Now, it’s getting flat-out macabre.

That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting.

Rumors of his impending demise have been popping up periodically since the too-thin crisis of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and look like they won’t stop until it actually comes true.

My grandmother used to have a perfect rejoinder for this kind of funeral-chasing behavior, which was prevalent among her gang of Italian sisters, who–whenever anyone caught a cold–predicted the worst outcome: “Don’t be a crepe-hanger.”

This time, more rumors surfaced yesterday in Gizmodo, curiously, a week before the Macworld at which he is famously not appearing. The site used a single–yes, that’s right–source saying his illness and not Apple’s business troubles with the conference’s organizer, IDG, was the reason for his pull-out.

The rumor, of course, sent Apple (AAPL) shares into a tailspin for the day, before others–such as CNBC’s Jim Goldman–posted just-as-strong refutations of the Jobs-Is-On-His-Last-Legs stories.

Blogger Robert Scoble even talked to a worker at a yogurt store that Jobs frequents and got a health report (good!).

Oh, dear–yogurt workers as medical experts? What’s next? Brain surgery consultation from the Starbucks barista? This is what we’ve descended to?

It has to stop, because the fact of the matter is that Jobs’s health is still nobody’s business, as it has not been throughout this bizarre obsession with one man’s personal issues.

In a post in late July, the last time this issue surged, I wrote:

And after listening to all of the debate about it–mostly indignant declarations by the media, making their case mostly by wheedling milder indignant declarations from stock analysts and corporate tsk-tsk outfits–I have concluded that what is ailing Jobs is exactly no one’s business.

Even if his every breath is critical to the ongoing operations of Apple, the reason most use as their main argument for Jobs to tell all, it goes double.

Why?

Well, any Apple investor has to know by now that Jobs suffered from a rather serious bout with a curable version of pancreatic cancer some years ago and that recovery includes inevitable complications.”

And, indeed, the only decent argument you can make to focus so intently on Jobs’s health of any relevance is the impact on Apple company stock, which is self-righteously trotted out each time these specious reports emerge.

The thing is, a lot of companies have been run by execs with health issues (and countries too–VP Dick Cheney’s ticker has been misfiring for a long time now, for example, and he still seems to have been running the show with a verve we wish he perhaps did not have so much of now).

But, to be fair, I will acknowledge the issue. But if anyone does not get that Apple’s CEO has health issues by now, they are ignorant in the extreme. The situation should be baked into the stock price.

In addition, Apple is run by a lot of other competent people besides Jobs and they too are part of its success. Here’s a news flash–Steve Jobs does not conceive, manufacture and wrap every iPhone and iPod.

That is the kind of mythology that has, of course, been propagated a lot by Apple and it is–like a lot of things–a bit true in a bigger concept.

But, as I recently said, when Jobs inevitably leaves the company, probably on his own two feet in retirement, the Cupertino HQ will not suddenly be taken up to the skies as if it were the rapture.

Maybe the yogurt shop guy knows about when that’s going to happen.

Speaking of rapture, here’s singer Jill Sobule singing about that at a recent D: All Things Digital conference.

And, in a second video, she sings perfectly about how we should behave when it comes to what is inevitable for us all. People riveted by Jobs’s fate might do well to take her sage advice.

Here are the videos:

Last night, BoomTown was at the Horn Group offices in San Francisco to appear on a panel called “Is Social Media Killing PR?”

Focused on the “future of the media ecosystem,” it was moderated by Media Survey’s Sam Whitmore. Besides me, the other panelists were the Horn Group’s Susan Etlinger and Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist with Forrester Research.

The panel topic was inspired by recent blog rants by Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington, all of whom have taken potshots at the PR industry as unnecessary or broken in the new social media order.

Of course, as was the intent, their pieces caused a teapot-tempest in the sector, although I said at the start of the panel that I was not so sure that PR folks should bite at this particular bait from a trio of bloggers well known for liking to start controversial debates.

In any case, it was a good discussion to a packed audience about what the implications of social media are for the PR business–essentially, fewer press releases and more Twitters!

My take was that as much as things have changed, little actually has and that social media were not going to turn a weak pitch into a strong one.

All that counted a decade ago were good products and solid start-ups–and that is all that still counts today.

