All Things Digital

Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer suggestions about stuff to watch.

What else to watch on the day of Yahoo’s earnings call but a six-part series, taken by a hand-held camera, at CEO Jerry Yang’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.

While we did a bit of video in our post about the event, where Yahoo unveiled some interesting new mobile and email initiatives, this video person went to town and taped the whole shebang and posted it on YouTube (which is also known in Silicon Valley as the company-Yahoo-whiffed-on-buying).

If you want to understand where and at what pace the Internet giant is going–ahead of earnings–it might be a good idea to consider this attempt to explain the revival attempts at Yahoo, which is vintage Yang.

In other words: Careful, deliberate, not prone to boldness and definitely on his own timetable. Good lord–even Yang’s mother makes an appearance!

So here it is, in all its glory (or, more precisely, all its sensible-shoesness):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

When BoomTown was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, I followed my partner-in-tech-crime Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret around the floor of the famous gadgetfest with my annoying video camera (truth be told, I am the irksome one and the camera simply my tool of choice).

And because Walt is so well known among the geek set, naturally, I dubbed him the “Brangelina of Tech.”

Thus, it is also natural that we deliver the same quality time with Waltgelina at Macworld, which was held yesterday in San Francisco and featured the famous annual keynote by his iLama Steve Jobs.

So, here is the first video of two of Walt visiting Macworld yesterday, trailed by our very brave Associate Editor John “Sully” Sullivan (pictured here), who gamely borrowed BoomTown’s Flip video camera to take on the momentous task, since I was at meetings in Silicon Valley all day (there was, in fact, life beyond the Moscone Center yesterday).

Sullivan also did a most excellent job of blogging the Jobs’ keynote here, as Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski was indisposed.

In this episode, Walt introduces Sullivan to the floor of Macworld and then gives a first look and public-Walt-handling of the not-the-iPhone-but-cool-anyway MacBook Air subnotebook.

Is Walt impressed? You’ll just have to wait for his review until he puts it through its paces.

In the meantime, here is the video:

Here is Part 2 of Waltgelina at Macworld.

BoomTown is usually never in sync with Wall Street analysts, given that their job is too often to sell people on companies and mine is to, well, tell on companies to people.

But I seem to be in violent agreement with Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay of late–at least with a recent report he just did calling for Yahoo to abandon its slower-moving strategies and get much, much bolder much, much quicker.

Suggestions by Lindsay included outsourcing its search business, making deep cuts in staff and also doubling down on its bets in its ad network businesses like Right Media.

(Frankly, I’d just like to see the company immediately-if-not-sooner roll out innovative email features like CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang showed at the Consumer Electronics Show last week.)

If you recall, Lindsay penned a previous report last October on the worth of Yahoo by parsing out its various assets. It was instructive in its focus on the value of Yahoo’s somewhat liquid holdings like investments compared to its core business.

The message at the time: Yahoo had some valuable assets–such as its stake in China’s Alibaba.com–and its stock did not reflect these gems. It even suggested the company be split into parts to unlock value.

But his most recent piece is less sanguine–a kind of flip side to the first, noting that the operations side of the business was not up to snuff, causing the valuation of Yahoo to fall. Bernstein blames Yahoo’s too-careful management, as well as its declining share of the search market.

Whatever you think about Yahoo, its still lackluster stock price–it hovers in the low $20-range–make reports like Lindsay’s interesting reading. See also this Motley Fool report yesterday, naming Yahoo the “Worst Stock for 2008.”

Nonetheless, all this bearishness could foretell some bullishness on Yahoo, which appears to simply refuse to move faster than it wants to.

Consider a largely positive piece on Yahoo’s fine-tuning of its business in the New York Times yesterday, which chronicled Yang’s turtle-versus-hare approach to the company’s future.

The article quoted Yang’s I’m-still-here intro to the CES speech (pictured here in this AP shot by Paul Sakuma), which kind of says all you need to know: “I’m guessing that a lot of you are here today to see what the new look and new face of Yahoo is all about…well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It’s still the same old face. I’ve been around since the beginning.”

And, I have no doubt, until the bitter, sweet or even bittersweet end.

How did we miss this video of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary vlogger Andy Jordan getting Tasered by a leopard-skin device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past week?

Fun!

Here he mistreats an animatronic dinosaur, which calls for more Tasering:

And here Jordan checks out tricked-out trucks at CES:

While we at D: All Things Digital don’t style ourselves as peacemakers, one of the genuine sateen pillows that we had tossed blithely about our party in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday night seemed to have a dulcet effect on bringing together faux foes.

Pictured below is Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis and Valleywag writer Jordan Golson resting their weary heads in a very intimate and touched-by-an-angel moment of togetherness. (Golson “stole” one with our papal dispensation.)

Typically, the bloggy entrepreneur and the Silicon Valley gossip site trade barbs and snark back and forth in a traffic-generating online equivalent of a wrestling match.

