DigVid Review: I'm back

I’m back from a lovely and relaxing vacation in Southern Colorado and I didn’t miss the following things: the never-ending Yahoo!-Microsoft spat, endless adulation of the iPhone, and election coverage.

Actually, I didn’t miss anything because everything I really wanted to know – and then some – arrived via my Blackberry.

Still, the big Yahoo! board meeting happens on Friday, Aug. 1, and everyone in the tech blogosphere is holding their breath to see what happens. According to Kara Swisher’s Boomtown, Carl Icahn has a bunch of people on tap to take board seats and then force the company to do things his way. These would-be board members include Harvard Law professor Lucian A. Bebchuk; former Viacom and Universal CEO Frank J. Biondi, Jr., Nextel Partners President John H. Chapple; billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban; investor Adam Dell (brother of Michael); Icahn right-hand man Keith A. Meister; former Grey Global CEO and Chairman Edward H. Meyer, Hygrove Partners Managing Partner Brian S. Posner, and former AOL head Jon Miller, who Icahn would like to take over as head of the company. Swisher isn’t really placing bets (yet), except on Miller, on whom both Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and Icahn agree.

If you’re wondering what the heck they are thinking around Tribune these days, this LONG memo from Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams (formerly of XM Satellite Radio, soon to be Sirius-XM Satellite Radio) gives you a lot of insight.

And just because this is interesting: Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a survivor of a rare form of pancreatic cancer, personally called The New York Times’ Joe Nocera to tell him that while he is having some health problems, they aren’t fatal and his cancer hasn’t recurred.  What is interesting is this analysis of the conversation and its revelations by PR maven Dan Lyons, who says that people who have nothing to hide are willing to speak on the record. So true, and something we journalists often let slide far too easily, especially in this age of hyper-control-freak PR in which freedom of the press seems to have been largely forgotten. Lyons also successfully points out that Apple, a publicly traded company, owes honesty to its shareholders. If Jobs is sick, it is material to the financial health of Apple and should be disclosed. 

Finally, all summer I have been looking forward to the season-two premiere of Mad Men. I watched it last night, and found it … deeply disappointing. Lately, golf has been far more interesting. For all the hype that Mad Men has gotten over the past month, I hope the show seriously steps up its game in coming episodes. But I have faith … so far.