AllThingsD » ATD

High Five to AllThingsD.com -- Happy Birthday to Us

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:39:31 +0000

Five years ago, AllThingsD.com was launched with just a few staffers, a few stories and a whole lot of hope. Also, as it turned out, with a panoply of LOLcat photos.

The site had soft-launched a little earlier, but — officially — we opened our doors in the late evening of April 26, 2007. Walt Mossberg wrote about a Kodak printer; John Paczkowski wrote about, wait for it, Apple; and I opined on how then-Yahoo-CEO Terry Semel might save the troubled company.

The more things change …

Actually, despite the fact that we have grown hugely in both traffic and staff, and have logged almost 26,000 posts, little has changed in how ATD looks at its role in covering tech, using stringent standards of fairness, accuracy, ethics and reporting.

As I wrote back then: “That is what we will be trying to do most of the time here, attempting to figure out what is happening in the digital space and explaining it in a way that is clear and cogent.”

And, of course, have some fun doing it.

Thus, mission accomplished, and mission never accomplished, too.

Walt and I want to thank everyone, from our outstanding staff to our Dow Jones colleagues to the many companies we cover to — most of all — our readers.

There is a lot more to come going forward, and we hope to never disappoint and always delight.

And, as I also wrote back then at the dawn of AllThingsD:

“But enough looking back: On to the next thing.”

And to my amazing partner, Walt, you knew I could not resist:

All Things Hired: Bonnie Cha Is Our Latest ATD Reviewer

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:01:10 +0000

On the heels of our recent hiring of Mike Isaac to cover social tech for this site, Bonnie Cha will be joining the staff of All Things Digital as a senior reviewer.

She joins Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret, as well as recent hire Lauren Goode, as part of our expanded All Things Reviewed site.

Cha has been covering technology since 2002, most recently spending eight years at CNET reviewing various consumer electronics, including printers, software and smartphones, as well as reporting on the wireless industry.

She also wrote for the Crave blog there, covering such topics as robotics and science, and served as a technical editor on several how-to books for McGraw-Hill.

When not tinkering with the latest gadgets, Cha enjoys spending her free time surfing or checking out live music. She is a graduate of Emory University with a degree in English and of the University of Southern California, where she got her masters in journalism.

Most of all, we think she’s a perfect fit for our ever-growing staff, so get ready for some insightful reviews and more when she starts in May.

Say It Loud: ATD Relaunches the "Voices" Section

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:04:53 +0000

One of the least-changed parts of AllThingsD since we started this site has been our “Voices” section, which has attracted robust and ever-increasing traffic over the years.

But today Voices gets a new look as we relaunch an updated section to bring you even more writing and information from outside sources. Voices will be run by senior editor Beth Callaghan, and will offer six regular features:

Must-Reads — formerly called Voices — will be the same daily compendium of links from around the Web. These are pieces we’ve selected editorially because we think they’re worth your time. We’ve made two changes in order to clarify the nature of the content and our role in suggesting them: We’ve renamed the links “Must-Reads From Other Web Sites” and we’ve simplified them to consist merely of outbound links. The links will appear in widgets across the site and in an archive — but when you click on a headline, you’ll be taken directly to the original Web site.

Voices is now made up of exclusive op-eds and posts from outside contributors who are well-versed in AllThingsD and have unique perspectives to share. We welcome and will evaluate all such pieces, and also plan to reach out to a range of industry experts on a variety of topics. Our goal is to spur debate and also give smart and engaging content a platform on our site.

Forum is conceived as an assembly of quick opinions from four or five well-known personalities on a single issue that is in the news. Topics can range from thoughts on the possible bubble in Silicon Valley to what’s the most interesting new trend to how possible privacy regulation will impact the tech industry. We hope to elicit a lot of different opinions and insights from a wide-ranging panel of execs, academics, venture capitalists, Wall Street analysts, entrepreneurs, bloggers and more.

Eye to Eye will be even more pointed, pitting a pair of often-opposing viewpoints on a controversial topic of the week — kind of like a Spy vs. Spy, but with words. The possibilities are endless here: Was $1 billion too much for Facebook to pay for photo-sharing site Instagram? Will Yahoo’s recent restructuring work? Do you think Google Glasses is a good idea? Where will Apple’s stock be in a year?

