All Things Digital

BoomTown has officially selected The Mechanical Zoo–a super-secret-shhh-onthedownlow start-up that already got tons of attention due to its passel of ex-Googlers and its mashup plan to mix social and search–as its next candidate for excessive Web 2.0 funding.

And, according to several sources, the San Francisco-based company is working on closing a mega-Series-A round right now, with all the usual big VC suspects in the running.

The Mechanical Zoo has already raised $750,000 in seed funding from angel investors and has access to other funding from institutional investors.

I am not sure as yet how much and at what valuation any new round will be pegged, but sources said it is likely to be larger than is typical this early in the game.

Why? Well, a hot concept and the fact that The Mechanical Zoo has the fancy team of pedigreed geeks–including former Google (GOOG) News product head Nathan Stoll and CEO Max Ventilla, another ex-Googler, along with other prominent techies.

Its first product offering is an invitation-only alpha version of a “subjective search” application that is inexplicably called Aardvark (see the graphic below; click on it to make it larger).

The motto on the site says: “Just ask. Someone knows. Aardvark connects you on the spot.”

It also notes:

“For information you can trust, a person is better than a webpage.

Tap into the knowledge and experience of the tens of thousands of people in your network–friends, people your friends trust, classmates and co-workers.

Send Aardvark a message by IM or Email and Aardvark will find the one person who can help you out, in the moment.”

The Mechanical Zoo site says its first product will be released this fall.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Let’s be honest–the tech media this week will be all about Apple’s (AAPL) newest 3G iPhone, which is set to be released into the wild on Friday.

So let’s get an early start, shall we?

And what better way than re-posting BoomTown’s videos from the maiden launch of the JesusPhone, which took place just a tiny bit over a year ago.

As I wrote then:

The big question for me is: What will all the iPhonatics do after the much-hyped iPhone from Apple debuts this Friday to continue to feed their state of expectant euphoria?

iPhone 2.0!

But until then, we might as well wallow in it.”

Indeed! More wallowing is definitely in order then!

So, here is a trio of videos: the first taken at San Francisco’s Apple store last year; the second at Palo Alto’s; and the third that proves, well, that the first iPhone sure can blend!

The Giant iPhone of San Francisco:

iDay in Palo Alto

Will the iPhone Blend?

With all the Yahoo (YHOO) reorganization noise this past week–full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, if you want to go all literary!–BoomTown had little time to post our video on GigaOm’s Om Malik’s Structure 08 conference on Wednesday.

Held at the spanking new Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, it was high-wonk, packed with CTOs and those involved in building the guts of the Internet and its infrastructure, whose jobs are becoming more complicated than ever as Internet usage booms.

Malik thinks this unprecedented growth is putting a lot of stress on the system, akin to the physical wear-and-tear our nation’s roads and bridges are under.

As he wrote: “The platforms on which we have done business for over a decade are starting to provide diminishing returns; the smart money, meanwhile, is seeking new platform structures.”

Thus, lots of talk about how to manage the potential crisis, such as the move toward cloud computing, databases in the sky and other stuff that is way, way over BoomTown’s head.

Nonetheless, we press on, because it is our solemn duty to understand dark fiber someday soon.

Here’s the video, including interviews with Malik, WordPress’s Raanan Bar-Cohen and NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson:

Oh the sweet irony of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting awarded a big round glass object, suitable for mantel-showing-off, from Harvard types.

Especially since he is now the school’s second most famous tech mogul dropout–after Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

But that was the case last night at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency, where the 24-year-old Zuckerberg collected the 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.

As is required at dinners like this, Zuckerberg had to sing for his supper in a post-meal interview about the hot social-networking site’s past and future.

At first, he did clarify that he was technically “on leave” from Harvard, as Gates also is, which the crowd loved.

(But, memo to Harvard Yard: Neither Gates nor Zuckerberg is coming back, so don’t leave the lights on.)

Zuckerberg (pictured here with me) also used the term “share information” in the interview, perhaps even more than he did onstage when I interviewed him at the D: All Things Digital conference last month.

And so much so that it could be the basis for a raucous drinking game where you take a shot every time he says “share information,” which would make you dangerously inebriated within 56 seconds.

Zuckerberg also strongly reiterated his statement that Facebook was not for sale, which is especially important now that it looks like a tastier treat to Microsoft (MSFT), in the wake of its failed takeover of Yahoo (YHOO).

But Zuckerberg specifically nixed a sale to Microsoft, which invested $240 million in Facebook and gave it its infamous $15 billion valuation.

He was joined onstage by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg–who is an academically scary double whammy, holding a master’s degree in business administration with highest distinction from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University.

Plus Sandberg has a really effective hairy eyeball that she used to stop me from stalking her or Zuckerberg with my Flip camera.

Still, BoomTown managed to get some video of those attending the event, which was heavy with tech types.

My various quarry dispensed business advice, all while I mocked Harvard (lovingly, so don’t gripe that I am envious–am not).

So, here’s my video of last night’s event, which includes: Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba (HBS); Facebook’s Ben Ling (not Harvard) and Elliot Schrage (Harvard undergrad, masters, law!); Greylock Partners’ James Slavet (HBS) and David Sze (horrors–Yale!); Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer (HBS); and the glass award itself (totally HBS!).

And, once again, here’s Zuckerberg and Sandberg in action, somehow withstanding my withering questions at D6:

Part One

Part Two

Today, Mike Homer, as well as many others suffering from incurable degenerative brain disease and dementias, will get a new video-sharing channel on YouTube (GOOG), along with a Web site and an interactive widget.

Last year, BoomTown wrote about the struggle of Homer, the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur (pictured here; I met him in the mid-1990s, when he was an exec at Netscape).

Unfortunately, Homer continues to suffer from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), for which he is under treatment at the University of California at San Francisco.

“The Fight for Mike” has raised $7 million for CJD at UCSF, where Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner–who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering the prion protein that causes CJD–is working on a major project aimed at defeating neurodegenerative diseases.

Now comes a unique collaboration between YouTube and the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, organized by two well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Ron Conway and Bill Campbell, with the help of YouTube Co-Founder Chad Hurley.

Conway and Campbell, along with the Homer family, have led the efforts to help find a cure for Homer.

Naturally, given Homer’s background, a digital initiative was inevitable.

Thus, the new project is the kick-off of the Memory and Aging Center’s “Defeat Dementia” campaign at UCSF, which is trying to use the Web and other digital technologies to help find new ways to get information out about public health issues.

Along with CJD, the YouTube effort will also focus on Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Parkinson’s, ALS and Alzheimer’s and try to engage the public and the medical community in a search for the causes and cures of these debilitating neurodegenerative conditions.

On the channel: videos of clinical-researchers and physicians discussing characteristics of the diseases; personal stories of patients and family members; and videos featuring advice and coping strategies from health-care professionals.

There is also now a Defeat Dementia Facebook group on the topic, and UCSF also has a partnership with Veodia.

Here is a video I did with Conway this week about the effort:

This 60-second video version of Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs’s keynote speech by Mahalo Daily earlier this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, mostly about the iPhone 3G, just cracks BoomTown up and is actually pretty informative.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the classic stylings of Apple’s Steve Jobs, showing off the iPhone 3G, from the keynote today at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Yes, those are actual oohs and ahs from the audience, which includes a massive passel of press, as if Jobs was showing them the secret to eternal happiness (which is, by the way, not a new iPhone, but a dozen tasty donuts).

Here’s the video from MarketWatch on WSJ.com:

John “Patches” Paczkowski live-blogged from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference today in San Francisco, featuring yet another much-anticipated–are there any that are not?–keynote by the company’s leader, Steve Jobs.

Thus, BoomTown got our Digital Daily scribe’s take on the event, where new features and other pretty-shiny-things–mostly related to the new iPhone 3G–were unveiled by Jobs, in a video below shot at ATD HQ (and where our neighbors are doing entirely too much noisy construction).

Also, if you want to know more, Walt Mossberg Mossblogged his first impressions of the updated device here.

Here’s the video with John:

Hey, BoomTown just heard that Apple (AAPL) is having some kind of conference for its developers today and there will be–what is the name they are calling it?–a “keynote” by some guy named Steve.

Blah, blah, blah on some new iPhone with three Gs. With GPS, video recording, more space, a better camera and an ability to beam you up to the Starship Enterprise.

OK, OK, for those not under a rock over the last several weeks, Apple leader Steve Jobs takes the stage for his much-expected keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference at San Francisco’s Moscone West, starting at 10 a.m. PDT.

In other words, Twitter should be completely collapsing at 10:01 a.m., under the weight of 1,265,452,983 tweeting fanboys (and girls too) going into digital ecstasy at Jobs’s every utterance, all hanging on for the detailed details and, you guessed it, one more thing!

AllThingsD will also be there live too, in the form of Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, who will be blogging right from the WWDC keynote.

