The well-known Technology, Entertainment, Design conference–better known to its techie fans as TED–will make its move from Monterey to Long Beach, in California, starting tomorrow night.

It’s a big change for the longtime gathering of digerati and others who have come to love its eclectic and outward-looking program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

First held in 1984, Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation bought TED in 2001 from its founder, Richard Saul Wurman. TED has since grown to include an international conference, TEDGlobal; media initiatives, including TED Talks and TED.com; and the TED Prize.

TED2009 is titled “The Great Unveiling.” And BoomTown is glad to be attending after several years away, especially since I always learn something new at TED (and I have a lot to learn).

It certainly has a varied lineup of speakers again this year, such as Microsoft (MSFT) Co-Founder Bill Gates, neurological anthropologist Oliver Sacks, writer Elizabeth Gilbert, tree researcher Nalini Nadkarni, Web political phenom Nate Silver and many others.

But I am perhaps even more intrigued by the introduction this year of the TED Fellows program, initially 50 individuals picked because of the “world-changing potential of their work.”

They will be invited to participate in the TED community each year, and some of the fellows will come for longer stints to future conferences.

The fellows program is supported by the Bezos family, the Harnisch Foundation, private donors and Nokia (NOK), with additional in-kind support from Kodak (EK), Lightscribe and One.org.

According to the press release, the fellows program was inspired by TED’s Africa program in 2007:

“The TED Fellows program will focus on attracting applicants living or working in five parts of the globe: the Asia/Pacific region, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East, with consideration given to applicants from the rest of the world….The program focuses on innovators in technology, entertainment, design, science, film, art, music, entrepreneurship and the NGO community, among other pursuits.”

Said Tom Rielly, TED Community Director, who is responsible for the program: “TED will help them communicate their ‘ideas worth spreading’ to a much larger audience.”

Given the troubles all over the world these days, we could all use a much broader perspective.

You can read the longer list of fellows, who seem to deliver just that here, but some of the first participants include:

• Erik Hersman and Juliana Rotich, co-founders of Ushahidi.com, a Web site for citizen journalism, covering crises such as the Kenyan post-election violence

• Faisal Chohan, CEO of Cogilent Solutions and founder of BrightSpyre.com, the leading job portal in Pakistan

• Juliana Machado Ferreira, Brazilian CSI: Wildlife biologist who uses genetic markers to track, interdict and convict illegal songbird traffickers

• Gerry Douglas, founder of Malawi’s Baobab Health Partnership, which builds touchscreen terminals that allow non-doctors to diagnose, treat and correctly prescribe drugs for people with HIV

In an unusual homecoming and odd job switcheroo between two Internet execs, former Yahoo media head Scott Moore is returning to Microsoft to lead its U.S. content efforts, according to many sources both inside and outside the company.

Moore (pictured here) will become U.S. executive producer, responsible for leading the content and programming strategy for the MSN online service. He will return to Microsoft’s Seattle area HQ in mid-March and report to Greg Nelson, GM of the MSN Global Media Group.

Microsoft (MSFT) declined comment about Moore’s new job, but sources said news of the appointment will be officially announced Monday.

But a memo about Moore’s new gig went out internally to some of the MSN staff earlier today, sources said. In fact, the return of Moore had been widely rumored inside Microsoft, even though there were several other internal and external candidates considered–including another former Yahoo, one source said–for the job.

Moore left Yahoo (YHOO), which was first reported here, last November due to unhappiness over the turmoil at the company and also to pursue a start-up idea he had about a local news site.

Moore even talked about the idea on the record with BoomTown (see video below), just as he was leaving Yahoo’s Santa Monica-based Media Group. Since he left Yahoo for good in December, Moore has been working on his start-up plans and took time off to go on a safari trip to Africa.

(Here’s a link to Moore’s Africa photos, in fact, which are quite good.)

But with the economic downturn making it harder for new start-ups to get funded on good terms, a desire to be back in the Seattle area, where his children live, and a new effort by MSN to compete better in the content business with top-ranked Yahoo, sources said Moore felt the powerful job at Microsoft would be a terrific challenge.

In what is a case of Web exec musical chairs, Moore had previously been replaced at Yahoo–in a rushed appointment–by Jeff Dossett. Dossett came to Yahoo from, wait for it, Microsoft, where he had held the job Moore is now taking.

In that move, also first reported here, Dossett was given a different title at Yahoo than Moore, as SVP of the U.S. Audience Group (Moore was SVP of the Media Group at Yahoo).

