Saturday, October 31, 2009
Weekend Update 10.31.09–Heartbreaks, Heartthrobs and Heart Attacks

BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.

BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.
What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name. Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search, and prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as… Bing.
The reason Microsoft hasn’t announced the slate of dissident directors it plans to nominate to Yahoo’s board isn’t that it’s already too deep in negotiations with Yahoo to bother–it’s that it can’t find any dissident directors to nominate. This according to “sources close to the situation” who tell the New York Post that Microsoft hasn’t managed to line up a single candidate for Yahoo’s board.
Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) are talking again. News.com reports that the two companies are “holding informal merger discussions”–which could mean anything from “the companies are discussing a shared vision of Microhoo” to “Jerry Yang is taking Steve Ballmer’s phone calls again.”
“Yahoo has shown some willingness to have a conversation and talk,” a source [...]
Google’s relentless success in both search and Internet advertising has finally pushed Microsoft over the edge. The software giant made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo this morning. The offer of $31 a share is a 62% premium over Yahoo’s closing stock price on Thursday.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”