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 today for a talk at Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar.

4:32 pm PDT: Ballmer was pretty much on time, delivering a rousing hello and some good words about being back. He had attended Stanford Business School many moons ago, before dropping out and joining Microsoft (MSFT). Good move, I’d say.

He offered anyone in the room jobs, if they were smart, and then gave out his email. Although he did leave out the pertinent fact that the software giant just laid off 3,000 workers earlier this week.

Well, that.

Then, Ballmer launched into his speech, which began with him talking about the “tough economy.”

The slide behind him was a picture of a glass half-empty or half-full, depending on your attitude, with the notes:

Economic “Reset”

Optimistic about the future.

4:40 pm: Ballmer then told his “entrepreneurial” story. There was a lovely picture of the young Ballmer with some hair. Not much, but some.

Lots of chatter about old computers ensued. Zzzzzzzz.

The early days of Microsoft were next, including how founder Bill Gates was worried about how Ballmer would bankrupt the nascent company by hiring more staff, a delightful story the pair told at our D: All Things Digital conference last year.

4:46 pm: Then the “emerging technology trends.”

Which are, according to Ballmer: many-core processing; screens everywhere; natural UI; all content digital.

Like All Things Digital! I always knew Steve and I were soul mates!

Because it is Microsoft, he moved into “software-powered experiences,” which means, according to Ballmer’s slide: a rich client + cloud, spans multiple devices and is persistent and personal.

“You world needs to be brought together,” said Ballmer. “You may not want to manage the cacophony of devices you deal with today.”

I may not. Or I may. Ballmer, may I?

4:55 pm: It was not a long or much of a content-rich speech. Ballmer wrapped up with the idea that “The Time Is Now.”

He noted that it is a great time for start-ups, with “all the right ingredients” that “dream big.”

What ingredients? What dreams? Ballmer was not saying much about his secret cooking tips for baking a tech behemoth.

4:57 pm: Time for questions from the students.

The first was about whether big- or small-company experience is better.

Both, said Ballmer. Depending on the problem. “You want to blend those things pretty well,” he said.

It is all about the ingredients! And blending. Also sifting, in my humble opinion.

The next question was about the state of the browser business.

Ballmer said it will get more innovative. We’re waiting!

The next was about what the main problem typically is with companies that have trouble making it.

“Too many companies can actually hang on for almost too long because there has been too much money funding these ideas,” said Ballmer.

Yes, we are soul mates!

5:04 pm: The next question was about the culture of a company from its start and how Ballmer has shaped Microsoft’s culture.

“I would say I have shaped Microsoft culture a lot,” he said. “Sometimes for the better, sometimes worse.”

Ballmer compares himself and Gates to “parents” of Microsoft.

That was very Iowa of him.

(As I said: soul mates!)

5:09 pm: The next question was about how he decided to leave Stanford Business School.

“They still have a spot for me if I want to go back and finish my MBA,” Ballmer joked.

But, he noted, it was not much of a risk to leave school.

When Ballmer did waver about going back to school, Gates convinced him to stay. Thank goodness, as he said he would have become an investment banker or a consultant.

The next question was about Google (GOOG), which was not named, I suppose for fear that it would set Ballmer off and there would be chairs a-flying.

“The No. 1 player [in search] is a lot bigger than us,” said Ballmer. “We are like a start-up.”

Well, a really, really, really rich start-up, which has been sued by the federal government for antitrust violations, and convicted.

5:14 pm: The next question was about ideas he might have missed.

Ballmer called himself “a mini-venture capitalist,” noting that figuring out what investments to make is tough.

He joked about the disastrous Microsoft Bob product. That always gets a laugh.

The next question was about how much attention Microsoft will give to cloud computing.

It gave him the chance to make a pun using the movie, “Three Men and a Baby,” noting that the “future is about three screens and a cloud.”

Ahahahahahahaha! Okay, not at all.