And Walt Mossberg is also in town, so BoomTown will try to corner him and Paczkowski after the Jobs speech with our new Mino video camera from Pure Digital to find out about iPhone’s beam-me-up-Scotty feature.

Until then, please enjoy this less-than-impressed-with-the-iPhone piece by Dan Gillmor in Voices today. Apple fans fire away, as Dan likes a good debate!

Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0’s fight for their right to party.

Last night, it was quite a festive mood, as a mess o’ tech press and a bunch of digital movers and shakers showed up at OutCast Communications’ Seventh Annual CEO Dinner, held in the Grand Hall of San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building.

Big clients of OutCast include Facebook and Yahoo, as well as a lot of hyper-trendy start-ups.

Here is a lovely video I did, featuring OutCast’s T.J. Snyder and Margit Wennmachers, investor Ron “Sister Woman” Conway, Yahoo (YHOO) communications czar Brad Garlinghouse and PR’s Nicki Dugan, Facebook’s Brandee Barker, VC Stewart Alsop and the incomprehensibly iPhone-addled Robert Scoble:

Recently, BoomTown, along with a passel of press, was invited to an outreach dinner, set to be held on June 9 at a San Francisco venue, with some top Yahoo (YHOO) execs.

This was somewhat of a big deal, given the typically cave-dwelling mentality of the company in recent days, due to the drama of the Microsoft (MSFT) takeover bid that has jacked Yahoo’s typically skittish approach to press relations up to dangerously shy levels.

Thus, the appearance of a herd of important ones felt epic: Network head Jeff Weiner, along with a trio of SVPs–Front Door and Network Services’ Tapan Bhat, Brad Garlinghouse, who heads Yahoo’s communications and communities arenas, and Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani.

The point? To talk up all the various initiatives at the company and to try to focus on the actual operating units, rather than the endless MicroHoo drama that has consumed every little bit of mindshare related to Yahoo.

The operating units at Yahoo have, in fact, been largely kept out of the acquisition maelstrom, except for being drawn in to comment on the feasibility of various schemes like a Google (GOOG) search-ad outsourcing deal.

Then the dinner was canceled last week suddenly, with organizers blaming scheduling issues.

That move set tongues wagging at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ, of course, and sources inside the company began to pepper BoomTown with two key theories.

The first: That Yahoo was very close to a deal with Microsoft, which could come over the weekend, and therefore it did not want to be trotting key execs in front of the press at what might be a delicate time.

While the cancellation of the dinner apparently came from corporate, at this moment–which could change at any moment, of course–that seems unlikely.

While many feel like Microsoft’s only way to best rival Google is to renew its efforts to buy Yahoo and is the only true option that would give the software giant any kind of real scale in the search arena, several sources told me that Microsoft is currently in a wait-and-see holding pattern as it considers its various alternatives.

“Microsoft is in no rush with Carl Icahn doing all the heavy lifting,” said one source, referring to the hopping-mad billionaire investor who is waging a proxy fight against Yahoo.

Another said the company is in a deep evaluation mode on what to do with plenty of time to contemplate its options, especially since Microsoft now has major Yahoo shareholders pining for a $33 per share price, rather than the higher figures once bandied about.

And, except for the threat of a Yahoo-Google search-ad hookup, which has been pending for a while, noted the source, “[CEO Steve] Ballmer does not have to move yet.”

BoomTown, of course, has disagreed with this strolling-in-the-park mentality, because if Microsoft is truly committed to the online ad space, it has to just take a flyer and buy Yahoo.

But an even more intriguing second theory surrounded Weiner (pictured here), the high-profile exec who is in charge of Yahoo’s many products from content to email to search to communities.

Several execs at Yahoo suggested to me that the reason for the cancellation was because he might be on his way out the door soon, a rumor that was started when Weiner took two weeks off upon the recent birth of his first child (Hey, congrats! Try to get sleep before colic starts in!) and then extended the leave two more weeks.

But after a bit of BoomTown sleuthing, it seems that a Weiner departure is not imminent–at least for now–and that he is likely to be back on the job after he perfects the art of swaddling. (Some advice for Jeff: Surrender now.)

But the notion of what the future holds for high-ranking execs like Weiner got me thinking that it is likely Yahoo will have to grapple with the issue more seriously in the coming months.

And the question of how Yahoo is going to hang onto top talent–while it sits in what is essentially a limbo until its August board meeting resolves the Icahn fight–is a very important one going forward.

Because if Yahoo manages to remain largely independent, there will still be the nagging question of who should be the leaders of the company, especially given the buzzsaw that CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker have been and will continue to go through.

