Posted at 8:21 AM PT
Later today at Twitter’s Chirp conference in San Francisco, BoomTown is moderating a panel titled “Investing in the Ecosystem.”
Or as I like to call it, “How Do You VCs Come Up With Those Crazy Valuations: Magic 8-Ball? Ouiji Board? Darts?”
I have a choice group of dudes–of course, they are all dudes–for the panel, all of whom have invested in a range of start-ups, including Twitter.
Presumably, the group will give the audience the 411 on what goes into finding, feeding and nurturing the many start-ups that populate the Twitterverse.
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Posted at 5:30 AM PT
Here’s the teaser for the 200th episode of the animated comedy goldmine that has been “South Park.”
One of the most popular shows online, too, after 14 seasons, the Comedy Central television series will air the 200th episode tonight, in which all the celebrities ever mocked on it join in a class-action lawsuit.
Tom Cruise, beware!
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Posted at 2:21 AM PT
Earnings from a spate of top digital companies will be reported in the coming days, including for Google (April 15), Yahoo (April 20), Apple (April 20), eBay (April 21), Netflix (April 21), Amazon (April 22) and Microsoft (April 22).
Most Wall Street analysts expect good news from the group as a whole, especially as the economy recovers. Bright points include the e-commerce and advertising markets, both of which have been rebounding.
In addition, extensive cost cuts over the last year and easy year-over-year comparisons for most companies will brighten the financial picture.
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Posted at 12:49 PM PT 
Yesterday, BoomTown interviewed Hollywood producer Lloyd Braun onstage in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters annual confab about the future of television in the digital age.
Braun, as well as many other longtime entertainment execs, are trying to forge the gap, by trying to operate in both worlds.
So last week, I motored down to Long Beach to the set of a very elaborate pilot for an action drama that he is shooting for NBC called “The Cape,” to talk about television, as well the latest Web site he launched in partnership with Microsoft’s MSN.
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Posted at 5:15 AM PT
Here’s the very funny video, made by the always funny Fine Brothers, that was played live at the second annual Streamy Awards show last week in Los Angeles.
Starring some of the nominees, it explains how to win (get a celebrity, natch!)
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Posted at 12:25 AM PT
The television hit, “Glee,” is one of News Corp.’s crown jewels of late, while its MySpace social networking site has struggled painfully to regain its once-hot momentum.
Now MySpace is getting the benefit of the heat “Glee” is generating, by hosting the online auditions for the Fox television network show, which returns tonight after a short hiatus, as well as from a massive ad takeover of the site today.
Will “Glee”–an online phenom in its own right, with more than four million song downloads so far–give MySpace a boost?
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Posted at 9:01 PM PT
Tonight, Cisco unveiled the latest version in its popular and innovative Flip digital video camera line, the SlideHD.
The new device, which can record up to four hours of HD video and store up to 12 hours of content, has a dramatic slide-up touchscreen and a slide navigation bar.
Here’s a video of BoomTown’s old Flips meeting the new kid in town.
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Posted at 11:17 AM PT
While a lot of people doubted Arianna Huffington when she co-founded her eponymous blog site many years ago, she can add another I-told-you-so to the pile after today’s induction of the Huffington Post as an official Harvard Business School case study.
Huffington, as well we HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau have been at the school today, answering questions from the 900 students to whom the case study has been presented.
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Posted at 8:30 AM PT
A year ago, I blogged about my son, Louie, in a post titled: “My iKid iJacked My iPhone: A Geek Parenting Tragedy.”
So I was curious to see if he would be as eager to grab the new Apple iPad I just got last week.
The verdict: Yes, and–because of its larger size–he now uses the iPad in a much more social way with his younger brother, Alex.
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Posted at 5:27 AM PT
With rumors flying hither and yon about the sale of Palm–likely to an Asian company, such as HTC or Lenovo–BoomTown is getting all misty for those days of hope that the little innovative smartphone pioneer might actually prevail against the giants.
Not for the creepy lady in the advertising for the Pre, mind you, but everything else.
Thus, here are three videos in which the dream was still alive at Palm.
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Posted at 1:04 AM PT
Although caught in an ever-noisier squabble with Apple over the banishment of its popular Flash technology from the iPhone, iPod and iPad and over other issues, Adobe Systems is pressing forward with the release of one of its most important products in many years–an upgrade of its popular and highly profitable Creative Suite software.
And while CS5 is the most significant update in several years and can do all kinds of cool things–like bend an elephant, as you will see in the video–it is also at the heart of Adobe’s issues with Apple.
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Posted at 9:01 PM PT
Bill Gross is widely considered the man responsible for the invention of paid search advertising, which heralded such Web powerhouses as Google.
Now, in a can-lightning-strike-twice effort and armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, the well-known entrepreneur talks about his decision to monetize Twitter on his own and gives a tour of his well-known Idealab incubator where his newest start-up, TweetUp, is being cooked up.
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Posted at 9:00 PM PT
Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man responsible for the invention of paid search is beating the microblogging site to the potentially profitable punch, and without its involvement.
Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.
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Posted at 6:06 PM PT
Yesterday, BoomTown conducted yet another sitdown with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch about the latest drive-by software attack by Apple.
This time, rather than taking a more conciliatory tone as in the last video interview we did, the mild-mannered Lynch was more pointed, calling Apple’s actions to block the use of its flagship Flash video technology by developers a “protectionist strategy” that was “bad for consumers.”
It’s gotten so bad that Lynch joked that the next rule Apple will force on developers could be: Chicken-swinging.
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Posted at 10:05 AM PT
It’s quite a feat, but Apple and Adobe are actually making the fighting between Kate and Jon Gosselin look tame by comparison.
So let’s look back to February, when the software company’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, thought it would all work out.
As in: The way they were.
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