All Things Digital

So, as is BoomTown’s patriotic duty, I was watching the returns come in from Pennsylvania in the draggy war that has become the quest for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as I also pondered what would happen next in the even draggier Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.

Then a smart friend in the industry wrote me an email, stating the obvious:

This msft/yahoo deal reminds me of the democratic nomination. we all know how it’s going to end but it’s going to be nasty nasty nasty all the way till the end, with enough bitterness generated along the way to present a reasonably likelihood of a pyrrhic victory. the ultimate loser can only succeed in doing well enough to drag out the process and inflict more pain.”

My friend wins the pundit prize.

And, in other words, the only winners in both these ugly contests are obvious: Republican candidate Sen. John McCain and Google (GOOG).

Which are, ironically, the pair both other pairs should actually be most focused on defeating.

Ah, more pointless eye candy from BoomTown’s good friends at Facebook!

Not satisfied to just entertain the masses with inane Vampires and SuperPokes, the social-networking site unleashed Lexicon on users this week.

It’s kind of like Google Zeitgeist except… well, it is exactly the same concept, all part of Facebook’s admiration of Google (GOOG) things, like, for example, as many of its employees as it can entice away.

As Facebook’s Roddy Lindsay described it: “We thought it would be cool to show trends on the public and semi-public forums across Facebook (also known as Walls). Today we’re announcing the launch of Facebook Lexicon, a tool where you can see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls.”

But, as much as I hate a lot of these juvenile time-wasters online, I do like the very simple Lexicon very much, especially in its ability to compare up to five keywords or two-word phrases at once.

Thus, BoomTown is periodically going to post word comparisons here, always using Britney Spears as the control word, since she has been a perennial champ on Zeitgeist for a very long time.

So, today, it is presidential candidates–Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

As you can see, among users of Facebook, Britney holds up surprisingly well, even though she is going through a quieter, less-manic-head-shaving period of late.

(Click to make the images bigger)

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Here’s the latest “Obama Girl” video from the folks at Barely Political, in which our-lady-of-obsession takes aim at Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential candidate rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In it, she urges Clinton to stop being so mean to Obama and also to step down from the race in a kind of tsk-tsk style. There is some awkward digital hugging.

Unfortunately, it is meaner to Clinton than it should be. Unlike the first, the new video is a little over the top in not such a clever way and seems more sour rather than just sweetly goofy.

Could it be that even Obama Girl has become jaded by the political process? It’s an Obamanation!

Here’s the video:

BoomTown has decided to reinstate our practice of showcasing excellent online videos that we started posting during the writers’ strike.

Our premise has been simple: That online video in both short and long form is the future and its development is important to pay attention to.

As a huge fan of the now-defunct “The West Wing” television series, I noticed the freaky similarities between the out-of-nowhere Democratic presidential campaign of the fictional Congressman Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) and the real-life Barack Obama.

That included a maverick Western senator, played by Alan Alda, who was Santos’s opponent and whom the right wing distrusted a la Sen. John McCain.

As it turns out from this great video from SlateV, the writers of the NBC hit used Obama as a template for their creation and now that template seems to be following their plot.

Here’s the video:

Finally, a solution to Yahoo’s (YHOO) thus-fruitless search for a way out of being forced to sell to Microsoft (MSFT): Get bought by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama!

OK, this post by comic and Web humorist Andy Borowitz is a joke, but I like it and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang could use a good laugh about now.

Best line: “A spokesman for Microsoft at the company’s Redmond, Wash. headquarters acknowledged that the company was ‘disappointed’ to lose Yahoo to Sen. Obama, but added, ‘We can’t really be mad at him, because we love him so.’ ”

Here is the link to the Borowitz Report site, pictured below (click on the image to make it larger), which is well worth a daily visit: