T-Minus One Day: More Countdown to D and a 'Craplets!' Surprise for Walt

We’re as busy as can be as our setup for the D: All Things Digital conference moves into overdrive. Aside from building the stage and the risers for the seating, we are also sorting through all the complicated audio-visual elements of the show.

But we also have to focus a lot on a major new element this year–making sure the AllThingsD.com Web site is ready to offer up news, photos and video from the stage as soon as possible.

(Still, we also made time to tease Walt about the term, “craplets,” that he popularized. See also the video below.)

We had a meeting this morning to figure out all the complex logistics to make the site rock, which include editing and posting of text and photos almost immediately after each speaker appears onstage at the conference.

In addition, because of the explosion of video on the Web, we also will be editing and posting video excerpts on the fly. We’ll be making the videos we post available for embedding by any other site that wants to use them.

Of course, we will make sure we have all audio and video rights (I know, all information should be free, but that does not mean we are not going to also respect copyright), as well as give credit to folks like our most excellent D photographer, Asa Mathat.

One big issue, of course, will be press and blogger coverage, which is suddenly increasing now that everyone is really paying attention to the fact that Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs will be interviewed together (which we announced way back in February here).

We’ve let dozens of reporters and bloggers into the conference itself and will also have a spillover room for the dozens more who have asked to get in, specifically for the Gates and Jobs joint interview, given the space constraints.

So, I am guessing there will be an overload of coverage, when all is said and done, which seems apt given the impact these two tech titans have had on the industry.

Here’s another video of our prep, including our entire staff surprising Walt with “Craplets!” T-shirts. Our terrific San Francisco-based design firm, Mule Design, which designed our AllthingsD.com site, loves to make warped and funny T-shirts on the side. Mule’s Creative Director Mike Monteiro came up with this one of Walt’s visage with the “Craplets!” bubble.

The phrase was popularized by Walt in a column here, referring to all the unsolicited third-party programs that come loaded onto Windows PCs. We liked the term so much, we had to immortalize it in a T-shirt.

(Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Walt Mossberg coined the word “craplets” in his Personal Technology column of April 5. In fact, he referred to the term, which had been in use since before he wrote the column.)