Numbers is a weekly story told by data — sometimes scientific, sometimes irreverent, always interesting. We will be working with many top research outfits, and will also be doing a number of our own polls of readers. We love infographics, surveys and pie charts at ATD and you’re going to get a whole lot of them.

Lastly, Ten Things About Me finds answers to entertaining and informative questions aimed at prominent people in the digital realm. It’s a little like the Proust Questionnaire mixed with the kind of queries that we are well known for at our D conferences, plus a whole lot of unusual ones, so you can get to know a variety of tech and media figures in a different way. First up: Twitter and Square inventor Jack Dorsey tells us what he’d be up to if he weren’t doing what he is doing now.

The new Voices will roll out all this week. Enjoy.

Welcome to ATD: The Very Social Mike Isaac

Kara Swisher — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:23:10 +0000

As many readers know, we have been adding to our staff here at AllThingsD, most recently in our new reviews section, with the addition of Lauren Goode earlier this year.

Now Walt Mossberg and I are proud to announce that Mike Isaac is joining our team to cover the social Web and its biggest players, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

He comes to ATD most recently from a staff writer position at Wired, where, among many other things, he spent much of his time writing about Google’s mobile and social efforts.

From 2010 to 2012, his coverage at Wired included the decline and fall of Hewlett-Packard’s mobile empire, Google’s surprise acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and Facebook’s steady trudge toward IPO-hood.

Prior to that, he wrote about the business of tech for Forbes magazine and Forbes.com, with a particular emphasis on start-ups and social. His work has also appeared in Paste magazine, Performer magazine, DNR magazine and the Washington Examiner.

Isaac holds a degree in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a former Georgetown University journalism fellow.

He takes over the social beat from Liz Gannes, who will be stepping up our coverage of the many businesses of Google, innovation, venture investing and the start-up scene — especially its bigger companies, from Pinterest to Quora to Dropbox. Gannes, as everyone who follows her knows well, has become a key observer of Silicon Valley and its players, and her insights into the tech scene have become one of our most invaluable offerings.

We’re excited for both of them, and look forward to their stellar work on our site.

We're Expanding: All Things Digital Would Like You to Meet All Things Reviewed

Kara Swisher — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:51:17 +0000

Tomorrow, as part of the commitment that AllThingsD has to providing its readers with ever more high-quality content, this site will be launching a new reviews section, All Things Reviewed.

Simply put, we’re building on the consumer-tech reviews by Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret that we’ve always run, with a fresh team of ATD reviewers, the first of whom is the talented Lauren Goode.

Lauren will be joined in the coming months by additional strong reviewers, who we will be adding soon, and each of whom will likely do one meaty review a week.

Katie, who will continue as a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, will also take on the added task of editing the new All Things Reviewed section, which we designed to be bright and graphical and easy to navigate.

We’ll also have plenty of timely, interesting consumer product news in addition to the in-depth reviews. It will all be integrated into the main ATD site, too, because we consider it a key part of providing a range of news, information, analysis and context to those who come to us for trustworthy, fair and accurate journalism.

Make no mistake: We think it is critical that reviews adhere to the same strict tenets of reporting we have for everything we post here. The reviews of the products we will feature take time, rigorous testing and deep critical analysis.

And, like Walt’s and Katie’s current reviews, these new ATD reviews will be based on thorough testing and aimed at smart consumers — and not just techies and enthusiasts.

That’s why we will pick carefully which products are significant or might be interesting to a broader range of readers. In other words, we won’t be reviewing every single slightly changed phone or laptop, or every me-too location app, and we won’t bore you with chip speeds and technobabble.

Thus, as hard as it is to say to the geeks who follow us, we will shun the rigid spec lists and templates used elsewhere, and instead present you with holistic, experience-based reviews that tell the story of the product — hardware, software, apps, games, Web sites and services.

Most importantly, we won’t be afraid to point out negatives, even if the manufacturer is an advertiser. Our aim is to earn your trust and be on your side, even if you disagree at times with our conclusions.

Like all new endeavors, we hope to get the entire section up to cruising speed as soon as possible, but we’ll be doing it in the careful, considered and high-quality manner we strive for in everything we do. (And, like all new stuff, we also had a party introducing the section to a packed crowd at the SXSW Interactive festival last night.)

