BoomTown liveblogged Yahoo’s “chalk talk” about search earlier today, which was an update of what the Internet giant is up to in the competitive space that includes Google and Microsoft.

Presenting at the event were Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy; Larry Cornett, VP of Consumer Products; and Marc Davis, chief scientist of Yahoo Mobile.

At its HQ in Silicon Valley last week, Google put on a similar show-off, called “Searchology,” about its own latest search innovations.

And although they are clearly No. 1 and No. 2 in the search space, both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) are bracing for the launch a major overhaul of the Microsoft’s (MSFT) search offering, which is expected next week at the D: All Things Digital conference and code-named “Kumo.”

11:45 a.m. PDT: A delightful lunch was offered to a room full of tech reporters at the San Francisco offices of Yahoo’s outside PR firm, Outcast Communications.

But all the munching was quickly swept aside by the aggressive tone of the speech to be delivered by the normally gentle-looking Yahoos.

Apparently, top Yahoo execs want to “kill the 10 blue links.”

Yipes!

“Nobody really wants to search,” said Raghavan, describing a broken consumer experience and how Yahoo wanted to fix it. This has been a bell he has been ringing from last fall, in fact.

But we all were soon deep in the weeds of tech, as he noted that Yahoo wanted to move from a “Web of pages to a Web of objects.”

It still sounded very, very Webby.

12:01 p.m.: Soon, Raghavan started to talk about Yahoo products, such as Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS), which he says has generated almost as many daily queries as Microsoft’s whole search offering.

Snap!

Next up was Cornett, who began talking about intent and how Yahoo was trying to weave what a consumer wants in with what is displayed.

That means “helping users accomplish that goal by connecting objects in the real world.”

He trotted out Yahoo’s Search Pad offering, which is simply a way for people to keep track of their searches online, instead of on a dopey scrap of paper that the dog eats.

Cornett also showed how embedded music, video and other structured data are inserted into mostly dull search results.

Yahoo, in other words, is going to know what we want and give it to us–even before we know we want it. Sounds like my mother!

12:15 p.m.: Cornett reeled off lots of stats about its SearchMonkey technology, which is a year old.

There was a picture of a monkey with a birthday hat, natch! (See here!)

SearchMonkey, according to Yahoo, is a “framework for creating small applications that enhance Yahoo search results with additional data and structure.”

Cornett then invited up Facebook software engineer Alex Moskalyuk to talk about building apps with SearchMonkey.

Lots of tech talk that was actually incomprehensible to the reporters gathered, although they all scribbled away (I, at this juncture, chose to eat another sandwich).

Here is one line: “Originally used XPath extractor, switched entirely to hCard.”

Welcome to my world! It’s like some telephone guy talking apart a handset and explaining the guts of the device, when I am only interested in making a call.

12:23 p.m.: Next up: Matthew Hertz of Pipl.com, a people search engine built on Yahoo’s BOSS.

People search was, he said, a “deep Web challenge.” Indeed, there needs to be an easier way of finding out about a potential date online!

Actually, Pipl is a nice service and useful too, and Hertz is right that Pipl should not have to reinvent the search wheel to take advantage of all the data already available on big search services.

12:29 p.m.: Yahoo’s chief mobile geek Marc Davis was up, talking about “answers, not just links.”

Now they’re talking!

Actually, mobile is a key search arena with the increasing popularity of smart phones.

That means knowing everything from movie times to weather to flights to cheap gas prices nearby immediately.

Twittery humanity needs to know now!

Yahoo’s offering is called oneSearch. which is also a good product. It better be. “For many people in the world, their phone is the way to access” the Internet, said Davis.

12:40 p.m.: Now, the Yahoos summed up “What’s Next?”

Let’s review: Kill the blue links! Intent! Objects! Open! Mobile!

Raghavan then gave me a great joke by using the term: WOO, which is Web of objects. Apparently, they go around Yahoo talking about getting to the WOO.

It sounded naughty and I liked it.

Time for Q&A!

A question was posed about how quickly Yahoo rolls out these technologies, which are often limited in “bucket tests” of smaller groups of users.

As soon as they can, of course.

