D7 Highlights

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

Adam Tow — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:25:03 +0000

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 Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein.

The pair are trying to remake Palm (PALM)–see the AllThingsD.com topic page on the Pre here–in a bet-the-company move to recover the Silicon Valley icon’s long-lost glory via innovation.

Palm is trying to muscle into a market with multiple competitors, such as Apple’s iPhone, Android from Google (GOOG) and many more.

In the session with Walt Mossberg and me, McNamee and Rubinstein talked about the new smartphone and its various features, including a controversial way of syncing with Apple (AAPL) iTunes.

Also, McNamee and I had a debate over the Pre’s mirror. Really.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session (along with a very funny intro video making fun of McNamee’s loose lips):

[ See post to watch video ]

Siri: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:30:02 +0000

Siri is a virtual personal assistant for your Apple (AAPL) iPhone or computer, originated at the Stanford Research Institute and spun out as an artificial intelligence project financed by DARPA.

In its demo for Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Siri tried to show how it was an alternative to search to get a user things like tickets and pizza–using a combination of innovative technologies, including speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search.

Here’s the video of the full D7 Siri demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker and CEO John Lilly: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:55:36 +0000

As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the innovative open-source browser.

With almost 23 percent of Web browser market in recent surveys, it is the second most popular of such software globally, after the Microsoft (MSFT) Internet Explorer, which holds just over 66 percent.

But there other competitors too, including Apple (AAPL) and now Mozilla partner Google (GOOG), which is bearing down upon it with its latest “don’t-be-evil” browser bulldozer, Chrome.

The pair talk about all this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session:

[ See post to watch video ]

Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington and Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth: The Full D7 Interview

Kara Swisher — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:23:06 +0000

It’s an opportune time to see this interview, in which Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth and Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington talked about the future of the news media.

The pair were interviewed at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, only a month before Weymouth landed in hot water for trying to organize an off-the-record gathering of D.C. power players and journalists at her house, underwritten by sponsors.

In the interview, Weymouth discussed the struggles the Post–one of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers–has had of late, as the Internet pummels its business model.

One of those hammers has been Huffington, whose site has grown like gangbusters, led by its political blogs and aggregation. Though not regularly profitable, it recently got a huge slug of funding to keep up the competition.

The pressure was apparent last week when Weymouth got in trouble for offering the exclusive sessions–although the controversial marketing flyer about it went out by mistake, before her approval or that of the Post newsroom.

Here’s the video of the full D7 interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Canesta: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:35:18 +0000

The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”

That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.

Canesta demoed the innovative technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menus, for Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Here’s a video of the D7 demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker: The Full D7 Interview

Kara Swisher — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:40:18 +0000

Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.

In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture the GE (GE) unit NBC launched with News Corp. (NWS); and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”

Here’s the video of the full D7 session (the video does not include a short intro video done by NBC’s “Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon, which includes a ribald joke about Zucker marrying Courtney Cox):

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: The Full D7 Session (Badda-Bing!)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:07:50 +0000

As most know by now, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the software giant’s relaunch of its search offering, dubbed Bing, onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

You can see that here, as well as Ballmer demoing the product, which is Microsoft’s biggest and priciest attempt yet to catch archrival Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) in the search business.

It is a market where the typically dominant Microsoft (MSFT) is a mouse in comparison, although it is also trying to innovate.

That did not stop Ballmer from doing some roaring about Bing, in an interview with Walt Mossberg, as well as the status of other Microsoft products like its upcoming release of the Windows 7 operating system, an arena where Microsoft does rule.

Ballmer also talked about ongoing talks with Yahoo about a search partnership, and other Microsoft initiatives.

Here’s the video of Ballmer’s full D7 session (this video is missing a promotional video for Bing, which the audience saw, but that Microsoft did not give us video rights to use here):

[ See post to watch video ]

HDNet Chairman Mark Cuban: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:30:50 +0000

What can one say about Mark Cuban that he can’t say himself?

Not much, as you will see from this sassy onstage interview he did with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, where he talked about everything from the idiots of the Internet to the subsidization of Web video by Google (GOOG) to the next big innovation.

Cuban hardly needs an introduction–he’s been a Web mogul, an entrepreneur, a sports team owner, a blogger, a theater owner, a high-definition evangelist and most of all, a digital gadfly.

Here’s the full D7 video session:

[ See post to watch video ]

News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:55:22 +0000

Over the last weeks, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta have had their hands full directing massive layoffs at the flagship social-networking site, as well as throughout the Fox Interactive Media division.

The pair discussed the many challenges faced by the giant media company in its digital enterprises in an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last month.

That included everything from how News Corp. (NWS) online content is paid for to the need for MySpace to innovate, as Facebook has surpassed it.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Immersion: The Full D7 Demo

Kara Swisher — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:20:09 +0000

Immersion (IMMR) is the innovative company behind haptic, or touch feedback, technology for some videogame consoles and mobile phones.

At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Immersion demoed its TouchSense for touchscreen keyboards and Immersive Messaging.

With TouchSense, the user is not only supposed to be able to get haptic feedback, but can also feel the virtual keys.

Immersive Messaging will also use haptic feedback, as well as gesture recognition, to send messages that employ physical senses rather than text.

See Walt Mossberg and the Immersion guys trade digital hearts. No, really, they did.

Also, I “twiddled.” Don’t ask.

Here’s the video of the full D7 demo:

[ See post to watch video ]