When in San Diego recently, BoomTown paid a visit to Qualcomm and its Chairman and CEO, Paul Jacobs, to talk about a new “smartbook” device the wireless-technology company unveiled last week, but that won’t make its debut until the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in January.

There, Jacobs will show off what is essentially a combination of a smartphone and a netbook.

Obviously, it’s going to be a competitive market and, really, Apple, with its upcoming tablet computer, is also pushing into this mobile-phone-that-ate-computers space.

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MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, released a beta version of a service to let users manage their health information on the Web.

Called My Health Info, the Microsoft offering, which includes a range of widgets and other Web tools, wades into an area that many are attempting to crack, including Google.

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The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up.

This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications.

What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.

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Although it’s not news that Yahoo was readying a new version of its homepage and has spent a lot of time doing so–in fact, it’s gone all Handy Manny with a whole lot of test renovations–the Internet giant begins the massive rollout of it tomorrow.

The official launch of what was code-named “Metro,” which Yahoo had previously said was coming in the fall, will take place on an opt-in “beta” basis for the hundreds of millions of users in the U.S. and will be extended to France, the U.K. and India later this week.

The change is an important one for Yahoo, since its front page–one of the most trafficked on the Web–is perhaps its most powerful calling card to users and advertisers, as well as to Wall Street.

Here are the details and also an interview about it all with Yahoo SVP Tapan Bhat, as well as screenshots of the new page.

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Almost two years ago, just as Web 2.0 was heating up, BoomTown did a video interview with Slide founder and CEO Max Levchin.

Soon after, the popular maker of widgets and other social networking applications grabbed a big pile of cash from new investors, which put the value of the company at $550 million.

But that was before the recession hit, as well as a generally more sober outlook for a lot of high-flying Silicon Valley darlings like Slide, which have had to wise up a little and get down to business.

So, it was time for another chat with Levchin to find out what’s what.

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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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How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of the work of “fact”-ion–titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”–which is set to come out July 14, along with a movie later.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck, but here’s my own list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair facts that should be in the book.

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Late last night, Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat posted an update on the ongoing redesign of the Internet giant’s homepage, a massive undertaking given that 300 million people visit it each month.

Bhat, who is SVP of Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communities and Network Services, said the company was completing the first phase of its “bucket testing” and collecting feedback, but that, “Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.”

Indeed not, according to several sources at Yahoo, who said that the massive underhaul of the homepage has been a much more complex, much dicier effort and was taking a lot longer than expected to launch.

And, more importantly, new CEO Carol Bartz is also giving it the once-over.

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BoomTown’s been just one week gone and yet another goofy, traffic-generating debate “erupts” in the blogosphere involving the usual suspects and the favored hyped Silicon Valley company of the moment, Twitter. The new bone being gnawed on is something I can hardly grasp the point of–some drivel argument about what constitutes the authority of a tweet. While tweet status would seem only important to, say, a Warner Bros. cartoon character like Sylvester, all I can think is: Who cares? That’s because the fact remains that Twitter is simply an unknown to most average people in a way other tech trends have not been.

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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist, and Pittman will join its board.

The site, which has been called Project Playlist, had previously raised several million dollars. The new round of funding super-sized that, sources said, hovering at about $18 million.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta to BoomTown, in an interview this afternoon, giving it as his main reason for joining Playlist.

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Widget maker RockYou announced today that it has nabbed a $17 million investment from two Asian firms, SoftBank Group and SK Telecom Ventures.

The investment will be added to $35 million from the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up’s C round in June. Overall, RockYou has raised a total of $67 million and–before the current econalypse–had previously reported a $400 million valuation.

In a video with BoomTown, the company’s co-founders, CEO Lance Tokuda and CTO Jia Shen, said the new funding would be used to expand into the Asia-Pacific market, add offices and staff and make acquisitions.

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You almost have to admire the shape-shifting–if not a wee bit slippery–stylings of Slide CEO Max Levchin.

The serial entrepreneur and widget king has signed distribution deals with media giants, such as Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit, CBS and Comcast’s E! Entertainment channel, to allow users of its FunSpace video service to look at clips from shows.

To make money, Slide will get a cut of ads sold by its media partners.

Oh my, how incredibly traditional of Levchin.

But it should probably come as no surprise that Levchin is now singing a bit of a different tune these days, as the daunting task of actually building a sustainable business model and attracting long-term advertisers has dawned on him and probably many other Web 2.0 wunderkinds.

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In a move to dramatically increase its traffic and give it more tools to offer publishers, Clearspring Technologies said it will acquire AddThis, the top bookmarking and content-sharing tool on the Web.

As with many social-networking start-ups, whether this disparate traffic can be easily translated into a revenue-generating business remains to be seen.

The McLean, Va.-based Clearspring–one of several widget networks seeking to connect publishers and advertisers with social tools by helping them embed small pieces of content across Web and monetize that content–would not disclose the price it paid for the Princeton, N.J.-based AddThis.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg talks even more about sharing information, explains why he wants to stay CEO, discusses mistakes like Beacon and successes like Facebook’s open platform, and defends widgets. Meanwhile, Sandberg talks about why she came to Facebook from Google, compares widget popularity to Elvis fans and talks about where ad spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).

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When Apple releases its third-quarter earnings after the close today, Wall Street will be looking hard for a solid performance from the company to help buoy a tech sector smacked silly by weak reports from industry leaders Microsoft and Google last week.

But more important to me is what is happening with the plethora of third-party apps now available on the iTunes App Store–both free and paid–for use on the iPhone platform.

That’s because Apple has finally built a platform for adults.

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