When he first started talking to Yahoo, Dossett (pictured here) was actually up for a job to run business development for Yahoo. But Moore’s sudden decision to leave had his boss, Yahoo’s EVP of U.S., Hilary Schneider, scrambling to fill the post. Dossett’s experience at MSN made him the obvious choice.

Now Moore’s appointment puts the pair in head-to-head competitive positions in the online content business, a clash that has been consistently won by Moore, when he had Dossett’s job at Yahoo and Dossett had Moore’s job at MSN.

Moore should also be comfortable at Microsoft and move into his job more easily. Previous to coming to Yahoo in mid-2005, he was president of MSNBC.com and publisher of Slate.com. He had worked at Microsoft for a decade.

Moore will oversee Microsoft’s involvement in the MSNBC.com joint venture again, along with all of Microsoft’s domestic content programming, which makes up a bulk of its efforts in the area.

And with Moore back on board, how MSN will better compete with the content juggernaut Yahoo is–due to Moore’s efforts, in part, and one of the troubled company’s stronger units–will be interesting.

That’s because Yahoo’s news, finance, sports and other properties typically rank as No. 1 online by far.

Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL has also tried recently to improve its content offerings and has gotten some traction. It recently upped the ante with its new MediaGlow online studio effort of niche blog sites.

At the very back of this pack, Microsoft has made innumerable efforts in the content space over the years, mostly unsuccessful–Underwire!, Mungo Park!–and has settled more into the aggregation model.

But it still has a lot of interesting original content efforts under way, such as an unnamed celebrity-focused site property it is reportedly launching within the next week with former Yahoo media exec–and Moore’s former boss–Lloyd Braun.

Ironically, Moore launched a Yahoo celebrity site, omg!, initially pushed by Braun when he was at Yahoo, which has been successful.

Here is the video interview I did with Moore at his Yahoo going-away party about his future plans. Below that is another one I did when he was czar of Yahoo content, in which he talked extensively about the future of content on the Web.

Today comes news that jumping-on-prone California Attorney General Jerry Brown is thinking of climbing onto the federal government bandwagon heading right for the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., to stop the search giant’s online advertising deal with Yahoo.

Brown joins big advertisers, newspapers and whatever mudslingers Microsoft (MSFT) can gather (and, let it be said, Microsoft can sling a lot of slimy mud).

They are all are coalescing around the notion that Google cannot have even the slightest possibility of getting its big mitts into the innards of Yahoo (YHOO).

Even though its stock has suffered of late, in part due to the possibility of a tussle with the government, Google (GOOG) has consistently argued that the arrangement does not hinder competition.

Google has also insisted that it will move ahead with the deal–which was struck as a parry to Microsoft’s attempt to buy Yahoo and is set to begin next month–no matter what.

I actually believe Google execs when they say this because they have shown a strong streak of stubbornness on controversial issues–witness the company not backing down from the Viacom lawsuit–about which they believe they are in the right.

Still, while Google would by no means control a lot of Yahoo’s search ads, the fact that the pair together have an 80 percent share of the search market apparently frightens ordinary mortals outside the Google bubble.

Maybe–even though Google exhibits none of the thuggish behavior that so characterized Microsoft’s monopolistic hegemony–it should.

Because added to that, Google just keeps announcing more and more earth-girding moves, such as today’s O3b Networks.

This joint project with Liberty Global aims to deliver cheap Web connectivity to Africa and other emerging markets.

O3b stands for “other 3 billion” and it is an admirable effort, as well as a good idea for making Google even more globally ubiquitous as the way people access the Internet.

And also today, more proof of Google’s dominance, with comScore’s latest stats on video use on the Web in July.

No shock–Google properties, primarily YouTube, accounted for 44 percent of the 11.4 billion videos viewed in the month.

Fox Interactive Media was a distant second with 3.9 percent, while Microsoft sites clocked in at 2.5 percent, Yahoo at 2.4 percent, Hulu at 1 percent and AOL at 0.8 percent.

Users on Google sites watched an average of 54.7 videos each, compared to 11.7 videos for Disney and Viacom, the next closest in videos-watched numbers.

While a lot of the media companies have more ad-rich premium content than Google, it is still a picture of one huge giant and a lot of teeny pygmies in the video space.

You see the pattern here, don’t you? So do regulators.

One has to wonder exactly when Google will see it.

And in that spirit, here’s “Walk Away Renée,” done by a very talented singer (but not The Left Banke, which did it originally).

I found it on–of course!–YouTube:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.