TECHNICK

The week ending August 21 began August 17 with another round of digital musical chairs—BoomTown reported that David Dickman, VP of West Coast sales for Yahoo (YHOO), will be leaving the company at the end of the month for Warner Bros., to work in digital sales. Also, after a five month tour of Europe and its finer Web establishments, Yahoo seems poised to name a new international head. MySpace made a move this week to fix its ad sales operation by bringing in Media Link and Wenda Millard, with whom BoomTown chatted Thursday from somewhere near Slovenia.

Digital Daily came bearing sad news on Monday: The Apple (AAPL) event scheduled for September 9 will not have anything to do with a tablet computer. Just music. And from an organization vulnerable to Palm (PALM) poachers. Presumably, all managers present will be exercising caution and utilizing peripheral vision. Netflix (NFLX) was the recent recipient of good news, as John reported this week—analysts’ research shows that the DVD-by-mail business has a lot of life left in it. So hopefully for them, Google (GOOG) won’t be going into that business anytime soon. It might be a little bit occupied by the Open Book Alliance and that group’s opposition to its Google Book Search Settlement, the $125 million deal that will allow it to digitize and monetize some 18 million books. Probably won’t be occupied for long, though.

MediaMemo returned this week with an explanation why the relatively mediocre iPhone camera has become the favorite camera on Flickr: It’s already in your pocket, and no one wants to carry another gadget around. Which is likely to become a more common refrain as high-end handsets grab more marketshare than ever and the quality of secondary functions improves. Another common refrain: The one where media companies start charging for content, and people start paying. News Corp. (NWS) (which owns this Web site) is working on assembling the critical mass of publishers it believes is necessary to make this possible.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg reviews a robotic investment adviser called Cake Premium, and points out some of the reasons you may or may not want to follow its suggestions for what to do with your 401(k). From Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answers questions about Windows OS upgrades on the Mac, and some follow-up questions about DriveSharp. In The Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret tests out the Rosetta Stone Totale, a web-based language-learning system that might be the next best thing to immersing yourself in another culture.