We hope you’ll like the result and welcome your feedback as we begin our latest expansion. And, as usual, there will be much more to come.

ATD and Mashable Sitting in a Tree: The Best Merger Memo I've Nabbed All Year

Kara Swisher — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:24 +0000

While AllThingsD.com is known for scooping various and sundry internal memos from Internet giants, this is perhaps the most pleasing to post.

It’s a graphic visualization that our social media editor Drake Martinet did for his beloved, Stacy Green, who is the VP of marketing and communications over at Mashable.

Drake asked Stacy to marry him last night and, because they are both such geeks, did this paean to their relationship that is just adorkable.

And we post it here, because ATD is not just about news — it’s about love, sweet love. Compared to our Apple coverage, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

No, not just for some, but for everyone — Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers.

(By the way, Stacy said yes.)

Enjoy:

What Not to Do in Hong Kong (Trust Me on This One)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:30:23 +0000

How shall I put this as delicately as I am known for: So I went to AsiaD in Hong Kong and all I got was this lousy transient ischemic attack.

First off: I’m doing great, have recovered all functions completely, and have even had a couple of scoops while bedridden. (And, yes, I am a bad patient!)

In all seriousness, as it happened, a 14-hour plane flight sandwiched into a window seat with two big dudes sitting next to me, combined with a not-uncommon but undetected-until-now heart condition, seems to have spelled trouble for me this week and sent me right into a hospital here in China.

(Note to everyone: When they tell you to walk around on long-haul air trips and drink plenty of water, you might want to listen.)

Without going into the gory details, what I thought was jet lag and a bad migraine actually rendered me speechless for a few hours on Tuesday morning, and in need of some serious medical attention and recuperation, which is why I will not be appearing at our first international D conference tonight.

As you might imagine, I am pretty bummed, since I was looking forward to the event and interviewing the stellar list of speakers we are hosting. It is the first D in a decade that I am not part of, except in spirit.

But, as usual, I know that my fantastic partner Walt Mossberg and the amazing AllThingsD staff here and in the U.S. will do me proud and deliver yet another memorable D. ATD phenoms Peter Kafka and Ina Fried will take over my interviewing duties.

It all starts tonight, with an interview with Google Android chief Andy Rubin by Walt, so I hope you’ll be following it as closely as I will be from the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital (no flowers, please!).

Speaking of my sickbed, here’s a little video I did from my room with a view, this time turning the lens on myself for once. The message, in living color and for those who care: I really am doing well and am as snarky as usual.

And, as you also might guess, I will be back in California this weekend and back to scooping as usual:

[ See post to watch video ]

Mr. Ballmer's Wild Ride! Microsoft Execs Will Address Wall Street Suits Today.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:17:32 +0000

Later this morning, I will scramble the private ATD jet to make my way down south to Anaheim for Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting.

That’s right: A bunch of Wall Street types, asking not very challenging questions of top Microsoft execs in a ballroom perilously close to Disneyland.

Taking place this afternoon, starting at 1 pm PT, the confab will include appearances by its top execs, including CEO Steve Ballmer, CFO Peter Klein, COO Kevin Turner, Online Services President Qi Lu and Satya Nadella, who helms the Servers & Tools division of the software giant.

There will be lots to discuss at the confab, including: What is up with Microsoft’s search and advertising partnership now that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz — who struck the deal — was ousted, and whether it is involved in a possible bid for the Silicon Valley Internet giant again; an update on the Windows Phone business; prospects for Windows 8, which the company just highlighted at its huge developers conference there; questions about its nascent tablet business; comments on Google’s recent moves, including its purchase of Motorola Mobility; and, of course, how Ballmer sees his own tenure at Microsoft, given its longtime lackluster stock performance (paging investor David Einhorn!).

In other words: Mr. Ballmer’s Wild Wall Street Ride!

Look for my live blog from the event later today.

Viral Video: Yahoo and Groupon Update -- Live From ATD Global HQ (My Bedroom!)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:26:52 +0000

Here are two videos from an appearance I made on WSJ.com’s Digits show yesterday, talking about the situation at Yahoo and at Groupon.

And, by “situation,” I mean big, honking controversy.