And, in fact, with all the social tools PR folks now have, it is easier than ever for them and companies to go right around the gatekeepers of the media directly to customers.

Here’s a short video I did at the event:

Earlier today, BoomTown posted a video of star venture capitalist John Doerr’s 10 tips to start-ups for surviving the econalypse that he ticked off at a roundtable in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

Beside the words of wisdom from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, I also trolled for advice from the panel of well-known entrepreneurs I moderated at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn” event.

Thus, here is the i-will-survive take from Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Toni Schneider, chief executive of Automattic, the company that makes the WordPress blogging software, Nirav Tolia of Web 1.0′s Epinions and Max Levchin of Slide.

As an added bonus, Ram Shriram, one of Google’s first investors, also weighs in. And, of course, the inevitable blogger Robert Scoble gives his two cents (and also freaks me out once again!).

Here’s the video of the entrepreneurs, and below it, for your viewing pleasure, two versions of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor (the classic) and Cake (the weirdly good one):

If it’s Oct. 1, it must be time for the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

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

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

But Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting ran away with the overall competition by raising more than $100,000 from almost 1,100 donors, mostly by promising to dress up like a giant tomato.

In the tech arena, venture capitalist Fred Wilson beat me–despite my best efforts, including the use of BoomTown’s progeny as props in shameless videos over the course of the competition–by raising $18,538 from 92 donors.

Both Bunting and Wilson were awarded lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, the prize his company offered to the bloggers who garnered the biggest number of donors.

Since Yang was not talking to me last year, part of Yahoo’s crackerjack cave-dwelling press policy at the time, I tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch, so I could get a little time with the reluctant-to-speak exec.

But we do not give up at AllThingsD: The Yang pursuit lasted all year long. He finally relented in late May, after I cornered him onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and forced him to promise in front of an audience of more than 600 to have a lovely grilled cheese with me.

Yang’s price? That I donate $500 to DonorsChoose.org.

Thus, a deal was struck and, better yet, we ended up having a lovely dinner at John Bentley’s in Woodside two weeks ago.

Now I am back without an insane obsession, although I have my best begging tools at the ready–now both my kids can talk–and a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools.

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.

Time is of the essence! In the tech blogger space, Wilson is already up to his nefarious VC tricks. Worse still, the very sneaky Robert Scoble has entered the contest too.

I simply cannot get bested by a clown like Scoble, now can I?

(I mean, really, take a long gander at the frequently nude dude pictured here!)

I think I have just found my 2008 inspiration! Game on, naked boy!

Seriously, start giving until it hurts and then give more or I am in danger of being Scobleized.

Until then, here is a special video message from Yang himself, proof that determination and obnoxiousness always prevail:

In BoomTown’s ongoing quest to overdose on tech conferences, I traveled south of San Francisco last night for Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm: TECH conference.

Run by David Kirkpatrick, it’s well done and a great place to run into a range of techies from Silicon Valley, as well as talk to more creative thinkers on where tech is going.

I was there to be on a dinner panel with fellow bloggers Om Malik of GigaOm and my favorite geek to tease, Robert Scoble, of Scobleizer. Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky moderated.

It was an interesting panel about a range of topics, from Yahoo (YHOO)–Kevin Kelly was bored, bored, bored with that topic–to the looming economic pressure that the digital industry is about to experience (a bummer, but entirely true).

Here’s the video:

Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0′s fight for their right to party.

Last night, it was quite a festive mood, as a mess o’ tech press and a bunch of digital movers and shakers showed up at OutCast Communications’ Seventh Annual CEO Dinner, held in the Grand Hall of San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building.

Big clients of OutCast include Facebook and Yahoo, as well as a lot of hyper-trendy start-ups.

Here is a lovely video I did, featuring OutCast’s T.J. Snyder and Margit Wennmachers, investor Ron “Sister Woman” Conway, Yahoo (YHOO) communications czar Brad Garlinghouse and PR’s Nicki Dugan, Facebook’s Brandee Barker, VC Stewart Alsop and the incomprehensibly iPhone-addled Robert Scoble:

If wishes were horses, all Facebookers would ride!

But alas, even though BoomTown is also intrigued by the idea as much as tech bloggers Robert Scoble and John Furrier, Facebook is not about to be bought by Microsoft (MSFT).

Unless that is, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stands in front of Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ, starts loading up an air cannon of money that never ever ends and aims directly at it.

