The new MSN homepage debuts tonight and you would be completely correct in thinking the recipe Microsoft has cooked up to inform its design ethos–white, clean and hiply modern–has definite echoes of a certain longtime tech rival.

That would be Apple, of course, with a big dollop of Twitter and Facebook tossed in, and finished off with a generous sprinkling of Microsoft’s new Bing search service.

For those who care: The MSN butterfly logo remains, although it appears to have lost a lot of weight.

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Yahoo is set to unveil a major marketing campaign to reset advertiser and consumer perception of the long-troubled company during Advertising Week in New York, which starts a week from tomorrow.

According to numerous sources BoomTown has spoken to about the campaign, Yahoo is–at least with advertisers–going to focus on stressing the size and scale of the Internet giant. With consumers, the Internet giant will push the idea of being a key hub on the Web.

The details of the plan will be made public Tuesday, Sept. 22, at a press conference with senior Yahoo execs, including CEO Carol Bartz.

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Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design.

The organizers have long put those analog talks, called TEDTalks, online. But they are now trying to make them even more accessible globally–with subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers world-wide. It launches today with 300 translations in 40 languages, including Urdu.

Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to cost.

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Facebook cried uncle this afternoon–but just a teeny, tiny, little bit–by announcing in a company blog that it had made tweaks to its recent redesign in response to massive user unhappiness over the changes.

We’re talking very tweaky, though, and not back-to-the-future stuff. As in, the new look is here to stay.

Nonetheless, the social-networking site also said it would give users more control via better filtering tools of the stream of information that Facebook has focused on making more prominent–and which some say makes the service look too much like a morbidly obese version of the hot microblogging site, Twitter.

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While at the TED conference last week, I asked a variety of people in attendance at the elite gathering which presentation had blown their head off–figuratively, of course!

TED, which feels like a four-year college in four days, had an eclectic range of speakers, many focusing on the awful state of the earth. But there were also less-dire presentations, such as one on how Brad Pitt’s head and range of facial expressions are now stored in a Sony database for all eternity.

That’s a cold comfort amid all the global melting down, but BoomTown will not refuse it.

Here’s some more TED reaction from the digerati.

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Last week, BoomTown traveled to Long Beach, Calif., to attend the TED conference, a longtime gathering of digerati and others who have come to love its eclectic and outward-looking program.

The four-day TED2009, titled “The Great Unveiling,” included Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates unleashing a small swarm of mosquitoes in the hall, a long list of varied speakers and a whole lot of schmoozing.

Here is my belated video of the event, including my kids trying to steal a futuristic car.

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Yahoo will begin testing out versions of its new main homepage to a minuscule number of users starting tomorrow, employing a design that more significantly allows users to customize the starting page in a way that essentially amounts to a kind of My Yahoo-lite for everyone.

Making such a shift will also be a big perceptual deal for Yahoo, which needs to prove it has remained current and open, especially compared to faster-growing rivals like Facebook.

Thus, making a success of its new design is critical, and Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang has been touting the idea that Yahoo must be the “starting point” to the Web for users.

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Although about one-third of its user base–30 million people–has already switched over to its new design, which has been opt-in since July, Facebook will now officially start to move the entire site and the other 70 million Facebookers.

The changeover–which is not optional–will be complete in a few weeks, Facebook said.

I do like the new look, which is definitely cleaner and simpler, although it makes the experience a little more disjointed, since everyone’s profile is now cut up into tabs.

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