Former Yahoo COO and current Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig (pictured here) will take over as CEO and president of Activision Blizzard’s powerful Guitar Hero franchise, according to sources close to the situation.

Rosensweig will run the hot gaming company’s division, which is located in Silicon Valley, the result of its purchase of RedOctane in 2006, source said.

He is well known to Activision (ATVI) Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick, who served on the Yahoo board for many years when Rosensweig was a key exec there. Both Rosensweig and Kotick have since left Yahoo.

It’s an interesting move for Rosensweig, who has been working in private equity since his departure from Yahoo (YHOO) in late 2006.

His name has been bandied about for several high-profile Web positions of late, and many thought he might take a political job, given that he was one of many digital execs involved in helping elect President Barack Obama.

But the weak market for investments and Rosensweig’s longtime experience and interest in eventually returning to operations–along with his well-known passion for music–are the likeliest motivators for the move to Guitar Hero.

Sources said Rosensweig will start his new job at Guitar Hero–which Activision could announce as early as tomorrow–in several weeks.

Running a major consumer brand like Guitar Hero seems tailor-made for Rosensweig, who worked at CNET Networks and Ziff-Davis before Yahoo. In addition, the jovial exec is well-respected in Silicon Valley, giving Activision a much more prominent presence here.

And the energetic Kotick (pictured below with me and, yes, Paula Abdul of “American Idol”–don’t ask) has long talked about turbocharging the largely retail Guitar Hero business online, as a way to further grow the music phenom.

User-generated music, as well as a plethora of online transactions and social networking, have been promising new revenue opportunities, Kotick has said.

(See video highlights of my interview with Kotick below on that topic and more at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference.)

Overall, despite the weak economy and a cautious forecast going forward, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision is growing, with revenues up in the last quarter, due in large part to the popularity of its Guitar Hero and Call of Duty videogames.

Its fast pace, in contrast to rival Electronic Arts (ERTS), has been helped by its merger with Vivendi SA’s Blizzard Entertainment last summer. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft online game is also one of the most popular multiplayer games in the world.

Here’s a highlights video from my interview with Kotick at D6:

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless (VZ) CEO Lowell McAdam jointly. We paired the two together to talk about big issues facing the wireless industry, including low broadband speeds and high prices.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I have posted this week.

In this third part, Martin talks about net neutrality and the big political issues for technology, while McAdam talks about competition with AT&T and other rivals, and then both answer questions from the audience about early termination fees, getting dropped call data, eliminating subsidies and platform convergence.

Time Inc., the largest magazine company in the world, is laying off hundreds and reorganizing itself drastically, due to tough economic conditions, especially in advertising, as well as the more inexorable diminishing of its business as readers move to the Web.

Time Inc. is a unit of Time Warner (TWX), as is the AOL online unit.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore penned the email memo to employees tonight. She tried to tout gains in its digital business–part of the reason for the reorg is to move more of its content to Web platforms–noting 26 million people visit its Time Inc. sites monthly.

Which is, well, still not as big as it should be.

Moore, as well as Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, was interviewed by me onstage at two different D: All Things Digital conferences, where the challenges facing the magazine business were discussed by both.

Those challenges, obviously, continue.

Both videos are below.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore at D5, May 2007:

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes at D6, May 2008 (Part 4 of 4):

And here’s the entire Moore memo on the layoffs and reorg:

From: Moore, Ann – Executive Administration
Sent: Tue Oct 28 18:00:37 2008
Subject: Staff Announcement

October 28, 2008

To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ann Moore
Re: Staff Announcement

As all of you are aware, industry conditions have been challenging due to the financial crisis, which has produced sharp decreases in advertising spending. This is expected to continue through most of 2009.

It’s important that we at Time Inc. react quickly to this new reality in order to maintain our financial strength, build our market position, and sharpen our ability to bounce back at the first signs of economic recovery. All the while we must continue to give our readers and audience the high quality editorial products they have come to expect from our publications and websites.

This is a challenge, unlike any we’ve seen before. And after much careful study and consultation with many of you who run our businesses, I have concluded that it is no longer possible to operate our company with the same decentralized management structure that served us so well during our many years of sustained growth.

So, effective tomorrow, we are going to implement a much more centralized management structure, organized into three business units that will group together titles that share similar audiences, advertisers, and the talents and skills of their staffs. The goal is to enable our company to move faster, go to market smarter, save significant costs, and employ our editorial resources more efficiently.

In broad strokes, here is how it will work:

Business Units. Time Inc.’s 24 U.S. magazines and companion web sites will be grouped into three business units, each reporting to a senior corporate executive. Each unit will have a similar structure that will include four key executives to direct the ad sales, digital business, financial and editorial efforts across that group. One of the most significant centralizing features of this new structure is that each of the three units will have one General Manager, responsible for all budgeting in the unit, who will report directly to Time Inc. EVP and CFO Howard Averill, with a dotted line to their respective senior operating executive.

The three Business Units will consist of:

* News: the existing print and digital properties in the TIME group, the Fortune|Money group, and the Sports Illustrated group, as well as Life.com and GEE. John Squires, EVP Time Inc. will manage the News Business Unit.
* Style and Entertainment: the existing print and digital properties in the PEOPLE group, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, and Essence. I will act as the EVP for this group so the Style and Entertainment Business Unit will report to me.
* Lifestyle: the existing print and digital properties of Real Simple, This Old House, All You, Southern Living, Cooking Light, Sunset, Health, Cottage Living, Coastal Living, and Southern Accents, along with MyRecipes.com and MyHomeIdeas.com. Sylvia Auton, EVP Time Inc. will manage the Lifestyle Business Unit, while also retaining responsibility for IPC Media.

