This morning, BoomTown will be onstage at California First Lady Maria Shriver’s well-known Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Calif., to moderate a panel titled “Changing the World Through the Web.”

The panelists include Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher; Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg; Premal Shah of Kiva.org; and Blue State Digital’s Joe Rospars, who was also new media director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In other words, as a group, they are all either prettier, smarter or better for the planet than anything I have ginned up so far.

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Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain 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 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!

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Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.

It looks like Julius Genachowski will be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The news was reported in several places late yesterday, and sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment to BoomTown.

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Though just posted on the Funny or Die comedy Web site, a new online video spoof on California’s Proposition 8 has already garnered almost one million views.

The video has a star-studded cast, all singing Marc Shaiman’s “Prop 8–The Musical,” including Jack Black (as, um, Jesus), Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Margaret Cho, Allison Janney and others.

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The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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I blame post-election exhaustion for rendering me comatose after Tuesday, which is how this video I did at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week got stuck in my to-do-later pile.

Well, it has since been fished out, including interviews with conference organizers, John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, as well as Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt (who is apparently scared of me, which is just the way I like it) and Microsoft’s man-in-Silicon-Valley Dan’l Lewin.

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When reports came out last week that Google and Yahoo were downsizing their controversial search advertising deal, I told a Yahoo exec I happened to be having dinner with that that it was the surest sign that the search giant was about to dump the long-suffering Internet portal.

The exec, who made the case that the deal was always tactical and not strategic, laughed. For all its problems, Yahoo has always been a straight-up player and such sneaky machinations are not its strong suit.

Google, not so much.

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BoomTown has finally gotten used to the silly gee-gaws television networks use on election night, like touchscreen maps and drawing all over the screen and jump-up numbers.

But one used by cable network CNN last night–a hologram of a various people beamed into the studio to look like they were right there with Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper–was downright freaky.

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Both President-Elect Barack Obama and the man he beat in a historic election, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, gave the kinds of speeches at the end of the last night that make one proud to be part of a country where stark differences still mean grace can prevail when it’s all over.

But don’t take my word for it–the Internet makes it possible to consider them again and again.

They are a shining example of–as Obama quoted our greatest president (in my estimation, at least), Abraham Lincoln last night–of how such a contest should end: “We are not enemies, but friends, though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

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In advance of tomorrow’s elections, here’s a pair of videos of the two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, talking about tech.

While Obama has many more supporters in the tech and Internet sectors in terms of overall numbers, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, McCain’s tech fans include Cisco CEO John Chambers, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former H-P head Carly Fiorina.

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As BoomTown has noted, one of the best things to come out of this election has been the very funny and very topical humor that has been on “Saturday Night Live” in this political cycle.

Headlined by Tina Fey’s perfect impression of Sarah Palin, it has been biting without stooping to the rank meanness from so many other places by both sides.

Last night, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain–who has been on SNL before (his “John McCain sings Streisand” skit was really a gem from that appearance)–was in two skits on the show and did a great job in both.

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The election is not the only event with only days to go–a move in face-off Yahoo and Google are in with the Justice Department over their controversial search advertising partnership will have an outcome, sources close to all sides said, before the next President is chosen.

Thus, I predict news either Friday or Monday.

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Here’s an interesting video from The Vote Hour, which is trying to get CEOs to let employees take off an hour from work to vote.

But while the group is independent and bipartisan, it is also an effort that started at Google.

The video includes the search giant’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, along with a panoply of well-known execs, including a lot from tech.

Also included, apparently for comic relief, is real estate mogul Donald Trump.

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Today, The Deal got played, and claimed that Yahoo and Google were likely to abandon their controversial search ad outsourcing deal.

Wrote The Deal’s Cecile Kohrs: “A proposed joint venture between rival Internet companies Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. appears headed for the trash bin, just ahead of an expected U.S. Department of Justice challenge to the agreement, lawyers close to the deal said.”

Well, maybe it will die at some point. But, in the words of Juba in the last line of the greatest movie ever (“Gladiator,” of course!): Not yet.

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One of the more interesting developments of this election cycle has been the boom in viral online videos being used–from a plethora of political spoofs of the candidates to educational videos to people simply venting.

And those pushing citizens, especially young people, to register to vote have been using the boom in online video too.

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