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All posts tagged ‘D: All Things Digital’

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Exclusive: Twitter to Debut a New Main Homepage Next Week

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Twitter will unveil a new main homepage next week at Twitter.com, said co-founder Biz Stone, in order “to better show who we are.”

In an interview with BoomTown this afternoon, Stone said the current page is essentially confusing to the masses of people who come to it, made aware of the microblogging service by the massive media hype it has received over the last year.

People arriving at the new main homepage will be greeted by a search box, information on Twitter trends and a panoply of more specific information about how they can use Twitter.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Liveblogging Fortune Brainstorm Tech: Disney CEO Bob Iger Has “One Hand in the Present and One Hand in the Future”

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Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, is the kickoff interview onstage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference, which is taking place over the next three days in Pasadena, Calif.

The event is packed full of Web and media luminaries.

So, BoomTown will be sitting in the front row and liveblogging some of the sessions here, including this one, titled, “Digital Kingdom: New Business Models for a Media Giant.”

Translation: When you Twitter upon a star, makes a–big–difference what you earn.

Which, right now, is not a whole lot, as Iger and others in the media business know all too well.

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Sunday, July 19, 2009

AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong Talks: The 100-Day Check-In!

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After his 100-day VisionQuest to figure out what to do at AOL, Tim Armstrong is in a chattier mood.

So, BoomTown did not waste a New York minute in getting on the horn with him to finally hear his take.

There’s not a lot of new stuff to reveal, of course, beyond what Armstrong has already said about AOL’s new direction.

That would be a spinoff in November, a focus on advertising, content, local, communications and starting a venture unit. But there is also the question of AOL’s ad deal with Google and more.

Here is the interview.

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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Yahoo Search Ad Deal With Microsoft “Down to the Short Strokes”–But Caution Also Advised

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Unless there is some major glitch, there might finally be a search and online advertising deal struck between Yahoo and Microsoft at long last.

Top executives at Microsoft–including SVP of the Online Audience Business Group Yusuf Mehdi, search head Satya Nadella and top digital exec Qi Lu–have all flown down to Silicon Valley from their Redmond, Wash., HQ today to iron out the remaining issues.

If all goes well, the deal could be announced within the next week, sources said.

Said one person close to the situation, “It is down to the short strokes, for sure, it is just a question if we can finally close this.”

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Palm Pre Commercial Keeps Mirroring the Ladies

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In a recent onstage interview, Palm’s major investor, Roger McNamee, and I got into a minor tussle over the mirror on the back of the just-launched Pre smartphone and his assertion that ladies in particular would love it.

Take that, reflectively-challenged Apple iPhone!

In any case, Palm is certainly not backing away from the female demographic with its latest commercial, which features an unusually pale woman with a sing-song and vaguely creepy voice.

It feels a lot like an ad for a new shampoo that promises lustrous locks.

All the better to look good in a mirror, presumably.

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Monday, July 13, 2009

Yahoo and Microsoft: Breaking (And Making) Up Is Hard to Do

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Oh, they’re still talking. Except when they’re not. And, then, they are.

Such has been the course of discussions Yahoo and Microsoft continue to be engaged in about a possible partnership deal around search and online advertising.

“It runs hot, then cold, then hot, then who knows,” said one person close to the situation.

It’s kind of like a digital version of the romantic travails of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, minus the paparazzi and screaming matches in trendy clubs.

Here’s an update of the talks.

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Facebookers Start Cashing Out Up to 20 Percent of Shares With New $100 Million Investment

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According to sources close to the situation, current and former employees of Facebook are now going to be able to sell up to 20 percent of their common shares.

It is part of a $100 million add-on investment in the social networking company by the Russian investors who recently put $200 million into the company for preferred shares valued at $10 billion.

The new tender offer today by Digital Sky Technologies for common shares of Facebook is valued at $6.5 billion, or $14.77 a share.

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Friday, July 10, 2009

Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein: The Full D7 Session

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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.

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Thursday, July 9, 2009

Siri: The Full D7 Demo

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Siri is a virtual personal assistant for your Apple iPhone or computer, originated at the Stanford Research Institute and spun out as an artificial intelligence project financed by DARPA.

In its demo for Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Siri tried to show how it was an alternative to search.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker and CEO John Lilly: The Full D7 Session

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As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the popular open-source browser.

The pair talk about this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The Duck Call Stylings of Cisco’s John Chambers (No, Really, Duck Calls)

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What hath the Flip digital video camera wrought?

Well, for one, getting to see a major Silicon Valley tech exec do duck calls online, that’s what.

Cisco PR guy John Earnhardt, who is obviously studying technique from BoomTown’s shaky-cam video style, caught company CEO and Chairman John Chambers quacking away in his office.

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BoomTown’s Favorite Leaked Yahoo Internal Memo Ever: New PR Head Eric Brown Says Hello (and More)!

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BoomTown has had some good leaked internal memos from Yahoo, but I have never enjoyed one quite as much as this one from newly installed Yahoo PR head Eric Brown, who started today.

While it is clear Yahoo has had its troubles in understanding and offering social-networking products to its users, Brown certainly knows how to share.

Yahoo could use some of that DNA!

Here’s his introductory memo to his new troops.

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Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington and Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth: The Full D7 Session

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It’s an opportune time to see this interview, in which Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth and Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington talked about the future of the news media.

The pair were interviewed at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference only a month before Weymouth landed in hot water for trying to organize an off-the-record gathering of D.C. power players and journalists at her house, underwritten by sponsors.

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Monday, July 6, 2009

Canesta: The Full D7 Demo

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The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”

That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.

Canesta demoed the new technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menus, at the seventh D: All Things Digital.

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Thursday, July 2, 2009

NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker: The Full D7 Interview

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Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.

In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture NBC launched with News Corp.; and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”

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About Kara

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.

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Ethics Statement

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.

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