overhauls. The exterior will have to remain the same, per New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. But while the interior was good enough for its previous owners, actors Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany, the new owners say the kitchen “had an inconsistent 1980s renovation.”

That’s the path that Jason Herskowitz has chosen. Old job: VP of product management at Total Music, Universal Music and Sony’s (SNE) attempt to create a service that offered either free downloads or free streaming music as a way to combat file-sharing. It collapsed earlier this year and Project Playlist bought some of its parts.

New job: VP of product management at LimeWire, one of the last (one of the only?) high-profile peer-to-peer file-sharing companies based in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the service was embroiled with industry lawsuits for three years running.

Here’s Herskowitz’s blog post announcing his new job and his pending move to Brooklyn (Welcome, Jason! Pretty sure we’re neighbors.) from Washington D.C. It’s not a crazy career move: A job is a job and there aren’t that many in digital music these days. Besides, I hear that LimeWire has nice offices.

Which reminds me: How is it, exactly, that LimeWire stays afloat when the labels have been able to force so many of its peers to shut down? Good question. I’ve asked around and heard murmurings that the labels and the file-sharing service may be able to work out some kind of agreement, but I’ve heard that every 12 months or so. So I’ll believe it in when I see it.

In the meantime, LimeWire continues to allow you to download just about any song (and many other things) you can imagine over the Web for free, without paying anyone a cent. Though if you do try to download a copyrighted song, you do get this stern warning from the service. I take it in the same spirit as the warnings head shops give you when they say the bong they’re selling is for tobacco use only (click to enlarge):

One day I’ll get to stop writing this, because Twitter is slowly starting to sketch out some revenue plans.

But for now, it still holds true: Almost all of the money Twitter is generating is being generated by companies other than Twitter. They’re members of the growing ecosystem of companies that base their business on the microblogging service, but don’t pay Twitter a dime.

Here’s another one: Pontiflex, a lead-generation start-up that hoovers up names and other info from users who visit its network of publishers and then sells the data to marketers. The Brooklyn-based company is rolling out a Twitter product that lets marketers compile a list of interested Twitter users.

Sound simple? It is. All Pontiflex is doing is adding a Twitter “handle” field to its lead-generation forms (see example at right). Armed with these data, a marketer can follow Twitterers who say they’re interested in their products, and…not much else.

Since the users aren’t actually signing up to “follow” any of the marketers, said marketers can’t send them direct messages. The marketers could try to “at reply” their leads–the equivalent of shouting out the name of someone you think might be at a loud cocktail party but can’t actually see. But that’s about it.

So what’s that information worth? Depends, says Pontiflex CEO Zephrin Lasker. Probably more than an email address, but less than a phone number. He says pricing will depend on clients, volume, etc., but he figures he’ll be able to sell each Twitter handle to his consumer packaged goods clients for a couple bucks a pop. Call it anywhere from 50 cents to $5 per name.

Per usual, Twitter won’t see a penny of that.

Like most other Twitter ecosystem ideas, this one only works if Twitter really crosses over from novelty to mainstream and stays there. And the jury’s still out on that.

But in the meantime, marketers want in on the new hotness, and Lasker is happy to oblige.

“This is one of those things that people don’t know how to participate in, but they want to be there,” he says. “So, that’s where we can help.”

Also, just because we’re talking about leads, and I use any excuse I can get, here’s Alec Baldwin’s awesome “Always Be Closing” speech from “Glengarry Glen Ross.” (Warning! Contains salty sales language.)

Confused? Of course. So was I, when I checked out Hulu’s new “Desktop” app, launched today as part of the video service’s new “Labs” collection of experimental offerings.

Basically, it’s downloadable software that makes it easier than ever to watch Hulu’s shows and clips in the same way that you’d watch TV–on your sofa, remote in hand. But Hulu wants to make sure you don’t actually think it replaces TV.

Note how the company describes it: “A lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer” that will work on Macs and PCs with “standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls”–but not with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Media Center machines or Apple’s (AAPL) AppleTV boxes. And it also isn’t designed to work with any other Web-to-TV software or boxes, like Vudu.

To spell this out: I’m writing this post from the “cave” that the All Things Digital team has set up for the D7 conference, and it’s full of gorgeous 22-inch and 30-inch Mac displays that are much nicer than anything that sits in my cramped Brooklyn apartment. Hulu is saying that they’d be A-OK with me watching Tina Fey and crew, via their service, on those monitors. But they don’t want me trying to get that show on an actual television.

Isn’t a screen a screen? Nope. Not to Hulu’s owners: GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and soon, Disney’s ABC (ABC). To them, it’s important to make the distinction between TV programming, which generates significant ad revenue and/or cable subscription fees, and online video, which generates very little at all. That’s why NBC CEO Jeff Zucker reiterated his opposition to Boxee, the software that makes it easy to move Web video like Hulu to TV sets.

Now all he has to do is convince tech-savvy entertainment consumers to play along. Good luck!

UPDATE: Several readers have suggested to me that Hulu and its owners aren’t as dumb as they seem, and that they do indeed intend to use Desktop eventually, as a Boxee-like product of their own–that is, they will use it to let people watch Hulu on TV. If so, that means that Jeff Zucker wasn’t being honest when he declared that “right now we’re committed to Hulu being an online experience, and that’s where our vision is today, and I think that will continue.”

But for what it’s worth, whenever I’ve talked to anyone at ABC, Fox, NBC or Hulu, all of them have been consistently mindful about not trying to disrupt the existing value chain that supports the cable and broadcast TV business–“the ecosystem” is the euphemism they prefer. So I don’t find Zucker’s comments so far-fetched.

Anyone want to weigh in? If you use your real name you can sound off in the comments below. Or you can drop me a line at  peter@allthingsd.com.

He’s probably being too conservative.

At least if you use Warner Music Group (WMG) as a comp. Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s music company is (very) roughly the size of Hands’s music company and was forever slated to buy, sell to, or merge with EMI. (In May 2006, EMI was willing to pay $26 a share in cash for Warner, but Bronfman rejected the deal; a year later, EMI rejected a Warner offer.)

Take a look: WMG, currently trading at $1.86 a share, is down 86 percent since Terra Firma bought EMI in August 2007. At what point will Hands have to fess up and take another write-down? (Click chart to enlarge).

Here’s an EMI employee with no complaints about the music business–Norah Jones, whose 2002 debut album was really EMI’s last super-huge success. Those days are gone, but she’s managed to hang on to her money–or at least enough to pay $5 million for a Brooklyn townhouse a couple months ago. Check out this excellent duet with Dolly Parton (yup, that Dolly Parton).

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)