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.

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:

As you can see from this video, BoomTown should stick to poking at Yahoo’s business plans, rather than talking to its very sharp Sarah Lacy of Yahoo Finance’s new Tech Ticker site.

Some material from AllThingsD appears on Tech Ticker from time to time, linking back to our site. And BoomTown was invited to talk about various topics last week with Lacy, including in this post and video about politics in Silicon Valley.

In the piece, Lacy and I discuss the candidates, as well as issues like ubiquitous broadband access (a critical issue about which I have long maintained the federal government has dropped the ball on spearheading the development of, as it has in the past with other important issues such as the universal telephone service or the federal highway system).

While I am not “longing” for former Vice President Al Gore, as the Tech Ticker post noted, it is still true that he is the most techie of any politician in recent memory.

I Obamapolize, but it’s true! (I also Obamapologize for my weird hair and lack of makeup, but I never appear on camera in BoomTown, so I am not going to when visiting Sunnyvale, Calif.)

Also below it is the hour-plus interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Sen. John McCain last May at our fifth D: All Things Digital conference, at a time when he was considered the longest of long shots for the Republican presidential nomination.

So much for predictions!

How far ahead of the political curve is our D: All Things Digital conference?

So far that we put all those bendy-straws-in-the-wind television pundits to shame!

Case in point: At D4, we invited former Vice President Al Gore to come just before everyone decided he was the best thing since organic whole-wheat sliced bread.

And at D5, held last May, we invited Sen. John McCain of Arizona to talk about things like tech policy and Iraq, during a time when most had written him off in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Not so, it seems, after Comeback Jack’s big win in New Hampshire last night.

Given our powerful psychic political skills, we are keeping our next political selection sealed in a mayo jar in the back of ATD HQ.

But to see what McCain is all about, here’s an hour-plus interview with McCain by Walt Mossberg and me:

As has been rumored and even reported on last week, sources say former Cisco exec Mike Volpi will be announced later tonight by Joost as its new CEO.

Volpi knows the founders of the online video service, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, as he has served on the board of their last hit, Skype.

Before he left, Volpi was in line to run Cisco, which is now under the leadership of CEO John Chambers. But as the ebullient Chambers told me in an interview onstage at D last week, he was not planning any move from the tech giant anytime soon (not even for an offer made onstage by Sen. John McCain at the conference to serve in the cabinet if he won his presidential bid).

The company needs a tech-savvy CEO, and one familiar with Silicon Valley, given that it recently got a $45 million boost of cash from a group of big venture firms and media companies, as I wrote here, including Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, as well as CBS.

While a lot of Joost’s success rests on getting a lot of great content for its service to deliver quality video content on the Web, how well it works and how easy it is to use (not so easy in my beta tests, so far) will be key to its success. And also how it works with all its multiple partners.

In that vein, Volpi is a good choice. Though his last Cisco title sounded geekish–SVP of Routing and Service Provider Technology Group–he was deeply involved in all of the company’s wheeling and dealing, including its aggressive acquisition sprees.

He was born in Italy, lived in Japan, attended Stanford University and also worked at Hewlett-Packard, so he is also perhaps a perfect balance of international and local (tech-wise) for the internationally based Joost.

Interestingly, sources told me that Volpi also talked to Yahoo about running its Audience Group.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our show. Walt and I certainly did, and I think we both felt it was our best D thus far.

And that’s without what was clearly the blockbuster joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of Apple, which got a mountain of attention, as it deserves for both its historic implications (the two icons of tech in a rare analog appearance together) and its sheer drama (PC guy meets Mac guy, except in real life!).

While it was not the WrestleMania some would have preferred, I thought it was riveting to see two people with very little left to prove about anything in their professional careers and who will be in the history books willing to go out on a bit of a limb and talk from a more personal place.

In addition, watching these longtime rivals and also collaborators kibitz about their tech-war stories, each correcting the other’s memories, was really interesting. Here is a great comic strip from the Joy of Tech Web site about the interview that says it all.

But outside of the glare of the pairing, there were a lot of highlights and insights I gleaned from the other onstage interviews.

Read more »

Here is the final prep video for the D conference, as we are coming down to the wire. Today is a full day of doing final rehearsals, making tweaks and, of course, having endless meetings (yes, conference-throwing is a glamorous profession).

The conference kicks off tonight with a cocktail party, followed by Walt and I interviewing Sen. John McCain. All the coverage, along with liveblogging, photos and video excerpts (as well as speaker bios and our full schedule), will be up here starting in the afternoon today, so check back early and often to keep updated.

To keep it short, here’s a final tour of some key D spots, a few of those meetings (with Nancy Carr of Kodak–a sponsor of the conference–about D photo books and another showing the high geek factor of our behind-the-scenes staffers), the packed swag room, the ballroom almost complete (and where Walt channels Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic”) and a lovely piano recital to set the tone.

After listening to that, you’ll find, words fail.

And, of course, on with the show.