One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo, which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan last weekend.

Top Yahoo execs were at the hack event, although it’s not clear if they attended the lap-dancing part of the program, which seems to have a history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

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Let’s all agree first to blame owner Condé Nast for deciding to shutter Gourmet–the elegant and iconic magazine, which has been around since 1941, after the November issue.

While circulation remained steady at Gourmet at just under one million monthly paying subscribers, Condé Nast Chief Executive Officer Chuck Townsend pointed to a fall-off in advertising spending by luxury brands that result in a money-losing mess.

But some are blaming a movement of readers to the Web. Is it true?

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Well, it’s not like Twitter’s investors are Britney Spears or anything, but somehow, the $1 billion valuation of Twitter deserves a BoomTown all-lenses-shooting response.

Thus, the crack team at All Things Digital went all out in trying to capture one such investor in his true state.

Click in to see photographic proof!

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BoomTown could not resist posting this photo for posterity’s sake, taken by All Things Digital Webmaster and master photog Adam Tow.

It pictures a quartet of the tech media’s heavy hitters, all attending at the Apple event in San Francisco today.

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Yes, that’s Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shorts, knees and all, in a picture taken right “after signing the papers” to acquire FriendFeed for $50 million. The deal was announced today.

One of FriendFeed’s founders, Paul Buchheit, posted them on his account at the online content-sharing site.

They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!).

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This morning, BoomTown was on the very terrific National Public Radio talk show, “On Point,” along with Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain.

The program, moderated by Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s WBUR station, was titled “From Desktop to the Digital Cloud” and dealt with the increasing move of data of all kinds online and into the so-called “cloud.”

In other words, eventually, a completely virtual life for music, photos, records and more, and the end of packaged software.

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Today, Microsoft tweeted a photo of the wall in front of one of its upcoming retail stores, either in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Mission Viejo, Calif.

Although it is not clear which location it is–frankly, those mall potted plants could be just about anywhere–I am guessing some Foot Locker is right around the corner and an Outback Steakhouse is not far either.

This does not bode well, especially if Microsoft is hoping to one-up the sleek and hip Apple store vibe.

In fact, that’s where BoomTown is off to now, to get an early place in line for an iTablet.

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Like grandmother, like grandson.

Yesterday, I told my No. 1 son, Louie, that Twitter was down, after a denial-of-service attack.

He was–shall we say–not very sympathetic, as you will see in the video following the jump.

Interestingly, Louie’s response was similar to my mother’s, who mocked the microblogging service at a gas station on the way to my interview with its founders at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

As it turns out, though, data actually back them up.

(Plus, see their videos too.)

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference late this afternoon and was greeted by that old chestnut:

When is Twitter going to make some simoleons?

Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky posted a poll about that and a few other topics, and then asked a question he said was on the minds of many in Silicon Valley:

“Why the hell aren’t you guys making money?”

Here’s what Stone had to say.

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Yahoo confirmed the news–first reported by BoomTown and in The Wall Street Journal last night–that it was buying Xoopit, the San Francisco social email company.

And it did so in both a blog post and on Twitter, as you can see here:

@karaswisher @jvascellaro Your scoops confirmed http://bit.ly/gpOT2.

Well, thanks! But we are already onto new scoops, so try to keep up!

The price for the acquisition, which Yahoo did not reveal, was about $20 million, according to sources.

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Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while.

Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment about the purchase. Xoopit did not respond to emails earlier today.

But sources said it was a done deal to buy the San Francisco-based social email start-up that finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

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Earlier this week, BoomTown pointed out how Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers was captured doing duck calls on the Flip digital video camera, made by the start-up his company bought in March for $590 million.

That was an adorable use of the consumer electronic device. But in the not-so-cute department, I submit this photo at right.

Sitting next to her boss, Barbara Walters, an ABC producer used it to ghoulishly take shots of the kids of pop legend Michael Jackson memorial service on Monday.

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Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to make the experience better for our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last weeks, which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

Check them out.

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Where is Microsoft spending its $100 million in marketing for its new Bing search service?

Here’s a photo that was forwarded to me showing an advertisement on top of a taxi in Manhattan of a goodbye message from Bing, as well as NBC, to the late pop legend, Michael Jackson.

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The layoffs at Fox Interactive Media moved on to Photobucket today, as one-third of its staff of about 120 were let go, sources close to the situation said.

The photo- and video-hosting service was bought for $250 million in mid-2007 by News Corp.

A FIM spokesperson confirmed the layoffs after being contacted by BoomTown, but declined to give specific numbers. But sources told me a total of about 75 people were fired.

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