10:18 am: Walt greets Gore by noting that he has just come from Steve Jobs’s memorial service. What was that like?

10:18 am: “A beautiful and moving event … It’s a terrible loss, of course, for the entire world. We’ll all miss Steve.

But for all of his inventions — “among them all, I actually think his greatest work was Apple itself.”

“He created an organization — and inspired it — that literally creates technology that people love … and that’s going to continue. There’s so many things in the pipeline, and the team that he built is hitting on all cylinders.”

10:20 am: Walt: So, no offense to Tim Cook, at what point does the lack of having Jobs at the helm of the company become apparent? There’s a pipeline, “but at some point that pipeline runs out, and then what happens?”

10:21 am: Gore: Steve cultivated a team, “and we had discussions at every single board meeting, for several years, about cultivating that team.” No one will replace him, and he’s totally unique. “And yet, he also served on the board of Disney … and he used to talk initially about how, after Walt Disney died, the company always got in trouble about asking ‘what would Walt do in this situation?’ And he made it very clear: ‘I don’t want that.’ He made it clear to Tim Cook and everyone else. ‘Don’t ask what Steve would have done. Follow your own voice.’”

10:23 am: Walt: So you still expect risk-taking and game-changing?

10:23 am: Of course. Everyone on that management team could be CEO of a world-class corporation.

10:23 am: Walt: Isn’t that a problem? That people come after them?

10:24 am: Gore: Of course. But that’s not new. And I’m on the compensation committee, and we pay real close attention to that.

10:24 am: Walt: You’re also a Google adviser, and those two companies are competing. How do you handle that?

10:24 am: Gore: After Eric Schmidt left the Apple board because of conflicts, I pulled back as well. I still talk to Larry and Sergey, but never about anything where there’s competition. It’s not really a problem, but “I don’t have as many conversations with them now. And I miss that.” I’ve known them since they were 27 years old.

By the way, I think Larry is doing a great job since he became CEO.

10:27 am: Walt: America has been the big tech innovator for a long time, and in Asia they are still mostly imitating what we’ve done. But Asia is coming up fast. “How much longer can this be an advantage for the United States?”

10:28 am: Gore: That depends on choices we make. “I think our political system is now badly broken.” We’ve been able to use the political equivalent of massively parallel processing to make great decisions over the past 200 years.

Let me digress for a minute: The U.S. formed its superior decision-making in the wake of Gutenberg and the evolution of the print press. Allowed “the rule of reason” to let citizens and their reps make good decisions. Then, 60 years ago, TV surpassed print. And unlike the public square of print, the TV public square is controlled by gatekeepers, and access to that square requires a lot of money. So now we’ve seen a huge degradation of the conversation.

10:31 am: Walt: Hasn’t the Web fixed that?

Gore: Not yet. Right now, TV is by far the dominant medium. If you take primetime out of the picture, the activity on iOS and Android is now rivaling TV. But you include primetime, 7 to 10, TV “blows everything else away. Still.”

“Television is still the big kahuna. It’s because people like to sit back, and the relationship between the television and the human brain is extremely close.”

It’s part of evolution — back on the savannah, the people who didn’t notice the leaves moving suddenly didn’t become our ancestors. We’re hardwired for this stuff; “it becomes a quasi-hypnotic state.” It’s why lead-in shows are so important. (Peter Chernin disagrees — see earlier.)

So that’s why so much political money goes into TV, and that helps explain why the system is so broken.

10:35 am: (Sorry, tech issues here.)

10:35 am: And we’re back. Gore is talking about companies who can take advantage of the innovator’s dilemma, Metcalfe’s law, etc.

Gore: 5.6 billion of the world’s seven billion people have mobile phones. Less than one billion are smartphones. “But that is going to change dramatically” … “Moore’s law makes it inevitable that the low-end phones are going to get smart.” And as those 5.6 billion get smarter and smarter phones — remind me to mention the climate crisis, by the way — that’s going to unleash amazing creativity.

10:38 am: Walt: Okay, let’s talk about the climate. This ties into tech: We love all these devices. Walt gestures to writers sitting in the front row, and Gore notes “All Apple — almost all Apple.” But it seems like people in the developed world have all these great devices, but people in the rest of the world deal with the pollution. Here in Hong Kong, there’s a lot of smog, and I’m told that much of it comes from over the border in mainland China, where much of this stuff is made.

