Sources with knowledge of the situation said the company is expected to demonstrate it at our D: All Things Digital conference next week.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to appear onstage at the event, a three-day event that hosts top players from the tech and media industries in interviews by AllThingsD.com Co-executive Editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Code-named “Kumo,” the search engine is a major effort by Microsoft (MSFT) to raise its hand to table stakes in the battle for search market share with Google (GOOG)–something it desperately needs to do.

According to the latest metrics from comScore (SCOR), Google’s share of the search market rose to 64.2 percent in April from 63.7 percent in March and from 61.6 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s market share for the month topped out at 8.2 percent, down from 8.3 percent in March and 9.1 percent a year ago.

Here’s a lovely video from a dinner All Things Digital held last night for the staff of both our annual D: All Things Digital conference and the AllThingsD.com Web site.

It’s a yearly event where Walt Mossberg and I gather our staff to talk about the upcoming year and plans going forward.

The site just added a new New York-based writer, Peter Kafka, as well as a director of operations (also for the conference), Christine Mohan, who is also in New York.

And D7 takes place in late May again, and we are already at work on another stellar lineup, as well as moving forward with a possible European version of the conference–EuroD–for fall of 2009.

But, before that, there’s ribs to eat.

Here’s the video:

Only 24 hours to go in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008 and I am now forced to bring in the big guns.

That would be the angrily arched eyebrows of Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski, along some of the AllThingsD.com staff, begging mightily for your donations.

So far, I have used my kids, known to authorities as the Swisher boys, to deliver a threatening pitch about why you should give early and often to fund technology projects for high school students.

I have also danced with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in “High School Musical 3″ and forced him into a painful dinner (thanks, Jerry!).

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

So far, I have raised $8,414 from 26 donors, impacting 704 students. But am still No. 3 behind the my longtime frenemy venture capitalist Fred Wilson and TechCrunch.

Congrats to both, but this obviously cannot stand! There is one more day to give, so get giving!

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

Here is our new begging-and-pleading video and also the other three I have employed to try to pry some dollars from the battered economy.

Patches Uses His Mesmerizing Eyebrows

The Swisher Boys Make Idle Threats

BoomTown and Yang Are Wildcats!

Awkward Dinner With Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang

BoomTown just could not resist making the obvious literary pun on the debut of Peter Kafka’s new daily blog, MediaMemo, on AllThingsD.com.

(He is pictured here.)

For those who were not dragooned into reading existentialist writers in college, I am referencing “Metamorphosis,” about a man who turns into a bug–except that the process is fraught with so much more meaning.

And thus it will be in Peter’s column, as the most excellent writer and reporter plunges into the topic–as he writes in his first explanatory post–of “the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day.”

It is transformative, to say the least, from someone who will lead you through it with the kinds of standards, accuracy, great writing and insight that I hope you have come to expect from this site.

While Peter’s impending arrival to ATD was announced in mid-September, he actually debuts today and will be posting many times daily.

As I have previously written, Walt Mossberg and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well-known for.

Peter has been working at Silicon Alley Insider, most recently as its managing editor, since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. (You can read more of his bio here, along with his ethics statement.)

Walt and I are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard to join the rest of the strong ATD team, which includes: John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News; and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

And we hope you will soon find–via following Peter regularly–why we are so very excited to welcome MediaMemo to the site.

Hi there. Welcome to a new blog/column/site/space carved out for me by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, who’ve invited me to join the AllThingsD.com team.

I’m a pretty boring person, but if for some reason you’re interested in verifying that, you’ve got some options.

I also hope that MediaMemo is descriptive enough of a name. But in case you’re wondering: I’ll be writing, frequently, about the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day. It’s a pretty big beat, and an exciting one.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you.

Specifically, let’s talk about how you can make MediaMemo a whole lot better: By giving me feedback. Tell me what I’m missing, what I got wrong, what I need to take a closer look at. Praise is fine, too. But I’ve got a thick skin, and what I really need is an honest, thoughtful input from the best sources out there: You folks.

So please, drop me a line, as frequently as you’d like. You can sound off on any particular post by leaving a comment. Or if you’d like to be a bit more discreet, you can contact me directly: peter@allthingsd.com.