In Yahoo’s case, it is the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz this week from the Silicon Valley Internet giant; with Groupon, it is the delay of the IPO of the social buying service and other related issues.

Here’s the video, which I did with my Ray-Bans in my bedroom at home. (Yes, in pajamas, as any good blogger would.)

Give Me Back My Baby: Michael Arrington Trying to Buy Back TechCrunch From AOL -- But Would AOL Sell It?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:57:26 +0000

Here’s another interesting wrinkle to the ongoing saga of AOL, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his nascent venture firm, CrunchFund.

Since the controversy erupted last week, Arrington has reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, as well as others in Silicon Valley, about buying back his popular tech news site.

Sources said Arrington needs funding to do so — irony alert! — and told them over the weekend that he planned to use his blogging bully pulpit to force AOL into giving up the site it bought for more than $25 million almost exactly a year ago.

But sources said — at this point — AOL is not inclined to sell the site, which has prompted Arrington to pen a blog post on TechCrunch, not-meant-as-a-joke-titled “Editorial Independence,” suggesting they do so.

Quelle surprise!

We’ve proposed two options to Aol.

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

or

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

Arrington used an image of the Spartans from, I think, the movie “300,” on the post. Memo to Mike: All the Spartans died in the end, however valiant. It goes without saying — this situation is not valiant and you are definitely not King Leonidas.

“It is at a stalemate, so this is the result,” said one person with knowledge of the pugnacious effort by Arrington to take back his baby.

Which, of course, he sold in the first place.

AOL has stated it will not allow Arrington to remain its editor or have “influence on coverage” while also doing a venture fund.

Thus, some of Arrington’s staffers, such as M.G. Siegler, have already been plowing the ground ahead of Arrington’s post.

Siegler, for example, penned a weepy diatribe about how unfair it all is and how different the site operates from slow-footed meanies at big media organizations such as the New York Times. The Times strafed Arrington in a David Carr column yesterday.

Wrote Siegler, in what can only be described as soap-opera fantastic: “TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows.”

Tune in tomorrow to see if AOL’s content chief and Arrington boss Arianna Huffington will use that gun in her pocket. Or will she use the razor-chiseled cheekbones of Armstrong to slice her new nemesis?

(Alls I can say to add to what I have already said, at this point: Good lord. But, wait, isn’t there a TechCrunch Disrupt conference next week to hawk and make it all about Arrington and not the entrepreneurs? This explains everything!)

While Siegler is trying to make it all sound as if it is so very unfair, since the site is presumably so very special, AllThingsD operates in a similar quick-edit way to TechCrunch — where I will underscore there are some terrific journalists.

But — because it is simply flat-out wrong on every possible scale — neither Walt Mossberg nor I would ever consider being editors of the site while also running a venture fund.

(In fact, it is now a standing rule at ATD that, if we ever did such an unthinkable thing — which of course we never would — our writers tell us we stink rather than praise us.)

Meanwhile, we’ll be busy breaking some actual tech news on this site, like here and here and here, while TechCrunch presumably faux-burns and AOL fiddles.

From U.S. to Germany to China–BoomTown Goes Around the (Digital) World in a Week

Kara Swisher — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 01:22:34 +0000

It’s a big, wide and very digital world out there and that’s why I’m headed around the globe–quite literally–for the next week.

First stop, due east of San Francisco, where I arrived today in Munich, Germany, to moderate several sessions for Hubert Burda Media’s annual DLD conference.

That includes interviewing a whole lot of players I see all the time in Silicon Valley, including investor Reid Hoffman, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Google sales majordomo Nikesh Arora, as well as the two hottest start-up leaders on the Web, Groupon’s Andrew Mason and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare.

And while there are even more U.S. techies here–many on their way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland–I like DLD because it gives me a chance to meet a lot of European entrepreneurs and also grok a different and global perspective on tech, media and more.

It starts Sunday.

Then, from here, even farther east. I head for Hong Kong, where I’ll be meeting my All Things Digital other half, Walt Mossberg and ATD’s secret brain Lia Lorenzano to meet with our Dow Jones partners and scope out a possible AsiaD conference in China in the fall.

We’ve had our international aspirations before that did not pan out–see one of the many videos I did for a possible EuroD in 2007, while we visited Dublin, Ireland–so nothing’s certain.