Gore: About two percent of global warming comes from this stuff. “It’s a nontrivial factor.” But the good news is that the IT sector has been really good about addressing this stuff, much more so than other industries. And the other good news is that the information revolution that comes from this tech makes it easier to combat this, as well.

Except for this massive disinformation campaign — reminiscent of the tobacco industry in the 1950s telling us that smoking didn’t cause cancer — that tells us this stuff isn’t a problem. One hundred million people died unnecessarily because of this, because of smoking.

In this case, the largest carbon polluters — starting about 19 years ago, in the U.S., Europe and Australia and other countries — these polluters and their ideological allies “have put out a massive campaign to put out false doubts … they know that they don’t have to prove” anything, “all they have to do is put out enough false doubt.” Meanwhile, there’s nearly unanimous consensus on climate change.

If you had chest pains and you consulted 100 leading doctors, and 98 of them told you to take care of your heart, that’s what you’d do. You wouldn’t pay much attention to the other two.

So now you have more pollution than ever, etc.

10:46 am: Walt: But wait — isn’t a Democrat in the White House? Isn’t that your party?

Gore: I’ve expressed disappointment.

10:46 am: Walt: What do you tell Obama?

Gore: I give him advice, and most of the problem is in the Senate, which is totally broken. But the White House has pulled back from environmental reform, and that’s disappointing.

10:48 am: Gore: Meanwhile, look what’s happening in Pakistan, Thailand, Russia, Colombia, all facing terrible crises because of the climate. Colombia has had five times its normal rainfall this year. The Philippines have had a massive series of downpours for the past two years. Nashville, my hometown, just had “once-in-a-thousand-years rainfall … at some point, there has to be a reality check.”

10:49 am: Walt: And this is all because of pollution?

10:49 am: Gore: Yes.

[Long explanation of how massive downpours are a result of pollution] “It will get a lot worse. Until we take action. Even after we take action, it will be a problem.” And the same factors creating all this rain are also creating droughts. Double, triple whammy.

“I’ve been trying to communicate about this. And I wish I could communicate more effectively about this.”

“This is a global issue … we’re now being assaulted by this 90 milllion tons of global-warming pollution every day … it’s not okay.”

Questions From the Audience

Q: Back to the print-TV-Web conversation. Please keep talking about the evolution of TV, in connection with your involvement with Current TV.

Gore: We’ve done creative stuff at Current TV with Twitter. It’s one of a series of experiments. Last year, we had a drama series with the Sims’s Will Wright, where he had an online story-creation engine online, where people could have input on story line. Many other examples.

But when you look at the opposite direction — TV on the Internet — you run into a broadband capacity problem. In the 1970s, there was only ARPANET, and twisted copper pairs. And we wanted to increase capacity via the information superhighway. But now, with video, the number of digits in a 30-minute video “is like a year’s worth of email.” And even with compression, etc., “there is a crunch coming” and “that is what has impeded the migration of TV proper onto the Internet.” For the majority of people, in the majority of the world, it is still going to be a while before we get full TV on the Internet.

Q: Back to the environment. What’s actually feasible for policymakers to do?

Gore: With individuals, start by “winning the conversation” — like the civil rights movement in the ’60s. Don’t put up with pollution. Then we can make changes on the consumer side.

For politics: Number one, we can start putting a price on carbon. Right now we tell people it’s okay to use the global commons as a sewer. It’s not. The market is telling polluters it’s okay to pollute, so of course they will. A carbon tax and cap are important.

Number two: Governments should create a green bank of development for renewables. Moore’s law is not a law of physics. It’s a law of investment. Chip power grows fast now because investors invest in R&D to make it grow fast. Same thing can be true for green R&D like photovoltaic electricity.

Q: Please talk about Apple. Senior talent there — if you look at their background, prior to joining Apple, they don’t look like world-class guys. Very different background than the resumes of the Google guys. So one’s not better than the other, but how does Apple think about talent? Also: Please talk about the Apple board — lots of folks have criticized the Apple board. (Gore is a member, of course.)