A question was asked about taking risks and tips for dealing with it.

“Valuable experience is valuable experience,” said Ballmer.

Say what? Is that a word puzzle? This is starting to feel like “Angels & Demons.”

Ballmer advised the students to “love doing the work that you’re doing.”

It is apparently all about the love at Microsoft. Who knew?

5:22 pm:

Two questions about consolidation, which is code for Yahoo (YHOO).

“I’m glad we went down the road,” said Ballmer, waxing nostalgic about the failed takeover attempt.

But he added he still thought a partnership of some sort between the pair is a good idea. “There may or may not be appropriate discussions,” said Ballmer.

There may. Or may not. Carol, may Steve?

Then there is some love for competitors, Facebook, even Apple (AAPL) for the iPhone.

Feel the love!

5:25 pm: The last question is about what he wished he had done if he could do it over.

He would have taken more computer science courses.

We are so not soul mates.

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.

Said one source: “It’s closer than it has ever been…we’re finally talking about the how rather than the if.”

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

Indeed, it remains a good sign that 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.

As I also reported last week, the latest idea is one in which Yahoo (YHOO) would take over both search and display advertising sales and Microsoft (MSFT) would run the tech for both behind the scenes.

It’s not clear if trading other assets–such as content–or an investment in Yahoo by Microsoft are being considered too.

In any case, any such deal would be a major shift for both companies in their business focus and would also tether them tightly together.

Many think they need to be tethered, given that Google (GOOG) overwhelmingly dominates the lucrative search market. Yahoo is strong in display, although that market has been harder hit in the recent economic downturn.

But whether or not Yahoo and Microsoft can come to a partnership agreement–given the deep complexities of the situation, the wariness over controlling key technologies and tense history between them–is a big if, of course.

Still, sources on both sides seem more positive than ever before.

Microsoft execs, for their part, report that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is much more straightforward to work with than former CEO Jerry Yang.

And Yahoo’s side seems convinced that Microsoft appears more willing to make a deal happen and is more flexible on terms than in previous encounters.

Both sides are using very small teams to discuss the possible partnership, mostly in Silicon Valley. Some of the Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft team, in fact, are in the Bay area now.

Sources said those involved on the Microsoft side include: Digital head Qi Lu, a former Yahoo tech star; top M&A and strategy exec Charles Songhurst; Online Audience Business SVP Yusuf Mehdi; and several others.

On the Yahoo side: North America EVP Hilary Schneider, who leads the efforts; General Counsel Michael Callahan; top Yahoo ad operations techie Mark Morrissey, who was key to its revival of the Panama ad system and has recently been leading product development on its new ad platform; finance SVP and Chief Treasury Officer Mike Gupta; and Products EVP and CTO Ari Balogh, although he is more in the background.

Of course, the only two execs who will matter, if these teams finally manage to hash out details, are Yahoo’s Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, as well the both companies’ boards.

Interestingly, Ballmer is slated to be at Stanford University’s Memorial Auditorium to give a lecture on innovation and entrepreneurship as part of the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar on Wednesday afternoon.

Whether Ballmer is seeing Bartz on this trip or not is not clear.

But he has to at some point. The approval of a deal–which could be struck soon, if terms can be reached–will be entirely their call.

[Postcard image courtesy of CarbonClothing on Zazzle.com.]

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

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

With the first consumer-friendly browser software, which made the Web easily understandable to the masses, Netscape was at the red-hot center of the nascent digital revolution.

“Wall Street went bonkers,” said one news reporter about the IPO, and the craziness did not stop for quite a while.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush too, 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, following mutual disagreements and announced a search for a replacement–you are correct.

In that job, the 53-year-old Currie will be helping Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 24, navigate–albeit temporarily–through some stormy economics seas on a journey that will hopefully end in an initial public offering.

The search for a new CFO will also involve Currie, obviously, and will be conducted by Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

But until a new CFO is in place, Facebook’s quest still entails sorting out a substantive advertising monetization strategy while also keeping up its speedy growth rates and managing the high costs that mount with its popularity.