I look forward to hearing from you. Now, let’s get to work.

[Image credit: Oskay]

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)

As readers of AllThingsD.com might have noticed, we added MarketWatch columnist Therese Poletti (pictured here) to the main rail of the site today.

Her twice-weekly column, Tech Tales, which appears on MarketWatch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, will also be published here too.

Poletti joins Eric Savitz (pictured here) of Barron’s, whose posts on his Tech Trader Daily blog about tech stocks have been appearing on the front of ATD several times a day for the past month.

We added these two very talented voices from other publications within Dow Jones (owner of this site), because we want to bring more cogent and useful news and analysis about tech and media to our readers. Also, they rock.

In all seriousness, the tech blogging arena is one with a lot of players–some great and some not so much–so we are especially proud of the high standards, accuracy and quality that each of these writers represents.

We will be adding more writers soon, so watch this space.

Of course, we also don’t believe in only cross-promoting Dow Jones brands, and publish a half-dozen major links to other sites daily in Voices, along with our tabbed front page feeds that link directly to CNET, paidContent, GigaOm and Techmeme.

We admire the work those sites are doing and, most of all, want to give our readers as many ways as possible to access the best posts being done across the digital landscape.

Of course, BoomTown and John Paczkowski’s Digital Daily remain the anchor of the main rail, while the work of Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret gets its own place at the top of the main home page of ATD.

In all, we hope readers find our commitment to giving you high-quality and incisive work–from scoops to analysis to reviews–helpful and we welcome any feedback.

It features video from BoomTown, John Paczkowski (and his eyebrows!), Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret, venturing all over the tech universe with our all-seeing video eye.

Expect even more video to come over the next year, as we try new ways of bringing our brand of high-level journalism to the site.

Here’s the video:

[This essay to attendees of the sixth D: All Things Digital conference is from the program book and is written by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg; D6 starts tomorrow night.]

As it turns out, creating a start-up is kind of hard.

And, trying to be entrepreneurial 24/7 is definitely challenging.

And, attempting to drastically shift your paradigm and move into new arenas with even newer rules and lots of uncertainty? Let’s just say, we are very tired these days.

Still, it is safe to say that we are also flatly exhilarated, riveted by our work as never before and pretty much hooked.

But did we mention the really tired part?

In all seriousness, it has been just over a year since we and our hardy little team launched AllThingsD.com, our earnest effort to take the D conference we created six years ago and give it another life on the Web.

When we were designing D we had one idea in mind–to create the kind of conference we wished we could attend. It would have the best speakers, it would cover serious topics, it would treat its audience with respect and intelligence and it would offer content that was valuable and bracingly true.

As to pointless and insufferable panel creep and PowerPoint double-talk–we would banish them.

So in creating AllThingsD.com, our goal was to take the spirit of the D: All Things Digital conference itself, the amazing community and connections, the no-holds-barred style, the rich content and great writing, and add a key ingredient–a staunch commitment to accuracy, ethics, standards and a notion that online readers want quality tech news and analysis in a transparent and honest way.

We hope you think we are well on our way to achieving that. And we are excited by all the possibilities ahead for the site as we move into our second year of trying to take all the many virtues of mainstream media and marry them with the excitement and energy of the blogosphere.

To say we think a lot about change these days is an understatement.

And, in a way, although we tend to shy away from themes at D, the ever faster pace of change in the tech and media world has turned out to be one of the hallmarks of the speakers we have invited to share the stage with us, and their insights with you.

Beginning with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, we could not have a better pair to talk about forcing dramatic change, even when running one of the most successful and enduring tech companies in the world.

From its bold and quite unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo (YHOO) this year, to its efforts to transform its core software business, to the symbolic passing of the torch as Mr. Gates moves away from his day-to-day role at the company in July, Microsoft’s leaders have sought out change aggressively.

So, too, have our other speakers.

Michael Dell is trying to reinvent Dell (DELL) again, even though it was his company that reinvented the computer business. Howard Stringer has been facing the same issues at Sony (SNE) in consumer electronics, while Time Warner’s (TWX) new CEO Jeff Bewkes has been handed a media giant he must shift even more dramatically into the digital age.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos, one of the Internet’s true visionaries, is at it again this year, trying to make the dream of an e-book a mainstream reality.