Gore: First of all, the way the executive team at Apple are chosen is not all that different from a lot of other places — they proved themselves in other positions and worked their way up.

As for the Apple board, I won’t talk about what goes on inside. But I will say this: “I have the deepest respect for my fellow board members, we’re all very good friends… I think that people who specialize in kibitzing about these things — I respect them, it’s good for them to think about this kind of stuff, but I wouldn’t change a thing about the way the Apple board has operated.”

We handled privacy and medical issues and succession all correctly there. “If you were running a corporation, and you had a star-studded executive team, would you really think it would be a smart thing to lay out in public your thinking about who’s going to move to what position over the next couple years? Of course not!”

Q: Please talk about impact of tech on the news business.

Gore: I used to be a journalist for the Army. I’ve watched the evolution of the business. The most important part of the problem you’re getting at is that with the transition to Internet journalism you don’t get enough critical mass to throw off enough revenue to create good investigative journalism. Crowdsourcing helps, but that’s not a substitute for real investigative journalists who can make a decent living doing what they do best.

Where will it go? It’s literally impossible to predict. I have a great iPhone 4S and an iPad, but “most of the quality stuff is still produced by newspapers and magazines.”

Walt: You don’t have the model for a new journalism, right? You just want there to be a new one?

Gore: Current TV has won a lot of awards. Those guys do a great job. And “60 Minutes” is great. But, increasingly, shows that used to do news are moving into infotainment.

I turn on the morning news and a program that used to do news is doing a segment about a kid who’s hiccuping. But I do have to confess it’s pretty interesting.

Q: What should Google do in China?

Gore: [Waits a beat.] “God bless you.”

Q: Advice for Obama going into 2012?

Gore: I’ve given it privately.

Q: What about the T-Mobile-AT&T merger. What do you think?

A: My guess is that Justice so rarely takes a move like they made — “I think it’s going to be hard to overturn that decision.” They’ll fight it, but they should think about other plans.

Q: Question about the failing of American education.

A: I’ve tried hard! I have an “our choice” app about environmental education. I had a documentary on TV, etc. But we have a major party embracing the rejection of science, even while the majority of American people believe in the science.

Q: Can you talk about financial reform in the U.S.?

Gore: I think financial reform and political reform are connected. “Money plays such an unhealthy role” in U.S. democracy — “way more than in the past”. There are four anticlimate activists for every member of the Senate.

“We need to move toward sustainable capitalism. Capitalism is the best system for organizing economic activity … but we have to pay careful attention to how those incentives are structured, and what they are applied to. We have to measure the full system of value.” And not just discard things that are difficult to measure — externalities. “So if we’re committed to capitalism, as I am, we have to make it sustainable.” Price tag can’t be the only marker of value.

Lots of conventions of modern-day trading and investing are “functionally insane.”

Q: [Didn't catch.]

Gore: The last century and a half is an exception to the longer history, in which Asia has been the dominant force in the world. China is becoming more competitive, “and I wish them well.” But I also remember when the Soviets were going to eclipse us. Didn’t happen. Japan Inc. Didn’t happen. So, is China’s rise inevitable? I don’t know. Chinese labor costs, inflation are going way up. I’m not so sure that we can predict in a linear way what’s going to happen in the future.

Ends with plug for AllThingsD. Thanks, Al!

Al Gore Session Photos

So why Asia? It seemed the most obvious choice for us, as we looked at the global landscape for tech. While the whole world has now been engulfed in the powerful trends of digitalization, perhaps nowhere else has been as important a place for understanding where it is headed next than this region, which is home to companies critical to the next phase of innovation.

There’s no question that Silicon Valley, which has been the base for most of the key players — such as Google, Apple, Facebook and more — has driven the digital revolution over the past decade. But as we look out onto what’s to come, it’s clear to us and many others that what’s coming next and even the next great company might be born here.

That’s why we have created a conference that mixes both important speakers from U.S. tech and also from all over Asia.

Given that smartphones are in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere are hard to ignore. His recent tussle and interest in Yahoo, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance in tech, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use?

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind-Google-and-Apple job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia, and Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

We also felt that it was important to hear from Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including: Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site; former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who is running the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online; and David Goldberg, who is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company.