That certainly was Netscape’s major challenge, which it never met successfully and which was made worse by intense attacks from Microsoft (MSFT) on Netscape’s core browser business.

That eventually led to the antitrust trial against the software giant, even as Netscape saw its star fall dramatically.

It was sold to AOL in 1998 for $4 billion, a shadow of its bubble valuation, and is now more of a footnote than an ongoing tech product (although the now-popular Mozilla browser is a direct descendant of Netscape).

In fact, in 2008, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL dropped its support for the Netscape browser and said it was no longer releasing new versions.

Still, a lot of former Netscape execs now hold other key jobs in the Web space.

Its investor relations exec, Quincy Smith, now heads up the digital arm of CBS (CBS), for example.

And Andreessen has started a number of companies and has transformed himself into an kind of elder statesman of Silicon Valley of late, as well as a newly minted venture investor.

Andreessen, many sources said, was a shadow influence on Zuckerberg’s decisions related to Yu, with whom relations had gotten tense, and to bring in Currie (pictured here).

Currie is certainly a great choice, in terms of the close-knit tech sector’s respect and experience.

Currie is also unusually tall, aggressively avuncular and laid-back, loves Elvis and enjoys pranking reporters like BoomTown. (Case in point: He once tried to spread the rumor that I am short due to a medical condition.)

Now the president of Currie Capital, a private investment firm, he had previously worked at General Atlantic in private equity.

After Netscape, he was a partner and co-founder of the Barksdale Group, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Before Netscape, he was CFO of McCaw Cellular Communications and also worked at Morgan Stanley (MS).

Currie is also board-happy, serving as a director of a variety of tech firms, private and public. They have included CNET Networks, Critical Path, Clearwire (CLWR), Safeco, Ofoto, Tellme Networks and Zantaz, as well as Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

He has an MBA from Stanford University and went to Williams College.

Here is the video interview I did with Currie and others at an event to support his friend and former Netscape exec Mike Homer, who recently died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Currie is at the 2:16-minute mark):

(Image of Netscape IPO T-shirt courtesy of intothefuzz on Flickr.)

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 was not quite that dramatic.

But there were a few nuggets to be found at the event, including a panel on online media with a stellar gang, all talking about microblogging, content and where it is all going in this horrible econalypse.

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

BoomTown did video interviews with all the panelists about their takeaways from the chat: CBS (CBS) Interactive top terrier Quincy Smith, former Yahoo (YHOO) and now LinkedIn bigwig Jeff Weiner, former Yahoo and now Microsoft (MSFT) bigwig Scott Moore, former exec at Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and now entrepreneur Jim Bankoff, and Federated Media head John Battelle.

Here’s the video:

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.

Indeed, Brockman now calls the event the “Edge Dinner,” after his lively Edge Web site, where he presides over a variety of eclectic online debates and discussions (in January, for example, the topic was: “DOES THE EMPIRICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE CONTRADICT THE REVELATORY NATURE OF FAITH?”).

Since I managed to miss the fete entirely (embarrassing confession: I fell dead asleep at 7 p.m. and did not wake until the next morning) and could not chronicle it, Brockman allowed me to post some photos from the event taken by him and by former Microsoft research guru and current intellectual property mogul Nathan Myhrvold.

Here are some, and you can see the rest here (click on the images to make them larger):

Google co-founder Larry Page and Applied Minds’ Danny Hillis

Former AOL kingpin and Revolution Health’s Steve Case and Jean Case, Case Foundation

Twitter CEO Evan Williams and Neoteny’s Joi Ito

Nathan Myhrvold, Google’s Marissa Mayer and Nathan Wolfe of Stanford University

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos

Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates and DEKA’s Dean Kamen

New Media Nabobs Tim O’Reilly and Arianna Huffington

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?

