The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”
That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.
Canesta demoed the new technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menus, at the seventh D: All Things Digital.
Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.
In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture NBC launched with News Corp.; and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”
As most know by now, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the software giant’s relaunch of its search offering, dubbed Bing, onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.
You can see that here, as well as Ballmer demoing the product, which is Microsoft’s biggest and priciest attempt yet to catch archrival Google and Yahoo in the search business.
It is a market where the typically dominant Microsoft is a mouse in comparison. But, no surprise, that did not stop Ballmer from doing some roaring about Bing.
What can one say about Mark Cuban that he can’t say himself?
Not much, as you will see from this sassy onstage interview he did with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, where he talked about everything from the idiots of the Internet to the subsidization of Web video by Google.
Last week, after much delay, longtime Internet exec Julius Genachowski was confirmed by the Senate as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
It is an important role for the future development of the Web, of course, although it took a dog’s age into the new Democratic administration to approve him.
Hopefully, he and the other commissioners can soon get to work on a wide range of major digital issues, such as a national broadband plan that does not cost Americans a fortune.
Over the last weeks, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta have had their hands full directing massive layoffs at the flagship social-networking site, as well as throughout the Fox Interactive Media division.
The pair discussed the many challenges faced by the giant media company in its digital enterprises in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last month.
BoomTown is at the lovely Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley at the 2009 Yahoo annual meeting, liveblogging the event, which should be spectacularly dull.
Here is a rundown of what went on.
10:05 am: The meeting kicks off with a little video presentation with various and sundry television talking heads saying “Yahoo” in quick succession.
Actually, this was the year during which all of those hype-magnets repeated “Twitter” so many times that it has began to make my ears bleed.
But I like the spirit of trying to make Yahoo seem relevant and innovative again.
Immersion is the company behind haptic, or touch feedback, technology for some videogame consoles and cellphones.
At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Immersion demoed its TouchSense for touchscreen keyboards and Immersive Messaging.
In what many sources at the company said is a major push, Yahoo is working on a massive plan to overhaul its brand in order to repair a damaged public image and focus consumers on what defines Yahoo.
The effort is being spearheaded by newly installed Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele, who has hired well-known brand consulting firm Landor Associates, as well as an outside consultant named Penny Baldwin, who was a former top exec at brand and ad giant Young & Rubicam.
As President and CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo runs the world’s largest mobile phone maker, a hard won and enviable position. But new rivals like Apple and Research in Motion are gaining market share with innovative touchscreens and apps, features that Nokia has been late to the smartphone party with.
Kallasvuo talks about all this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.
Reading books and newspapers on a handheld device has gotten to be a hot arena in the consumer electronics business, especially after the introduction of the Kindle from Amazon.
Plastic Logic will come on the market next year with its e-reader offering, so the Silicon Valley-based company gave a sneak preview of the device, including a first look at the gadget’s innovative touchscreen user interface.
Look ma, no keyboard!
We kick off the week of full posts of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO of Research in Motion, which is best known as the maker of the BlackBerry.
Lazaridis has been key to developing the BlackBerry smartphone, which means he is directly responsible for the CrackBerry problem too. And it means he’s in the thick of the new handheld platform wars.
BoomTown once asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer if the software giant was ever going to be able to catch No. 1 Google in market share in the increasingly lucrative search arena–despite years of trying and billions in investment in its Web businesses overall.
“We don’t actually have to catch the leader,” answered the pugnacious tech leader. “We just have to surpass the No. 2 to have a great business.”
No. 2 is Yahoo. And now, with a recently revamped search offering called Bing showing some promising signs, Ballmer shot another one across its bow by telling an audience yesterday that he was ready to spend billions more to win the race.
Onstage in an interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Eve Ensler shed much-needed light on the dire situation in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ensler’s aim is to end the use of rape as a weapon of war there, in part as a consequence of the region’s coltan trade. Coltan, or columbite tantalite, is a mineral essential to the manufacture of a wide array of consumer electronics, such as mobile phones and laptops.
It is well worth hearing about exactly how some of our everyday gadgets come to us at a terrible price.
Yes, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did indeed drop the F-bomb on BoomTown quite expertly in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and, yes, it was both expected and enjoyable.
(In this picture, she is clearly trying to hypnotize me with her stare.)
But that’s not all the voluble leader of the long-troubled Internet company said in what was a sassy, funny and very lively session at D7, where she talked about a lot of topics, from Microsoft to Google to the state of the advertising market in the weak economy.
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. Read more »
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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