Eric Boyd (pictured here), a high-profile techie from Yahoo who left the company for a start-up last year, is now headed to Microsoft to work for its digital group, now run by another ex-Yahoo, Qi Lu.

UPDATE: Microsoft confirmed the hiring, although declined to provide further details.

Boyd–who is well-known for his card-counting team exploits while at MIT (which was later made into a movie)–had been VP of platform engineering at Yahoo and worked on a variety of projects there.

With the addition of Boyd, sources said, Microsoft has acquired a huge swath of the top tech talent of Yahoo, many of whom came to the software giant because of Lu and to also escape the turmoil at Yahoo.

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BoomTown just got this interesting memo that Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele sent out to her staff immediately in the wake of the deal for Microsoft to take over Yahoo’s search technology business two weeks ago.

I render it unto you, dear readers, since it shows just how intent the top managers of Yahoo are, especially internally, in reassuring those concerned that Yahoo had not just gutted itself and how it would remain as innovative as ever.

Also amusing–for reasons I cannot understand since it is an internal memo–is the use of the code name for Yahoo, which is called Yale, after the famous university in New Haven, Conn.

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While it is not yet clear exactly what kind of business case study Facebook will turn out to be in the end–a raging success or a raging something else entirely–that has not stopped Harvard from feting the hot and hyped social networking site.

That would be the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, which will bestow upon Facebook its 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award on June 17 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

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With all the holiday hubbub, don’t miss this great piece in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend by Steve Stecklow and James Bandler, which chronicles the bumpy road of the much-hyped $100 laptop project, spearheaded by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte.

Walt Mossberg and I have had Negroponte at two of our D conferences to talk about [...]

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AOL=Ads Online Loser?
What can we say about AOL’s ad miss, reported in the New York Times today by Miguel Helft, except to quote an email I got from a former AOL executive today: “Ad sales and no surprises were the reason these guys were supposedly brought in.”
Oops. Indeed, more analysis of this issue tomorrow, but [...]

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