And Barry Diller of IAC (IACI)? As usual, he has been right in the middle of a brawl about what direction the interactive company should take.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has, of course, been the youthful face of change, bursting on the scene with his upstart social-networking site and upending all the apple carts in Silicon Valley as the leader of the Web 2.0 army. In this fight, he has recently been joined by former Google (GOOG) exec Sheryl Sandberg, who knows a thing or two about disruption.

Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI) must take a global information powerhouse and make it even more digital, as challengers pop up everywhere. And Tom Rogers of TiVo (TIVO) is seeking to take the groundbreaking concepts the digital video-recording company pioneered and make a lasting business out of it.

Bobby Kotick of Activision (ATVI) has merged his offline game company, whose “Guitar Hero” is one of the mightiest brands in the sector, with one of the most powerful online multi-player games makers.

And Lowell McAdam of Verizon (VZ) has been trying to react to the sweeping shifts in how wireless technologies are delivered to consumers, as true change finally comes to the cellphone industry.

Nathan Myhrvold, former research guru at Microsoft, has always been about figuring out what’s behind the next corner, while FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has to puzzle over what role the government has to play in this fast-moving space.

And Melinda Gates is changing the world, which is a pretty big job.

And, of all the many luminaries we have on stage at D6, probably no one has had a more eventful year than Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang. From suddenly taking over the reins at the company he launched while a student at Stanford University, to having a tough year of trying to revive Yahoo, to coping with an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft, Mr. Yang has had the ride of his life. He will appear with Yahoo president Sue Decker, who has become the No. 2 exec at the company, and has been charged with carrying out Mr. Yang’s vision amid much turmoil.

Finally, the long and storied career of News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch has been all about constant transformation. It is also not an understatement to say that the new owner of Dow Jones (and also AllThingsD.com and this conference too) is probably one of the most game-changing business leaders around.

And we hope to be equally disruptive in quizzing him and all the speakers about what it all means. Even the demos we picked will display the same forward-leaning and game-changing ideas all our speakers represent.

So, hold onto your seats for D6, as it’s going to be a bouncy ride.

And, as it turns out after our first full year as Web entrepreneurs, we would not have it any other way.

Except, of course, it would have been nice to get a little more sleep.

Find out what’s happening at D6 by reviewing these posts and video clips that will be posted live during the conference this week.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD‘s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5:

If we were an actual baby, AllThingsD.com would be just about to walk by now.

Hopefully, we have done better than that over the past year and we hope to do even more in the year ahead, attempting to give readers the very best tech news and analysis married with the high standards The Wall Street Journal is known for.

At the same time, we have also tried to capture the excitement and energy of the blogosphere, in what has been an entrepreneurial effort within a major media company.

The site officially launched on April 26, 2007, one year and two days ago.

No presents, but your presence over the next year, as we make even more improvements to our work-in-progress site.

Thanks, of course, go first to my amazing partner, Walt Mossberg, as well as our crack staff (click here to see them in all their glory), partners, designers and all the many Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones folks involved.

To mark the past year, BoomTown could spend a lot of time deeply ruminating on how blogging is so very different than mainstream journalism (much more fun, much less sleep).

Or I could ponder the agonizing quest to improve standards and accuracy in the blogosphere (“I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha/Destroyer of evil am I/I will march to the sound of the trumpets of glory/Forever to conquer or die.”)

Or I could discuss widgets and how they have changed my life (I don’t know what I would have done had Scramble not inspired my empty soul!).

But, no!

Instead, I will just re-post here one of the very first posts I had up on that first day, about…drum roll, please…my worries about the situation at Yahoo (YHOO).

I don’t want to say I am a psychic or anything, but in this piece, called “Terry in Turnaround,” I begin my obsessive coverage of the Internet portal, which I thought a year ago could be headed for trouble.

(Interestingly, my other post that day was about Facebook trying to become more mature.)

Here it is:

To: Terry Semel
From: Kara Swisher
Re: Some unsolicited advice on being under fire as the Chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc.