Next question was about how WOO impacts online ads. “It takes us away from a marketplace of keywords to a marketplace of intent,” said Raghavan.

That means advertisers can eventually make better ads. Oh, joy.

Then a question about when links are appropriate and when rich search should prevail.

Well, it depends on the user!

Next, a question about the currently trendy “real-time” search–a magical power that the blogosphere has, in its infinite hype-osity, bestowed on Twitter.

Raghavan called it a “buzzword” and I agreed.

Cornett added, correctly, that it should be about precision and accuracy in search, as well as serving “fresh” data. Fresh was a diplomatic word for whatever the mostly useless tweets are yammering on about at any given moment, which are most pointless.

The next question was about how soon a lot of this cool rich search data gets to the masses. Answer: Some of it is in testing and some is live systemwide.

I then asked about whether Yahoo would shove out the bells and whistles if, say, Microsoft’s new search service has a lot of the same features.

Cornett noted that Yahoo will only roll out after testing showed good results.

In other words, Yahoo will kill (or drink) no blue links before their time!

More questions about rich data, with one that makes the point that Yahoo was originally known for “curation,” which was its original business as the Web’s first truly useful directory.

It was.

1:01 p.m.: Still more questions.

Someone asked the Yahoos to comment on a recent post on TechCrunch that said the company was not developing for BlackBerry and focusing intently on the iPhone from Apple (AAPL). An exaggeration, said Davis, which was a diplomatic way of saying the story was wrong.

Blackberry users can now relax.

BoomTown is not proud of the problem.

Not at all.

But, after hearing the same situation described over and over again from many other parents like me, I am also not alone.

As it turns out, our almost-seven-year-old son, Louie, has morphed into an iJacker.

That would be of my iPhone, which I switched solely to recently after a longtime attachment to my BlackBerry.

That RIM (RIMM) mobile phone never turned into a CrackBerry for him, as Louie did not care much for its lovely keys for emailing that so captivated me.

But now he wants to grab my iPhone from my holster all the time, having become entranced by apps–lots and lots and lots of apps–that now litter the digital pages of my Apple (AAPL) device.

DizzyBeeFree and Super Monkey Ball. Touch Hockey and Paper Football. Finger Sprint and MoodPhone. Bounce On and Crazy Penguin Catapult. Lie Detector and Crazy Snowboard. Tic Tac Toe and Hangman. And iChess, iCheckers, iBowl.

Of course, there are also the bubble poppers and light sabers and more cowbells.

And, good lord, how did a “Race to Witch Mountain” app get on there?

So, I don’t need any stats to tell me that the iPhone, and the iPod touch too, have turned into gaming devices of great impact.

But there are stats, like yesterday’s from comScore (SCOR), showing that 12 out of the top 25 all-time iPhone apps are games. (See the chart below; click to make it larger.)

It’s easy to understand why. The ease of use, the small form factor, the great graphics in this mobile phone that is actually a powerful computer.

In fact, Louie hardly has any interest in the desktop computer anymore, or even a laptop. Although we limited his access to it, it’s moot, since he hardly ever uses it now that the iPhone is around.

Why? It is clear, most of all, that Louie loves the movement and the touch features, which turn the experience into a visceral one.

And, uh-oh–according to a post last week on the blog Blorge.com, “The industry patent watch reveals that Apple has filed patent applications that seek to patent certain user interface ideas for the iPhone, including the use of movement, vibration, and pleasure.”

Oh, this is not going to go well when Louie is a teenager.

Thus, aside from switching to a Microsoft (MSFT) Zune, what are our parenting tactics to stave off that day from coming sooner?

Well, obviously, as much as he might beg–and he does beg and wheedle and plead–Louie gets to use the iPhone sparingly, on short car trips mostly.

And he has to play not only the sillier games, but use ones like iChess or word games that require some brain power.

Lastly, Louie must be analog more than digital and playing inside and outside more than any of it.

There should be more rules, I know, but for now he seems just as riveted to baseball and kickball too, so I am not quite in the panic stage.

More the do-not-leave-the-iPhone-on-the-counter-if-I-ever-hope-to-see-it-again phase.