The media and blogosphere pitifully arguing, as if it was the most important issue to face mankind ever, over who was right and who was a shill?

Apple (AAPL) being frustratingly opaque and making the bad situation worse–first by saying nothing when Jobs appeared looking disturbingly gaunt, to now releasing a series of confusing statements that don’t jibe, even if health diagnosis is always a moving target?

The rumors and innuendo about Jobs’s fate and health status swirling everywhere, pretty much all of which is pure speculation and all probably wrong?

The emotional dives in the stock, because of skittish investors, who should know by now that this is an uncertain situation–Jobs had cancer, for goodness sake–and therefore should probably tread very carefully?

And, most of all, the needless tarnishing of the reputation of a man who is one of the technology industry’s greatest icons–if not the greatest–having positively impacted the whole culture with a style and elegance that is unmatched?

That it comes at a time when he is sickly and trying to recover makes it even worse and quite sad.

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

It was full of a lot of wonderful stories, including about his first bout with cancer. And the speech ended with some words Jobs saw on the back of “The Whole Earth Catalog” when he was young, which impacted him greatly.

They were: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

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

So let’s slow things down, shall we, and get some much-needed perspective this speech surely has (in other words, the inevitable finger-pointing and shareholder lawsuits can wait).

Here’s a video of the Jobs speech, as well as the full text after the jump.

The 2005 Jobs Stanford Commencement Address:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

Thank you all very much.

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.

The panel included Bret Taylor, Co-Founder of FriendFeed; Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur; Pownce Co-Founder Leah Culver; and SoftTechVC’s Jeff Clavier.

It was a lively discussion, which was also focused on monetization–or lack thereof–issues in the instant Internet space, in which users share every detail of their lives with friends and family in a digital millisecond.

Like I said, MTMI (much too much information!!).

In any case, here’s a video I did of the event, including snippets of the company presentations, as well as interviews with all the panelists:

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 from 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.

Why?

Well, any Apple (AAPL) investor has to know by now that Jobs suffered from a rather serious bout with a curable version of pancreatic cancer some years ago and that recovery includes inevitable complications.

That was on display when he took to the stage of Apple’s most recent Worldwide Developers Conference in mid-June and looked really gaunt and unhealthy. It was obviously hard to look away.

People immediately reacted like it was the end of the world–which is no surprise given Apple’s rabid following–and began to suddenly acquire instant medical degrees and diagnose Jobs on the spot.

In its typically secretive style, Apple did not help matters by throwing out a thin gruel of information and noting it was only a common bug.

Of course, that felt like a bigger whopper than usual–even if he did, in fact, also have a cold, it kind of begged the question of what accounted for the rest of his haggard appearance.

In any case, the chatter went on and on, right up until the most recent quarterly earnings call when Apple’s CFO said, when asked that Jobs’s health, that it was a “private matter.”

Immediately, that sent the debate into a frenzy, as armchair word detectives went into overdrive about exactly what that meant. (Personally, I think it meant that Apple was saying Jobs’s health was a private matter.)

This weekend, the noise level reached a quantum level after Jobs made a can’t-make-this-up statement to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, who was inquiring as to Jobs’s well-being:

“This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”

Now that just cracked me up, given all that had gone on before, although some were once again indignant over the gall of a major company CEO making such a statement.

Obviously, they have never met or heard Jobs, who is well known for doing such things pretty much all the time.

And that’s the problem here and my main argument for leaving him be:

1) As I said, Apple investors who have not figured Jobs’s precarious health–after a round with any kind of cancer–into their investment strategies about Apple going forward need some serious reality medication themselves.

Guess what? Jobs has been really sick and it means he is going to have a harder time with any kind of infection or complication for the rest of his life, and he will likely be more delicate than someone who has not had cancer.

By the way, the take-away from the Nocera article and an earlier one last week in the New York Times was that Jobs had been quite ill, but not life-threateningly ill. Which was Jobs’s way of getting out the news.

2) Jobs is one of the most important CEOs, in relation to his company, around. (Warren Buffett, who did choose to reveal all when he was sick, is the other.) And that’s another thing investors should be figuring into their calculations on the worth of the stock.

As Jobs himself said in a famous commencement speech to Stanford University: “No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”

You don’t have to get as dramatic as all that to know that when you are talking about such a charismatic and critical CEO as Jobs, any lack of involvement by him–like say going on a year-long yoga retreat–is going to be a problem that investors are buying when they buy the stock.

Of course, there are other Apple employees making things work at the company, although it sometimes feels as if Jobs is crafting every iPhone that goes out.

But it’s obviously the Steve Jobs Show, and investors risk that when they buy such a ticket–kind of like anyone who bought a ticket to Celine Dion’s recent show in Las Vegas and hoped she would not get, like, a common cold!

3) And, of course, we get to the secretive Apple culture story line in every single story, which is trotted out like it is a surprise and we should all be so angry about it and demand change.

Again, have we not been paying attention all these many years? When has Apple not been secretive, except when it suits itself?

Here are a few more shockers for those still stewing about Apple’s secretiveness: Sen. Barack Obama is African-American and Sen. John McCain is old and some people in the country are racist and ageist and may hold those things against them in the upcoming Presidential election!

All kidding aside, it’s the same media that wait in eager anticipation when Jobs doles out the often-disingenuous tidbits about various Apple products coming and then hype them to the high heavens for him when he deigns to unveil them.

In other words, the Steve Jobs you are getting right now is the Steve Jobs you have always gotten–on his terms, what he wants to say and when and how.

So don’t be surprised when he does just that.

Meanwhile, Jobs has come to our D: All Things Digital conference many times and chatted up a storm. Here he is in a highlights reel of the historic joint interview with Microsoft CEO and Founder Bill Gates in 2007.

In it, Jobs is quite voluble about their longtime rivalry and also reveals their secret relationship that dares not speak its name (he is kidding):

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

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

It is not clear when the move will take place, but sources said it is likely to start by the beginning of next year, as there are multiple permits, design issues and other logistical issues to resolve.

But, one thing is clear: Facebook will relocate its Palo Alto-based HQ–scattered in about five buildings throughout the suburban town–to a single location.

New HQ possibilities include, first and foremost, the old Hewlett-Packard buildings on Page Mill Road, nearby to the west of Palo Alto.

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prefers to remain near Palo Alto, sources said.

But Facebook has also been looking at locations in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, further south, as well as also considering a San Francisco location in the city’s recently redeveloped Mission Bay area.

Until now, Facebook has expanded by filling up rented buildings throughout Palo Alto, the picturesque town right next to Stanford University.

The appeal of being located in Palo Alto–full of shops, restaurants movies and also within walking distance of the main train station into San Francisco–has been a draw for its employees, who have, until recently, gotten some rental subsidies for being located near its offices.

But–as it has grown–Facebook’s presence in town has also become a problem for it and also the town’s citizens, as its swarms of employees have taken up too much space and parking in the increasingly crowded streets.

Growing further in Palo Alto is almost impossible, given the lack of office space and the higher expense, compared to the more typical office-park setups off Highway 101 in Silicon Valley that most Internet companies settle into.

Given Facebook’s plans to grow to 1,000 employees by the end of this year, it’s not a surprise that managers would be thinking of the next home for the company, making a move that is typical for most start-ups.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO brought in from Google (GOOG) recently, saw such a thing happen to the search giant, which now has a large campus called the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif.

Over the past six months, there has been a lot of upgrading of Facebook’s looser culture to bring it up to a more professional operation it needs to be if it wants to IPO at some point.

That has meant a lot of internal rejiggering, as well as what BoomTown can only describe as a maturing of its frat-like culture.

There have also been departures of several of its early employees, which also always happens as start-ups mature. Those who have left include: former top exec Owen Van Natta and CTO Adam D’Angelo.

And, just last week, Matt Cohler, its VP of Product Management and longtime adviser to Zuckerberg, announced he will leave Facebook in the fall to become a venture capital partner at Benchmark Capital.

Together, they created the 25-volume “Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy,” which was published in 1962 and was soon out of print.

Now Stanford University’s School of Medicine is putting the astonishing images online, working with Silicon Valley’s eHuman. Right now, the Times reports, just the head and neck collection is online for $8 a month, but there is more to come.

It seems well worth it. As Schwartz writes:

“Even without the stereoscopic boost, the images are stunning, though perhaps not best examined over breakfast. Blood vessels cluster in a cobwebby tangle along a spinal column, and pelvic bones stand out like butterflies against a stark black field. The back of a man’s head, its layers of flesh and bone sliced away, shows the excavation from the scalp down to the brain as if looking at a stratified canyon wall. The original Kodachrome slides, carefully preserved, still provide images of tremendous clarity.”

He notes that it will eventually be possible for those with special glasses to see the images in 3-D too.

Google (GOOG) has been long tinkering on a version of human-body mapping, dubbed Google Body, a concept much like Google Earth, with many partners including eHuman and Stanford.

But this work–done well before anyone had the sophisticated tech tools we have now–seems just perfect.

Below are some pictures by William B. Gruber from the Bassett Collection:

(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 after a year of neglect, due to the gaping maw of need that is blogging.)

In any case, the hour-long speech–titled “On Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back”–that took place at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday afternoon in front of a crowd of students, faculty and press did not have any news to speak of and was very high-concept about the future of tech.

Gates took the show on the road to the University of Texas in Austin yesterday, part of a kind of farewell tour to seven nationally recognized universities.

But, as I watched it, I felt as if the iconic Gates–who will step down this summer from his daily duties at the software giant he co-founded and built into a massive powerhouse–was pretty happy with his new persona of tech-guru-in-chief.

For sure, it is definitely a kinder, gentler Gates, who speaks of ubiquitous touch screens, instant online information globally and a way to map the human brain.

And the students seemed to love it, asking a series of earnest questions of Gates at the end of the speech, most of which were related to his well-known philanthropic efforts and how to do good in the world.

As a human being I was actually touched, although–to be honest–as a reporter I was dying for someone to ask about Microsoft’s aggressive and unsolicited bid for Yahoo, which is vintage Gates of yore. (Only students were supposed to be part of the Q&A, and while BoomTown feels like a 20-year-old, our looks are a little longer in the tooth.)

Here’s the video of various parts of the speech, including a snippet at the start of Gates’s goodbye spoof video featuring Bono (and apologies for it being so, well, jumpy, but BoomTown had to sit behind a very restless photographer who was acting like has was a paparazzo and Gates was Britney Spears):

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.

Actually, we kid. That’s because Gates actually spoke out on the issue yesterday in an interview with Reuters.

While the software giant’s founder and chairman has taken a back seat to CEO Steve Ballmer in the Yahoo bid, Gates wasted no time in tempering expectations if Microsoft (MSFT) failed in its effort to buy Yahoo (YHOO).

Calling the Yahoo offer “very fair”–uh-oh, maybe the $35-per-share offer is not in the mail–Gates insisted the company would continue to invest copiously in search to try to catch rival Google no matter what.

“We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done,” Gates told Reuters. “We will do that with or without Yahoo.”

But Gates also threw Yahoo a tasty compliment, noting: “But we also see that we’d get there faster if the great engineering work that Yahoo has done and the great engineers there were part of the common effort.”

And that’s got to be worth, in the wise words of J. Wellington Wimpy, at least a few samoleans.

(Completely unrelated factoid, except as it pertains to Wimpy: Gates loves hamburgers too, especially In-N-Out Burger, and has been known to seek the chain out when traveling down south of Seattle.)