SAN FRANCISCO -- The Federal Reserve monitors things like inventory levels and housing starts to gauge the economy's direction. In Silicon Valley, old-timers have some leading indicators of their own.

The goofy-names index, for example, is back near its previous high. Consider Orgoo Inc., which helps people organize all their Web communications. Or Zipidee Inc., a purveyor of "digital goods" such as cellphone ring tones. "Are these names of dogs or are they names of companies?" asks Kate Mitchell, a venture capitalist in Foster City, Calif.

The rate of odd-looking start-ups, too, is on the rise. One called Startup Schwag exists solely to deliver a monthly package of T-shirts and other goodies bearing logos of other tech start-ups. Rapper MC Hammer, known for 1990s hits like "U Can't Touch This" and a 1996 bankruptcy filing, is chief strategy officer of an online-video start-up called DanceJam. PlaySpan Inc., a Web-gaming outfit that raised $6.5 million, boasted on its Web site that it had been founded by a fifth-grader.

Then there's this familiar froth indicator: Some office landlords in Silicon Valley are again accepting stock in still-private start-ups in lieu of rent.

"It is absolutely déjà vu," says David Chao, a venture capitalist in Menlo Park, Calif., who reports seeing lots of bad business ideas, from ever-younger entrepreneurs. "There's just as much junk now as there was in 1999," he says.

That year, of course, was when dot-com excess was nearing its glorious peak -- a profusion of product-free businesses, strange company names and profligate spending on things like in-office massages. Start-up stock effectively became legal tender for bills to landlords, lawyers and workers. The bubble started leaking fast in 2000 and soon left quite a mess.

Even pessimistic prophets don't see today's silliness ending nearly as badly. Investments by venture capitalists, while at levels not seen in nearly six years, remain way below the peak. So too does the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index. And today's start-ups generally aren't tapping the stock market for cash to fuel their ascent, partly because technological change has brought down the cost of creating a new Web company. So, the argument goes, a deflating bubble wouldn't hurt as many people.

Marc Andreessen, who helped make the historic dot-com bubble possible by founding Netscape Communications in 1994, doesn't find the current period particularly frothy. "My theory is that the next bubble will only come when everyone stops talking about bubbles all the time," he says.

Indeed, some start-ups are trying to tone down the hype. Since its funding announcement, PlaySpan, which runs an online marketplace for the virtual goods that game players need, has minimized the role of its now-sixth-grade entrepreneur, Arjun Mehta. His mother "wants him to focus on school," says PlaySpan spokeswoman Mika Kelly, who adds that the child is "not involved in management." Arjun's father, Karl Mehta, is the company's other founder and current CEO.

And companies with odd names typically argue they aren't goofy at all. Orgoo says its name means "infinite organization": The "org" comes from organization and the "oo" looks a little like the symbol for infinity.

Zipidee's name comes from the upbeat "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" tune in the 1946 Disney film "Song of the South." Founder Henry Wong thought the name sounded "memorable, carefree and open-feeling," just like the company's "open, digi-good marketplace," says spokeswoman Jessie Wong, who is also Mr. Wong's wife. Mr. Wong, who is a venture capitalist as well as an entrepreneur, says, "I don't see the froth that a lot of people see."

People like Howard Hartenbaum. "It seems like we're in a bubble," says Mr. Hartenbaum, a venture capitalist, and he's betting on it: His firm, Draper Richards LP in San Francisco, has pulled back its new investing in Internet companies over the past three or four months.

Mr. Hartenbaum's indicators: He is being pitched by too many inexperienced management teams who haven't worked together before and seem to think they're entitled to start-up riches. And he finds entrepreneurs recycling ideas that flopped in the last tech boom, such as Web sites that offer group discounts for consumer purchases or pay people to surf the Internet so they will look at ads.

Free food is a bubble indicator that John V. Bautista watches. A longtime Silicon Valley lawyer, Mr. Bautista cites the revival of work-force perks like free eats and gym memberships.

He points to one of his own clients, RockYou Inc., which invites its 20 full-time employees to order any food they want from Costco during the week. Goodies like beef jerky and candy are continually arriving at the San Mateo office of RockYou, which makes software "widgets," programs that let people add things like slide shows to Web pages. RockYou's chief executive, Lance Tokuda, doesn't see any bubble but admits the food policy "kind of reminds me of 1999." Mr. Bautista sees "a bunch of little bubbles," and says that "some of them are popping, others are growing."

The froth indicator that tech veterans cite most often is the befuddling business plan. BillMonk, a company launched last year, offers Web tools to let friends keep track of debts to each other. "You think about that and say, 'Give me a break,' " says Peter Falvey, a co-founder of tech investment bank Revolution Partners in Boston.

Mr. Falvey concedes the service might appeal to kids. BillMonk was bought earlier this year for an undisclosed sum by a mobile-payments company, Obopay Inc., whose moniker might qualify for the goofy-name index. (It derives from "obol," an ancient Greek coin, and the "obo" part also echoes the phrase "or best offer.")

Other prognosticators cite the burgeoning Internet-conference scene. The TechCrunch Web site expected 400 attendees at a Web conference in San Francisco last month; it stopped selling $2,500 invitations when sign-ups reached about 900.

Among firms presenting there was ZocDoc Inc., which lets people make appointments with doctors and dentists online. The New York company has listings for only 2% of the dentists in Manhattan and no physicians, but it has attracted interested investors, says its CEO, Cyrus Massoumi.

MC Hammer's video company was also at the TechCrunch confab. Mr. Hammer, born Stanley Burrell, says he has been involved in the start-up scene for years and hopes to link songs from his coming album to videos and other "premium content" on DanceJam. He doesn't see a bubble: After the "shakeout period" of the dot-com bust, he says, "great young minds" are developing new Internet technologies.

At one point in the conference, women in lab coats began working the crowd, handing out test tubes filled with "power shots" of vodka and cranberry juice. They were touting Powerlabs, an online "community" from a start-up called Powerset Inc. that is creating a new Web-search engine. Powerset says the women worked for a public-relations firm.

Theatrical ploys like "spokesmodels" are another troubling indicator, says David Hornik, a venture capitalist. "Second- and third-time entrepreneurs and venture investors who lived the late '90s get nervous when they see these telltale signs of a bubble," he says.