Louie’s almost-four-year-old brother, Alex, is less interested in games on the iPhone, as it turns out.

Instead, for him, the iPhone is a magical music video device on which I bring him old musical numbers.

Last night, it was “I Like to Be in America” from “West Side Story” and the night before, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from “Oklahoma!”

He was as delighted and mesmerized, as I was when I first saw those classics on the television when I was a kid.

And, even seeing them on an iPhone, of that, I am proud.

But, to give you the full picture of the situation, here is a video interview I did of Louie in action with my hijacked iPhone (it is not pretty):

Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain (pictured here) gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.

BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog–deliciously called McCain Blogette.com: Musings on Politics From a Pop CultureGirl–during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.

Well, there she goes again!

In a post titled, “Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet,” Meghan McCain noted flatly:

The Republican party isn’t exactly Internet savvy. That’s no secret…This has been a source of personal frustration for me for a very long time. Unless the GOP evolves as the party that can successfully utilize the Web, we’ll continue to lose influence.”

Thankfully, it gets worse!

Writes Meghan:

I know this aggravates the old school political operatives to no end, but it’s true. The Obama administration understands that my generation spends most of its day on a laptop or a BlackBerry, and that using the web is easy way to communicate their ideas to their constituents. Making a website, Facebook group, or YouTube video entertaining and enticing is where grassroots campaigning begins. President Obama currently has around five-and-a-half million supporters on Facebook; my father has around five-hundred thousand.”

Sorry, Dad!

But apparently not all that much, because she ended her piece with a zinger about the GOP’s new Web effort, the Rebuild the Party site, essentially declaring the party a wizened Luddite with no hopes of ever beating the BlackBerry-loving Obama.

…The website is about as provocative as a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. At the time that I write this, the video on the homepage features various individuals, most of them I would guess between the ages of fifty and sixty, explaining why they consider themselves Republicans. Had I still been an independent, there is nothing about this website or video that would sway me as a twenty-four year old woman to join the GOP…Until the Republican party joins the twenty-first century and learns how to use the Internet, its members will keep getting older and the youth of America will just keep logging on to the other side.”

Meghan McCain is definitely right about the unusually sleepy video–which only pops when they focus on dead Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt:

In an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about an alliance being discussed between Facebook and Nokia, came news about the pair working on a deal to deeply integrate the hot social network with the handsets of the world’s largest maker of mobile phones.

Although BoomTown has seen this movie before–a similar mobile deal with a Nokia (NOK) investment in Facebook was being bandied about a year ago–expect more noise than ever when it comes to social-networking sites and mobile devices in 2009.

As you can see from the chart below, Facebook ran past MySpace in the number of unique visitors via mobile phone in the early fall of 2008 and kept climbing.

Said the Journal article: “In December, Facebook had seven million U.S. mobile users, compared with MySpace’s 5.7 million, according to Nielsen Co.” (Full disclosure: MySpace is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns Dow Jones, the owner of this site.)

And, indeed, to get this kind of traction, Facebook has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, so far mostly by building its popular Facebook application for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and iPhone from Apple (AAPL).

Facebook–the Journal piece said–has also been talking to Palm (PALM), which will launch its new Pre smartphone in the spring, and Motorola (MOT), about being integrated into their operating systems too.

The race to be present on mobile devices by everyone and their Internet mother has gotten all hopped up with the introduction of so many smartphones of late, since these devices make any Web app experience much better.

And consumer uptake of these kinds of phones, with big screens and multitouch capabilities, is widely expected to dramatically increase over the next five years,

But here is the dicey money–or nonmoney, actually–quote from the article:

“As with most of the cellphone-software industry, Facebook has yet to find a way to generate meaningful revenue from its mobile services, which include text-messaging features, a mobile Web site and downloadable software. But the number of users accessing its site from phones has grown.”

Oh dear–that roughly translates in Facebook-speak to friending without benefits, with costs rising without much (or any) revenue coming in, to speak of.

Of course, many would argue that both Facebook and MySpace, as well other big players, have to still play hard in the mobile market to gain users–given that consumers are on the move more than ever, digitally-speaking–even if it takes a while to see financial results.