Terry baby,

Has it actually been six years since I last shot you a memo offering some thoughts on getting the top-dog spot at Yahoo? Back then, I wanted to be among the first to congratulate you, as I wrote:

…on getting the green light on one of Silicon Valley’s most boffo projects. Or as we say here, on deploying a major multi-platform operating system with a simplified user interface and innovative support services using a world-wide network that focuses on standards-based security, manageability and reliability.

I hope by now you know what all that means and, if not, that you sound like you do. It’s hard to live in one of those tiny cubicles at Yahoo all this time (memories of that swanky Warner Bros. office you once luxuriated in must seem like a dream) without absorbing some of the jargon that techies like to throw around to make you feel stupid. (I know you still don’t know what SOAP is, nor should you.)

But it’s not your geek learning curve I am concerned with right now. It’s these persistent rumors that you might soon be ankling your way out of Yahoo’s HQ in Sunnyvale or even get the big heave-ho from Chief Yahoo (I will bet that even on his craziest day Ted Turner never asked you to call him Chief Yahoo) Jerry Yang and the board or perhaps a passel of irritated investors.

Ingrates! When you arrived at the company, it was gasping for air after the Internet bubble it rode to the top had popped. You cleaned up that place like your good pal Clint Eastwood might take out all the baddies in a troubled Western town, except without a lot of shooting. Your Hollywood reputation as a world-class schmoozer and soother was true–all sweetness and light, but investors loved it.

It was a good plot, but, I think we can agree, not enough for today’s fickle audience. Now, you seem to be box-office poison with a lackluster stock, disgruntled employees and questions about your vision. In other words, you appear to be in “turnaround” in that bad Hollywood way (meaning a film project that has been in development for ages so that it is not likely to see the light of day, let alone a theater). But let’s change the story and make it the kind of turnaround the whole family will enjoy.

First, the big surprise: Rethink your whole approach to search. You have certainly put a lot of powder behind this new online advertising system called “Panama” and have promised big results in upcoming quarters. Maybe it will deliver, but the fact of the matter is that it is likely you will be running behind search leader Google for the foreseeable future. It’s not that they have such much-bigger brains over there (they don’t, except for that one guy they hide in the back) or that the food is better (well, it is), but that Google (GOOG) is and always will be a technology company that dabbles in media. Yahoo is almost the exact opposite, starting out as a directory and not as a technology superstar. All this wrangling with Google in a nerd version of “Highlander” is only going to get you to the reality: “There can be only one!”

While some have been suggesting you get out of search, selling off Overture and doing a big money deal with Microsoft (MSFT) or even, yes, Google, to handle the algorithmic heavy-lifting, I think a better approach might be to spin off the search part of the company, perhaps combining it with a spin-off of Microsoft’s search assets. Thus, you create a separate company that could focus only on making Larry Page and Sergey Brin sweat a little bit. Put it in the hands of a real techie star (think the Brad Pitt of servers), and I will bet top engineers will find a tech-focused outfit more attractive to work for.

Most important, it will free you up to focus Yahoo on what it does best: Media and consumer products. While Google gets all the hip glory, the fact of the matter is your email is much better, as are your mobile doodads, as are all your news and entertainment offerings (pitting scrawny Google Finance next to Yahoo’s mighty site is a fine illustration of what you do best). And when I say media, I don’t mean you have to spend all your time creating stuff–in fact, you might consider throwing in the towel on your Santa Monica satellite–but that you could be the best friend Hollywood ever had. The news business, book publishing industry and most of Hollywood (from television to movies to music) is justifiably scared out of their wits by Google and only more so after the YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions. It is true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which I think is a line in some Mel Gibson flick you helmed.

Speaking of acquisitions, go back and give that Mark Zuckerberg the love and $1 billion he wants. Facebook needs to hook up with a big player and fast, because despite its hypergrowth, its advertising ambitions are still hard to reach (even though a few ex-Yahoos are running the show in that department). They need help. Unlike the messy and looks-like-the-wheels-could-come-off-anytime MySpace, it is a really useful, well-made and sticky social network and seems to have a pretty defensible and young audience. As long as you keep things hopping, of course. Even us old folks are looking for a useful and relevant way to stay in touch, and Facebook can easily handle a lot of different communities, unlike many others where it’s hard to feel like you belong without a tattoo. I know it is a lot of money, but you know hiring a star is probably the best way to produce a hit, since a series of indie hits is not going to get you there.

