Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.

But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

There’s a great excerpt in the New Yorker this week.

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Today, at the Silicom Summit at Stanford University, BoomTown was on a panel about consumer media, and right in a front seat paying rapt attention was Steve Wozniak.

It was the same Woz–the famous nickname of the Apple co-founder–who was also staring back last week at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference and taking it all in.

So, of course, I whipped out the Flip digital video camera and asked him some questions.

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BoomTown went down to Silicon Valley’s most exclusive country club–also known as Stanford University–where Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage for a talk at Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar.

Ballmer–who went to and then dropped out of Stanford Business School for a job at the fledgling Microsoft–was in an ebullient mood and even joked about problems with the Windows Vista operating system.

Party on, Steve!

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Recently, BoomTown reported that talks between Microsoft and Yahoo had gotten “hot and heavy.”

That mood seems to be continuing, as many sources close to the situation on both sides said that the pair are coming ever closer to a search and advertising partnership deal.

“It’s meaningful,” said one source. “The fact that there is even progress and engagement, after so many failed attempts between us, says a lot.”

Indeed, there seems to be a lot of engagement between the two sides of late, and some sources think a deal could even be struck within the next few weeks.

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Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the famed browser start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of. But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday–you are correct.

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Last week, I went to the 15th Stanford Accel Symposium, hosted by Stanford University’s MediaX and the VC firm Accel Partners.

With the honking big title of “The Delta Conference: The Impact of 2008 Dramatic Events on the World of Digital Media and Technology,” it included a panel on online media with a stellar gang, all talking about microblogging, content and where it is all going in this economic environment.

It was kind of like “The View,” except all guys in khakis and oxford shirts. You know, a typical Silicon Valley gathering.

Here are video interviews with the panelists.

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Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference.

It was jokingly called the “Millionaires’ Dinner,” but I renamed it the “Billionaires’ Dinner.”

That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!?

Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman’s most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.

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The restless frenzy is what is perhaps most disturbing of all about the never-ending obsessive death watch that has centered on Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

What doesn’t make your skin crawl about it?

That’s why BoomTown thinks it is time to listen to the wise words Jobs delivered at a now legendary Stanford Commencement address in 2005.

The last words of the speech came from the back of “The Whole Earth Catalog”: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

I think right about now, that foolish part has gone way too far for Jobs and the rest of us.

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Last night, BoomTown was invited to moderate a panel for MIT/Stanford Venture Lab at Stanford University’s Business School on the topic of lifecasting.

In other words, the digital version of TMI (too much information!).

Called “Lifestreaming: The Real-time Web,” it was aimed at debating the trend toward “sharing our lives with others as they happen,” with three entrepreneurs and a venture capitalist in the space.

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So, I have been standing by, trying to make sense of the debate that has swirled around Apple CEO, Co-
Founder and font-of-all Steve Jobs with regard to his health or, more specifically, the lack thereof.

And after listening to all of the debate about it–mostly indignant declarations by the media, making their case mostly by wheedling milder indignant declarations out of stock analysts and corporate tsk-tsk outfits–I have concluded that what is ailing Jobs is exactly no one’s business.

Even if his every breath is critical to the ongoing operations of Apple, the reason most use as their main argument for Jobs to tell all, it goes double.

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It looks like Facebook will definitely be moving from its funky multi-building setup in downtown Palo Alto, Ca. to a centralized campus in Silicon Valley, said several sources.

The high-profile social networking company–which has been undergoing a major managerial shift of late as it matures from its startup status to that of a more established Web player–has been growing quickly to almost 600 employees today from a couple hundred last year.

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Pretty please, don’t miss this excellent story today in the New York Times by an old colleague of mine, John Schwartz, about amazing images of the human body that were compiled by University of Washington anatomy and dissection expert David L. Bassett and View-Master inventor William B. Gruber six decades ago.
Together, they created the 25-volume [...]

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Sorry that this video of Microsoft’s Bill Gates speaking at Stanford University is a day late, but here it is below.
(Our lame excuse: After two lovely scoops on Tuesday–Owen Van Natta’s departure from Facebook and Yahoo’s severance plan for all employees–BoomTown took yesterday off to clean AllThingsD.com’s HQ. Really, we did, since it was filthy [...]

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No, not as the conquering hero of Yahoo yet, but to give a talk to students at Stanford University about topics Gates often focuses on.

In a speech titled “On Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back,” Gates will address the young folks gathered tomorrow afternoon at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium, as well as to a contingent of media. And he will do a question-and-answer session with only students.

A temporarily muted BoomTown will be there, so here’s a shameless offer to any hoodie-wearing student: Free latte to anyone who asks Gates about the Yahoo bid.

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