But we’re hoping we can pull off some kind of international conference in 2011, one of the many parts of the expansion of our D offerings, including more events and many additions to our reporting staff on the ATD Web site this fall.

I will be posting videos from both places, including another episode of “Where in the World Are Walt & Kara?”

Until then, enjoy this one from Dublin Castle in 2007:

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft's Browser Boss Dean Hachamovitch Touts Privacy Features at D@CES

Peter Kafka — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:28:59 +0000

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is still the world’s most popular, but its dominance is being steadily eroded by competition from Mozilla, Google and Apple. Can a new, aggressive approach to privacy change that? Can Microsoft really protect users from tracking across the Web–and do users really care?

Dean Hachamovitch, who oversees IE for Microsoft as a corporate VP, gives Walt Mossberg an update on the browser wars.

Greetings! We’ll be starting shortly. If you were in the room right now with our select crowd, you would have just heard some Aerosmith. And now, one of my favorite Van Morrison songs : “Jackie Wilson Said.” Also, we’re not using the classic red D interview chairs for this one. Going with a kind of teal blue. Now you know!

[ See post to watch video ]

Some Isley Brothers now.

Some Elvis Costello. Don’t know this one, though.

And…here’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Kara is wearing something that might have been bedazzled. Walt’s wearing Waltwear.

An update on the state of the ATD empire, which is getting much bigger.

Walt brings on Dean Hachamovitch.

Dean, by the way, is wearing a black long-sleeve shirt that says “private” in big white letters. Hope someone asks him about it.

Ah, and Dean has a “private” shirt for Walt, too. We’ll get to privacy in a bit, it seems.

DEAN: Working on IE 9, in beta, downloaded over 20 million times. Most important is its performance. It’s amazingly fast. Also, it blurs the boundary between Web sites and apps. And also, some talk about privacy.

WALT: Okay, that was a nice ad. But please talk about reports that you’ve been eclipsed in Europe by Firefox.

DEAN: Yes, we used to have 90 percent market share back in the ’90s. But now we look at how many people choose to use our most recent versions. “We are delighted that IE 6 market share is going down. We are delighted that IE 7 market share is going down.”

DEAN: And bear in mind how much the Internet is growing. “There are a lot of different factors. It’s a very complex situation.”

WALT: Okay, on to privacy. Safari used to have some kind of privacy feature, but that’s old. Then in IE 8, you introduced a new feature, not by default, which tried to extend that protection to other sites on the Web you traveled to.

DEAN: You were describing “over the shoulder privacy.” But we’re also concerned about tracking. There are two kinds of tracking: “Expected tracking” and “creepy stalking.”

Pandora and Amazon are expected tracking. You want them to know what you’re doing. But the important thing is that you have visibility and control, and you get benefits.

For instance, when I go to Amazon, they know that I bought Spice Girls and Fergie, and they tell me other stuff I should get.

WALT: Some of that tracking isn’t sophisticated enough.

DEAN: Anyway, creepy stalking is bad. Because consumers aren’t aware of what’s going on, and they don’t have control of it.

WALT: We don’t allow slides at our conferences usually, but we’re going to make an exception. Please show us some slides!

Dean is showing people a monitor that shows you what cookies were attached to a certain NPR page, which includes tracking info that comes from Facebook integration.

Now a Fox News page with similar info.

A reminder that cookies, by the way, aren’t the only tracking info involved here. Also pixels, etc.

But even once you root around and look at the pixels and tracking info, you might not really understand what you’re looking at or who is behind them.

WALT: Microsoft is a big Internet advertiser and publisher. Don’t you do some of this stuff?

DEAN: Yes, and in addition to us and Google, etc, there is an amazing ecosystem of information brokers. There’s a huge industry around this.

WALT: So what’s coming?

DEAN: With the new rev of IE 9, first quarter of 2011, you’ll be able to “go to a Web page, click on a button and you’ll be protected from tracking.” Any Web page can do this.

It will block content on that page. It will be an open publishing platform.

WALT: Why would a publisher want to do this? They have a legitmate need to want to know things about you, to serve you better ads, right?

DEAN: We have a lot of interest from a lot of different organizations that want to make lists. Publishers, government agencies, consumer advocacy, etc.

