All Things Digital

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my partner Walt Mossberg and me.

D6 tech and media speakers include: Microsoft Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT); News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch; Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX); Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo (YHOO), and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

The pairing should make for a lively session, given all the heat around Yahoo of late, largely related to the scuttled attempt by Microsoft to buy the company.

What would you like to know about that and anything else about Yahoo?

As it so happens, you can ask!

While the conference is sold out, you can submit questions that you would like answered to Yang and Decker or any of the speakers via text or video. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose.

Ask early and often here!

In addition, the whole conference will be online at AllThingsD during the conference, via live blogs and reports of breaking news (and there will be breaking news, as there always is), along with video highlights.

And videos of all the interviews will be posted soon after it is over.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD’s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5:

Oh, it has been kind of easy to write off the digital video recording icon, hasn’t it, as cute as bouncy little TiVo guy is and as much as you’ve gotten to secretly like that “doink” noise it makes?

But, as it has turned out, TiVo has been on a bit of a tear lately for a has-been, with a series of new partnerships and innovations that have created a stir around the long-struggling company.

So, BoomTown thought it was time for a video check-in with CEO Tom Rogers, which took place yesterday near TiVo’s Alviso, Calif., HQ:

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Despite the progress of digital video recording pioneer TiVo in reviving its business, the goal of getting Internet programming on your television set for it and many other players is still an uphill battle, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield in an article yesterday.

Why? Um, it’s still a minefield out there for the dogged companies trying to do so (i.e., everyone), even though there is a huge boom–billions and billions served and more to come–in watching such fare on the computer.

Wingfield lists five key problems: Too many boxes; too complicated (we can relate); high prices; not enough content; and basic slowness of downloads and streaming.

Here’s a video about the issues:

Here’s a nice MarketWatch interview with RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser on the recent deal to let users of its Rhapsody music subscription service access it on TiVo:

Today, the folks from Hillcrest Labs visited me at my home to show off their latest version of what they call an “operating system for the television,” which they had first shown off as a demo at the D3 in May 2005. The Rockville, Md.-based company is one of many trying to reinvent the television navigation experience, complete with a remote control that is a round, motion-controlled device called the “Loop,” pictured here (and you can also see the pictures and video of the Hillcrest demo at D3 here).

Their visually based navigation system, which swoops in and out like a helicopter, is an attempt to free the consumer from the onerous and frustrating grid system that has used up too many minutes of consumers’ life. The centerpiece is obviously the Loop, which is moved about in the air somewhat like a mouse on a desktop and with only a few buttons and scroll wheel. It is certainly a welcome change from other remotes, most of which require you to have a degree in astrophysics to understand properly. I will be interviewing Hillcrest CEO Dan Simpkins again with others at a panel at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s annual show next Monday afternoon in Las Vegas, called “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from the iPod: Defining the Consumer Experience.”

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AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski does a most excellent job in his Digital Daily posts and video, but here is some stuff I have found interesting perusing the Web at the start of what is already a busy week. While most were opining on Yahoo’s acquisition of the rest of Right Media (it bought 20% of the online ad exchange last October) for $680 million in cash and stock, it had to be one of the least surprising deals, in the wake of Google’s $3.1 billion payout for DoubleClick earlier this month.

So I was more interested in the Washington Post’s follow-up of NBC’s controversial decision to air the self-made video of the Virginia Tech gunman in an interview with NBC News President Steve Capus. Written by media reporter Howard Kurtz, it gives a lot of background of Capus’s career and, of course, hashes over the reasoning for putting on TV the rantings of an obviously disturbed killer, for which NBC was assailed from all sides. “I’m stunned that people bang down our door at one moment,” he told Kurtz, “demanding we release it uninterrupted and without filter–then question whether it should have been released in the first place…I’m just stunned at the depths of absurdity and hypocrisy.” Welcome to the new digital world, Mr. Capus. In fact, there was likely not even a decision to be made for the longtime television pro–in the age of YouTube, that video was going up no matter what.

The New York Times brought tears of joy to my eyes with the news that Sony Television will soon be airing something called “minisodes” on a new Web service called, wait for it, the Minisode Network (log-in required). The shows will distill old shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” “T. J. Hooker” and “Starsky and Hutch” to three- to five-minute clips, which somehow seems perfect given their hokey formulaic perfection. The mini-shows will be offered exclusively on MySpace at first, which is about the most perfect audience for dumbed-down dumb shows.

Speaking of short and sweet, Om Malik’s got a great mini-essay on why Hollywood needs to embrace the plethora of video-downloading services springing up on the Internet–its DVD business is waning. But it might not go so well for the studios in the end, writes Malik quite correctly: “Imagine if you could rent a movie, decide you don’t like it that much, and decide to forego the DVD purchase. Now that would be an oh-s— moment!”

And there are plenty of those kind of moments in the short, rough and oddly compelling mini-movies that Rosie O’Donnell has been posting recently on her unusual blog. Once a lot of text haiku-like ruminations of the controversial television personality, the movies bring you up close and personal with O’Donnell, who sometimes is half out of the frame getting her hair done as she answers reader mail while using only her iSight camera. “It’s working, it’s working,” she says as she taps on the keys of the computer. Indeed, it does work and makes me wonder if O’Donnell really needs any TV network (except, of course, for that big bag of money they offer).

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