Microhoo. Or would it be Yahrosoft? Either way, unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few days (with the only metaphorical rocks netting you a reprieve in this case being: a) the huge upset that was Super Bowl XLII, or b) the intense political race surrounding Super Tuesday), you’re most likely aware that a merger between software and internet superpowers Microsoft and Yahoo! has become a genuine possibility. Well, at least in the eyes of Microsoft.

People have been sounding off about the topic since last Friday, when Microsoft publicly announced its offer to buy Yahoo for $31 a share (or a 62 percent premium over the closing price of Yahoo’s common stock on January 31, 2008—which was $19.18 a share). That’s a $44.6 billion unsolicited bid. While there may be various motives behind Microsoft’s ongoing effort to acquire the struggling Yahoo, one obvious reason would be to better its positioning against Google in the U.S. search market. Combining the current stakes of Microsoft and Yahoo in this market would equate to around a 32 percent share, creating a much more formidable threat to Google’s existing 58 percent hold over the marketplace. Microsoft would also like to gain stronger footing in the online services and paid-search advertising industries, and Yahoo’s customer appeal and current operations would certainly help Microsoft to accomplish these goals.

This clear and present danger to Google’s reign is why the corporation will likely play a role in whether or not this MFST/YHOO union actually happens. While Google can’t outright buy Yahoo (it would violate antitrust laws), the company is more than capable of stirring up some trouble. Yahoo can also avoid being acquired by Microsoft by outsourcing its searching advertising to Google, as this move would rejuvenate Yahoo’s cash flow and appease company shareholders (who must at least be tempted by Microsoft’s generous $31/share offer).

Outsourcing to Google would provide a hit to Yahoo’s pride, but teaming up with Microsoft is what one Yahoo engineer describes as “the frosting on a giant double-layer suck cake.” I’m not sure what that even means, but it doesn’t sound pleasant. The financial breakdown of the merger makes sense for Yahoo, and its shareholders especially, but integrating an independent, free-thinking operation such as Yahoo into a well-oiled machine like Microsoft is anything but a natural process.

The truth of the matter is, Yahoo has been in a gradual downfall for a few years now, and some internal changes will have to be made for the company to have any chance of rebuffing Microsoft’s advances. According to a BusinessWeek article that ran yesterday, the only options that Yahoo has left at this point are 1) to outsource its advertising to Google, 2) to secure a private equity partner to fund Yahoo’s going private, 3) to seek out a white knight (or a more tolerable company to submit to than Microsoft), or 4) to swallow a poison pill…which will presumably end in shareholder lawsuits.

I try my best not to lift quotes from TechCrunch for most of the posts that I write (we all know that it would be easy), but I felt obligated to include this wrap-up of the situation posted by Michael Arrington yesterday. Eloquent, yet cynical, in a word…perfect:

Whatever happens, the salad days for Yahoo are long gone. 2008 will be the year Yahoo ceased to be one of the big independent Internet heavyweights. They’ll almost certainly become an operating subsidiary of Microsoft, or Google’s whipping boy. And if by some chance the government puts a stop to either deal, they’ll have a short reprieve before facing similar decisions next year or the year after. The world is an unforgiving place. Yahoo is cute, cuddly and likable, but they did not execute the way Google did. And because of that they are quickly turning into collateral damage in an epic war that is really just beginning between Microsoft and Google.

Does anyone else feel like they are trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons game gone dangerously awry? Not to stereotype or anything, but Bill Gates would make one menacing Dungeon Master.

Seeing as I’m still holding onto the notion that it’s 2007, I figure now would be a good time to write one of those retrospective, year-end posts. I have a monstrous pile of New Year’s resolutions that I don’t feel like tackling, so I made sure to find a topic that allows me to fight off the arrival of 2008 (for at least a few more days). Lucky for you, it’s also pretty interesting.

Here is Pingdom’s take on the biggest internet blunders of 2007. The post highlights 13 incidents and links to a slew of related articles for each one. There were a few that I was aware of, like the NaviSite fiasco that I posted about in November (my very first post!), and the Black Friday service issues that several big-name internet retailers experienced.

Other notable blunders that were featured on the list include: Twitter’s six days of downtime throughout the year; the Skype outage that occurred in August; the 365 Main data center outage that affected sites like Craigslist, Technorati, TypePad, Second Life, and Yelp; and the RackSpace incident when a truck rammed into a power transformer, cutting off power to its Dallas data center.

