allthingsd

ABC certainly has been taking its sweet time in releasing the first episode of "V," a sci-fi television series that debuted earlier this week on the Web in any substantial way.

The premiere of a redo of a 1980s miniseries about an lizardy alien invasion disguised as a peace mission by outerspace hotties turned out to be a big broadcast hit, but it is hard to watch online.

Until tomorrow, that is.

Here is a video interview BoomTown did with Bob Visse, GM of MSN Product Management today at Microsoft's offices in San Francisco.

The new MSN homepage debuts tonight with a redesign cutting clutter, adding the ability to access both Facebook and Twitter, a local focus and with Microsoft's new Bing search service everywhere.

Also, some Microsoft interviews with MSN staff about the changes.

Here's the new trailer for the upcoming videogame-to-live-action Disney fantasy adventure movie, "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time."

It still looks an awful lot like a videogame and is chock full of special effects--but the adaptation also seems to feature much in the way of shirtlessness and mascara-wearing on the part of star Jake Gyllenhaal.

BoomTown is also not quite sure what to think of another new advertising campaign from an Internet giant--this time by eBay.

With the tag line, "Come to Think of It, eBay," the print, television and online marketing campaign start today to "boost its standing as a holiday shopping destination."

Interestingly, it has been crafted by San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which has also just nabbed the lead role in the $100 million advertising campaign by Yahoo.

Now, BoomTown likes a good jingle as much as anyone else, but this new one from Microsoft's Bing search service is sticking in my head like a piece of chewed gum.

Shot at Keith Valley Middle School in Horsham, Pa., it uses 400 very adorable sixth graders who are dragooned into one very large "Bing Goes the Internet" dance--complete with logo wear. The kids rock, the jingle not so much.

Here is a funny but decidedly creepy new commercial from Microsoft, in its ongoing marketing campaign to push its Bing search service.

Titled "Vampire Decision Engine," the software giant taps into vampire mania, playing into Halloween and the next chapter in the "Twilight" movie series, "New Moon," set to debut in November.

Load up on garlic, Google!

Quincy Smith, the high-profile CEO of CBS Interactive, is planning on leaving his job at the media giant in January to start an advisory firm in Silicon Valley, according several sources.

But, in an interesting twist, Smith will remain an adviser to CBS under a multi-year contract, sources added, making it his first client. Apparently, Smith will focus intently on authentication issues for the company.

Here are the three new Apple commercials trying to take a smack on the launch of Windows 7, the new operating system from Microsoft.

The "Get a Mac" advertising features the PC and Mac guys, as usual, but are quite a bit meaner than usual.

A gauntlet of wildly cheering sales people dressed in bright-colored t-shirts, a sleek, white store, a simple but elegant design.

You will be excused for thinking this video below is from an Apple store, but it is actually from the opening of a Microsoft Store in Scottsdale, Arizona today.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo, which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan over last weekend.

Top Yahoo execs were at the hack event, although it's not clear if they attended the lap-dancing part of the program, which seems to have a history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

In a shift that is sure to be much commented on by the advertising industry, Yahoo has tapped Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to take the lead for its creative, advertising, digital marketing and strategic planning efforts.

The San Francisco-based Goodby, which is owned by the Omnicom Group, is known for innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the terrific ""Got Milk?" campaign.

Perhaps a "Got Yahoo?" campaign is in the future?

Until now, the top job of goosing Yahoo's tarnished brand, as part of a recently launched $100 million marketing push, has been helmed by Ogilvy & Mather.

This week, "Saturday Night Live" reprised one of its better skits, "The Rock Obama," spoofing the health-care debate.

In it, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson does to some politicians just what a lot of us would like to do.

Earlier this week, while in New York, BoomTown paid a visit on well-known media and Web exec Bob Pittman to hear about his newest venture.

And, as it turned out, it tasted pretty good.

That's because the former MTV wunderkind, AOL top exec and, currently, an investor in a wide range of media and Web companies is making tequila instead of Internet sites.

Thank God, it's Friday!

In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.

And, so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.

Other good news: A pair of bullish analyst reports yesterday.

But, a spate of executive departures, with chances of more to come, are worrisome.

As is the excessive yodeling Yahoo is once again encouraging.

It looks like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will have her hands full with pretty dicey nuclear and terrorism issues in North Korea and Pakistan this week, but she managed to find time last week to try her diplomatic hand at working out the state of emergency between late-night television talk show host Conan O'Brien and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Here are the videos.

For many years now, one of our regular attendees at the D: All Things Digital conference has been award-winning movie and television director, producer and writer Barry Sonnenfeld, who is--as it turns out--a not-so-closeted geek in his spare time with a gadget column for Esquire magazine called "The Digital Man."

Now, he is branching out into vlogging about his geek passions on Crackle, which will appear every two weeks from wherever he is--either from his homes in East Hampton, NY or Telluride, Co. or from Hollywood sets.

Oh my. Oh my. There is almost nothing BoomTown can say about a rumble that was captured on an Apple iPhone on a San Francisco Muni bus.

A fight between two women escalates over some kind of seat issue and it is sure to become an Internet sensation.

Appalling, but there is very little that will go on anywhere without being uploaded and viewed--probably to YouTube, which has a new logo, seen here, advertising that fact.

Unlike the gripping back and forth of the fight over Yahoogle last year, the approval for the search and online advertising partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo is chugging along slowly but surely, as the Justice Department has deepened its investigation by reaching out to a broad range of publishers, advertisers, public interest groups and rivals for comment recently.

But, so far, there is still no significant external challenge to the MicroHoo deal, even from Google, the likeliest company to try to scuttle or, at the very least, slow down the deal.

In other words: Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Way back in the fall of 2001, BoomTown attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.

It was an obsession that he has never given up.

So, it is ironic then, that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple has developed--a device being spearheaded by CEO Steve Jobs and likely to arrive in the coming months.

Four years ago, the movie "Snakes on a Plane," became a genuine Internet phenom well before the movie was in theaters.

Which, in the end, only showed that online buzz had negligible impact on the viewing public, given the movie's box office turned out to be tepid at best.

But will another small film, about a demon-plagued couple with a infrared-equipped video camera, called "Paranormal Activity," prove that the chatter of Facebook and Twitter have more legs today?