Today, All Things Digital debuts a new feature called “Almost Famous” in our Voices section.
No, it is not about Kate Hudson and nascent rock stars.
Well, you might meet geek rock stars to be.
Focused on innovative, interesting or just plain odd start-ups, we thought it was a good way for our readers to get a gander at some up-and-coming ideas and trends. It will be penned by Drake Martinet every Friday.
Earlier this week, while in New York, BoomTown paid a visit to well-known media and Web exec Bob Pittman to hear about his newest venture.
And, as it turned out, it tasted pretty good.
That’s because the former MTV wunderkind, AOL top exec and currently, investor in a wide range of media and Web companies, is making tequila instead of Internet sites.
Thank God it’s Friday!
To be totally honest, BoomTown was a little late getting a request in to Microsoft to host a Windows 7 Launch Party.
Thus, no “special Signature Edition of Windows® 7 Ultimate and your very own Windows® 7 Party Pack to share with your guests” for a shindig at my house!
So, because we admire the very gumption of Microsoft marketing types trying to make a software launch festive, which many have mocked mercilessly, the Swisher boys and I pressed on and created our own party to mark the launch of the much anticipated operating system software.
Yahoo introduced its new $100 million marketing and branding campaign in New York today with “It’s Y!ou” as the new motto, making use of the Internet giant’s famous exclamation point and aimed at its customers.
Sure, it’s clever and all, but All Things Digital has come up with a much better advertising idea focused on Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, a sassy and ofttimes salty exec whose pugnacious utterances have become legend quickly.
Here’s a lovely video BoomTown did last night at our All Things Digital annual BBQ, at which the crackerjack team at our little rogue operation inside Dow Jones goes analog, gnaws on some ribs and trades tech tales.
Last night, of course, much of the chatter was about what went down at the Apple event in San Francisco yesterday, at which CEO and Supreme Leader Steve Jobs made a grand reappearance onstage after a liver transplant.
Walt Mossberg and Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski were there and give their spicy reports.
BoomTown could not resist posting this photo for posterity’s sake, taken by All Things Digital Webmaster and master photog Adam Tow.
It pictures a quartet of the tech media’s heavy hitters, all attending at the Apple event in San Francisco today.
As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs about tech to send them to me pronto.
I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. A closet pie-charter.
(I also love pie.)
Thus, here are a few comparing some stats about development for the iPhone from Apple and the Android from Google, from Flurry Analytics.
BoomTown is wearing all-black today, in profound mourning for the prospect of no Paula Abdul on “American Idol” next season.
“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return,” tweeted Abdul yesterday, bidding goodbye, natch, on Twitter.
Here is a cool video look at her and co-judge Simon Cowell and one of her appearance at the D: All Things Digital conference. (I kid you not!)
As the wind-up act for the Financial Analyst Day at Microsoft today, its CFO, Chris Liddell, took the stage to try to put a shine on weak financial results that the software giant recently reported.
“So, what genetic disposition do you need to be a CFO? Essentially, you need to be miserable, you need to be the sort of person who takes drinks away from people at the end of a party,” said Liddell, in his jaunty New Zealand-Hobbit accent. “So, you know, my colleagues who have been giving you drinks all day, have told me to come out here and take most of them away from you.”
Which was ironic, since the all-day event for media and Wall Street analysts ended with cocktails.
After months of speculation, interviews and statements to the contrary, Microsoft and Yahoo have finally reached a deal. Details of the story are still emerging, so for your reading convenience, BoomTown’s full coverage is below:
Complete Coverage
- Analysts to Yahoo CEO: Where are Those “Boatloads of Money” You Were Talking About?
- Yahoo Gag Reel
- WWGD: What Will Google Do, Now That There Is Finally a MicroHoo?
- Liveblogging the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Conference Call: The Carol and Steve Show Debuts!
- Yahoo Investors on Microsoft Deal: Do Not Want
- Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s Letter About the YaSoft Deal
- MicroHoo Deal Finally Official in a 10-Year Landmark Partnership (Plus the Full Press Release)
- Yahoo To Get 110 Percent of Search Revenue in First Two Years of Deal With Microsoft
- Before Yahoo-Microsoft Deal Terms Are Unveiled, Let’s Go to the Videotape From the Last One
- Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Struck–Will Be Announced Within Next 24 Hours
As the final posting of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, here is one of the sessions that generated a lot of news: The first major interview about the Palm Pre with Elevation Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein.
The pair are trying to remake Palm in a bet-the-company move to recover the Silicon Valley icon’s long-lost glory via innovation.
Microsoft just announced in a blog post that it was “integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.”
Microsoft said it is not indexing all of Twitter in its new Bing search service–not yet, that is–nor has it made any kind of exclusive deal with Twitter to add this real-time feed.
The software giant is the first major search service to do this on a regular basis, using public APIs from Twitter–and it is an aggressive move, which seems to be part of its major push by Bing.
Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to make the experience better for our readers.
In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last weeks, which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.
Check them out.
At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, besides interviewing a lot of tech and media muckety-mucks, the All Things Digital staff and friends also got a terrific screening of a new documentary–“Autumn Gem”–by our Webmaster, Adam Tow, and his wife, Rae Chang.
The pair co-produced the project, which explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine and women’s rights activist, Qiu Jin.
Even more interesting is what it is like to get an indie film made and distributed in the digital age, which I talked about with Tow and Chang last week.
Last night, BoomTown went to a lovely party thrown by David Hornik, the August Capital VC who also runs The Lobby conference in his spare time.
He threw the event because those who attend the annual invitation-only gathering in Hawaii wanted to get together again during the year in Silicon Valley for even more schmoozing.
I went to the first Lobby in the fall of 2007, so Hornik let me in to have some pizza and beer at August’s offices on Sand Hill Road and use my Flip video to ask those in attendance where they thought the digital sector was in terms of the economy and innovation.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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