Last week, a cougar was reported to be roaming on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft.
Here’s an image the very fine global alert from Microsoft Global Security first sent last week, which assured employees of the software giant that “Microsoft Security will conduct frequent patrols of all wooded areas of the campus.”
That’s more than you can say about how the software giant handles hackers!
There’s no question that Spotify is the latest hot start-up of the moment, which would be super annoying to BoomTown–who is easily irked by never-ending froth around Web 2.0 companies–if co-founder Daniel Ek were not so sharp and the digital-music-on-demand service he created not so nifty.
But, indeed, Ek turned out to be a very refreshing and level-headed serial entrepreneur in an interview I had with him yesterday in London.
Here’s the video.
Nokia is set to announce today that it has acquired Plum, the San Francisco “microsocial networking” start-up, for an undisclosed amount, sources said.
UPDATE: Nokia confirmed the purchase, but gave few details.
The small company was founded several years ago by Hans Peter Brøndmo as a social-bookmarking site. He then shifted its focus, trying to make a business in the places big social networks ignore.
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.
Last night, “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer” aired a piece on “how technology companies are innovating amid the recession by designing popular new smart phone applications.”
BoomTown was to talk about how perhaps not all of the 65,000 apps being created by legions of third-party developers for the Apple iPhone will result in gold, diamonds and unicorns raining down on entrepreneurs.
Oddly enough, I somehow went all Jules Verne at the end and started talking about screens on coffee tables, so I am obviously just as bad.
Longtime Internet entrepreneur Al Warms paid a visit to BoomTown HQ today to show off a new company he has founded called Appolicious.
That is the unusual name Warms–who sold his Participate Media, along with its BuzzTracker content aggregator, to Yahoo in late 2007–has given to a start-up aimed at encouraging discovery and social networking in the Apple iPhone mobile apps market.
The site is kind of a combination of Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo, but devoted solely to organizing and making sense of the app galaxy in the universe of smart phones.
From vacation, that is–an activity that I highly recommend (and getting toasted at Burning Man this week does not count, although that is also apparently highly recommended in order to endure that digital dustfest).
In any case, we begin Yahoo memo-bombing in five minutes.
That is all.
Starting today and through next week, BoomTown is headed south down California’s lovely Highway 1 for as much of a vacation as I can possibly take.
Which is to say, just a week off from posting.
In other words: Partovis, Wenda, Owen, play nice! Yahoos, please hold your internal memos. And I hope Apple’s tablet is not delivered from on high this week while I relax beachside (it won’t be).
This week, BoomTown decided to mash up two different and interesting surveys, both from comScore, about the search market.
When you do this, you find that while the new Bing search engine from Microsoft is showing some impressive growth–up a half-point in July from June to an 8.9 percent share–the software giant still has a long way to go to get some true love from the consumers.
Obsessive love, actually.
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.
Last night, onstage at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, my most excellent partner, Walt Mossberg, interviewed well-known techno musician Moby about music and entertainment in the digital age.
The wide-ranging talk was part of an ongoing cultural festival series organized by The Wall Street Journal, called Summer Scoops Live.
Here are some video clips of the event and more.
Yes, that’s Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shorts, knees and all, in a picture taken right “after signing the papers” to acquire FriendFeed for $50 million. The deal was announced today.
One of FriendFeed’s founders, Paul Buchheit, posted them on his account at the online content-sharing site.
They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!).
BoomTown has already gotten some very good submissions from readers for a contest to come up with a good moniker for the tablet device Apple is allegedly working on.
In a post earlier today, some of my ideas included: iTablet, iPad, iAmnotanetbook and iAmakindlekiller.
And here are some of the user-generated ideas, via Twitter mostly, and my Paula Abdul-inspired comments in reaction to them.
Despite the spate of recent rants about all that’s wrong with Apple, the pendulum will swing once again, and soon, once the drumbeat gets even louder for the new digital tablet that is slated to be delivered from on high sometime this fall by–in the most likely and juicily dramatic scenario–CEO Steve Jobs.
So, I suggest we move on from the dead-horse issue of the Google Voice app and other sleepy debates to more enjoyable late-August frivolities.
Like trying to guess the name that Jobs will ultimately bestow on the new device. BoomTown will start…
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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