And, if it gets bought, likely by Microsoft, a lot of key execs will obviously be faxing off their resumes, despite what are likely to be huge retention packages.

In both cases too, one must factor in sheer exhaustion brought on by the turmoil among the Yahoo troops, which cannot be underscored enough.

In many more conversations I have had with employees of late, there is a decided increase in the weariness factor with the situation and a feeling that the road ahead will be even more daunting.

And how to overcome that will be perhaps the greatest mystery of all for Yahoo’s leadership to solve going forward.

Thanks to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington for pointing us to “Weekend King,” a San Francisco-made movie, which sounds just delicious from the trailer below.

It’s about a repulsive but rich computer programmer named Rupert Coleman from Silicon Valley who buys a bankrupt town in Utah and hopes to become its beloved ruler.

High jinks and heart-warming life lessons ensue, of course!

Arrington thought it sounded “sappy,” which it does, but BoomTown went all soft and melty in the middle over the idea of it.

Why? True story: Once, while at a party in 1999 talking with a well-known Web billionaire, sick of the excess, I suggested that he take a ton of his Web 1.0 bubble money and buy a village or town somewhere and dude it up with all sorts of cool stuff like free everything.

The catch? Require the citizens to rename it after him and hold an annual parade dedicated to his glorious accomplishments.

He demurred (No, it was not Mark Cuban, because he’d have totally done it!), much to my disappointment, so you can see why I love the idea of this movie.

(In the latest excessive Web 2.0 bubble, my new request of an Internet multi-billionaire recently was to convince him to try to become best friends with Brangelina and brood by dangling the plane and donations galore to worthy causes and free babysitting forever. Again, no luck.)

Here’s the video:

In another micro-move in the fight between activist shareholders and CNET, the Delaware Supreme Court has given the thumbs-up to a lower court ruling that the Jana Partners group can nominate a slate of directors to the board of the San Francisco-based tech news and reviews site.

CNET (CNET) has been fighting these efforts by Jana–along with Sandell Asset Management, Alex Interactive Media, Spark Capital and Velocity Interactive Group–to nominate two directors and expand the board and add more of their own nominees–claiming it was contrary to its bylaws.

Apparently not!

Read more »

Since I posted an interview with Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar today on the announcement of his $15 million funding, it seems only sporting to post this lively video interview I also did with his main competitor, Mark Pincus of Zynga, recently too.

Zynga, named after Pincus’s dog, is one of the two main social-gaming networks that are competing for audience by offering highly interactive games of all kinds. Its aim is to be more engaging and create a series of addictive games that users will return to again and again.

Pincus, who also founded the Tribe social-networking site, is a longtime entrepreneur. I met him way back when as a reporter at the Washington Post when he and Sunil Paul launched one of the few start-ups–Freeloader–in the D.C. area.

And I can report that Pincus is as jumpy and energetic today as he was 15 years ago.

He has certainly been busy lining up a spate of fancy investors, garnering $10 million in funding in January, including from: Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.

Zynga, which is larger than rival SGN, claims 2.3 million total daily active users across Facebook, with its Texas Hold’em game being the largest it offers. Other games include Sea Wars, Blackjack, Attack! and Scramble.

As I said in my SGN post, while BoomTown often makes fun of viral apps, most of which are faddish and juvenile, the better-made gaming apps actually are likely to be a real business over time, as long they remain engaging and fun to play as the classic real-life games are.

Zynga plans on making money through ads, including creating its own ad network for other gamers, as well as via the sale of virtual goods and premium offerings.

Here’s a chat with Pincus at Zynga’s offices (Pincus owns the building, by the way, which also houses a bunch of other Web 2.0 start-ups) in San Francisco:

BoomTown was the first to put up the hugely popular spoof video called “Here Comes Another Bubble,” by the San Francisco-based Richter Scales.

And, the first to report on the controversial story of it then being taken down by YouTube (GOOG), in a fight the group had with a local photographer, Lane Hartwell, who objected to the use of a photo she took that was in the video without her permission or payment to her for its use.

The Hartwell photo was removed, and the copyright controversy eventually died down. And the video still remains very funny and even more realistic than ever, given the series of crazy Web 2.0 funding valuations of late.

And now “Bubble”–which opens with a BoomTown interview with investor Peter Thiel, who denies such a thing as a bubble in tech–has won a Webby Award for Best Viral Video.

Well, congrats to the creators of the video, which mocks the current Silicon Valley culture with affection, set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”: