BoomTown provided continuing coverage of the Yahoo (YHOO) merry-go-round. This time, PR head Jill Nash announced her departure. As the company’s chief communications officer, she’s had a challenging two-year run. New CEO Carol Bartz definitely has some PR ideas of her own, including offering cash prizes to employees who provide info on their colleagues who leak information to the press. Not a huge deterrent yet, apparently–it didn’t take long for BoomTown to get info on both Nash’s farewell memo and Bartz’s bounty system. Next, New Networks, the publisher behind BarelyPolitical and its hugely viral Obama Girl videos, has widened its purview to include the tech sector with BarelyDigital, which the online network has envisioned to include regular shows, tech news remixes and the like. It’s rumored that Obama Girl will be making a cameo appearance or two. If the first two features are any indication, the future looks pretty funny. In another round of executive musical chairs, Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be leaving the online service, to be replaced by former Yahoo ad exec Greg Coleman. Microsoft (MSFT) is launching a slick new celebrity site on MSN called Wonderwall, created, designed and produced by BermanBraun Interactive, a Hollywood company run by former Yahoo media chief Lloyd Braun. And speaking of musical chairs, MSN is clearly upping its content ante–earlier this week, it hired Yahoo’s recent media head Scott Moore, who used to work at Microsoft.

MediaMemo asked: What happens when one of the world’s richest men lets loose a swarm (a small swarm) of mosquitoes at a high-end conference? Nothing too exciting, really, but when you consider that the stunt was the publicity-generating part of Bill Gates’s talk at TED, which was a discussion of malaria and some of the problems the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing head-on, it gets pretty compelling. Kindle 2.0, the new generation of the device dubbed the “iPod of the book world” will be unveiled Monday at a New York press event, but how many of the devices have been sold thus far? Amazon’s (AMZN) not telling, but Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney estimates the number at 500,000–and believes that the Kindle will be a $1.2 billion business next year. Obviously, a lot will depend on Monday and the new device’s reception. MediaMemo also took some time out this week to wish Facebook a happy fifth birthday, and to stack its track record next to Google’s at the same age, with interesting results. Even the pros are getting hit hard these days–in its quarterly earnings report this week, News Corp. (NWS) missed its estimates, recorded an $8.4 billion write-off and lowered its guidance. CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted that the downturn is worse than he thought. He also admitted that he spent $2.8 billion too much for Dow Jones. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

Digital Daily followed the trial of four Google executives this week on criminal charges of defamation and breach of privacy after a much-publicized two-year investigation. Google (GOOG) insists the charges are unwarranted and “akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” Clearly, the ultimate outcome will have a huge impact on the future of a free, open Internet. MySpace said this week that it has identified and ousted 90,000 registered sex offenders–and those are just the ones brilliant enough to use their real names. There’s no way of knowing how many are actually using the service or how to prevent them from re-registering once they’re deleted. A free an open Internet, indeed. DD also pondered the future (or lack thereof) of the Motorola (MOT) handset division. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha says the company is committed to making the business work, but its products are looking boring and outdated, and a turnaround would be prohibitively expensive to execute. In the words of one analyst, the company’s problems are “gruesome.” On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft continues to vehemently deny reports that it’ll be producing its own smartphone. In a report this week, analysts from Broadpoint.AmTech speculated that the device could be uncrated later this month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Meanwhile, it’s been up in the air for two years whether or not iPhones will ever be uncrated in historic Georgetown. Apple (AAPL) has been around the table a few times now with preservationists wary of the architectural impact of an Apple store, no matter how much the business traffic is needed in the neighborhood. Looks like perseverance may have finally paid off, though–Georgetown’s Apple store could open later this year.

In Personal Technology this week, Walt Mossberg took a look at a program called Foxmarks, which sets out to synchronize bookmarks among all of your browsers and all of your machines. Sound a little too handy to actually work well? Walt found it does a pretty good job, with a few caveats. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt responds to readers who want to know more about doing “techie” maintenance on their PCs to keep them running well, whether or not to buy a 15-inch MacBook Pro, and options for email within Windows 7, which won’t ship with a built-in email program. In the Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret tests Google Latitude, an opt-in program that lets users track one another’s movements on their smartphones using GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell towers. Kind of like Gawker Stalker, only with permission and without Lindsay Lohan (unless you happen to be Lindsay Lohan).

Last but not least, Silicon Valley lost one of its own this week. The widely admired and much loved Mike Homer, whose rare, severe illness was a rallying point for many over the past months, passed away last weekend and was laid to rest on Thursday.

More next week.

BoomTown reported Monday in a major scoop that Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang will indeed be stepping down as soon as the Yahoo board can find a suitable replacement. Digital Daily argued that it was perhaps the best thing Yang could have done for the troubled company. Early trading on Tuesday saw a 14 percent rise in stock price–an addition of nearly $2 billion to Yahoo’s market cap. Happy days didn’t last long, of course. All it took was a statement from Steve Ballmer reasserting Microsoft’s (MSFT) lack of desire to buy the company to send its share price plunging to $9.

Microsoft is allegedly coming close to settling on a new head for its digital business, not for lack of lost time, though–BoomTown predicts the winner will be Qi Lu, Yahoo’s former head of search. We’ll know soon, supposedly. In the meantime, Microsoft is busy trying to woo Verizon Wireless (VZ) away from Google (GOOG) as its default search partner on many of its devices. It’s willing to pay from $550-$650 million–twice as much as Google’s paying, allegedly–to own 60 percent of all searches made from mobile devices.

Digital Daily had more news of the continually declining economic situation (OK, econalypse). This week, the harbinger of doom was the precipitous fall in corporate IT spending, which will be, uh, about $0 over the next 90 days, according to Changewave. That just about lines up with the fact that online spending is at its lowest level in seven years. Meanwhile, concerns that current economic conditions will last much longer than previously expected prompted a tech selloff that kicked tech’s ass all the way back to 2003. Good times.

On a happier note, now everyone knows how to make serious cash from social media: Run for president. In the 21 months of his campaign, Barack Obama’s online machine raised half a billion dollars. Listening, Mark and Chad? How not to make money: Ask Axl Rose. In a pioneering move, the fabled Guns N’ Roses album, “Chinese Democracy,” launched on MySpace (NWS). Not so pioneering: Crappy sales. Of the tons of fans who tuned in, less than tons bought the album. In a nonsocial-networking move, YouTube will host its first-ever offline party in SF this weekend–Obama Girl, Fred Figglehorn and other viral phenoms will be in attendance. Don’t worry, BoomTown is going so you don’t have to.

MediaMemo followed the burgeoning saga of Mark Cuban’s battle with the SEC on charges on insider trading–more to come, no doubt. Motrin was also in the hot seat this week for its insensitivity toward women in its recent campaign aimed at, well, women.

Walt Mossberg gave Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm a comprehensive review on its launch date. For the smartphone’s details and a video of of its many features in action, check out Personal Technology. Covered in Mossberg’s Mailbox this week were some pros and cons of buying an e-reader, and details about the lack of FireWire as a stumbling block for buying a new MacBook (AAPL).

In The Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret takes a look at VideoSurf, a video search engine that searches videos by “seeing” the images that appear in them.

(Note about the placement of stock symbols: MySpace is owned by News Corp., which also owns this Web site, and the MacBook is an Apple product.)