Closely related is a more defined approach to marketing and rewarding customer loyalty. You can’t be a catchall anymore, as it is no longer a reach game. You must try to keep your best customers engaged. Let’s practice this one word: Relevance! What do I mean by that? I mean not turning into the soulless, ad-choked, spamfest that AOL became as it grew. Yahoo has to be relevant to each and every one of its users and that means letting them pick and choose any Yahoo product, even if it is not branded that way. Think Flickr (that was a terrific move) and you have the right idea.

Speaking of Flickr, I got this one off it. One personal aside: I love the loyalty, but can you possibly stop inviting Tom Cruise to Yahoo? It seems a bit goofy, and you’d be better off having some tech legend in from time to time.

There is a lot more to say, but let’s just end with the vision of your friend, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in the third “Terminator,” always kept to his task of protecting the leader of the resistance. Last time I wrote you, I advised you to use that old Hollywood technique of blaming the last studio boss if things went south after you arrived. Clearly, you can’t do that now, given your long tenure. So you have to stick to the course and say loudly you are doing that. After all, it’s not likely, even with the recent troubles, that the Yahoo board has the kind of guts it would take to oust you and there are no angry shareholders massing at the gates (and the last time I checked, even the obstreperous Carl Icahn couldn’t get rid of Dick Parsons at Time Warner).

And if you are going to go, then do it sooner rather than later. Unlike Burbank, Silicon Valley loves failure and even embraces it. In other words, even if you leave, you will eat lunch in this town again.

Tom Cruise/Terry Semel photo by Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

OK, you might attribute it to being super-bored in the holiday doldrums. But, for some reason I cannot explain, I find myself strangely drawn to the videos being made about the start-up of Seesmic, the new video-sharing service that is being created by European entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur.

Up on his own loic.tv channel on YouTube, everything from checking out the company digs to working on a logo to hiring are on display, and Le Meur encourages community comments about the company’s direction. The videos are currently up to Day 57.

It’s a shameless gimmick, to be sure, but Le Meur’s French accent grows on you, and it is an interesting way to market your company, for certain (AllThingsD.com and D: All Things Digital only did one staff BBQ and Rodeo video, which is seen below).

While Seesmic is described in a lot of ways–video Twitter, video social network, video sharing tool are some examples–Seesmic’s obviously practicing what it preaches here: video blabbing that is often compelling.

(Here is a screen shot of what Seesmic looks like, which you can click on to make bigger.)

To get it all going, Le Meur (who also organizes the Le Web conference in Paris, which just took place) got a bunch of high-profile angels like former AOL head Steve Case, investor Ron Conway, FON founder Martin Varsavsky and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, as well as many others, to pony up millions for Seesmic’s funding.

He and his family moved to San Francisco this past summer, and he has been ferreting away ever since on the service, which will officially debut in early spring of 2008.

Here’s Seesmic’s latest, a what-are-you-doing-for-the-holidays video of its employees:

Then again, I also kind of like the flip side–the mostly hysterical, sometimes line-crossing attack review of Seesmic by Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. Actually, although Feldman trashes Le Meur’s effort, it is just the kind of thing that would probably make Seesmic the very lively place it needs to be.

Here’s Feldman:

And here’s the video of our ATD/D BBQ and Rodeo, which focuses a lot on the marinated lamb:

We hope you like it.

So what’s new? Find out after the jump!

First, the photo heads of Walt Mossberg and I on the front page have been greatly reduced–and please, we know the jokes you could make, so let’s move on quickly, shall we?–in order to move the mug of Senior News Editor John Paczkowski and also his most excellent Digital Daily column up to the top too.

Paczkowski–or, as we like to call him, “Patches”–does an amazing job in both text and video of analyzing the day’s important tech stories with both insight and humor.

Sometimes using puppets! And those patented arched eyebrows! All kidding aside, Paczkowski has many fans all over the Web and deserves as much prominence as we can give him.

