Big prolonged sigh.
We tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, which was part of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org.
Major lunchroom snub!
OK, we’re going to cut to the chase.
Give here to DonorsChoose.org.
We’re now at $12,056 with 44 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, with VC Fred Wilson still king of our little tech charity mountain.
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!
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 CEO Jerry Yang, who remains as grumpy as ever toward his old pal at BoomTown.
Soften him up with love, sweet love and give now!
So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!
Yesterday, we slapped around VC Fred Wilson in our ongoing efforts to overtake him in our increasingly annoying journey to extract donors and dollars from geeks for a charity called DonorsChoose.org.
It’s working! We’re now hovering near $10,000 with 35 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, although Wilson does march on like Sherman to the sea with $16,566 and 61 donors.
So go now and to 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!
We are nearing the halfway point of 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 CEO Jerry Yang! And it must be ours!
Thus, it’s time for a Web celebrity endorsement! So, here’s Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, which recently got into a little bit of controversy when one of its top execs said they’d never pay their bloggers!
Well, I didn’t pay her either and absolutely did not hand her her lines at all–except, well, all of them.
Although New York Times poobah Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was passing by when I was making the video at Google’s Zeitgeist event yesterday, did jokingly chastise me for telling her what to say, it was actually the whole point of egregious fund-raising tactics. (But thanks, Arthur, for keeping me honest!)
So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!
And here’s the video:
Yesterday, I used my two adorable children starring in a video in what is clearly a bald-faced attempt to wrench donors and dollars from the dear readers of BoomTown for a charity called DonorsChoose.org.
How easily you are moved, as it turns out, and good thing!
Yesterday, the Swisher boys’ charm managed to more than double the donations to $7,344, making us No. 2 in a tech blogger fund-raising challenge for the month of October on the site. We also almost doubled our number of donors to 29.
To recap: Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called 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.
Our readers’ generosity in the race to raise as much money as possible has made the top tech blogger fund-raiser Fred Wilson very nervous, so much so that he impugned my kids!
Over at A VC blog, he was clearly sweating when he posted on the competitive juices flowing in the challenge, saying I was trying to turn my kids into Jerry Lewis to raise funds!
Jerry Lewis! Them’s fighting words! Anyway, try some fund-raisers more current like, say, Brangelina!
Is there no end to my groveling?
Apparently not, if it has the effect yesterday’s round of begging had by more than doubling our donor numbers and adding more than $1,500 to the AllThingsD kitty in only one day, after this post in which I egregiously use the musical stylings of Barbra Streisand to plague Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.
Whatever for? Well, it is fun, of course, but it is also for a good cause too.
Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called 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.
So far, our AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site (and you can also access it using the nifty fund-raising thermometer above, on the left rail of this site) has raised $3,520 from 16 donors.
We have passed TechCrunch in donor numbers and just nosed aside Endgadget in donation totals.
But the wily venture capitalist Fred Wilson is still on top with 36 donors and $11,247 (we don’t want Valleywag to start wagging, but we hear donating is a requirement of term-sheet signing, not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Wilson is foiling BoomTown’s genius master plan of winning the award Yahoo is sponsoring for the bloggers who inspire the most readers to give. The winner will get a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang, from whom we currently cannot get the time of day.
Wilson, like any decent VC, probably has got the phone number to Yang’s golf cart!
Well, two can play at that game!
I’m bringing in the cute kids–namely mine–to plead for donations and donors!
Remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!
To inspire you, here are the Swisher boys, only one of whom can really talk, who are not coached in any way to ask you to be generous:
Today, we post below our most pathetic video ever in our attempt to garner donations for DonorsChoose.org, using (and abusing) our favorite icon, Miss Barbra Streisand.
Last week, I wrote about October Tech Blogger Challenge on the the charity site called DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.
I picked tech projects in both San Francisco (where I live) and Washington, D.C. (where Walt Mossberg lives) and have set a goal of $25,000. So far, our AllThingsD page on the DonorsChoose site (and you can also access it using the nifty fund-raising thermometer on the left rail of the main BoomTown page here) has raised $1,928 from seven donors.
That puts us fourth, just behind Endgadget ($2,830 from 22), TechCrunch ($2,875 from eight) and the putting-us-to-shame Fred Wilson ($9,283 from 32).
We want to thank all who have given, but we’re asking for more from more now both to help the kids and also for our more nefarious purposes, which require sheer numbers.
That’s due to BoomTown’s dastardly master plan of winning the award Yahoo is giving. The company is sponsoring an award for the bloggers who inspire the most readers to give and the winner will get a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang.
Here on the Tech Leaderboard in terms of donor numbers, we are fifth (Anil Dash drops in with 14). But Fred Wilson is still leading by a mile!
Like Yang needs to have lunch with another VC!
So here is our video plea to stop this unfortunate event (and where all that will be discussed is widget valuations and real estate):
Oh how very delicious comes the news that once obstreperous Internet entrepreneur and now obstreperous Mavericks owner Mark Cuban might appear as a contestant on the guilty-pleasure television show “Dancing With the Stars.”
According to Sports Illustrated, Cuban might join–I have truly died and gone to heaven–singer Wayne Newton and “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star Jennie Garth in the reality show phenomenon, which is actually a pretty tough challenge once you get beyond all that glittery spandex tight pants flaunting and focus on the difficulty of learning how to dance that well in front of huge audiences.
Of course, the Internet chattering class has been more riveted by Cuban’s recent “fight” with VC Fred Wilson and really the whole of the digerati, after he basically said the Internet was “dead and boring” in a post on his Blog Maverick site. (Cuban is pictured above almost perfectly.)
He actually only used those terms to get people all pissed off–a typical Cuban tactic–in this post, but was actually making a great point about the Net becoming a utility and how that is a good thing.
I would agree. Just because I did not ooh and ahh over the fact that my blow dryer was powered by the electrical grid this morning does not make it any less amazing.
Should The Wall Street Journal’s paid site, WSJ.com, become free now that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has bought Dow Jones?
That debate has been all over the Web since News Corp. won its battle to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) last week, including posts by Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson in favor of the move.
But former MarketWatch head Larry Kramer disagreed, noting that his old site should be the free product, while the Journal’s content should remain premium.
Sorry, Larry, but I vote–and I know Murdoch (pictured here from a magazine spread with an Apple computer at the ready, apparently) definitely does not preside over a democracy–yes, ma’am, um, sir, for a free WSJ.com.
(And just to show this is not a kiss-up to the new boss, but a cogent analysis of the landscape for the Journal moving forward under Murdoch, here is a video interview posted below that I did in Los Angeles with Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser back in May about the possible News Corp. takeover and how I felt about the situation. Not so happy and also really wrong about Rupe’s chances of winning Dow Jones, as you will see.)
Also, I have posted many times on this subject, such as this recent piece.
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.
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.