What do these incidents teach us? That no website or service is infallible; that very few outages go unnoticed these days; and that you shouldn’t rely on a server, a hosting company, or an internet service without some type of backup plan, especially if an outage will cost you a sizeable chunk of revenue. Even though technology is constantly being improved upon, outages will never cease to exist. And that, my friends, is why tech staffs exist (and why they probably make more money than you do).

As promised, the final round of voting for the 2007 Crunchies is now live. The 100 nominees were made public not long after I wrote this post last Friday, and everyone is allowed to cast votes once a day in each of the 20 categories until the voting wraps up on January 10. The award ceremony will still be held on January 18 in San Francisco, where the winners will be announced LIVE! (Doesn’t everyone love what that word implies nowadays?)

I considered listing each of the nominees in this post, but if you plan on casting a vote or two (or 20) in the next few days, I assume that you will probably take the time to peruse all of the finalists for yourself. Here are a few highlights:

Nominees for the best new gadget/device of 2007 include the iPhone, the Kindle, the ooma, the Pleo, and Nintendo’s Wii. I hadn’t heard of a Pleo before, although I unknowingly saw one at the mall when I was Christmas shopping last week; it’s a robotic baby dinosaur that displays lifelike emotional and developmental behaviors. I should have known something was up when I saw a toy dinosaur displayed in a protective plastic case at the front of the Sharper Image store (a Pleo retails for around $350). On another note, I’m pretty sure that the first Wii models were released in late 2006—but who knows how binding the rules of the 2007 contest are, especially with this being the inaugural year for the Crunchies.

The nominees for the best new start-up are: Hulu, iMedix, Joost, Ribbit, and Tumblr; while the candidates for the best overall site or product of 2007 are: Digg, Facebook, GrandCentral, Twitter, and Zillow. These are probably the two biggest categories of the contest, although I am intrigued by the best bootstrapped start-up award (for companies that have raised less than $100,000).

There are a handful of sites and companies that were named as repeat finalists in different categories (I know for a fact that this is allowed), as well as some unorthodox awards that I find interesting. Take for example: the website most likely to make the world a better place, or a procrastinator’s favorite: the best time sink site.

I’ll keep my predictions to myself, mainly because they are unsubstantiated and have a good chance of being wrong. Plus, I like to play favorites, and I need to get busy voting. As I mentioned earlier, voting went live five days ago, and since that time, over 20,000 votes have already been cast. So I think I have a good chance of cracking this thing wide open with my one vote a day. Bottom line: robotic baby dinosaurs matter. iPhones? Not so much.

Earlier this week, the nomination process for the 2007 Crunchies began. Together with GigaOm, Read/Write Web, and VentureBeat, TechCrunch has unveiled a new blog dedicated to this first annual award ceremony. The 2007 Crunchies will recognize promising start-ups and this year’s most compelling internet and technology innovations.

TechCrunch and its fellow blog networks have opened up the nomination forum to the entire internet community, encouraging anyone with an opinion to vote for their favorite product or company in a variety of award categories. For example, there will be an award for the best video site, the best consumer start-up, the company with the best use of viral marketing, the best start-up founder, and so on and so forth.

No companies are excluded from the competition, and only one award (for the best international start-up) has geographic limitations. A single company can be nominated for and win multiple awards, but the achievements that qualify the nominees for these awards must be made within the 2007 calendar year. No nomination fees apply, but each voter is limited to one nomination submission per category.

According to the rules stated on the site, “The Crunchies Committee will select the top five nominated companies per award category based on the quantity, quality and breadth of submissions received.” This sounds a little vague to me, and I’m hoping that the committee won’t exert any bias in their decision making, but I sort of like the idea that sheer numbers may not determine all of the nominations.

Between now and Wednesday, December 12, you can nominate your favorite companies and products for a Crunchie. If you are part of an organization that you believe deserves recognition for achievements made in 2007, you can post a badge on your site encouraging users to nominate and vote for you. Find all available badges here.

After the initial nominations, users can submit one ballot per day to be counted toward the final vote. Award winners will be determined based on popular votes received through website voting up until the middle of January. Finalists, event sponsors, and select members of the press will be invited to the award ceremony in San Francisco, which is scheduled to be held on Friday, January 18.

It’s difficult to say how this first award ceremony will play out before the nominees are announced, but I’m hoping for at least a few surprise entries (or underdogs) on the final ballot. The general public has most of the power when it comes to determining the nominees and the winners, and with TechCrunch headlining the event, nominated companies are sure to net some serious publicity and website traffic.

