For the last month or so, the Google homepage has played with the famous colored-letter logo by morphing it into a sci-fi in-joke and later adding another “l” to indicate the company’s 11th birthday.
Now, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi–the Indian leader whose 140th birthday anniversary is today–has become the “G” in the logo.
Yes, indeed, the head of the man known as “The Father of a Nation” is a letter.
As the wind-up act for the Financial Analyst Day at Microsoft today, its CFO, Chris Liddell, took the stage to try to put a shine on weak financial results that the software giant recently reported.
“So, what genetic disposition do you need to be a CFO? Essentially, you need to be miserable, you need to be the sort of person who takes drinks away from people at the end of a party,” said Liddell, in his jaunty New Zealand-Hobbit accent. “So, you know, my colleagues who have been giving you drinks all day, have told me to come out here and take most of them away from you.”
Which was ironic, since the all-day event for media and Wall Street analysts ended with cocktails.
Here’s a priceless video segment from David Letterman’s “Late Show” last night, as he is taught how to use Twitter by actor Kevin Spacey.
After asking how much it costs and noting that he could get anyone on Manhattan’s 57th Street to say hello just as much as Spacey could get tweets from his 800,000 followers, Letterman officially declares Twitter a “waste of time.”
Perhaps so, but it also makes for great talk-show schtick.
BoomTown is winging it across the country for a Dow Jones event in Chicago–we do our part for the mother ship here at All Things Digital!–so there will not likely be posts today.
That is, unless Yahoo and Microsoft merge, buy Twitter and mount a cavalry attack on the Googleplex.
One can dream!
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.
Today, Twitter’s investors are in rainy San Francisco for a board meeting of the hyped microblogging service, where they will presumably discuss revenue options that the start-up keeps promising are coming soon.
Right now, Twitter has no revenues.
Well, why wait? As with BoomTown’s 100-Day Yahoo Countdown, which was initiated here after former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said he was taking that many days to rethink Yahoo from top to bottom, it’s just about time for a Twitter Count-Up to come up with some ka-ching ideas.
BoomTown might have been remiss in my post yesterday on top candidates for the Yahoo CEO job, in the wake of news that Jerry Yang was stepping down, by leaving out several key possibilities.
Yesterday’s roster included News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, Google’s Tim Armstrong, Kevin Johnson of Juniper Networks and also two Yahoo board members, among others.
So here is an addendum to my initial list–all of whom are Yahoo outsiders, the likely choice versus more tarnished insiders.
Hopefully, we will find out this morning the 411 on the Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest parry in its attempted takeover of Yahoo (YHOO).
But, before that, let me get this straight: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer now wants to go hostile on Yahoo with a proxy fight.
Because earlier this week, he sent smoke signals that he was considering [...]
I think we can safely say the magic multimedia strategy once touted back in Web 1.0 as the savior of old media is now almost completely discounted.
So posits Valleywag’s Owen Thomas in an excellent short analysis of the deal for NBC Universal to buy women’s media cable channel and Web site company Oxygen Media for [...]
What do you do when you want to inject a little inspiration into a company that needs a lot of it?
Do you hold an all-day meeting of top execs where you actually outline specific goals and exhibit better leadership?
Do you admit your corporate culture is a little weak and promise to focus on strengthening it?
Do you trot out all the senior execs and let them talk about their concrete plans (and, better still, actually prepare them to deliver their spiel with some level of quality)?
Do you do some post-lunch touchy-feely group exercises to get people talking?
Best of all, if you really want to send things over the top, do you bring out an icon so beloved as to give goosebumps to explain to the troops how he managed to turn his once-beleaguered and now-soaring company around?
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.
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 »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
