In March of 2010 , the New York Times used the ju-jitsu theme to depict the fight between Google and Apple over smartphones. As you can see below, the late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs faces off with an iPad and iPhone against then-CEO (and now Executive Chairman) Eric Schmidt, who is armed with an Android device.

Jobs gets to do the cool, in-the-air kick.

Now, this week, on the cover of Fortune magazine, it is Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg doing the floating hi-yaaa against Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page.

Leaving aside the fact that neither ever wears suits to do anything, let alone karate, it’s almost exactly the same, as you can see below.

Personally, I would have used Nerf guns at dawn.

Thus spake Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz:

“There sure are a lot of folks writing about us. There are some pretty incredible stories out there. I’m not letting it distract me, and you shouldn’t either.”

That’s from her Friday note to Yahoo employees ast week, sent to me many times, in the wake of more rumors of a variety of takeover plots emerged and more folks writing–including the all-the-late-news-that’s-fit-to-print New York Times, who seems to have just realized the Internet giant might be “adrift.”

Wrote the Times:

“The board of Yahoo, the ailing Web portal, hired Carol A. Bartz as chief executive to apply a little shock therapy.

Now, nearly two years later, the patient is still suffering from many of the same symptoms: a stagnant business, shrinking market share and a shortage of innovation.”

BoomTown had no idea whatsoever until the Times declared it so!

In any case, I much preferred Bartz’s sassy note to employees, in which she called herself “your fearless leader,” rather than from another recent note in which she described herself as writing from a foxhole.

Plus, this one had some news nuggets, such as:

That “Microsoft should be powering paid search in the U.S. and Canada by the end of this month, right on schedule.”

And that, “on Monday, we’re going Alpha in four countries on a totally new platform for global News,” dumping nine different News code bases “with ‘new’ News we can bring a new site up in a month.”

Of course, Bartz had to do a significant pretzel to manage her sunny assessment of the Yahoo homepage outage last week as a good thing.

“Several outlets indicated their surprise at such a major issue with one of the world’s largest Websites, noting the importance of Yahoo! to the daily lives of users and the fact that Yahoo! is never down,” she wrote.

Except it, um, was down.

Water under the bridge, it seems, as multiple sources tell me Bartz has been spending a lot of time reaching out to many outside Yahoo in a much friendlier manner, perhaps to tamp down the negative chatter about her salty demeanor.

She’ll likely be doing more of that quite publicly tomorrow, after the markets close, when she presumably will lead the call with investors after the company’s third-quarter earnings are announced.

Wall Street consensus is that Yahoo’s net income will rise to 15 cents a share from 13 cents a year ago and and revenues will be a flattish $1.13 billion.

Investors are likely to react badly to any lesser results, especially after Google’s stellar performance last week and the likely terrific one by Apple today.

Most of all, analysts will be especially attuned to how Bartz positions the recent spate of top exec departures and her vision for growth at the Silicon Valley icon.

There might be a clue in her note to Yahoos, which she ended with a well-used metaphor: “Let’s all look out the windshield, not the back window. That’s how we move forward.”

Personally, when driving, I always look at both, since I find it safer to always be able to see exactly what’s coming and what’s going.

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In a post last week, BoomTown wrote that Cisco would introduce a consumer telepresence product.

It did today in San Francisco at a press event. It is called, inexplicably, “Umi” telepresence.

I’ll be honest, it sounds like the kind of sushi I typically refuse to eat, because I am not as adventurous as I like to pretend I am.

Actually, it seems to be a variation on you-me.

Get it? You and me and telepresence. As in “Star Trek” for non-geeks.

According to Wikipedia, here are some other definitions for the word:

“Umi may refer to: Umi, ‘sea’ in Japanese language; UMI, Universal Mobile Interface; Umi, Fukuoka, a town in Japan; Umi-a-Liloa, the king of the island of Hawaii; Umi Ryuzaki, a character in the fictional manga series ‘Magic Knight Rayearth’ by CLAMP.”

“Connect with a touch of the button,” is the motto for the giant Silicon Valley networking company for Umi.

And, frankly, I wish I could have telepresenced from my bed at home with it.

You can, using Umi with your existing high-definition television and high-speed broadband. It’s in three parts: A camera, a remote control and, ugh, yet another set-top box to pile on the rest on the shelf in your home living room, as you can see below.

Cisco said the device is scheduled to be available to consumers on November 14 in Best Buy (BBY) Magnolia Home Theater stores, as well as at bestbuy.com and umi.cisco.com “for the suggested retail price of $599 with a monthly fee of $24.99 for unlimited ?mi calls, video messaging and video storage.”

At the short and sweet event, Cisco execs touted their entry into the crowded consumer video-conferencing arena.

“It’s all about tasting the chocolate,” said Cisco exec Gina Clark about her box of Umi, which will work with Google Voice Chat–but not Skype and Apple (AAPL) iChat yet.

It also has the seal of approval from Oprah Winfrey, who will doubtlessly use it in some Oprah manner on her talk show.

Clark mentions tasting the chocolate several more times to knock the point home that if you try it, you’ll like it.

I can’t believe I ate the whole Umi!

Now, Cisco–which really is obsessed with the chocolate metaphor today–is making me have a chomp in a demo.

And, while I am no reviewer, it is pretty sweet, and looks great, well beyond what is available via Internet video chat.

Until the inevitable shaky video appears, here is the full press release from Cisco (CSCO):

Cisco umi Press Release