If you know of a few companies that have gone unnoticed this year, submit their names here. I suppose that better-known companies may snag a few (or most) of the Crunchies, but if you’re like me, you’re hoping that the final ballot will include a little diversity. It would feel too redundant if all we saw on the ballot were names of companies that have been making headlines all year long. You probably won’t score your favorite start-up a Crunchie all on your own, but who knows, a glowing nomination from you may get them some of the press that they deserve.

To read more about the 2007 Crunchies from the event co-hosts themselves, take a look at these recent posts at GigaOm, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.

Even though over 800 people were packed into The Estate last Friday night for the TechCrunch Boston Meetup, I was able to navigate the club surprisingly well and speak with almost all of the event’s sponsors. I also endeavored to do a little research this weekend while I was still in recovery mode. So after combining what I have seen, heard, and read over the past couple of days, I am left feeling impressed by more than a few companies.

I’ll start with the seasoned veteran: TripAdvisor.com. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, it compiles user-generated content and recommendations on everything from trip locations and hotels to flights and vacation packages. Even though the site has been around for nearly eight years and nets more than 25 million unique visitors a month, the company continues to make it out to local events (its U.S. headquarters are in Needham, MA) and remain involved in the emerging tech community.

A representative from the company said that TripAdvisor.com was hiring aggressively in all departments, so their motivation for sponsoring the meetup was mostly to seek out new talent. Either way, they brought a ton of free t-shirts for everyone, so they receive a nod of approval from me for the effort that they continue to put in when it comes to customer, industry, and employee relations. Also, the accolades they received in a recent episode of The Office, and the fact that this entry is posted on their site means that the company will probably always hold a special place in my heart.

But I’ll move on to more pressing issues, or rather, companies that you most likely don’t already know about. In terms of sites directed towards the average consumer, my favorite of the night had to be MyPunchbowl.com. This site launched in January and currently has an undisclosed number of registered users, but judging from the way they were received at the event, their member base must be steadily rising. MyPunchbowl is the brain child of Punchbowl Software, and its goal is to improve the overall user experience by offering “end-to-end” party planning. In other words, the site helps members with everything from picking the date of their party to sharing pictures and stories with guests after the festivities are over.

After browsing the site and some of its features, I agree that its software is easy and fun to use. I also like how the site allows you to personalize your virtual invitations (as opposed to sending them out in bulk) and the fact that MyPunchbowl helps you out with checklists of all the minor details that you might otherwise overlook. All in all, I like the product and the design, and the fact that this site is only ten months old bodes well for the future of the company. The site is also run by four guys (as of now), which kind of disproves the notion that men can’t plan a good party.

I am awarding honorable mention awards to Mzinga, Moola, and Wine Library TV. Based on my interaction with the people at Mzinga, I am pretty sure that the company creates Facebook-like applications for businesses. So basically, they create social networking forums for a business’s customers and employees in order to gather and mine useful information from them. A cool concept, even though the social networking angle is starting to feel a little stale to me these days.

Moola is a site that gives you a penny, which you can then double every time you beat another contestant in a head-to-head game. So if for some reason you are able to win a string of 30 games in a row, you’ll be ten million dollars richer (or more like six million, if you consider the havoc that taxes could wreak on your prize money). The mediocre games on Moola.com don’t really interest me, but its business model does. The site will be ad supported, so in order to play a game, you need to watch an ad and correctly answer a question about it. It sounds annoying, but when money is on the line, I suspect that a lot of people will follow these prompts. This is great news for advertisers, who can ensure that people are at least looking at their internet ads.

My last nod goes to Wine Library TV, or the personality behind WLTV, Gary Vaynerchuk. In an effort to overcome stereotypes about the wine industry and encourage more people (of all backgrounds) to enjoy the world of wine, Vaynerchuk records five episodes of his own personal wine tasting each week for the site. His approach may be a bit overwhelming, but you can never say that Vaynerchuk is boring. Honestly, I just love the fact that he reviewed Trader Joe’s famous Two Buck Chucks.

Even though this site isn’t as tech-oriented as the other sponsors from the Boston meetup, I think it shows how flexible of a tool that the internet really is. User-generated sites and blogs can help anyone push any sort of agenda, and in this case, Vaynerchuk wants to make wine fun for everyone.

That’s about all I have got to say for today. If I offended any companies by not posting about their product or offering them some type of meaningless honorable mention, just know that I have no authority to award anything to anyone. I just thought it would be fun. It’s a Monday, and I’ve got to do something to entertain myself.