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Friday, August 21, 2009

Fancy Charts of the Week: It Might Be Bingtastic, but Users Heart Google the Way Gum Loves a Sneaker!

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This week, BoomTown decided to mash up two different and interesting surveys, both from comScore, about the search market.

When you do this, you find that while the new Bing search engine from Microsoft is showing some impressive growth–up a half-point in July from June to an 8.9 percent share–the software giant still has a long way to go to get some true love from the consumers.

Obsessive love, actually.

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Microsoft’s Vision of the Future–and the Inevitable Spoof

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One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later.

But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video in a spoof that hit the target deftly.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Fancy Graphs of the Week: iPhone Versus Android

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As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs about tech to send them to me pronto.

I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. A closet pie-charter.

(I also love pie.)

Thus, here are a few comparing some stats about development for the iPhone from Apple and the Android from Google, from Flurry Analytics.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: The Full D7 Session

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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.

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Monday, June 22, 2009

RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis: The Full D7 Session

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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.

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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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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

New Tellme Mobile Product to Try to Help Microsoft Fight the iPhone With Voice Power

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Tellme, the voice services subsidiary of Microsoft, is announcing “one-button” voice access for Windows-enabled mobile phones, as well as some new technologies to improve call automation for customer service centers.

Aiming at smartphone users who might prefer to use voice commands over the Apple iPhone’s popular touch, tap and swoosh features, Microsoft is trying to differentiate its mobile offerings.

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

And I Thought My Kid Was an iPhonatic–See This Video and Be Scared, Be Very Scared

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Earlier this week, BoomTown chronicled my parenting conundrum concerning the fact that my almost-seven-year-old son hijacks my iPhone at every opportunity to play games and more.

Titled “My iKid iJacked My iPhone: A Geek Parenting Tragedy,” it describes the Apple smartphone’s strange hold over him and how it was freaking me out.

That was until I saw this do-NOT-miss video, sent to me by an Internet entrepreneur whom I know (and who shall remain nameless), about his even younger son’s iPhonaticism.

Or as this apps-crazy toddler puts it rather strongly: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyiiiiiPhoooooooooone!

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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Kara Visits Demo09!

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There was no doubt, given the continuing economic collapse and all the joy that brings, that Demo09 was going to be a much tamped-down and sober affair this year.

But there were still a lot of interesting start-ups being featured in the main ballroom and demo “pit,” such as a cool “touch book” offering, a strange hooking-up-in-a-bar smartphone app and a plethora of ideas that obviously got their inspiration from the iPhone from Apple.

As in: touch, swipe, interact! (Which is the official BoomTown motto, in point of fact.)

Here’s a video I did of Demo09, which ends today.

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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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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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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

TiVo Las Vegas: Walt, Katie, Peter and BoomTown Head to CES

With Macworld out of the way, a chunk of the crack All Things Digital squad is now winging its way both east and west to the annual gadgetopocalypse in Las Vegas, a.k.a. the Consumer Electronics Show.

Despite the fact that the show is feeling the pinch of the economy and that there are really no big products to speak of, CES is still one of the biggest and most important gatherings of the tech year.

Las Vegas turns into a geek moshpit every year, as legions of vendors, buyers, press and others converge to be overwhelmed for days by noise, long lines for cabs, keynotes, demos and more (like the Pussycat Dolls).

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Monday, January 5, 2009

Goodbye BlackBerry (and Hello iFart App?)

Hello, my name is BoomTown and I am a reformed CrackBerryaholic.

How bad was it? Here’s the worst story: I was holding my BlackBerry in my hand, inadvertently for once, when I gave birth to my son in 2002.

I should have been embarrassed by that. I was not. Hence, that makes me a full-fledged Blackberry addict.

Actually, I was one.

That’s right, I have finally abandoned the BlackBerry for the iPhone.

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Need Any More Proof Why Microsoft Wants to Back Up the Money Truck to Verizon Wireless?

Here is an amazing chart from a story in The Wall Street Journal recently about mobile phone search preferences, which says a whole lot about why Microsoft is so eager to hand a pile of money over to Verizon Wireless to become the default search on its many devices.

Well, as in the PC market and on social-networking sites, because of–wait for it–Google, of course.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Kara (Re-)Visits the Flagship Apple Store in Manhattan–the Madness Continues!

On Friday, which was the debut day for the new 3G iPhone, BoomTown was at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan bright and early to chronicle the marketing madness wrought by his iPhoniness Steve Jobs.

So, after a lovely weekend at the shore, I went back late Sunday night (without Mom!) to the same store, assuming it had all calmed down.

Oh no, my friends.

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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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