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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Teeny-Tiny Pixi Phone From Palm Tries Killing Giant Hype for Apple Event Today

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Oh, BoomTown fears this is not going to end well for the weensy little smart phone Palm is debuting today on–what an amazing coincidence!–the very same day Apple is throwing its big product bash in San Francisco, at which Mac fanboys fervently hope that Supreme Leader Steve Jobs might even appear.

You don’t step on Superman of Silicon Valley’s cape, of course, but the device with the aggressively cute name of Pixi is apparently attempting just that.

Thus, this fairytale might have a not-so-happy ending.

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Friday, September 4, 2009

BoomTown Talks About the iPhone Apps Economy on the News Hour (Plus Some Future Stuff Blather)

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Last night, “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer” aired a piece on “how technology companies are innovating amid the recession by designing popular new smart phone applications.”

BoomTown was to talk about how perhaps not all of the 65,000 apps being created by legions of third-party developers for the Apple iPhone will result in gold, diamonds and unicorns raining down on entrepreneurs.

Oddly enough, I somehow went all Jules Verne at the end and started talking about screens on coffee tables, so I am obviously just as bad.

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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Google and Others Fish for Acquisitions: Here’s What They Might Be Looking For

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave what he just had to know would be a much quoted comment to the Nikkei today, explicitly saying that the company had “begun seriously looking into acquisitions again.”

Music to the beleaguered mergers and acquisitions market, to be sure, especially after a recent uptick from other big companies pulling out their wallets again as the impact of the econalypse subsides.

According to sources, Google is working on at least a half-dozen acquisition deals, most of which are small start-ups in the online advertising and cloud-computing arenas.

That would be welcome news for many.

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Friday, August 21, 2009

BoomTown Will See You in September

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Starting today and through next week, BoomTown is headed south down California’s lovely Highway 1 for as much of a vacation as I can possibly take.

Which is to say, just a week off from posting.

In other words: Partovis, Wenda, Owen, play nice! Yahoos, please hold your internal memos. And I hope Apple’s tablet is not delivered from on high this week while I relax beachside (it won’t be).

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs Speaks!

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While in Southern California last week, BoomTown sat down with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to have a chat about the booming market for smart phones and, well, smart everything.

With all the swirl around iPhones from Apple, the Palm Pre, the various new BlackBerrys from Research in Motion and whatever else gets cooked up by Amazon, Google and others in the critical smart and mobile device market, it’s interesting to hear what Jacobs has to say–especially since his company is going to be one of the ones to benefit from such an explosion.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Palm Pre Commercial Keeps Mirroring the Ladies

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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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Friday, July 10, 2009

Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein: The Full D7 Session

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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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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

New ATD Features: Topic Pages and Finding Jobs (No, Not Steve!)

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Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to make the experience better for our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last weeks, which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

Check them out.

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

AT&T Chairman, CEO and President Randall Stephenson: The Full D7 Interview

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Next up on the seventh D: All Things Digital conference program was an onstage interview that Walt Mossberg did with AT&T Chairman, CEO and President Randall Stephenson.

Stephenson was queried about a lot of topics, including the status of the Apple iPhone deal, the company’s network glitches, the economy and competitors like the new Pre from Palm, and more.

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Friday, June 5, 2009

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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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Friending Without Benefits? But Facebook Keeps On Forging Into the Mobile Market!

Facebook, which has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, is in talks with mobile handset giant Nokia about integrating the hot social-networking site on its phones.

Its deals like this–as well as building its popular Facebook app for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion and the iPhone from Apple–that are spurring huge market share growth in the arena by Facebook.

And there are more deals to come, with cellphone makers like Palm and Motorola, as the smartphone market keeps heating up.

Too bad for fast-growing Facebook and others that there’s no money to be made yet.

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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

BoomTown’s Annual Waltgelina Walk at CES: Walt and Katie on the (Less Crowded) Floor

As BoomTown did last year, I took to the much-less-crowded floor of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week with tech review kingpin Walt Mossberg and Mossberg Solution columnist Katherine Boehret to get their take on the scene.

Of interest to Walt was the Palm Pre launch and the Yahoo Connected TV initiative. For Katie, it was a $2,000 cellphone.

Here’s the video of their ruminations.

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Monday, January 12, 2009

Kara Talks to Roger McNamee About the Palm Pre

BoomTown did a video interview with Palm’s sugar daddy investor Roger McNamee at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, after the debut of its Pre smartphone.

Via Elevation Partners, McNamee has invested a total of $425 million in Palm, aimed at reviving the company that pioneered the smartphone market, but lost its step to competitors.

Thus, Palm and the private equity firm have banked a lot on its new product, so McNamee was out in full force at CES in Las Vegas, talking up the Pre.

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Thursday, January 8, 2009

CES-tastic!: No Taxi Lines, Barry Manilow and a Geek ZZ Top (But, as Always, Scoble-Stalked!)

Here is BoomTown’s first video from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which kicked off last night with a keynote speech by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

So far, it’s been a definitely thinner crowd, a reflection of the weaker economy.

But CES is still a reliably noisy, often pointless, gadget cavalcade–with introduction of a new smartphone from Palm, called Pre, as the highlight so far.

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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.

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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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