Champagne wishes and caviar dreams are now but a memory for billionaire shareholder-activist Carl Icahn, who lost about $125 million today by selling off 16 percent of his ever-losing stake in Yahoo.

The sale of 12.7 million shares at just under $15 a piece is a far cry from the hopes that the famously prickly Icahn had when he started his quest to bring about change and riches for himself by investing in stock of the turmoil-plagued Internet giant in 2008.

As it turned out, he came to Silicon Valley, he saw, he did not conquer.

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Oh, BoomTown could not resist making the obvious literary pun on the debut of Peter Kafka’s new daily blog, MediaMemo, on AllThingsD.com.

I am referencing, of course, Franz Kafka’s famous 1915 novella, “Metamorphosis,” about a man who turns into a bug–except that the transformation is fraught with so much more meaning.

And thus it will be in Peter’s column, as the most excellent writer and reporter plunges into the topic–as he writes in his first explanatory post–of “the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day.”

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Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City, starting at the end of October.

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I meant to get this very funny video about the Web sites of financial publications–from Current TV, by Viral Video Film School–posted sooner, as it made me spit up my coffee several times.
The shaggy Brett Erlich perfectly reviews the sites for the Web 2.0 crowd, making fun of WSJ.com’s soothing video intro music, and the [...]

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If you are a glutton for punishment, here is the entire video from the Public Relations Society of America’s Silicon Valley chapter’s annual “Media Influencer” dinner, held at the Computer History Museum last week.

BoomTown was one of the tech writers on the panel, which was talking about what the big trends in tech in 2007 [...]

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Last night, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silicon Valley chapter held its annual “Media Influencer” dinner at the Computer History Museum, which featured a spate of tech journalists pitching a large room full of PR people about what’s hot in the sector.
Turning the tables this year–and apparently getting “honored” by the group–were: Victoria Barret [...]

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In a front page article Sunday, New York Times writer Gary Rivlin drags out that old Silicon Valley chestnut about how hard it to is be just a plain old millionaire when everyone else around you has all those hundreds of millions and–worse!–billions.

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