I knew it was coming, but I finally received my 9.4 software update. The update includes a couple of UI improvements, but TiVo’s (TIVO) support for YouTube (owned by Google (GOOG)) is what I’ve been drooling over. The way it’s currently set up, you need to hit a lot of buttons to get at your favorite content, but thankfully, TiVo has said that that it is working on a way to sync it with your personal YouTube account.

One of the complaints that I often read about YouTube is that it’s just a bunch a cat videos. While it is true that the feline community has found their special crazy place on the site, I feel that this statement does an injustice to all of the hard working innovative filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of the web. Don’t get me wrong there is a ton of junk on YouTube, but there are also some really talented people who are redefining the relationship between an artist and their audience.

Yahoo’s (YHOO) retally of its shareholder votes shows the deep-seated anger among shareholders and how close CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock were to being ousted from the board of directors. The votes had to be recounted after one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders, Capital Research and Management, questioned the initial results. (The miscount was the fault of Broadridge Financial Solutions, the proxy processor—their credibility is shot now). Half of the “No” votes for Yang and Bostok were initially never counted. Instead of the initially reported 15 percent and 21 percent of votes withheld for Yang and Bostock, respectively, the true “No” votes were double that: 34 percent for Yang and a whopping 40 percent for Bostock.

Those numbers are dangerously close to what would have been needed to kick them off the board. And it raises the question of what would have happened if Carl Icahn had decided not to back down from a full proxy battle. While it is doubtful that Icahn would have been able to overturn the entire board, he might have been successful removing Yahoo’s chairman and CEO. Between himself and other allies such as John Paulson and T. Boone Pickens (who ended up selling his shares at a loss), the Icahn contingent controlled at least 10 percent of the votes. That could have been enough to get rid of Bostock (depending on how Paulson voted his 4 percent stake). And keeping up the public pressure could have won over enough votes to kick Yang off his own board as well.

Get ready to start hearing a lot about MySpace Music, a huge joint venture project between MySpace and the big music labels. One big question about the project remains: who will be the CEO of the new company. We’ve gathered a shortlist of candidates that MySpace has interviewed.

The project was first announced in April along with a related settlement with Universal Music over a copyright infringement lawsuit.

‘Twas 2005, IGN had just acquired my old company, AskMen… and I was being marginalized, so I was looking for something to do. One day on a flight to NYC, I happened to read about one Rocketboom: an online video blog, or vlog, in BusinessWeek.

I never really got Rocketboom, but the concept of producing low cost video for the Web was intriguing. I never really liked the “one person talking in front of a camera, pontificating, day in, day out” model but I knew that there could be more to it. So while the programming is not my thing, giving credit where credit is due, Rocketboom was indeed a trailblazer… and Sony (SNE) - which just bought the 50% of Sony BMG it did not own - was looking (I presume, of course) to bolster its original content programming for Crackle… which is one of the many companies trying to gain traction in a YouTube-dominated world.

Would Yahoo (YHOO) chairman Roy Bostock and some of his fellow directors actually have lost their board seats if the voted had been counted correctly?

That question is being raised this afternoon by Mithras Capital, an investment firm which owns 1.7 million Yahoo shares. Mithras issued a press release calling for an investigation into voting irregularities involving the company’s recent board election - and he doesn’t mean the one you already know about.

Time Warner

Guidance

Analysts are looking for a profit of 23c on revenue of $11.45B. The consensus range is 21c to 26c for EPS, and revenue of $11.18B to $11.84B, according to First Call. In April, Time Warner forecast FY08 EPS $1.07 to $1.11, in-line with First Call consensus expectations of $1.08.

Rocketboom, the daily video blog, is turning over its distribution and ad sales to Sony Pictures Television in return for a seven-figure guarantee plus a share of revenues. Rocketboom will be distributed on Sony’s Crackle video site, as well as across other Sony (SNE) platforms such as the PS3, PSP, and Bravia I-Link TVs.

Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron says he went with Sony because of Sony’s distribution strengths and the deal allows him to maintain control of the business. (Whereas selling the business to another media buyer would have required him to give up his baby). The deal is structured as a distribution and advertising deal, and sounds like it could lead to a closer relationship or outright sale if things go well. But if they don’t, Rocketboom would regain complete control of distribution and ad sales after the contract expires.

For about a couple of years now, I’ve been telling newspaper executives - both privately in discussions and publicly on this blog - that they should rush to scoop up the most promising online video content startups (75%) and online video technology (25%) players that fit well with their strategies because it’s their only salvation.  I could hyperlink each and every one of those words in the previous sentence to something I’ve written.

The rationale was:

In a stunning ruling that has huge implications for the cable industry, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York has cleared the way for Cablevision (CVC) to offer so called “network DVRs,” in which consumers would be able to record video programming for future viewing “in the cloud,” rather than relying on hard-drive in their set-top boxes.

The Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling which concluded that network DVRs were a violation of content copyrights.

News Corporation

Guidance

Analysts are looking for a profit of 34c on revenue of $8.5B. The consensus range is 29c to 41c for EPS, and revenue of $7.87B to $9.1B, according to First Call.

YouTube continued its inexorable drive upward and onward in June, propelling Google (GOOG) to new heights of a 47.8% market share of all video viewing visits on the web. That’s up 2.3 share points versus May and nearly 14 points compared to a year ago.

Meanwhile the best of the rest gave up share to GooTube, with Yahoo! (YHOO) in particular taking a big hit of .7 share points in June and FIM/MySpace sliding 5.3 points over the prior 12 months.

Time Warner (TWX) has reportedly completed its internal restructuring so it can officially separate AOL’s dial-up business from its content and advertising assets. The split is likely to become official when Time Warner delivers earnings on Wednesday. The big question: Who is buying?

This move is a bit overdue. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Time Warner (TWX) is moving forward with its plans to sell off AOL in pieces, and is finally ready to formally separate the AOL portal and advertising business from its legacy dial-up access business. But how much can it hope to get for these parts? When Google (GOOG) invested $1 billion in AOL a few years ago for a 5 percent stake, that valued AOL at $20 billion (which some people thought was an inflated figure even back then). Today, even after breaking it up, Time Warner will be lucky to get more than $7 billion for the whole lot.

Although it wants $10 billion for just the advertising and content business, there are only two serious potential buyers: Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT). And Time Warner is not making any friends at Yahoo by interfering with the selection of one of its new board members. If Microsoft turns out to be the only bidder, it would have no reason to offer much more than the $4 billion that the market is valuing the business at today. And, of course, all bets are off if Microsoft ends up buying Yahoo instead. (The dial-up business also only has one serious buyer: Earthlink).

According to reports from Bloomberg, Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce website whose biggest shareholder is Yahoo! Inc (YHOO), is willing to exchange Yahoo’s 39% stake in Alibaba Group for cash.

The Chinese firm that took over Yahoo’s China operations in 2005 and has been reorganizing it since seems ready to do a deal. Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma said today at a briefing in Hangzhou, where the company is based “we are very well prepared”. He added that Alibaba Chief Financial Officer Joseph Tsai “is spending most of his time evaluating the situation”. However, no specific details were provided.

According to the WSJ, media giant Time Warner Inc., (TWX), as part of its plans to cut costs and streamline operations, is expected to announce on Wednesday that it has completed the internal work necessary to separate its AOL Internet-access business from its website and online advertising business.

This news shouldn’t come as a surprise. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, since he took the job eight months ago, has made clear his company’s intention to make a structural separation of AOL’s access and audiences business, so they can be run independently.