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou, needs little introduction. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba.

And so does LivingSocial, whose CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, it was natural to invite Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, who heads global product strategy for the Korean giant’s mobile business. That has surged in the past year to make Samsung a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, chairman of HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. Add to that HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market, and it’s clear it is in a pole position on the critical mobile market going forward.

Finally, we are also glad to bring back Al Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist. He is also on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, as well as a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

In total, along with some very cool demos to show off, it’s going to be an exciting AsiaD, and we are thrilled most of all to welcome our first international audience. So get ready for a busy three days here and we hope you will like what we have to show you.

And then there was Schiller and Gore.

That would be Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller and former Vice President Al Gore, who round out the stellar list of speakers at our upcoming AsiaD conference.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21 in Hong Kong, the lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of Silicon Valley start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Asia head Rose Tsou; LivingSocial’s Tim O’Shaughnessy, along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul; Samsung mobile head Dr. Won-Pyo Hong; HTC CEO Peter Chou, who replaces Chairwoman Cher Wang.

Schiller, who reports to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook (and before that, Steve Jobs) is a member of the executive team of the tech icon, where he has worked for 17 years. He is responsible for a swath of Apple’s outward-facing businesses, including product marketing, developer relations and business marketing.

Today, in fact, he was onstage at Apple’s iPhone event, outlining some of its new product offerings. In addition, Apple just opened its first retail store in Hong Kong.

Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006, needs little introduction. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist.

Gore is on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, which is a neat trick. At the same time, he is a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a partnership that is focused on sustainable investing.

And, as most people know, he knows a thing or two about the Internet.

Walt Mossberg and I could not think of two better people to add to the lineup we have for AsiaD, which has very few seats left.

See you in China in two weeks!

The Next Web, which wrote about the speech, takes that to mean multiple models. However, even if there is only one model out, that would still be new iPhones next month in my book.

Of course, the October arrival is hardly shocking. (AllThingsD has been saying that for months and reported earlier today that Apple will have its launch event on Oct. 4). However, Apple employees and directors (even those who are a heartbeat away from the presidency) are generally expected to keep their mouths shut until any official announcement is made.

Or, to put it another way, Al, you are supposed to put all of that Apple information in a lockbox.

Then again, it’s not like he left another prototype in a bar.

First, Apple investors will freak out.

Second, Apple will do what Apple has planned to do for all these years.

For years, since Jobs’s first bout with pancreatic cancer was disclosed, Apple has taken a lot of criticism from analysts, shareholders, activists and tech and business columnists on the subject of succession planning. The main complaint has always revolved around the fact that Apple seemed not to have a plan for the day that Jobs would cede the helm either by choice or happenstance.

The fact is that Apple does have a plan, and chose, I think wisely, to keep most of the details related to it confidential. On the very last page of Apple’s Corporate Governance Guidelines (PDF here) you find that the company designates its compensation committee, a subset of its board of directors, as the body responsible for succession planning.

Here’s what the text says (emphasis mine):

XIX. Management Review and Succession Planning
The Compensation Committee should conduct, and review with the Board, an annual evaluation of the performance of all executive officers, including the CEO. The Compensation Committee is expected to use this review in the course of its deliberations when considering the compensation of the CEO and senior management. The Board also reviews the CEO performance evaluation to ensure that the CEO is providing effective leadership of the Corporation. As part of the annual evaluation, the Board and the CEO should conduct an annual review of management development and succession planning for senior management, including the CEO.

And for the record, the members of the compensation committee are as follows: Millard Drexler, the chairman and CEO of retailer J. Crew; Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States; and Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon, is the committee’s chair.

All of them, Gore especially, know a little something on the subject of succession planning. Yet the market has over the years generally assumed that Apple has had no plan for a post-Jobs Apple.

Expect that assumption to be the order of the day when the markets open tomorrow. Apple shares have already taken a 5 percent hit, dropping $19.08 in after-hours trading tonight, and you can bet that’s just a precursor for what’s coming tomorrow. Over the coming days, the so-called “Jobs premium” will be erased.

So what happens next? First off, tomorrow will be Tim Cook’s first day as CEO — not acting CEO, but as the actual CEO of Apple. Long credited as the man who brilliantly runs Apple day to day, he’s now in charge.

