Dear Readers - This just in! We are very pleased to announce that Craigslist's Founder Craig Newmark will be featured in a luncheon keynote interview at our Digital Media Conference West next week in San Francisco. Craig joins a stellar line-up of speakers from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, including fellow Bay Area whiz, Digg CEO and Co-Founder Jay Adelson.

Thank you to the 250+ participants at Future of Television West this week! We’ve received a lot of great feedback about the event and know that each and every one of you contributed to making it such a wonderful event.

We would like to extend a special thanks to all of our sponsors: Entertainment Technology Center @ USC, Macrovision, Move Networks, Davis Wright Tremaine, CEA, Parks Associates, Webcastr, Frank Magid Associates, CTM, Visual Effects Society, Producers Guild of America, Terpin Communications, NVPR, Social Radius, Mobile Monday, Mobile Excellence Awards, Web Television Week, Tubefilter, Billboard Publicity Wire, UCLA Anderson, EMF, and New York – Tokyo.

Los Angeles - Variety today published a 2-page spread (pages 10-11) in its Video Business magazine congratulating Digital Media Wire’s “25 Executives to Watch in Digital Entertainment."

The honorees were selected by the editorial team at Digital Media Wire to recognize emerging leaders in the digital media and entertainment industry.

The 2009 honorees are:

Las Vegas - CNET.com yesterday announced the winners of its fourth annual "Best of CES" 2009 Awards. The "Best in Show" and "People's Voice" awards went to the Palm Pre while ten companies were recognized as having the best products in their respective categories. The 10 category winners include:

1. Car Tech: Gracenote CarStars
2. Cell Phones and smartphones: Palm Pre
3. Computers and hardware: Sony Vaio P-Series Lifestyle PC
4. Digital photo and video: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-G3
5. Gaming: Nyko Wand
6. GPS: TomTom GO 740 Live
7. Home audio: Samsung HT-BD7200
8. Home video: EchoStar SlingLoaded HD DVR?? 922
9. MP3 and portable video players: Samsung P3
10. Televisions: Panasonic G10 series

A detailed summary of the products selected and video embedded above of the winners and finalists showcasing their technology is available online.

Today we unveiled Digital Media Wire's inaugural “25 Executives to Watch in Digital Entertainment” list, honoring emerging leaders in the digital media and entertainment industry. With this list, we recognize 25 of the most innovative, creative and forward-thinking executives in digital entertainment. These individuals and the companies they represent are building the technologies and business models that will shape the future of media and entertainment.

The list of recipients and information about our reception honoring the group at the 2nd Annual Digital Media Insider @ CES at the Venetian in Las Vegas on January 9 is online. Congratulations to this exceptional group of leaders in digital entertainment! We look forward to celebrating with you on January 9.

San Jose - While the Yahoo shareholders’ meeting was in progress, TechCrunch reported that Time Warner will block the possible appointment of former AOL Chairman Jon Miller to the Yahoo board.

According to the sources cited by TechCrunch, including a former AOL executive close to Miller, without Time Warner’s approval, Miller cannot serve on Yahoo’s board since he is under a non-compete agreement with AOL.

Yesterday's article on TechCrunch about Lookery, a company specializing in selling ad inventory for social apps on Facebook, that is struggling to break even despite serving about three billion ad impressions per month, sparked an interesting discussion in the blogsphere about the ability (or inability) of social networks to monetize their traffic through advertising, and the outlook for online advertising supported businesses in general.

Dear Friends and Readers,

Thank you so much for your kind emails and calls to us about the situation in Burma (also called Myanmar), which was severely hit by Cyclone Nargis three weeks ago.

As many of you know, my wife, DMW partner and love of my life Tinzar, is Burmese, and her parents and many family members live in Rangoon, the country's commercial center in the south of Burma (the area hit by the storm).

For the first two weeks after the storm, we were unable to contact her parents and family, but last week we reached a relative by cell phone (phone lines and electricity are still out in most of the city) and learned that her parents and family are fine (the roof of their home, while damaged, is being repaired). As to the extent of the damage and relief efforts, we still don't know much more than what we hear on the news here and are very concerned about the situation there.

In case you missed it, here is the press release from last week announcing our new partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association for LA Games Conference. This gives us a significant step up as we increase our profile and position as one of the leading publishers and event producers covering the $17.9 billion game industry (2007 sales figures, according to NPD Group). For more information about our annual LA Games Conference, please visit www.lagamesconference.com.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

The Microsoft - Google battle was back in the headlines this week with both companies announcing acquisitions in the online advertising space and increased speculation about the future of Yahoo. On the acquisition front, Google (NASD: GOOG) announced on Tuesday that it has received approval from the European Commission for its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the final step to completing the transaction. Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt applauded the announcement noting that "with DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform.”

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

I spent the past week at our Digital Music Forum in New York City with 500 senior industry insiders immersed in two days of high level discussions about the future of the music industry. I don’t often toot our own horn, but this was one heck of a great event.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

It was a crazy week for all of us at DMW with much of our time spent on planning three major events we are producing in the coming weeks: Digital Music Forum East in New York City, February 26-27; The Millennials Canada in Toronto, March 5; and Future of Television West in Los Angeles, March 24-25. We have been producing the entertainment industry’s leading digital events for years, but developments over the past year have really increased the profile of our events, which now attract large (often standing room only) crowds and camera crews from leading media outlets, such as CNBC, CNN, PBS and the BBC.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

The week started with a bang on news that Yahoo Inc’s (NSDQ: YHOO) board rejected Microsoft Corp.’s (NSDQ: MSFT) unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for the company.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

In the days following Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) announcement of its unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid for Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), much of the news focused on the battle between Google and Microsoft to color the other’s motives as anti-competitive. As reports surfaced that Yahoo may try to avoid being acquired by Microsoft by giving control of its search advertising to Google in exchange for a large revenue share (although nothing has made public by either Google or Yahoo on this), Microsoft reportedly began lobbying government officials to block any such deal between the two on antitrust grounds setting the stage for what is likely to be a long and public battle between Google and Microsoft over control of the Internet.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

In my column last week, I predicted that there may be a silver lining in Yahoo’s recent troubles and low share price in the form of a possible takeover bid from rival Microsoft. Voilà! In a bold move that sent ripples through Silicon Valley before sunrise on Friday, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) announced that it has made an unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid