IT Buoy

Here is a remarkable video clip of film critic Roger Ebert showing off his “new” voice in a television interview on the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” yesterday. Ebert has dubbed the new voice “Roger Jr.” That’s because it has been computer-generated using numerous past recordings he has made, from innovative software programming by a Scottish tech outfit called CereProc. “It’s what they call a beta. It still needs improvement, but at least it sounds like me,” he said. The award-winning movie reviewer lost his voice after a bout of thyroid cancer, but remains as eloquent as ever with his new/old voice. Said Ebert: “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where crime starts

Jim Cameron, famed Hollywood director, producer and writer, has agreed to an onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June. With the bazillion-dollar haul from “Avatar,” the innovative filmmaker is getting a lot of kudos in the entertainment business. But the D8 audience is probably more interested in all the high-tech, mega-geek stuff about movies that Cameron (pictured here) will surely wax on about. Still, let’s hope none of them go as far as the dudes and dudettes in this video below, who manage to take total nerd much more seriously than you can imagine (and with a pitch-perfect tone that almost makes you think they are actually not kidding–which they might not be):

The long-running telenovela that has been MySpace over the years took yet another dramatic turn late today when News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller fired MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, whom he had hired only nine months ago to turn around the troubled social networking site, according to several sources. (The pair are pictured above in happier times, with Van Natta on the left, during an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with them at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in May. You can see the full video below.) While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as problems among top execs finally came to a head today. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.) Among the issues were tensions between Miller and Van Natta, as well as growing tensions with his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn. Miller hired Van Natta, but the CEO didn’t bring in the two executives directly beneath him: Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller, along with News Corp

Today, BoomTown gassed up the Mini Cooper and motored down to the Sunnyvale HQ of Yahoo, this time with a tiny bit of trepidation. Ok, not that much, but some! Why? Because Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz had invited me to be the first in a new speaker series for employees at the Internet giant, called “Yahoo from the ‘Outside In,’” due to my intense–some might say obsessive–interest in the company. The twist: Bartz herself conducted the interview with me in front of about 600 Yahoos gathered in its URL’s Cafe, the main cafeteria at the company. As it turned out, she was pretty good at playing the journalist, asking about a range of things, including how I got the sources I did (I never kiss and tell), what I would do if I ran Yahoo (run it right into another wall, I am sure) and what Yahoo should focus on (content, content and more content). The Yahoos had some good and also tough questions for me too, including about my sometimes snarky tone in posts, my personal relationship with a Google exec (see my copious disclosure here ) and my thoughts on the future of content (bright for Yahoo, not so much for newspapers). We also talked about a variety of tech companies, such as Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN). And, as Yahoos have tweeted, I did say I had a “man-crush” on Bartz (but only after she claimed I had a regular one) and described myself has a “sparkly vampire,” when asked about my late-night blogging habits

Bloomberg is notorious for its secretive, lengthy hiring process. Potential wire writers have to show up for multiple interviews and take a written test. “The whole process takes a number of months,” one Bloomberg hopeful told us. Bloomberg representatives did not return messages for a response about their interview process. But some potential finance writers said they respect it for weeding out bad writers and clueless analysts. Even if they have to suffer through it. So what is it like to test at Bloomberg?