Second, we have added a regular new daily feature, an obligatory list called the Tech Top 10, which is compiled and written by our lovely Associate Editor John Sullivan. A geek-in-training, Sullivan will point readers all over the Web to the most important tech and media stories of the day, updating it as news breaks.

Third, we’ve added video–the kids love video, we hear–to the front page, which will rotate depending on what the latest video we post–from Digital Daily, BoomTown, Walt Mossberg or wherever–might be.

Fourth, on both the front page and inside the section, we hope you like our souped-up Voices, which we know has been much too quiet since our launch. Now, it is a veritable blabfest!

To accomplish this, we are pointing daily to many tech and media articles and blogs all over the Web, featuring great posts, videos, cartoons and graphics that we think you need to know about.

As I said before, no soulless algorithms here, as our editors try to choose stuff we think is amazing, challenging, controversial or just plain fun.

Our goal is to give those interested in tech and media all the information they need to be fully informed, all with the kind of taste and high standards all Dow Jones properties aim for.

As I also noted before, we will also be soliciting and publishing more quality original blogs too–in text and video–from the top echelons of the digital industry, trying to bring the same sort of high-level debate and insights that we present annually at the D: All Things Digital conference.

Fifth, you can learn more about the terrific (and growing) staff that is responsible for both D and AllThingsD.com on the refurbished About Us pages.

In addition to the staffers we have featured since our April 2007 launch, now meet Adam Tow, Christine Mohan, Jill Pendergast, Natalie Fonseca, Meg Burns and my long-suffering assistant Ed Daly (who better be snappy with that coffee this morning or my holiday cheer will turn ugly fast).

As I said, we hope you like it and there will be even more stuff to come soon, to keep you coming back for more.

That includes new tools too, to let you get our content anywhere you like, such as a new way to put your RSS feed from the site on your My Yahoo! page.

Can a juvenile Facebook widget be far away? I think not, if those slackers at RockYou get cracking!

Big thanks for the changes go to our whole staff, but especially to the Web savant Adam Tow, without whom, well, we’d be techless.

(Yes, I completely made that word up.)

Because this is the fast-moving Web and we are a bunch of hip, hopping hep cats, we’re doing some renovation to the AllThingsD.com site and also turbocharging the Voices section too.

The site is still powered by those lovely folks over at WordPress and keeps the amazing style created by the truly intelligent designers over at San Francisco’s Mule Design Studio. And it is still all free, all the time.

But, on Monday, as if by magic–the magic of our Web genius Adam Tow, that is–we will have moved the digital furniture around on our front page, adding our occasional Tech Top 10 every day by our own John Sullivan and also a featured daily video.

And we will be rearranging all the pieces–BoomTown, John Paczkowski’s Digital Daily, Walt Mossberg‘s many columns (including Katherine Boehret’s Mossberg Solution) and Voices–to make it prettier and easier to use, in our ongoing attempts to give readers more, more, more.

And who doesn’t want more? Those grumpy folks who are never satisfied, that’s who (and you know who you are and so does BoomTown and how we wish you would just learn to live, live, live and join our noisy circus, which is what you know you want to do)!

We think even the glummest of the glum will like our new iteration of our Voices section–which we have admittedly not paid enough attention to since our spring launch. All that will change, as we try to provide you with new viewpoints from important players around the Internet every day.

Culling from the mountains of content from the Internet, we’ll be pointing to lots of tech and media posts, videos, graphs and cartoons from the most interesting and reliable sources to bring you information you need to know about.

No soulless algorithms here–we’ll try to choose the best stuff for our readers, to give them what they need to be fully informed, all with the kind of taste and high standards all Dow Jones properties aim for.

Plus, we will be soliciting and publishing more quality original blogs too–in text and video–from the top echelons of the digital industry, trying to bring the same sort of high-level debate and insights that we present annually at the D: All Things Digital conference.

What else? Well, we’ll be adding more information about our crack D and ATD staffs on the About Us pages.

And we’ll be bringing you extensive and sassy coverage by our team in 2008 from exciting upcoming tech and media industry events like the Consumer Electronics Show, MacWorld and Sundance, to name a few.

Of course, there is more stuff to come soon, but we’ll keep it to ourselves, as we don’t want this exciting news to turn into Geeks Gone Wild.

