All Things Digital

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:

Don’t miss this video below from WSJ.com last week about AT&T (T) stores using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface table-sized touch computer to help customers, which is one of the first commercial applications of the device.

Surface actually got a demo at our D5 conference last May, but BoomTown has been partial to this very funny video spoof on the “big-assed table”:

I meant to get this very funny video about the Web sites of financial publications–from Current TV, by Viral Video Film School–posted sooner, as it made me spit up my coffee several times.

The shaggy Brett Erlich perfectly reviews the sites for the Web 2.0 crowd, making fun of WSJ.com’s soothing video intro music, and the online video stars on Forbes and Fortune (one of whom, Fortune Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer is an old classmate of mine, in fact).

The best bit is his take on the “Information Highway Traffic Jam” at the end among all us MSM types, driving like teens gone wild on the digital freeway.

Here’s the video:

WSJ.com’s Tech Diary’s Andy Jordan attends one of the geekier get-togethers ever–a LAN party, playing video games all night.

Exciting? Not!

The recession’s impact might not miss the typically high-flying Internet stocks. Or maybe it will. Or not.

Good thing Facebook and Slide got all that cash!

With a lot of companies reporting soon, here’s a video from WSJ.com to help you sort it all out:

Here’s a lovely selection of videos from the Consumer Electronics Show, taking place this week in Las Vegas, from the folks at WSJ.com. (BoomTown videos to come, of course!):

Here are two articles from The Wall Street Journal’s online site you might have missed in your holiday stupor.

One looks at the newfound fervor in India for Lord Balaji (pictured here), an incarnation of the Hindu Lord Vishnu, because of his apparent pull in getting adherents visas to the U.S. and other Western countries. Well, that’s one way to win an H-1B.

Another is a piece about investor Peter Thiel, who made the first significant investment in Facebook, and his maverick theories on how venture capitalism has to change. That includes letting entrepreneurs cash out early–praise the Lord and pass the Porsches!

(If you want to hear Thiel in action, see below the video interview BoomTown did months ago, in which he discusses his approach. And, yes, I know I say “right” too much.)

Andy Jordan of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary visits Smokey and the High-Tech Bandit!

Favorite quote when Jordan asks a trucker if he has a laptop and is misheard: “Lap Dancer? No, I’m married.”

It’s certainly a long way from CB radio–10-4, good buddy.

One of the nice things about having a blog is that I can mouth off on just about anything I want and include whatever I want too (such as, for example, shamelessly making videos of my kids in a fruitless attempt to try to cajole Yahoo’s Jerry Yang into having lunch with me).

Today, that means being able to give credit where credit is surely due. In this case, being able to thank L. Gordon Crovitz (pictured here), the outgoing publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for all he has done for both Walt Mossberg and me and all he has done for our little Dow Jones enterprises–this Web site, AllThingsD.com and our annual conference, D: All Things Digital.

Today, with the change in leadership due to the purchase of Dow Jones by News Corp., it was announced that Crovitz is leaving the company as a manager next week, although he will apparently be writing a column on media. He had run the company’s consumer media group, including the flagship Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, Barron’s and Barron’s Online, MarketWatch and the other properties.

And also its most outlying outpost, AllThingsD.com and our D conference.

Read more »

Andy Jordan of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary makes sure the cabbies in Manhattan don’t take him the long way around. New Yorkers react to taxis with GPS and other gadgety doodads:

Andys find each other online. There is a harmonica in this chapter of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary. Riveting!

The WSJ.com’s Tech Diary vlogger Andy Jordan visited the Digital Life gadget show in New York last week and gets digitally altered (including elf ears!), sees his facial hair too close up and meets way too many robots.

Here’s the video:

We were kidding last week in our post about our longtime opinion that News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch should set WSJ.com free from behind its paid wall that one way to make money was to create a number of premium services, including perhaps starting with a Walt Mossberg fan club.

Thus, we were unprepared for the plethora of people inquiring about wanting to join a real one. Sadly, this is not to be, as we’ve got a lot of other priorities around here at AllThingsD.

Nonetheless, that did not stop our friends over at Geek Culture from celebrating AllThingsWalt with this nice medallion, pictured here, which we make available free to all who want to print it out, cut around the edges and create a lovely button to wear proudly at all tech events of note.

As we have predicted (and advocated) many times in BoomTown, including in this post titled “Free to Be, Rupe and We,” News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch indicated yesterday that he is strongly considering taking down the paid wall at The Wall Street Journal’s online site.

Murdoch, the new owner of Dow Jones (and, by extension, this site too), told a crowd at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference in New York that he had not pulled the free-switch yet, but argued for the move and said he was not worried about it impacting revenue.

His argument in a nutshell: more audience=more ad dollars.

“Will you lose $50 million to $100 million in revenue?” Murdoch asked and then answered his own question. “I don’t think so. If the site is good, you’ll get much more.”

The site is good and you will get much more. I have long thought so, as I wrote in May: “I vote–and I know Murdoch definitely does not preside over a democracy–yes, ma’am, um, sir, for a free WSJ.com.”

Because, while a paid model might have been right in the past, having a larger, powerful and global owner changes the stakes considerably and allows the tremendous site to make bolder moves than ever before.

And such a move would also make the Journal more relevant on the Internet, because a paid wall has kept its content too much apart from the online conversation that is only growing exponentially.

The hit the site might take–potentially lowered ad revenue in the short term and lower ad prices in general–is a necessary one, I think, on a road to much greater prominence the site deserves. It is a risk well worth taking.

And that is not to say there are not many opportunities for premium content offerings.

Why not a paid site aimed at users seeking highly specialized news, data and information on a variety of topics? Why not offer supercharged stock-charting tools? Why not a Walt Mossberg fan club, complete with a free T-shirt (pictured below) upon becoming a member?

While Murdoch declined to drop the hammer on the subscription WSJ.com site, that move seems inevitable now, especially after the New York Times ended its dopey and irksome TimesSelect (even the name is ickily elite-sounding), which gated the best stuff behind a paid wall, effective today.

In the email I just got from them, the Times said: “Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion–as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.”

They finally got that right. News flash: Free at last.

The WSJ.com’s Tech Diary video blogger Andy Jordan tags along with one of the members of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad.”

“I’m an actual geek!” he tells one of his customers. Printer disaster! Too-hot laptop. Clip-on tie, white socks and black shoes! Fun!