And that’s an encouraging thought. Formally designated Apple’s number two in 2005, he has overseen it during its most exciting and world-changing years. On his first business day as COO, Apple shares closed at $54. Today before the news broke, it closed at nearly seven times that price.

During those years Apple has largely remade much of the world around it: Music, media, communications are all indelibly and fundamentally different because of the work that has come out of Apple during this six-year period. To assume that this stops because Steve Jobs doesn’t show up at the office tomorrow or next week is failing to understand the Apple way.

If you follow Apple long enough, you know that Apple has a long-term vision. I think enough time has passed that I can share the following anecdote. In 2007, right after the introduction of the first iPhone, I attended a meeting with Jobs and the editors of the magazine I was working for at the time.

The meeting included a Jobs-led, hands-on demo with prototype iPhones, during which I asked Jobs a question: “Will you do a version of this without the phone?” The answer — which surprised me that he even gave it — was yes. In that moment I got a very tiny glimpse of the long path that lay ahead. I could see way off in the distance the logical progression leading first to the iPod touch and from there to the iPad. It was a revelation.

And we all know exactly what the iPad is doing to the established order of the PC industry: It is tearing it down. Hewlett-Packard’s decision to get out of the PC business is just one very big and recent example of the degree of that change.

That in mind, I find it hard to accept the argument that there isn’t a similar long-term vision that Apple is executing on at this very moment. My suspicion has long been that a pipeline of products — some of them incremental improvements on existing ones, others radically new and disruptive — are in various stages of the design process. I think it is a safe bet that Apple’s strategic plans for the next five years are more or less mapped out. Beyond that, it’s harder to see, and circumstances can certainly change a great deal in that amount of time.

But consider where Apple was five years ago and what has happened since. Yes, the Apple story was interesting in 2005 and 2006, but who could have predicted that Apple would become the biggest company by market capitalization in the entire world, eclipsing ExxonMobil, if only for a few days.

Markets will do what markets must do. And so must Apple. The next phase of what has turned out to be the most interesting business story in living memory has begun.

Related posts

• Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple; Cook Takes Reins
• Steve Jobs’s Resignation Letter: “I Have Made Some of the Best Friends of My Life at Apple.”
• Apple Stock Falls After Jobs Announcement
• Steve Jobs Live on Stage in 2010 (Video)
• Tim Cook as Apple CEO: A Tested and Steady Hand
• Essay: Jobs’s Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era
• What Happens Next at Apple?
• Mossberg on Jobs (Video)
• Analysts Confident in Apple’s Prospects
• Apple Shares Bounce Back
• Tim Cook: Apple Will Continue to Make the Best Products in the World
• Does Tim Cook Need His Own Tim Cook?

Earl will be the company’s chief operating officer and will begin Sept. 6, after wrapping up her job as chief strategy officer and COO at Current TV, the cable station started by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.

In her new job, she’ll be leading day-to-day operations at Ngmoco, and will work closely with the company’s CEO and founder, Neil Young.

The appointment comes ahead of a major growth spurt for the San Francisco company, which was purchased by Japanese-based DeNA late last year. It anticipates adding another 100 staffers to its base of approximately 200 employees over the next four months.

Since being purchased by DeNA, Ngmoco has been busy building a very large mobile game network called Mobage (pronounced mo-bah-gay), which launched on Android devices in all English-speaking countries in July.

While today Mobage consists mostly of a game network that connects players around the world, it aspires to be a much broader entertainment network for next-generation devices, something that has been mainly Young’s vision up until now.

That’s where Earl will be able to step in, having coming from the TV industry. “The more I spoke with Neil and saw where they were headed, there’s a lot of similarities,” Earl said. “I was the first executive to join Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to build a new kind of media company — one that was focused on inviting the audience to collaborate.”

She added that the vision for Ngmoco and Mobage in building a worldwide brand is equally large.

“It’s the scaling of Mobage on Android now, and soon iOS, and then beyond, while also going into more territories. The ambition is big, and there’s a lot to do. Neil is in demand while we are in its start-up phase. He’s asked me to come in and be a No. 2, to take off an operational burden. I’m comfortable doing that.”