What can we say? Our work is done.

P.S. My Flip camera flipped out Tuesday, so I cannot bring you my riveting video of the party, including an exclusive interview with our very own ATD version of very glammy booth ladies who greeted guests at the Venetian’s Tao. But pictures of the soiree to come.

Here is the second part of my video of following Walt Mossberg, along with Mossberg Solution writer Katherine Boehret, around the floor of the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday:

In this, the second of two videos from the floor of CES, it is more big screens, more fanboys, more gadgets–just a typical day in the life of Walt (Part 1 is here):

Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski and I continued our trek through the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show and the neon streets of Las Vegas last night, even though we ended up in the fake daylight of fake Venice by the end of the evening.

Here’s a video of a bunch of companies showing at CES, which we checked out at the ShowStoppers demo event, including those offering text voicemail, a tracker for kids, dogs and the aging, an air-Guitar Hero, an overpetted animatronic dummy and an inexplicable beer dispenser.

We also finally ran into the man we like to called “Brangelina of CES,” because this is his town this week–also known as Walt Mossberg and our revered co-kahuna of this site. Later today, we will be following Walt around the floor of CES, which should make for an interesting video.

Until then, enjoy this one:

How glad BoomTown was to finally see Jerry Yang up close and personal, after our valiant but futile efforts to get near the Yahoo co-founder and CEO in 2007.

No, we’re not stalking him in a restraining-order kind of way, although I did stake a claim to a front-row seat in the intimate theater at the Las Vegas Hilton for his keynote this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, where Yang couldn’t help but see me.

Like he cared!

Not at all, as he was riveted to delivering his shtick about Yahoo’s mobile efforts (it’s a 3.0 version, according to Yang, which is a good move since Web 2.0–in general and in particular–has not been so kind to the Internet giant), as well as giving the audience a glimpse of some interesting new concepts related to its popular email program.

The front rows were so packed with top Yahoo execs–including President Sue Decker, as well as David Filo, Jeff Weiner, Brad Garlinghouse, Ash Patel, Dave Karnstedt, Bradley Horowitz, Hilary Schneider and even Chairman and former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel–that you had to wonder who was running the show back in Sunnyvale, Calif.

(I mean, say, if Google had decided to launch a sneak attack today with their bicycle brigade, it could have taken over Yahoo without a shot fired!)

Yang maintained a low-key tone throughout the presentation, as is his way (I kept imagining the performance being done by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, who would have sold it all hard until he popped a vein).

Nonetheless, Yang did get the message through that opening its platform up to third-party developers would be a big push in 2008 for Yahoo.

So, the widgets in the excellent mobile product, called Yahoo! Go 3.0, are laudable and much more innovative than anything out there, even though Yahoo has been too quiet about marketing its Yahoo! Go product until now.

But at CES, Yang brought Yahoo Connected Life Executive Vice President Marco Boerries (pictured here) out to show off the mobile apps, including one from MTV (Viacom head Philippe Dauman and MTV Networks head Judith McGrath were in the audience) that seemed fun.

More interesting was Yang’s presenting new concepts for its Yahoo Mail product, which will be more social, relevant and integrated. A lot of this functionality is already being used by the open-source email company Zimbra, which Yahoo recently acquired (and whose head Satish Dharmaraj I interviewed last week).

As I wrote in that piece, I love the innovations, including ranking of those you email with most frequently and instant mapping from email, as well as a plethora of great features for email.

So, one vexing part of Yang’s presentation was that this concept needs to become a reality tomorrow. He brought out Co-Founder and interim CTO Filo to basically promise “soon,” but I say: Make it snappy!

I know, we’re pushy when it comes to Yahoo, but it’s because we care!

Well, care is not the right word exactly, but we are certain that a powerful and pioneering company like Yahoo can out-innovate these Web 2.0 newbies who get ridiculous funding to make goofy widgets and have the nerve to call it a business.

Thus, we took the chance and his prone position after the speech surrounded by well-wishers to go up and say hello in person to Yang, whom BoomTown has known for longer than either of us would care to say.

And, miracle of miracles, Yang said it had been far too long since we had gotten together and agreed to meet in 2008, a meeting for which we have been asking and egregiously posting about forever, to no avail.

How much does BoomTown love CES? Not so much.

But if it gets me lunch with Yang, I love it. So, Jerry, it’s officially 2008 and I am waiting by the phone for your call.

Here is my video of parts of Yang’s keynote:

So we arrived at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with Digital Daily’s John “Patches” Paczkowski yesterday from rain-sodden San Francisco, and launched right into gadgetmania.

While there does not seem to be much news or truly groundbreaking products as of yet out of anywhere–”It’s like no one has anything new, but we have to all be here to show the flag,” said one attendee to me in a rare moment of honesty–it does feel a bit like old home week for the tech crowd.

While Patches covers the keynotes and the floor, I am roaming around searching high and low for new trends. And, so far, that feels like I am searching for Big Foot.

Here is BoomTown’s Welcome to Vegas video, where we arrive, start to brave the crowds of CES and run into blogger Robert Scoble, as usual, in the press room (and where I give him a hard time for giving in to Facebook’s fascist data rules):

Lots of people were bellyaching about the lackluster nature of Bill Gates’s final performance at CES last night–long on deals and stats and short on the futuristic predictions Gates often makes.

Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski was unimpressed, as were Duncan Riley of TechCrunch and ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, for example.

But, to my mind, giving the Microsoft co-founder and chairman a hard time at this point is sort of like razzing Celine Dion, who coincidentally also just completed her own longtime run in Las Vegas in her Caesars Palace show, “A New Day.”

In other words, let’s just all admit that–as irksome as both have sometimes been–they do kind of grow on you after a while.

While that may be still debatable with Dion, I know, it is squarely the case with Gates, who has had the longest-running and most complicated relationship with the tech industry, even as he has dominated it for most of the past two-plus decades.

Gates’s impact will surely be chewed over in the history books in centuries hence–likely as not, always with the Yin to his Yang, Steve Jobs of Apple.

And, despite all the controversy his tenure has engendered (most especially the bullying antitrust behavior), as he transitions from his day-to-day role at Microsoft in July in what will likely be one of the longer goodbyes in the digital arena (including his sixth appearance at our D6 conference in May), I am guessing his influence will be seen as a net plus in the years to come.

While many level charges at Microsoft as a hindrance to innovation over the years, via the overwhelming dominance of its Windows operating system, the fact of the matter is that the digital industry has never been more fast-moving and quick-changing, and it remains one of the brighter spots in the pantheon of businesses worldwide.

While that is not because of Gates and Microsoft alone, it is also not in spite of them either. In fact, it’s quite bracing to see Gates attempt to make quick shifts over the years as technology has raced past him, an indication of just how powerful change is compared to the world’s richest man.

Very powerful, as it has turned out, and watching Gates try to keep up has been a perfect metaphor for all those who labor in the tech sector.

His famous December, 1995 sleeping-giant-has-awakened speech about the Internet was a case in point, as were his aggressive moves in later years into a wide range of arenas such as gaming, search, online services, social networking and even an attempt to take on the iPod hegemony with the Zune.

It is clear that most of Microsoft’s efforts outside of its core software business–and a great business it remains, by the way–have been less impressive. But it points to a key factor that never changes throughout the tech arena that even the giants are always vulnerable.

Now, going forward, what Microsoft will do post-Gates, of course, is all that matters.

Will it try to vaunt ahead in the search and portal arena and catch No. 1 Google by attempting to acquire Yahoo?

Will it use its popular Xbox to finally move successfully into the home-entertainment space, as evidenced by announcements Gates made last night at CES about deals with media giants like NBC Universal and others?

Can its MSN ever be more than just an also-ran portal?

What will happen to software in the years ahead as applications inevitably move to the Web?

Gates will not be the one to figure it all out, as he will be off, focused on his laudable philanthropic work when these questions and more get answered.

But even he could not have made an accurate guess onstage last night, as much as pundits wanted him to.

In fact, one of the more tiresome things to endure at CES–aside from the long lines–is always having to listen to the spate of predictions of what is to come, when, the truth is, no one really knows how it will all turn out.

It was always thus. After all, reaching way back in history: Wasn’t the launch of the Titantic supposed to herald in the age of high-tech super-boats? Of course, no one figured in the tragic results from its encounter with an iceberg.

But it did make for a pretty good song, so let’s enjoy a bit of Celine to send Bill Gates off on what one hopes is a much safer journey:

Here’s a lovely selection of videos from the Consumer Electronics Show, taking place this week in Las Vegas, from the folks at WSJ.com. (BoomTown videos to come, of course!):

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang emerged from his hibernation den over at Yahoo yesterday and didn’t see his shadow.

So do better-than-expected revenues mean spring is on the way for the struggling Web giant? We’ll see, but it means we might see a lot more of the shy-of-late Yang, who accepted a big keynote slot at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

On the first day of the gadgetfest, held every January and run by the Consumer Electronics Association, Yang will appear in a prime slot on Monday, Jan. 7, at 11 a.m., at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater.

Said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CEA: “As content and technology continue to intertwine and create new ways to connect consumers with information and each other, we look forward to hearing [Jerry] Yang’s views on the evolution of Internet technology and its impact on consumer technology products.”

So does BoomTown, who will be front and center at the show to see Yang, trying to get the attention of our favorite Web CEO. (Zuckerberg’s not even close!)

It would be nicer still to have lunch with him, of course, and we would if you give early and often to our efforts to raise money for DonorsChoose.org.

So go now and click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

Why click here?

Because it is well and good to help help BoomTown in the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

(AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with Yang.

It’s either that or I will have to rush the stage at CES!

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!