Now there's a new man to burn in effigy. Or at least sing to in sweet French lip dubs. AOL named Dave Harmon executive vice president of human resources today. Which of course is a much easier job now then it was last fall. [AOL]

eBay CEO Meg Whitman could announce plans to retire as soon as today's earnings call. The most likely candidate to replace her? Consensus suggests auctions chief John Donahoe. But how'd that happen? A quick look at other viable contenders shows Donahoe's candidacy owes much to the process of elimination. Here's how the discarded contenders stack up.

At most companies, the post of chief information officer is a humdrum administrative job, making sure that the servers running the CEO's BlackBerry don't go down. At Microsoft, add to that this burden: Serving as a part-time shill for the company's products. If anyone could change that, it may be Tony Scott, freshly hired as the software company's fourth CIO in as many years. Scott, Tony, replaces Scott, Stuart, who left in scandal.

Are Microsoft's second-tier executives all second-rate? Apparently. Microsoft has just tapped Stephen Elop, the COO of Juniper Networks, to run its Business division, which includes the highly profitable Office suite. Elop, the former CEO of Macromedia, is a good fit. But his hire sends an unwelcome message to up-and-comers within Redmond: Keep toiling away, but don't aspire to run one of Microsoft's great franchises. Bill Gates can find someone better than you elsewhere. Which should be as good a signal as any for them to start leaving.

Drew Schutte, the longtime publisher of Conde Nast's Wired, will now run the sales side of The New Yorker and its website. David Carey, publisher of Portfolio, is adding Wired to his responsibilities. [BusinessWeek]

Steve Jobs has quieted one long-running concern of unhappy Apple shareholders by naming Avon CEO Andrea Jung to the male-dominated board of the Cupertino-based computer maker. Jung will be the board's first female member in nearly 11 years. The addition likely has nothing to do with appeasing feminists, however, and everything to do with Jung's business connections. She also serves on the board of GE, the parent of NBC Universal. Apple's media strategy has been hindered by a feud between NBC's Jeff Zucker and Jobs over selling TV shows online. Jung will likely have to recuse herself from any direct dealings. But as a behind-the-scenes peacemaker? She's perfectly made up. (Photo by Avon)

Think you need capital to become a venture capitalist? Not at Battery Ventures. There, you just need a working knowledge of how Google works. "Google arguably is at the center of the online advertising ecosystem," Battery Ventures partner Roger Lee told the New York Times. "If you understand how Google works and how associated business models work, it gives you a great lens to understand other advertising companies," Lee said, explaining why he recruited former Google advertising exec Satya Patel to the firm. Sounds good. When does Scoble start?

Matthew Szulik is out as Red Hat's CEO. CNET reports that the widely admired Szulik is stepping down because of his wife's health problems. But don't worry, open source cultists, the man replacing Szulik, Jim Whitehurst, has years of experience ... in the airline industry. As Delta Airlines' former COO, Whitehurst carefully guided the airline back from bankruptcy. Which is just like running a company with 28 percent revenue growth.

Online video startup Roo.com, based in New York, just laid off a fifth of its workforce and lost four board members. Earlier this month, an executive was indicted for money laundering and felony grand larceny. So who's the man to turn this ship around?

Sprint Nextel has a new CEO to replace Gary Forsee, who exited the company in October. Dan Hesse, former CEO of Embarq, a local phone company that Sprint spun out last year, will take the post. Hesse previously worked 23 years at AT&T, including a stint running AT&T Wireless. [WSJ]

New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue has signed a new contract with CNBC and is very proud of this. Here's our 100-word version of his video introduction:

The New York Times reports that Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media and my boss, will take over as editor of Gawker.com, his flagship and our sister site, on January 2. My first reaction to the news: Well, good. This should keep him busy.

We'd heard rumors Jobster was close to replacing Jason Goldberg as its CEO, and the Seattle P-I now confirms them. Jeff Seely, another Seattle entrepreneur who just sold online stock-buying site ShareBuilder for $220 million to ING Direct, will take over the online job board on January 7. His first order of business: Raising more money, I suspect.

The store of Googlers worth poaching must be running out. Facebook has turned to taking geeks from TechCrunch — specifically CrunchBase product manager Ben Meyer. Michael Arrington groped for the appropriate words to express his outrage.

The exodus at Yahoo continues. Cameron Marlow, a leading light of Yahoo Research, has left its Berkeley building, as we noted — but we can now reveal his destination: Facebook. That Yahoo tried to acquire the social network last year for a fraction of its current $15 billion price just makes his departure more bitter. Marlow, you see, had developed one of the most intriguing social networks at Yahoo — Tagsona, an internal tool for finding coworkers at Yahoo working on similar projects. Tagsona has already inspired social features in Yahoo products — but, alas, its inventor will be cooking up new ideas at Facebook, not Yahoo.

As a part of its new video initiative, Wired hired Cranky Geeks producer Annaliza Savage away from Ziff-Davis, according to reports. They need her. There isn't much to video.wired.com at the moment, which is currently airing clips from Wired Science such as this one.

Anyone remember "Gore and Doerr"? That was Silicon Valley's dream presidential ticket in the late '90s, long before the Supreme Court nixed Al Gore's presidential career and John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC, torpedoed his own golden reputation by missing out on all the hot Internet companies of this millennium. Gore and Doerr are teaming up again, with Gore joining Kleiner Perkins as a partner specializing in greentech startups. Finally, he has a real excuse for buying that condo in San Francisco's St. Regis tower: His previous Valley gigs, as an Apple board member and a senior advisor to Google, were thoroughly part-time, if incredibly lucrative.

Rupert Murdoch has added a 27-year-old European opera singer to the News Corp. board of directors. Natalie Bancroft, of the Bancroft family which sold Dow Jones to News Corp., was was offered the position as part of acquisition negotiations. One Dow Jones employee said, "It validates the family's incompetence." Ouch. Natalie has, as best as we can tell, zero experience running a business. An interesting choice for Rupert — we wonder what kind of influence, if any, Natalie will have on News Corp. Other board members include Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan, News Corp. COO and president Peter Chernin and a former prime minister of Spain. [FT]

I was a bit surprised when Surya Yalamanchili, the former reality-TV star fired by Donald Trump from The Apprentice, told me he'd landed at LinkedIn. One would think his broadcast-TV star turn would afford him more than enough introductions in the Valley. Perhaps he likes a challenge. Yalamanchili, who previously worked for Procter & Gamble and started this week as LinkedIn's director of marketing, has traded packaged goods for social networks. His first task: Figuring out how to brand LinkedIn as new and improved. Despite the differences between the two sites, people won't stop talking about how Facebook will soon move in on LinkedIn's turf.

Looks like the Financial Times got the same pitch. As did the New York Times.