The start-up, as we’ve written before, was founded by an Apple designer prodigy named Mike Matas. “Our Choice” was first demoed at TED, where Matas wowed the crowd by activating a wind turbine demo within the book by blowing on his iPad and iPhone.

The most distinctive part of the book platform seems to be the ability to pull any multimedia off the page with a two-finger gesture and browse around infographics with one finger (and occasionally your breath). But now that the book’s available, you can buy it for yourself here or watch the tour guided by Al Gore below.

Other iPad-focused interactive book makers include Inkling and 955 Dreams.

Its 2010 lobbying spend was about $1.6 million. (Microsoft’s was $6.9 million.) But while it might seem that any lobbying Apple might need to do in Washington could be easily accomplished by a phone call from one of its directors–one in particular–evidently that’s not the case. Because the company has hired a new lobbying firm to help deal with its D.C. concerns: Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock.

It’s not clear why Apple hired the firm; lobbying disclosures say only that it will handle “innovation” issues for the company, and sources I’ve spoken with seem unaware of any big legislative pushes the company might be mulling. That said, Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock is a formidable lobbying firm with a number of executives who did stints in the Bush administration and the Republican National Committee, and a client list that includes some very big names: Coca-Cola, CTIA, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Ford, Time Warner and Oracle.

Think Larry Ellison got a referral fee?

The Internet likes to spoof on politicians who make digital faux pas, such as former Vice President Al “I invented the Internet” Gore and Internets-loving former President George W. Bush.

And former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who was tragically killed in a small airplane accident Monday, was no exception, never able to shake a speech in which he called the Web a “series of tubes.”

Said Stevens at a hearing in Congress in 2006:

“The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

The death of the hard-charging 86-year-old Republican pol, of course, revived the many online videos of him related to this non-geek malapropism, and “series of tubes” made it as a trending topic on Twitter.

Here is one of the more famous videos from Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” and another rap based on Stevens’ speech:

Like BoomTown, Bill Gates was at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend–not just to sample some of the fare at the well-known independent film festival, held annually in Park City, Utah, but also to appear at the screening of a documentary about the crisis in public education in which he appears and that scored the first distribution deal at the event.

The worldwide rights for “Waiting for Superman,” directed by Davis Guggenheim and produced by Participant Media, were sold to Paramount Vantage, a unit of the Viacom (VIA) movie studio.

The film premiered Friday at Sundance, with Gates in attendance. The Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder took questions at the screening and made it to several Sundance events, surprising several film types.

“I couldn’t believe it was him,” said one participant at a filmmakers’ gathering.

Yes, it was him, especially since issues in public education have been a big focus of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he has been spending most of his time since leaving day-to-day work at the software giant in 2008.

Interestingly, Participant Media–along with Guggenheim–put out “An Inconvenient Truth,” the global-warming doc starring former VP Al Gore, which was a huge success.

And in yet another Silicon Valley connection, Los Angeles-based Participant was founded by former eBay (EBAY) exec Jeff Skoll.

Here are highlights from a terrific interview Walt Mossberg did with Melinda Gates at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference in 2008, where she talked eloquently about the problems faced by U.S. schoolchildren:

And here’s the press release from Participant on the “Superman” deal:

HOLLYWOOD, CA (January 21, 2010)–Worldwide rights for the new documentary from Oscar®-winning director Davis Guggenheim (AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH) and Participant Media have been acquired by Paramount Vantage, it was announced today by Adam Goodman, Paramount Film Group President and by Participant Media’s CEO Jim Berk.

The documentary will have its world premiere tomorrow, January 22, at the Sundance Film Festival. Paramount Vantage will release the movie in the fall of 2010 in the U.S. with international release dates not yet determined.

The studio’s specialty division Paramount Classics released Guggenheim’s acclaimed AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH in 2006. The influential documentary, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, received two Academy Awards®, and was a worldwide box office hit, grossing more than $24 million in the U.S. and nearly $50 million worldwide.

The new film, developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, examines the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories–from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system.

The documentary features several leaders in the field of education, including philanthropist Bill Gates of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York Geoffrey Canada; Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools Michelle Rhee; Knowledge is Power Program Founders (KIPP) David Levin and Mike Feinberg; and President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation Bill Strickland.