So while efforts by mobile advertising services, such as AdMob, are trying to make that happen and are definitely promising, it’s still a game of growth and not revenue or, of course, profits.

[T-shirt image, courtesy of Zazzle.]

BoomTown did a video interview with Palm’s sugar daddy investor Roger McNamee at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, after the debut of its Pre smartphone.

Via Elevation Partners, McNamee has invested a total of $425 million in Palm, aimed at reviving the company that pioneered the smartphone market.

But Palm soon saw its business gobbled up by the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and the iPhone from Apple (AAPL). And, of course, there is the G1 phone from Google (GOOG) too, along with competition from Nokia (NOK) and many others.

And Palm is following the less-than-stellar last launch of the Foleo in 2007.

Thus, the company and the private equity firm have banked a lot on this revival, so McNamee was out in full force at CES in Las Vegas, talking up the Pre.

The Pre launch was indeed the highlight of the show, and also gave Palm’s moribund stock a boost.

And, indeed, the Pre does look pretty cool, with a sleek design and a new operating system, although the real proof will be when it debuts to consumers later this year.

In any case, here is the always hopped-up McNamee giving it his best for the Pre:

Hello, my name is BoomTown and I am a reformed CrackBerryaholic.

How bad was it? Here’s the worst story: I was holding my BlackBerry in my hand, inadvertently for once, when I gave birth to my son in 2002.

Long story short: I was emailing away throughout labor, suddenly had to have emergency surgery, was quickly drugged into paralysis and forgot it was gripped in my hand–all until the anesthesiologist looked at me like I was a freak.

I should have been embarrassed by that. I was not. Hence, that makes me a full-fledged Blackberry addict.

Actually, I was one.

Because over the weekend, while casting about for a good New Year’s resolution (Work less? Nope! Exercise more? Double nope!!), I impulsively decided to dump what is pathetically one of my more satisfying and reliable relationships ever for a questionable new one.

That’s right, I have finally abandoned the BlackBerry for the iPhone.

I have no idea what possessed me, but suddenly I had to change dramatically and change now. (I could blame the influence of fellow CrackBerry user President-Elect Barack Obama for that mood.)

So, I finally made the dreaded switcheroo from the devices made by the fine folks at Research In Motion (RIMM), which I have used since the first stubby little block of greyish plastic until the last stubby bigger block of reddish plastic.

To be honest, I have been flirting with the idea of leaving my longtime love for a while now.

Almost sneakily, I bought an iPhone from the get-go when it came out from Apple (AAPL) in June of 2007, because it was just too cool a device to pass up.

I was instantly delighted by the touchscreen swooshing and squinching, its breakthrough quality as a handheld media player, the Internet access that finally worked and the generally clever way of organizing contact and other information. I also liked the voicemail recording a lot.

Not so much the AT&T (T) cellular network, of course, but that was livable. What was not, as it was for a lot of people, was the poor email experience, specifically the virtual keyboard.

To say my entire life revolves around email and texting is to go overboard. But not by much. It is, in fact, the bane of my partner, who has learned to live with it grudgingly.

My obsession has even turned into mimicry by my other son, a three-year-old, who grabbed a small and rectangular block of wood recently and started tapping on it with his fingers, proudly declaring, “I’m Mama working!”

Oh dear. Like I said, I am pathetic in this regard (on the plus side, I don’t drink, do drugs or watch “Dancing with the Stars”).

But my issues with the dullish BlackBerry slowly mounted, from its too-small screen, to the substandard Internet experience to the limited ways to store emails to the overall clunkiness of it.

And when the apps came out for the iPhone, it got worse, since the ones on BlackBerry just are not as robust at all.

And with those apps, I now did not even have to really launch a browser and click away in frustration. Instead, I could largely rely on an increasingly interesting array of software that made my digital life a lot easier.

I am not including the iFart app in this group, of course, the kind of toddler programming that I had thought I had left behind when I started ignoring Facebook apps. Verdict: Eww.

In any case, my BlackBerry still had those lovely clickety-clack keys that have always been a joy to press and with which I could write a book in a very short time, I had become so adept at using them.

