Let me be crystal clear: Yahoo and Microsoft are not currently secretly at work on a pricey new search partnership and a piece this weekend in the Times of London that said they were is inaccurate.

It’s natural for the idea to be brought up, since they have talked about such a deal many months ago and have indicated publicly and recently that they should again in the future, so smart betting is correct in guessing that they probably will do some sort of search deal in the months ahead.

Still, various rumors pop up weekly about deals between the pair, which are about as convoluted as a mash-up of “Richard III” and “Macbeth,” with some “Three’s Company” thrown in for comic relief.

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Here’s a bright spot in Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings announcement later today: Sources told BoomTown that the company will not announce a specific number of layoffs tomorrow, although it will give an overall percentage of employees and costs to be cut.

In other words, you get to practice your long division and multiplication skills! Fun!

Other than that, of course, when Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang gets on the horn at at 2 p.m. Pacific time, the outlook is likely to be a wall-to-wall glumfest.

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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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What does it take to imagine a new industry out of orange groves?

A lot more than settling a strike, I would posit.

A lot has been written about the writers’ strike in Hollywood, which is officially over after three acrimonious months with the overwhelming vote by the members of the Writers Guild of America to accept a contract it hammered out with the entertainment studios.

Writers will presumably be back at their keyboards today.

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Why does the idea of a marriage between Hollywood writers and VCs make me slightly queasy?

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags [...]

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