Six-time Grammy Award-winning recording artist, concert performer and philanthropist John Legend composed the end title song “Shine.” Legend’s own Show Me campaign uses education to break the cycle of poverty through sustainable development at the individual, family, and community levels.

Said Paramount’s Goodman: “Our commitment to this movie and the issue of education is urgently important to all of us at Paramount. In collaboration with our partners, we hope to bring about a real solution.”

Said Davis Guggenheim: “With these two great partners, Participant Media and Paramount Pictures, we have a chance to create public awareness around this issue, and this is the only way we can make real change in our children’s schools.”

Said Jim Berk, CEO, Participant Media: “The movie creates an emotional personal connection to an issue which underpins the very future of our country. By reuniting with our good friends at Paramount, we have the chance to build on our ground breaking partnership on AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to launch a national conversation from movie theaters, to kitchen tables all across the country.”

“It’s wonderful to have Paramount as partners on this film,” says the film’s producer, Lesley Chilcott, who was also a producer on AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. “It’s crucial to have experts like Paramount and Participant that understand the power of a film to create urgency about an important issue. We need to get the message out there. Millions of kids are waiting.”

The film is directed and produced by Davis Guggenheim. Lesley Chilcott is the producer, with Jeff Skoll and Diane Weyermann serving as executive producers. Written by Davis Guggenheim and Billy Kimball. The cinematographers are Erich Roland and Bob Richman. Greg Finton, Jay Cassidy, and Kim Roberts served as the editors.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/education-documentary-featuring-bill-gates-gets-first-distribution-deal-at-sundance/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091123/viral-video-when-forests-attack-al-gore-is-taping-toy-guns-to-trees/ http://allthingsd.com/20091123/viral-video-when-forests-attack-al-gore-is-taping-toy-guns-to-trees/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:00:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20993

Former VP and full-time envirogod Al Gore, who appeared at the fourth D: All Things Digital in May 2006, turned out to be a very funny guy onstage.

And he’s funny on television too, as you can see from his hysterical appearance this past weekend on “Saturday Night Live.”

In the bit, Gore talks about getting his crazy on to get folks to not forget about global warming.

Enjoy the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091123/viral-video-when-forests-attack-al-gore-is-taping-toy-guns-to-trees/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090904/how-old-is-this-internet-thing-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20090904/how-old-is-this-internet-thing-again/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:44:59 +0000 Marisa Taylor http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=15032 Poor Al Gore has been teased mercilessly for supposedly claiming he invented the Internet.

But that’s not the only portion of cyber-history that’s in dispute.

Media outlets are celebrating Sept. 2 as the 40th anniversary of the day the Internet was invented. Security company Symantec (SYMC) even chose to ring the day in by creating a top-10 list of the most notorious online threats, with No. 1 as 2000’s “I Love You” worm, which infected an estimated 5 million computers.

UCLA’s engineer school, on the other hand, is recognizing Oct. 29 as the 40th anniversary. That’s where computer-science professor Leonard Kleinrock and his team were credited with sending the first computer-to-computer messages.

Well, which is it?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090904/how-old-is-this-internet-thing-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090803/ftc-to-google-ceo-apple-nice-try/ http://allthingsd.com/20090803/ftc-to-google-ceo-apple-nice-try/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:42:18 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=22708 Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s resignation from Apple’s board this morning was a nice gesture, but it’s not going to end the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of the ties between the Google and Apple boards.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the FTC applauded the move, but said the two companies are foolish if they think it will simply abandon its inquiry as a result.

“We have been investigating the Google/Apple interlocking directorates issue for some time and commend them for recognizing that sharing directors raises competitive issues, as Google and Apple increasingly compete with each other,” said Bureau of Competition Director Richard Feinstein. “We will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies.”

In other words, Schmidt’s departure was a nice start, but the Commission still worries that Google (GOOG) director Arthur Levinson’s presence on Apple’s (AAPL) board–as well as that of Google advisers Bill Campbell and Al Gore–might lead to conflicts of interest or unfair business practices.

So who’ll be the next to leave: Levinson or Gore?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090803/ftc-to-google-ceo-apple-nice-try/feed/ 1