Here are the three new Apple commercials trying to take a smack at the launch of Windows 7, the new operating system from Microsoft.
The “Get a Mac” advertising features the PC and Mac guys, as usual, but are quite a bit meaner than usual.
The legal high jinks in the contentious battle over the fate of Skype got worse this afternoon, as former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the founders of Skype–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, via Joost and Joltid–against them.
It’s yet another chess move among a group of well-known tech players, who used to work together closely and are now at odds.
Perhaps the sides in the ever-escalating war over the Skype deal will work out their differences and settle–which is what should and probably will eventually happen after everyone realizes how stupid all this noisy legal wrangling over the Internet telephony giant is.
But that day is decidedly not today, given a pair of recent big-gun PR hires by parties involved.
Since the beginning of the year, Apple shares have more than doubled from $90.75 on Jan. 2 to almost $186 today.
Google has done about half that performance, while Microsoft has done one-third.
But that’s apparently not enough, according to Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid, who has raised his price target on Apple to $210 from $180.
BoomTown is getting dizzy.
This week, BoomTown has found an interesting chart to peruse about the loyalty people have for their smart-phone apps.
The takeaway for developers: Try to stay in Quadrant I!
In other words, Sally-Field-at-the-Oscars territory–it’s where they love you, they really love you.
Maggie Wilderotter, a Yahoo director who was once under consideration to be its CEO, has told the company she intends to resign from the board at the end of the year.
She has served on the Yahoo board since mid-2007, during its most tumultuous period ever.
Wilderotter is CEO of Frontier Communications, a large telecom services company. Her departure means Yahoo will only have one women on the board–CEO Carol Bartz.
Another high-ranking Yahoo exec is leaving–this time, Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships.
Schinella announced the move internally last week, telling staff he would stay on until the end of the year.
Located in New York, he has been focused on strategic deals with big Yahoo partners.
Here’s a lovely video BoomTown did last night at our All Things Digital annual BBQ, at which the crackerjack team at our little rogue operation inside Dow Jones goes analog, gnaws on some ribs and trades tech tales.
Last night, of course, much of the chatter was about what went down at the Apple event in San Francisco yesterday, at which CEO and Supreme Leader Steve Jobs made a grand reappearance onstage after a liver transplant.
Walt Mossberg and Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski were there and give their spicy reports.
Oh, BoomTown fears this is not going to end well for the weensy little smart phone Palm is debuting today on–what an amazing coincidence!–the very same day Apple is throwing its big product bash in San Francisco, at which Mac fanboys fervently hope that Supreme Leader Steve Jobs might even appear.
You don’t step on Superman of Silicon Valley’s cape, of course, but the device with the aggressively cute name of Pixi is apparently attempting just that.
Thus, this fairytale might have a not-so-happy ending.
Longtime Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.
As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending, although it seems more frantic than ever of late.
In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman and CEO Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference, and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”
Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.
Garlinghouse, who will remain on the West Coast, will be named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.
He will also be, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, its “CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”
Last night, “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer” aired a piece on “how technology companies are innovating amid the recession by designing popular new smart phone applications.”
BoomTown was to talk about how perhaps not all of the 65,000 apps being created by legions of third-party developers for the Apple iPhone will result in gold, diamonds and unicorns raining down on entrepreneurs.
Oddly enough, I somehow went all Jules Verne at the end and started talking about screens on coffee tables, so I am obviously just as bad.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave what he just had to know would be a much quoted comment to the Nikkei today, explicitly saying that the company had “begun seriously looking into acquisitions again.”
Music to the beleaguered mergers and acquisitions market, to be sure, especially after a recent uptick from other big companies pulling out their wallets again as the impact of the econalypse subsides.
According to sources, Google is working on at least a half-dozen acquisition deals, most of which are small start-ups in the online advertising and cloud-computing arenas.
That would be welcome news for many.
As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs about tech to send them to me pronto.
I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. A closet pie-charter.
(I also love pie.)
Thus, here are a few comparing some stats about development for the iPhone from Apple and the Android from Google, from Flurry Analytics.
BoomTown is certainly going to be one of the many-so-many who will immediately fork over whatever it takes to get my mitts on the upcoming tablet device from Apple.
And that’s why, according to a new report from Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster–who is monk-like in his devotion to writing down every scrap he can about whatever Apple HQ in Cupertino, Calif., deigns to release–it’s going to be raining money down on the company, just like manna from heaven.
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.
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