While the fireworks were great, the most important thing that “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart elicited out of CNBC’s most famous stock jester, Jim Cramer, was the admission of using the malleable press to float fictional rumors about companies in order to make money on the negative news.

While Cramer at first tried to deny he did it, Stewart had the videotape of the “Mad Money” host talking about the practice, specifically in regards to Apple.

Kind of puts all those Steve-Jobs-Is-Dead-Right-Now rumors from a few months ago into a new light?

While we all know Jobs has been quite ill, grave-dancing rumors written without any serious reporting have also been a troublesome issue, because it was clear greedy short-sellers played a large part in stoking the fear about his immediate demise back then.

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Peter Chernin might be going from News Corp. But he’s not forgotten, at the least by our little tech Web site (see, Peter, we still like you, even if you’re–almost–no longer our boss!).

In fact, you can see him in action after the jump in a video, talking about digital issues and more in a long interview I did with him onstage at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007.

Will the 57-year-old Chernin–who was top choice to head Yahoo and has been mentioned as a possible leader at Apple–have his next act in tech?

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Last week, an obviously jet lagged (and badly dressed, as some troglodyte commenters on Yahoo pointed out, but it was snowing!) BoomTown visited with Henry Blodget at Yahoo’s Tech Ticker studio in Times Square to talk about a range of digital topics.

The video interviews included: How well Apple will do without Steve Jobs on deck; whether blogging reporting and professionalism standards need to rise; when Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Time Warner online unit AOL will stop dancing around various deals; and, finally, how the recession is impacting Silicon Valley.

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Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

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Over the next two weeks, tech companies will be reporting their fourth-quarter earnings and the expectations are pretty much what you might imagine: Bad to very bad to very, very bad.

That’s bad, of course, because tech has been one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy, with strong returns quarter after quarter for a long time now.

It begins today with IBM, followed by Apple, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

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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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Yahoo’s board has approved Carol Bartz for the company’s top job and Bartz has accepted. What happens next? Yahoo’s CEO post has been the subject of speculation of one kind or another for most of the past year, and BoomTown’s had the right story earlier–and more often–than anywhere else. Tune in here for the latest developments in the ongoing story.

• Sue Decker’s Goodbye Memo to the Yahoo Troops
• Yahoo’s Decker Resigned With Class–Now Chairman Bostock Should Exit Stage Right Too
• The Past Is Prologue: Carol Bartz and Autodesk in 1992=Yahoo Now
• Carol Bartz: The ALL CAPS CEO
• Live-Blogging Yahoo’s Bartz as CEO Announcement: Her First Words? “Yahoooo!” and “Friggin’”
• Yahoo Confirms Bartz Pick as CEO; No. 2 Exec Decker Out
• Is a Microsoft Search Deal With Yahoo “Ticked and Tied”?
• Bartz to Be Named Yahoo CEO: Now What’s Next?
• Yahoo Investors: We Would Have Preferred Steve Jobs…
• First Up for Carol Bartz: Deliver Yahoo’s Miserable Q4 Report Card
• As BoomTown Said, Bartz Is Tops on the Yahoo CEO Short List–Here’s the Reaction
• New Prospect for Yahoo CEO: Carol Bartz

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You knew it was coming, of course.

Since the blogosphere couldn’t actually kill him off–deeply lazy and incredibly wrong in insinuating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was dying imminently–it turned around yesterday and declared him a liar for not saying he had a “hormonal imbalance” sooner.

Of course, Apple has also played along in this bizarre game, along with its defenders, who have all tried to pretend nothing is wrong with a man who clearly looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him because of his long-running health issues.

Since the facts of the matter seem dead on arrival, get Marcus Welby, M.D., stat!

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Even without Apple CEO Steve Jobs, there will be copious amounts of live coverage of Macworld’s keynote by Apple SVP Phil “No-Black-Turtleneck” Schiller all over the tech sites online in T-minus nine hours and counting.

And, guess what? All Things Digital will be there too, with the intrepid reporting duo of Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski on text and our Webmaster (and not-so-secret Mac fanboy) Adam Tow on photos.

The $23.45 question: Will the not-prone-yet Jobs make a surprise cameo appearance?

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Oh, I’m sorry, is this the part where BoomTown is supposed to make a list of some sort of what I like and don’t like, what’s hot and what’s not, what’s going to happen and such to all the various players in the digital space?

I don’t think so.

Why? Well because it’s a lot like Nostradamus–you can read into it anything you want.

For instance, in just one week of speculation in the blogosphere: Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dying. Wait, no he is not, but is sick, so he lied. Even though he has always said he is sick. Hey, maybe he is lying and is really cured!

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BoomTown is not saying it’s going to be like watching grass grow.

But 2009 is not exactly getting off to a rousing start this week–with two underwhelming blockbuster tech events taking place that already have more of an air of whimper than of bang to them.

That would be the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual egregious gadgetfest in Las Vegas, and the final appearance by Apple at Macworld.

Of course, while CES tries to fend off the spate of no-one-is-going-to-CES stories–well, I am!–the absence of his digital Holiness and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld has really generated most of the glumness.

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Now, it’s getting flat-out macabre.

That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting.

Rumors of his impending demise have been popping up periodically since the too-thin crisis of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and look like they won’t stop until it actually comes true.

My grandmother used to have a perfect rejoinder for this kind of funeral-chasing behavior, which was prevalent among her gang of Italian sisters, who–whenever anyone caught a cold–predicted the worst outcome: “Don’t be a crepe-hanger.”

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BoomTown had no idea how much yammering took place between Yahoo Tech Ticker’s Sarah Lacy and me last week when we did an interview. But here is (hopefully) the final chapter of three videos about the tech scene, looking back at 2008 and forward to 2009.

This one is about the most underrated and overrated in tech–and somehow I manage to call Facebook both. I also note that while Steve Jobs is not overrated, by any means–so back off, you Mac fanatics–the other key execs at Apple are underrated.

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Boomtown extends apologies to the late Francis P. Church, who penned the original “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” editorial in the New York Sun in 1897. But with a little rejiggering, his eloquent words work perfectly as a translation for Apple’s press release about its withdrawal from Macworld yesterday, which doubtlessly shook the Apple faithful to the core. Oddly enough, it matches up surprisingly–and a little disturbingly–well. Thus, here’s a little holiday inspiration to help those poor souls make it through these darkest of days.

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The prospect of no Steve Jobs keynote and Apple’s last year at IDG’s annual Macworld Conference & Expo is sure to do five things, none of which are pretty. An era is surely over, but what comes next is anyone’s guess.

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