On the spur of the moment yesterday–as Los Angeles was gridlocked by the memorial service for pop legend Michael Jackson–BoomTown decided to pay a quick visit to Harvey Levin, who runs TMZ.

Located on Sunset Boulevard–natch!–TMZ is the celebrity news Web site that actually broke the news of Jackson’s death, before any other media outlet.

And it has pretty much led the coverage as the sad story has unfolded–and keeps doing so.

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Of course, the recent shoe attack on President George W. Bush created the perfect storm for online video. As you might know (although Bush clearly did not from this video), the showing of the sole of a shoe is the ultimate insult in Arab countries. And throwing a shoe? Well, worse. In this country, making a video about shoe-throwing is. (Also, BoomTown’s choice for the best shoe-related online video ever.)

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If you want to listen to an interesting discussion on what happened with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s leaving his job and what’s next for the troubled Internet giant, well-known Internet analyst and now consultant Charlene Li and I talked yesterday with Forum host Michael Krasny for the “Forum” radio show on San Francisco’s KQED public radio.

Click through to hear the show.

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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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Last night, Arizona Sen. John McCain officially accepted the GOP candidacy for President in a speech in which he pushed himself as a change agent, even though the Republicans have been in power for eight years.

Actually, the maverick image was one of the reasons we invited him to our fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007.

Since the speech last night had more generalities than specifics, as convention speeches often do, here’s an hour-plus interview with Sen. McCain by Walt Mossberg and me.

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Whatever his current chances to nab the Republican presidential nomination, you’ll want to see this video of our interview with Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
He talked a bit about tech, but the really riveting stuff is about Iraq and his controversial backing of keeping the U.S. presence there.
By way of background, D: All Things [...]

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