Well, maybe just a little bit–here’s that great Maria Sharapova “I Feel Pretty” video for Nike that we so love and for which we thank the universe for providing to us via the miracle of the Internet:

It’s certainly been a hit-or-miss proposition, since the Internet was popularized–mostly misses, actually. Beyond viral phenoms from the Dancing Baby to Mentos and Coke, there really is little there that has taken off in a big and lasting way online.

Many, big and small, have tried, but none have truly succeeded. Most recently, Yahoo pulled the plug on Hollywood player Lloyd Braun, for example, who was brought in to make Web hits.

But that has not stopped him–Braun’s got a new deal with Pepsi to create original online content. Over at AOL, which has a lot of history in this arena, there is much stuff in the works.

And sites like Funny Or Die–which uses more celebrities, like a recent one with Bill Murray–pop up daily.

One interesting effort is social network Bebo with its recent series called “KateModern,” an honest version of “LonelyGirl15″, both of which are series focused on attractive self-consciously self-conscious twentysomething women and their attractive friends.

And today, in a project with great similarity to these efforts, MySpace unveiled an exclusive partnership with well-known television producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, creators of such iconic shows as “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething,” for an original Web series called “quarterlife.”

The 36-episode series–there will also be a social-network component, natch–is about a group of attractive twentysomethings, with what appears to be, yep, another self-consciously self-conscious central female character who video blogs about them.

Sort of like hit BoomTown’s reality series–well, a hit with my Mom!–that is also posted below. We could use some self-consciousness, for sure, plus we’re much lumpier.

Here are some videos for you to peruse:

FCU With Bill Murray

KateModern

Lonelygirl15

Quarterlife

AllThingsD.com & D Unplugged

Sure, we’re not Laguna Beach and we’re not going to eat slimy bugs and we have no Tim Gunn and we’re definitely not going to do any ballroom dancing. (Well, maybe a waltz now and then.)

But I got such a good response to the movie I made about my home-based office for the AllThingsD.com site and also the D: All Things Digital conference (though I suspect it was the addition of singer Jill Sobule to the video that made it work), that I thought: Why not just egregiously take every aspect of our start-up experience and use it to feed the blog beast?

Oops, let me rephrase that more cogently: We’re experimenting with radical transparency here, showing you traditional media company types trying really hard to digitize their work and livelihoods and commit great journalism in the process.

We have already posted all the interviews and demos from D5 on the site, which I am highlighting daily, because we think–despite the conference being a tough ticket to get–that it’s important to deliver our content to as many people as possible and however they like it.

So we’re here on this site. And in email and RSS. And now on Facebook. And soon to be on iTunes and YouTube and who knows where else? Thank goodness we haven’t widgetized ourselves yet–like USA Today announced yesterday, but we’re open to all kinds of options.

Given that I wasn’t shooting video at nascent stages of the site or the conference–although I did several video posts behind the scenes at D5 in May that are also reposted below–I thought I would introduce you to the crew at our first annual D/ATD BBQ and Rodeo event.

Not much happens in this first episode, although you can meet the team D. But keep hoping for a future catfight between the Johns (Paczkowski and Sullivan) on our staff over email names or perhaps a major meltdown from Lia Lorenzano-Kennett over what kind of scones to serve at D6 breakfast or perhaps a staged smackdown between me and Valleywag’s Owen Thomas.

And maybe the creation of even some new forms of high-standards reporting and analysis will be depicted, delivered in innovative ways. We hope so.

Sorry if I get a bit too party-swirly with the shooting (vertigo anyone?), but I am testing out the new version of my tiny video camera. So hold on, it might be a bumpy ride!

And you know how much Walt and I love to chase the youth demographic. Oh, we’ve got our iPhone cranked up to the max with Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and even went to see “Superbad” this weekend.

Of course, then, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to creating a D: All Things Digital group on Facebook, where we have an unusual amount of friends. That’s because the site has become a must-be-there in Silicon Valley of late for reasons having to do with 1) the billions of dollars in valuation for Facebook, and 2) because Silicon Valley is like an overgrown high school. Thus, we go where our readers are.

We’ll use the group to post news about the conference and Web site and post videos we all do, as well as photos. You can also interact there in discussion boards if you like. And if we see a widget we think will work well, we’ll add it.