And even then, I expect CEO and Co-Founder Mark “Just Say No” Zuckerberg might say no to that, as he pretty much said today from Tokyo about past rumors of a sale to Microsoft.

He shouldn’t, as this might be the social-networking site’s golden–and I do mean solid golden–opportunity. (Furrier argues this Microsoft-as-Facebook-IPO here.)

And while Zuckerberg would not comment on selling to Microsoft specifically, he was pretty definitive on the subject of Facebook’s independence, as quoted by Reuters, while in Tokyo to launch a Japanese version of Facebook:

“You can tell, from our history and what we’ve done, that we really wanted to keep the company independent, by focusing on building and focusing on the long-term.”

A strong sentiment the 24-year-old Zuckerberg has been firmly voicing since he was, well, 22 years old!

And while “wanted” is in the past tense–a Blue’s Clue for conspiracy-minded tech bloggers, perhaps?–Microsoft bankers querying Facebook execs does not a deal make.

Many sources inside and outside Facebook with knowledge of the company said a sale was unlikely and pointed to an IPO as the exit for its investors.

Not that some Facebookers don’t wish that Zuckerberg would change his mind and sell now.

That’s especially true given Zuckerberg’s mind is the only one that matters in the current balance of power at Facebook.

Why? Well, some people I talk to there are worried about a variety of things, especially the prospect of a big, fat cash-out now versus the very slow road to IPO.

While Facebook investors and even the company have once pointed to 2009 as the earliest for such a liquidity event, many sources both inside and outside the company I talked to said Facebook needed to establish a strong and sustainable business model before it can contemplate that move.

Thus, 2010, 2011. Joked one person close to the company: “Try 2021!”

Ahahahahaaa. (Not quite as funny, of course, if you are now holding a private-plane’s-worth of Facebook shares.)

That’s not to say Facebook and Microsoft aren’t friendly or that Microsoft has been uninterested in grabbing hold of the whole company.

They have been for a long time, as BoomTown reported here.

And top Facebook execs recently visited with Ballmer.

Of course, the company is still swimming in the $240 million in cash from the investment Microsoft handed over and collecting those payments from its guaranteed ad deal with the software giant.

And, best of all, Facebook just faced off with Google (GOOG) over data portability, which Google-hater-in-chief Microsoft doubtlessly is cheering on.

So, while all signs point to close friends with some affectionate hugging, marriage is still not in the cards, if it ever will be.

OK, I like Twitter a lot, but what is up with all this tech news coverage of its outages?

With the Twitter service being glitchy all weekend, for example, the jump-to-the-next-big-thing champ Robert Scoble wrote another piece yesterday smacking his old amour and praising his new love: FriendFeed.

You know, the new pretty young thing in Silicon Valley (ex-Googlers involved make it hotter still!).

You don’t know?

Neither does most of the human race, in truth, which is just getting around to noticing Facebook and maybe, just maybe, figuring out how to properly use a SuperPoke (my advice: never ever!).

And, while Twitter is amazing in many ways, its tech glitches don’t deserve this level of emergency alarms.

But that has not stopped the echo chamber of Silicon Valley from making a lot of really noisy noise about the indignity of it all.

Isn’t there a recent Sarah Lacy interview with some random Web 2.0 player they could egregiously overreact to instead?

In a weird way, though, this reminds me of the outrage when AOL (TWX) went down for 19 hours in August of 1996. (To date myself, I was actually at AOL HQ in Virginia at that very time with CEO Steve Case, working on my first book.)

At the time, AOL’s 6.3 million users had their first collective digital nervous breakdown and the outage resulted in national headlines–as well as later governmental investigations–across the nation.

“If this (outage) is a sign that AOL can’t handle its growth, that’s a very bad message for the professionals that use it,” Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, said ominously to CNN at the time.

Now, 6.3 million users over a decade ago in today’s terms is a lot more in comparison to Twitter’s current users.

But the difference: Today, one single person like Scoble can tweet louder than millions can complain and it sounds like it is exactly the same thing.

But it includes puppets and who doesn’t love a roiling puppet-war?

No one, that’s who!

So here are two recent ones Feldman posted on his 1938 Media site, one with his Shel puppet and one using a Robert Scoble puppet interviewing Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera: