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All posts tagged ‘politics’

Friday, November 6, 2009

All Is Forgiven: “It’s a Clean Slate,” Says Andreessen About Lawsuit-Mad Skype Co-Founders

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Silicon Valley legend and now VC Marc Andreessen was making the interview rounds after the settlement between the litigation-addled co-founders of Skype and all the various people they were suing was announced this morning.

In an interview with BoomTown, when asked about the aggressive legal tactics of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis that resulted in them finally seizing a stake in the Internet telephony giant by suing him and many other Silicon Valley players, Andreessen said:

“We did not take it personally. It’s a clean sheet of paper.”

Well, it is actually a torn, stained and very worn out piece of paper, but bygones!

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

“Changing the World Through the Web”: Video Interviews with Zuckerberg, Kutcher, Rospars and Shah

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Yesterday, BoomTown moderated a panel at California’s Women’s Conference titled “Changing the World Through the Web” for a crowd of several thousand people.

The panelists included Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher; Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, who leads the social networking site’s elections, breaking news and social change initiatives; Premal Shah, president of online microloan site Kiva.org; and Joe Rospars, founder and creative director of Blue State Digital and new media director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Here are video interviews I did with each of them.

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Arianna Talks About New CEO, New Local Sites and Paying for Content

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Huffington Post co-founder and blogging diva Arianna Huffington was in Berkeley this past weekend keynoting at the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp 2009.

So, BoomTown took the opportunity to motor over the Bay Bridge to catch Huffington on video between sessions about all the big changes at the news Web site of late, including a new CEO and local New York site.

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

“Inane and Half-Baked” Twitter Is the Forrest Gump of International Relations

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In what is quite possibly the most spot-on comment about Twitter that BoomTown has heard thus far, Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said about its use by Iranians protesting the election results there:

“It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.”

In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Dear Dad: You Lost the Election Because the GOP FailWhaled on the Web

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Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.

BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.

Well, there she goes again!

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Monday, December 1, 2008

Huffington Post Nabs $25 Million in Funding–Here’s a BoomTown Interview With Oak Investment’s Fred Harman

The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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Monday, September 15, 2008

As Promised–Tina Fey as Sarah Palin as Tina Fey…

While you might have seen it everywhere by now, BoomTown promised this would actually be the last post of the multitude of video spoofs about Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that have popped up on the Web of late.

Thus, here is Tina Fey’s version–which, as I expected, is the best–of Palin on “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend. She is joined by Amy Poehler, who does a perfect slow-burn impression of New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

It will doubtless be the most popular video online this week.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Miss BoomTown Goes to Washington (Of Course, for MicroHoo Plus Google)

Today, BoomTown boards the Acela Express from New York’s Penn Station to D.C.’s Union Station to attend the Senate hearing on the Yahoo agreement with Google to outsource some of its ad search business.

Titled rather ominously, “The Google-Yahoo Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising,” the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights (eek!) will hear testimony at 10:30 a.m. at the Dirksen Senate Office Building from a passel of Internet reps, including those from Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The Entire D6 Interview With News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (4 of 6)

Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 4 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

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Monday, June 30, 2008

The Entire D6 Interview With News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (Part 1 of 6)

Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 1 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hillary + Barack + Microsoft + Yahoo = W*A*S*H

So, as is BoomTown’s patriotic duty, I was watching the returns come in from Pennsylvania in the draggy war that has become the quest for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as I also pondered what would happen next in the even draggier Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.
Then a [...]

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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

“Obama Girl” Swings at Hillary Clinton and Misses

Here’s the latest “Obama Girl” video from the folks at Barely Political, in which our-lady-of-obsession takes aim at Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential candidate rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In it, she urges Clinton to stop being so mean to Obama and also to step down from the race in a kind of tsk-tsk style. There is some awkward digital hugging.

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Monday, March 3, 2008

Yahoo Tech Ticker: BoomTown Should Stay Out of Politics

As you can see from this video, BoomTown should stick to poking at Yahoo’s business plans, rather than talking to its very sharp Sarah Lacy of Yahoo Finance’s new Tech Ticker site.
Some material from AllThingsD appears on Tech Ticker from time to time, linking back to our site. And BoomTown was invited to talk about [...]

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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Super Tuesday: Turn and Face the Strain (of All That Political Rhetoric)

Why I do I love the Internet? Because one online video can encapsulate and send up all the political noise instantly, that’s why.
So as you vote (and whoever you prefer, most definitely get out and vote), try to remember that it is all about ch-ch-ch-ch-changes:

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

PoliticoPlaybook TV: The State of the Union as High School Musical

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.
Sure, James Kotecki is no Jon Stewart and is a bit goofy in an endearing preppy style as announcer.
But his short video recaps of politics with a touch of sweet snark for [...]

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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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