You can join now at this link or go to Facebook and search for D: All Things Digital.

Most of the major specs I recommended two weeks ago in my annual spring guide to buying a computer hold true for laptops as well as desktops. That guide can be found at walt.allthingsd.com/guide. But buying a portable involves additional factors, so here are some tips for making laptop purchases.

First, you may want to wait to get that new laptop until later this year or early in 2008. There are a number of interesting new hardware features coming. One is called a “solid-state drive,” or SSD, which replaces the traditional hard disk with a faster drive made of memory chips like those used in digital cameras. Another is a “hybrid hard drive,” or HHD, which combines memory chips with a standard hard disk, for faster start-ups.

Also, more and more laptops will be using light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to light up their screens — a method that promises to be both brighter and less power-hungry.

You also may want to wait for laptops with a new type of Wi-Fi wireless networking built-in. It’s called “N,” and promises to be faster and to have longer range.

For Windows Vista users, another new laptop feature coming soon is a small screen on the lid called a SideShow, which can display calendar appointments and new emails.

Even if you don’t wait, there are some features to know about that aren’t available on most desktops. One is a built-in Web camera and microphone, highly useful for making video calls and recording videos to be posted online. Another is a feature that allows you to play music, videos or DVDs without booting up Windows.

In addition, if you travel a lot, you may want something called a built-in WWAN, or Wireless Wide Area Network. This is essentially a cellphone modem that makes Internet connections over a cellular carrier.

Another key feature is a new kind of slot on the side of most laptops for add-on cards, like wireless modems. It’s called an ExpressCard slot and, confusingly, it comes in two sizes. Your old-style cards, called PC Cards, won’t fit in these new slots, so unless you want to buy new cards, you might look for a laptop that has both the old and new slots.

Battery life, weight and size remain crucial on laptops, unless you are buying a huge “desktop replacement” laptop, which will rarely leave the house or be unplugged. For everyone else, I recommend finding a laptop that offers at least three hours of battery life on a single charge, without requiring you to dim the screen so much you can’t see anything.

Most laptops cluster around the six-to-seven-pound range, which is fine for occasional travel, or for carrying between classes, or between home and office. But if you are a frequent air traveler and have the budget, shoot for a laptop that weighs four pounds or less and is small enough to use on a seat tray in coach even when the person in front of you reclines.

The most expensive laptops are at the extremes–huge, multimedia machines and ultra-portable models for hard-core road warriors. Most well-configured Windows laptops, with typical 15.4-inch screens, are between $900 and $1,500.

I find that laptops with 13.3-inch widescreen displays make a nice compromise between mobility and power. At the moment, there are very few brand-name models in that size, notably Apple’s $1,099 MacBook, which weighs 5.2 pounds; and Sony’s Vaio SZ line, which weighs 4.1 pounds but costs roughly twice as much. More 13.3-inch models are coming later this year from other manufacturers.

Finally, there’s the perennial issue of Windows versus Mac. Apple’s two laptop lines, the MacBook and MacBook Pro, are very good. They have better built-in software than any Windows laptop I’ve seen and don’t suffer from the security issues that plague Windows. And they can even run Windows software, if you need that.

But the Mac laptops lack some features that are common on Windows portables, such as slots for camera memory cards and built-in cellular modems. And the MacBook even lacks an ExpressCard or PC Card slot.

Among Windows machines, I think Sony and Lenovo make especially well-designed laptops, but almost any name brand would be fine.

Addendum: I’m happy to say there is a new, expanded and redesigned online home for all my columns. It’s at walt.allthingsd.com and access is free. It contains the current versions of the columns with the accompanying videos, plus a searchable two-year column archive and a new blog called Mossblog, which I will update occasionally.

This new column home page is part of a larger new Web site called All Things Digital, at allthingsd.com. In addition to my columns and blog, it contains technology news, analysis and opinion from journalists Kara Swisher, Katherine Boehret and John Paczkowski, and guest blogs from prominent technology figures.

My columns will still be published on The Journal’s main Web site, WSJ.com, which is available to paid subscribers and includes a much larger archive, going back more than a decade.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com