So, I had great hopes for the BlackBerry Storm, with a clicking-like virtual keyboard, as the solution to all my problems. Or so I thought.

When I first saw it, I knew this was not what I had been waiting for, which was underscored by Walt Mossberg’s review.

The weird push on the glass screen made me feel like it was going to break with every click. What I really wanted was the tactile feel of the keys and not the click feel.

The G1 smartphone from Google (GOOG), of course, offered a real keyboard and the big touchscreen. But it just looks and feels too much like–let’s be honest–a pair of clogs I once wore in seventh grade and have regretted ever since.

And, while there is a Palm device reportedly coming out this week with a touchscreen and a slip-down keyboard, I guess I have finally become tired of waiting for something that is perhaps not possible: A virtual keyboard that feels real.

Thus, I gave into the iPhone and learned to live with my all-thumbs typing.

And, as many have said, I am actually getting better at that. Not speedy, as I was with the BlackBerry, which–ironically–has caused me not to use the iPhone as obsessively and to put it down a lot more.

Except that, as soon as I do put it down, it is immediately picked up by my now six-year-old, the very person who had endured my incessant pregnant clicking.

As it turns out, he is obsessed with the many game apps I have downloaded for him onto the iPhone–currently “Crazy Penguin Catapult.” (Verdict: Unusually fun.)

So much so that he sneaked into my bedroom yesterday morning and spirited my iPhone away for a session while I slept late.

What can I say? Like mother, like son.

In this regard, let’s hope not.

[Photo credit: Cool, but creepy BlackBerry Baby image is from All Media.]

Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted yet another annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” event for the Churchill Club.

A brief rundown of the Palo Alto gadgetfest show-and-tell: An animatronic singing Elvis freaked out my No. 1 son, Louie, who played an excellent Luke Skywalker/gadget boy for my presentation; our guest gadget geek was Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams, who was a delight with a mini-helicopter, a flat-screen reader and a wry wit; Walt showed off the new Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM), the alleged Apple (AAPL) iPhone killer (maybe not so much), as well as a fuel cell and more; and our crazy gadget maven, Greg Harper, co-founder of Gadgetoff, went perfectly insane with everything from tiny projectors to a creepy probe to minicellphone towers to USB ties and eyepads.

It was a lot of fun with a packed crowd, even in this econalypse-impacting Silicon Valley.

Here is a rather longish video, which is well worth watching. Yes, BoomTown is–along with Louie and Elvis–wearing a Yahoo (YHOO) hat.

Here’s the video:

[Photo courtesy of Dan Farber of CNET.]

While there are very few bright spots to look at in the start-up space in Silicon Valley these days, especially those relying on online advertising, the San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob is at least slightly shiny.

The mobile advertising marketplace, backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, just got a big slug of funding–almost $16 million–to keep pushing to get ads on mobile phones, which has gotten a huge boost from the popularity of the iPhone.

The number of ads AdMob is serving on the iPhone jumped to more than 100 million in September, compared to 35 million the month before, for example.

The massive data usage by users of the popular mobile device by Apple (AAPL) has clearly turbocharged AdMob’s prospects, which were already on the rise. Compared to a year ago, the company said, the number of ads it served more than tripled the number of ads served on a monthly basis to 4.5 billion.

Obviously, the better quality and more actionable nature of ads on improved screens is the reason for the shift, which should accelerate as more smartphones like Google’s G1 and newest Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM) become more popular too.

Most importantly, even now, AdMob is cash flow-positive, which is not a bad thing to be in the current econalypse. It also has a cushion of cash–AdMob had previously garnered $15 million in funding from Sequoia and Accel.

It’s not all sunshine and daisies, of course, since the ad market in general is headed for a deep slump, and new markets are not going to grow as quickly, as marketers pull back from spending.

But, when the economy turns, the mobile advertising market is clearly going to be a fast-growing arena, with big players like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) as AdMob competitors (or potential acquirers, especially Google).

With the money it just raised, AdMob said it would be getting ready for that race, and also use it to expand internationally.

Here’s my video interview with Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob, on all that and more, as well as a tour of its offices: