Oracle 1, Maven 0

Talk about things at H-P taking peculiar turns: I was just made aware of this item this morning, so I have no way of confirming whether it is still on as scheduled. But at tonight's Bay Area Council's 61st Annual Dinner, featured speakers slated to appear include New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller ... and increasingly infamous Hewlett-Packard board/spy director Patricia D. Dunn. Insert your own bugging device joke here.

Al Gore's crowning achievement in life may be to have the worst timing of any public figure, and his kooky mojo continues today.

Reports are out that Gore's Current TV will announce a joint venture with Yahoo!(YHOO), which raised question marks on Tuesday with surprisingly troubled sales guidance.

In fairness to Yahoo! and the former next president of the U.S., Yahoo! did only see advertising slip in two segments.

These segments, auto and financial, were probably undergoing some cyclical weakness, and the fact that Yahoo! has grown up enough to be vulnerable to such weakness should be reflected in its multiple but seems -- at this stage, at least -- to be no cause for panic.

But apparently Reuters, which gets all good and snide for no good reason, thinks otherwise. "Big media touts Internet plans," it says in a scolding headline, "even as Yahoo! slips."

Apparently, at a previously scheduled conference Tuesday, big media companies such as Walt Disney(DIS), Viacom(VIA.B) and Time Warner(TWX) had the temerity (note the sarcasm) to talk about their plans to use the Internet to deliver content.

Look -- and this has been true from the start: Anyone who sells the Internet as the savior of any stodgy old big-media company should be marketing boy bands in River City -- er, Mason City, Iowa.

But there's no reason to give up on modest little strategies just because Yahoo! reported a modest little disappointment. And with that, I need to go cry in my coffee over my own private Oracle debacle.

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