In a recent onstage interview, Palm’s major investor, Roger McNamee, and I got into a minor tussle over the mirror on the back of the just-launched Pre smartphone and his assertion that ladies in particular would love it.

Take that, reflectively-challenged Apple iPhone!

In any case, Palm is certainly not backing away from the female demographic with its latest commercial, which features an unusually pale woman with a sing-song and vaguely creepy voice.

It feels a lot like an ad for a new shampoo that promises lustrous locks.

All the better to look good in a mirror, presumably.

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As the final posting of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, here is one of the sessions that generated a lot of news: The first major interview about the Palm Pre with Elevation Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein.

The pair are trying to remake Palm in a bet-the-company move to recover the Silicon Valley icon’s long-lost glory via innovation.

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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Roger McNamee is very bullish on the iPhone. “It’s the most exciting thing in years,” said the longtime Silicon Valley investor. “With Apple’s identity, I think it will be spectacularly successful.”

This, of course, is an interesting product for McNamee to cheer for. Because last week, Elevation Partners, the high-profile private-equity firm that counts McNamee and [...]

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