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BoomTown

Friday, June 5, 2009

Twitter’s a Big Baby! Apple iPhone’s AT&T Problem! MySpace’s Blues! No One’s Gonna Pay for This Blog! Poll-Crazy at D7

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Hey, politicians aren’t the only ones who get to do fancy polls!

Walt and I had a bunch of them about a variety of tech topics that we pulled out to ambush, ooops, pose to speakers at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference last week, which we commissioned from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates.

Check our our lovely graphs here.

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Visit ATD’s New Featured Pages: Pre, D7 Speakers and More to Come!

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If you want to know about All Things Pre on All Things D, then we’ve got a page just for you.

While you can use our search to find out about the coverage our crack staff has done about the new smart phone from Palm, for example, you can also just jump over our special “featured” pages we are now offering.

Essentially, they are mini-sites that automatically grab content–posts, reviews, pictures, quotes and video–from all over ATD and put it into one attractive package.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Curse Heard Round the Globe–Well, Actually, Just the Web, But It’s a Start for Yahoo

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San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien made a lot of humorous hay at the expense of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz yesterday, in a joke piece called: “Bartz Unveils New &*%! Strategy for Yahoo.”

O’Brien cleverly created a fictional transcript of a Yahoo staff meeting where Bartz–by now, well-known for her salty language–lets loose in an address about just how sick she was of competitors getting all the good press: “So we’re re-branding the company around excessive use of profanity. Our new marketing slogan will be, ‘Yahoo, (expletive) yeah!’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Why Robert Scoble Is Wronger About “2010 Web”: A BoomTown Translation!

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Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

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Monday, June 1, 2009

More Mark Cuban (Trapped in the Green Room at D7 with BoomTown and the Flip Video Camera)!

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Last week, Walt Mossberg and I interviewed entrepreneur, high-definition television fanboy, dancing fool and reliable gadfly Mark Cuban at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

After our onstage interview, BoomTown also got him to be more specific about his thoughts on a variety of things he discussed, including Google’s underwriting of its YouTube video subsidiary, the problems with broadband and the Internet as a “utility.”

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Bartz and Ballmer Meet One-on-One Again at D7

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had yet another one-on-one meeting yesterday evening at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., said several sources, in ongoing discussions about a search and advertising partnership.

In addition, top deal execs from both Yahoo and Microsoft continued their talks, including Yahoo U.S. head Hilary Schneider and top Microsoft digital exec Yusuf Mehdi.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

D-Day: In the Seventh Year, We Didn’t Rest (Mostly Because of Meetings)

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We launch the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., today, after a long weekend of preparations and way too many meetings, as you can see in the video below.

(Including packing the mountain of swag bags for attendees, upon which one of my kids sits in this photo.)

The conference kicks off with an evening interview tonight with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

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Monday, May 25, 2009

A Long Weekend’s Journey Into (D7) Flight!

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Incredibly, the seventh D: All Things Digital conference begins tomorrow night, after a year of preparation, as we raced to the finish line this past weekend.

Here is a video I did as we get ready, including: my mother being perplexed by Twitter (which will be fodder for a good question for co-founders Evan Williams and BIz Stone on opening night of D7 tomorrow); my assistant, Ed, getting threaded; our first D commercial by my friend and also new Fox star Jane Lynch of “Glee” (incredibly, we realized that she and I now both work for Rupert Murdoch); and a short primer on this year’s show by my terrific partner, Walt Mossberg.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Off to D7: The More Things Change, the More They, Well, Are A-Changin’

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BoomTown will be driving the minivan–packed with my assistant Ed, my mom, two mannequins (don’t ask), a coffee machine and lots of coffee and some very nice outfits–down to the seventh D: All Things Digital conference today, so don’t expect much in the way of posts from me.

Thus, I hope Twitter doesn’t sell to [fill in the blank], Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer don’t agree to agree (until they are on the D stage next week) and Facebook’s valuation doesn’t ricochet up and down the blog-hyped scale once again.

But the rest of the well-oiled All Things Digital machine will be in full force covering tech and media news, even as we gear up for the big event next week, which will feature pretty much all the major players in the digital space.

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Will the Twitter Twins Channel the “Zoolander” Duo at D7 Next Week?

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While getting ready for the spate of interviews at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference in just seven days, BoomTown has been doing a lot of research on the people taking the stage.

Some interviews will be quite serious (Eve Ensler, talking about the dire situation in the Congo) and some possibly funny (Mark Cuban, who simply defies definition).

But this picture that Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams posted today on his Flickr page is easily the most unusual bit of research I have come across.

It is aptly titled, “This doesn’t seem awkward at all.”

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Ignore the Twitter Buyout Rumors: Here Are the Facts in Five Beyoncé-Madonna-Approved Steps

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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About Kara

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 »

Ethics Statement

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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