AllThingsD » Alex Swisher

Bobbing for Apple, PC Hide-and-Seek and More: Swisher Boys Throw a Windows 7 Launch Party!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:17:01 +0000

To be totally honest, BoomTown was a little late getting a request in to Microsoft to host a Windows 7 Launch Party.

Thus, no “special Signature Edition of Windows® 7 Ultimate and your very own Windows® 7 Party Pack to share with your guests” for a shindig at my house!

As you might imagine: Massive, massive bummer.

While Microsoft (MSFT) PR head Frank Shaw begrudgingly invited me to his party, flying to Seattle for it seemed like too much fun to have in one lifetime.

So, because we admire the very gumption of Microsoft marketing types for trying to make a software launch festive, which many have mocked mercilessly, the Swisher boys and I pressed on and created our own party to mark the launch of the much anticipated new operating system software.

With Windows 7 officially in stores on Oct. 22, the software giant hopes its new offering will erase all memories of Vista. And so far, reviews, such as Walt Mossberg’s here, are pretty good.

After a rocky start, including disinviting all the All Things Digital staff from the proceedings for reasons you will see in the video, Louie, Alex and I proceeded to party down.

The festivities included Pin-the-Moustache-on-Steve-Ballmer, Bobbing for Apple (AAPL) and, of course, a very exhausting game of “Search”–also know as Hide-and-Seek–for the Google (GOOG) PC.

All in all, a memorable evening at the Swisher household, as you can see in the video below:

[ See post to watch video ]

(All joking aside, ATD staff do regularly use both Windows and Apple computers, as well as all the various browsers, to make sure our site works well on all platforms. That said, no Apples were harmed in the making of this video.)

Kara Visits Sundance and Interviews Hurley, Hastings and Kilar

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:29:06 +0000

Here’s a longish video BoomTown did over the weekend at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, the famous annual independent film gathering now taking place in Park City, Utah.

I was there to moderate a panel on Saturday titled, “Where Do We Go From Here? Icons of the Digital Age.”

It was a great session, with a lot of insights as to where things are headed in the online video space and how that would impact the movie industry. Main conclusion: Significantly.

The trio of panelists were: Chad Hurley, the co-founder and CEO of the Google (GOOG) video service, YouTube; Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, the premium online video service that is a joint venture of News Corp. (NWS) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal; and Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix (NFLX), the largest online DVD rental service, which has been moving into an ever wider range of distribution of movies on the Web. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

I did interviews with each of them, as well as a chat with my only indie celebrity friend, Jane Lynch, some scenes from the festival and an intro and outro from my own little stars, Louie and Alex Swisher.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

MicroHoo: Some Web 2.0 Advice!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:26:38 +0000

Last night, BoomTown loaded the kids into the car–you try finding a sitter on a Tuesday night!–and went early to a pair of dot-com parties being thrown at some trendy spots in San Francisco related to the Web 2.0 Expo taking place this week.

Our quest was to find out what some savvy Web 2.0 types thought would–or should–happen next in the Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle, following Yahoo’s earnings report yesterday.

Thus, we made the scene–at widgetmaker RockYou’s “Rockin’ Spring Mixer” at Bong Su and news site Digg’s get-together at Mighty–to get some advice on what’s going to happen next.

Frankly, BoomTown is running low on ideas and we got a good range of predictions to bolster our bare cupboard.

So here’s a good mix of interviews on the topic, with folks such as RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, Broadband Mechanics’ Marc Canter, Digg Founder Kevin Rose (in the very, very dark and noisy club–sorry!–but you can hear him at least), Digg CEO Jay Adelson and others.

And, at the end of the video, using a dinosaur toy as a metaphor, Louie and Alex Swisher, who pretty much have the situation down cold.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]