Editorial. John Huey continues as Time Inc.’s Editor-in-Chief, overseeing the News Business Unit Managing Editors and Martha Nelson, the Managing Editor of the Style and Entertainment Business Unit. In editorial alone we have seen three recent examples of how this sharing across titles can work to our benefit. During the summer Olympics, Sports Illustrated set up a system to supply Time.com with a fantastic array of photos from the games; in Europe and Asia, FORTUNE and TIME already are sharing correspondents; and, of course, the most visible example was the recent TIME cover story on the economy written by FORTUNE managing editor Andy Serwer and Allan Sloan. In the new structure we will see much more of this kind of cooperation.

Time Inc. Advertising Sales and Marketing. Given the difficult ad sales environment, it is critical that all of our brands work together to efficiently and effectively offer advertisers the solutions they need. For this reason, we are creating Time Inc. Advertising Sales and Marketing, a group that will be charged with setting and executing corporate ad sales strategy along with the ad sales head for each business unit. Stephanie George will become President of Time Inc. Advertising Sales and Marketing and will remain a Time Inc. EVP. She will also remain on the Board of American Express Publishing.

Time Inc. Consumer Marketing and Sales. Consumer Marketing and Sales will be run by Brian Wolfe, who has been promoted to EVP and will report directly to me. All Consumer Marketing and Sales activities will be centralized under Brian. This department will be responsible for circulation net income across all U.S. Magazines, as well as Synapse, QSP, Time Warner Retail, Time Customer Service, and TW4, Time Inc.’s international fulfillment operation.

Everyone in the Consumer Marketing organization should be proud of their accomplishments in this difficult environment–some of our largest newsstand titles are having record years and we are seeing strong circulation net income results across the company. These organizational changes, along with the recent acquisition of QSP and the incorporation of Synapse into Time Inc. Consumer Marketing and Sales, will give Brian and his team the ability to continue this momentum by making the best decisions for the company as a whole, and making them quickly and definitively.

Finally, I’m pleased to announce the promotions of Kerry Bessey and Maurice Edelson to EVP, Time Inc.

Time Inc. Senior Management along with the Business Unit leaders are working on restructuring within each group, and will announce further changes in the coming weeks. While the broader economy and the advertising industry both continue to present challenges, I know we can weather this storm and emerge as an even stronger company when the economy begins to recover. We are still a very profitable company. Our cash flow is strong. We have made tremendous progress with our digital business. Each month, more than 26 million people visit Time Inc. websites. We know our consumers continue to value our magazines and websites. We have the top brands in all the categories where we publish and we’re finding exciting new ways to expand our titles beyond the printed page and the web. The importance of fact-based journalism has never been clearer given the many serious issues facing the world and our core competency, trusted editing skills, has never been more needed than in this time of too much information.

I’d like to thank you all for your continued hard work.

A.M.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless (VZ) CEO Lowell McAdam jointly. We paired the two together to talk about big issues facing the wireless industry, including low broadband speeds and high prices.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

In this second part, McAdam talks about the wireless giant’s open network initiatives and the impact of aggressive efforts by Google (GOOG) in the space, termination fees and subsidy issues, while Martin discusses the key issues the FCC will be facing, including the transition of the broadcast industry from analog to digital and network neutrality.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless (VZ) CEO Lowell McAdam jointly. We paired the two together to talk about big issues facing the wireless industry, including low broadband speeds and high prices.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

In this first part, Martin talks about why broadband speed is so slow and prices are so high (the U.S. apparently has density issues!), the difficulty of getting consensus in Washington, D.C. and more open wireless networks, while McAdams discusses the challenges with local governments.

For all the noise, it’s worth paying attention, because Monday’s outlook will be cloudy, as in cloud computing.

The day will include a speech from Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie (pictured here), and others on, among other topics, its cloud infrastructure service initiatives–designed to match aggressive efforts from Amazon (AMZN) in the space.

There will also be a demo of Windows 7, which will hopefully put an end to the long Vista nightmare when it is eventually released. (To be ahead of the curve, see a video below of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and founder Bill Gates showing Windows 7 off at our sixth D: All Things Digital conference in May.)

In all, a Windows geekfest!

Microsoft (MSFT) execs will probably be in a good mood given the decent earnings results the company announced earlier this week for the third quarter. Revenue was up nine percent to $15 billion, even though net profits only increased 1.9 percent to $4.37 billion.

Still, that was a pretty good performance in a down economy, due to strength in Microsoft’s powerful Windows and Office franchises. And despite–as usual–the weakness of its online division.

While the revenue for its MSN, search and advertising network grew to $770 million, or up 15 percent in the quarter, operating losses doubled to $480 million from $267 in the same period a year ago. Search grew more than display advertising, a forward outlook Microsoft that maintained.

And still no digital chief, long promised by Ballmer, in sight either. Sources said that head, who will lead the unit, has still not been selected. (BoomTown is officially beginning to feel sorry for longtime leading internal candidate Brian McAndrews.)

While PDC has never been an online-focused event–this is for the big-dog businesses of Microsoft–it will still be interesting that the event will focus on continued movement toward the cloud.

It’s an inevitable–though decidedly dicey–journey for the software-dependent behemoth. So, the continued transformation should be interesting to watch.

Here is the Windows 7 demo from D6:

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I posted this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this third part, Diller talks about the new digital communications age and the explosion of video and then takes questions from the audience about tenacity versus stupidity in business, time management and where he is going to make “trouble” next.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this second part, Diller talks about the dire digital crossroads in Hollywood, the prospects for the Ask.com search service, his take on the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover battle (no one is a winner here), Google’s dominance, Facebook’s hype (Diller calls the hot social-networking site the “princess phone” of this era) and the power of interactivity.