Here’s a good way to get your hands on scarce venture capital money: Create a start-up geared around Twitter-like “real-time” sharing and conversations. The newest entrant: Hot Potato, a buzzy start-up that’s supposed to let users converse about a particular event, whether they’re attending it in person or watching from afar. When it’s up and running, that is. The five-man crew doesn’t have users or a product just yet. But it has just raised around $1 million.

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Remember last week, when President Barack Obama threw out the first pitch at baseball’s All-Star Game? And remember the ensuing fuss about his form? And remember how Jon Stewart sliced through all of the crap with his typically incisive wit?

Alas, you’ve got no choice but to remember that last part. It has disappeared from the Web, apparently at the behest of Major League Baseball.

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Depending on your perspective, this is either interesting news or heartening news: Michael Jackson’s funeral and memorial were indeed a giant Internet event. But they don’t seem to have been as big as Michael Jackson’s death, and they weren’t as big as Barack Obama’s inauguration. So, let’s call them the third-biggest Web event of the year. To date.

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Looks like I called this one wrong: Earlier in the day, I predicted that Web interest in Michael Jackson’s funeral would be less than expected because anyone who really cared about this would be watching on TV. Nope.

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Michael Jackson’s funeral service starts at 1 pm Eastern today and you will have to try very hard not to see it: In addition to wall-to-wall coverage on the news channels, any Web site capable of live-streaming the event will be doing so. Is the Internet ready for the coming traffic jam? I’m betting it is.

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One last Michael Jackson Web traffic story: Google says it received so many search queries with the late singer’s name on Thursday that it thought it was being targeted by an “automated attack.” Which meant that some visitors looking for Jackson info on Google News got an error message for about 25 minutes yesterday.

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Want to watch Web clips of Barack Obama’s latest press conference (or backyard shoot-around) but worry that the Administration–or Google–is watching you? Worry no more!

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The White House is already Twittering (of course). But now it’s getting tips from a pro–Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who’s evangelizing official Washington at this very moment.

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Steve Rattner, once one of the most prominent bankers in the media business, is going to Washington after all. Except that the Quandrangle Group founder won’t be getting the “Car Czar” job he was originally supposed to take in the Obama administration, since that job never got created. He’ll be an adviser, instead. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has formally appointed his New Media team.

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Barack Obama caused a small stir among us media navel gazers when he called on the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein during his press conference this week. Time to get over it. “The Daily Show” can help.

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Think of how much time you spend on the Web when you’re gainfully employed. How much would that increase if you weren’t? Something to think about as you ponder data from a variety of sites reporting increased traffic in January–the same month that 600,000 Americans lost their jobs.

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I realize people have bigger things on their minds these days, but how did the blogosphere not pick up on this yesterday? Because while it’s important to note that Intel has committed to spending $7 billion in the U.S., it seems that none of us Apple-obsessives noted this nugget: The President is a PC user.

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No one likes Live Nation, and everyone hates Ticketmaster. So this is going to be one tough merger to sell. But Barry Diller and crew are going to try anyway. Here’s a look at their talking points–and the ones their many critics have already been voicing.

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Barack Obama has yet to announce who his chief technology officer will be. But he has hired a Silicon Valley exec for another role: Google product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton will be the new President’s “director of citizen participation,” starting in March, sources tell me.

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Barack Obama’s inauguration was indeed a big day for Web video. But it appears as if the Internet audience wasn’t nearly as big as the one that watched it on TV. The people who run MSNBC.com, CNN.com and Foxnews.com aren’t complaining, though–they all saw huge increases in traffic.

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