WALT: So, I have to download a list from someone I trust to make this work. Will you maintain this list?

DEAN: No. People will find these lists the same way that they find other things on the Web they like. From Facebook, or friends, or wherever.

We think it’s important to have people exercise judgment in making these lists. The most important thing is that you go off to the Web and find one you have confidence in.

WALT: But why do I have to hope that I go to sites that have these buttons?

WALT and DEAN are trying to explain how the list and button combination will work. Frankly, I’m confused. We’ll have to circle back to this.

WALT: A cynical journalist might suggest that you’re embracing privacy and wearing a shirt because Firefox et al are eating your lunch.

DEAN: Paying Windows customers want a great experience that includes privacy, including through their browser. But another way to view people who use browsers is that they’re objects to be boxed and sold. We don’t believe that. We believe Windows customers should have a great experience with their browser.

WALT: As opposed to?

DEAN: Well, Chrome, for instance, is funded by advertising.

WALT: So is The Wall Street Journal.

DEAN: I think advertising is great. But be careful about connecting advertising with tracking. We have advertising customers, and we want them to be delighted. And we have Windows customers, and we want them to be delighted. We have a unique position on this that gives us an opporunity to lead.

WALT: All the other browsers have a privacy mode.

DEAN: But that’s for “over the shoulder” privacy, not tracking.

WALT: Some of this tracking stuff is very hard to block. Can you really protect a user from all of it?

DEAN: Good question. Flash, for instance, enables tracking “Flash cookies” and they’re inherent in Flash. Only way to turn them off is to turn Flash off.

WALT: So this won’t block Flash cookies?

DEAN: It will if you tell it to.

WALT: But that’s pretty extreme.

DEAN: Yes. We’re touching on the ambiguity to the consumer about what actually is important and worthwhile tracking, and what isn’t.

We want to help consumers make progress being in control, but it’s a work in progress. It’s happening in Berkeley and in Brussels.

WALT: Let’s switch gears. Some people, not mainstream people, are debating whether the future of entertainment and progress and productivity will be on the browser and in the cloud. Google is pushing that via Chrome OS, and they also have Android apps that store local cloud on the device. Where do you come down on that?

DEAN: It’s a great case of “and”–you’ll have local apps and cloud versions. Like with Office mail, etc. We’re doing work on speed and safety so you can feel more comfortable in the cloud. “I think it’s the best of both worlds.”

WALT: So not a religious issue? Just practicality?

DEAN: Yes.

Questions and Answers

Q: What do you think of what the FTC says about privacy?

DEAN: The paper they put out in December is a good framework. And they’ve responded positively to what we’ve put out. They’re in favor of self-regulation, and we’re eager to work with them. I’ve had conversations with them, and what they say makes sense.

WALT: You’ve been talking to competitors about working together on this?

DEAN: We’ve been talking across the industry.

Q: Who is supposed to make banking, etc., more secure? This isn’t just about someone saying something on Facebook, but opening up the wrong window and having your bank account drained.

DEAN: We take it very seriously. “Security is an industry issue. I have to say it that way, because anything that we can talk about here has multiple parties involved.” if your Facebook is hacked, was it using your banking password?

Q: I’m talking about a national security issue.

DEAN: There’s a lot of working going on within the industry, working with law enformecement, to make things more secure.

WALT: But since you have the biggest market share, there’s a lot of responsibility on you. What do you do about that?

DEAN: Well, one thing we do is put out updates every eight weeks, because things change.

But really, “the best thing you can do to remain secure is to keep all your bits updated….That would make such a difference.”

Q: Firefox has plug-ins like AdBlock, that let you block ads. They seem to be effective at blocking things like beacons, too. Are they effective and can you do something analogous?

DEAN: Add-ins require installation, etc. You need a list, too. But we’re building that functionality into IE, so you don’t need to download anything else. We’re also working with people who make lists for AdBlock Plus, and they’re eager to work with IE 9 as well.

WALT: But AdBlock blocks ads, too. You’re not going to do that, right?

DEAN: It comes down to the list. If a list author lists sites that involve ads, then they’ll go away, too.

WALT: So you could surf the Web without seeing ads?

DEAN: It depends on the list.

WALT: I do think ads are good, by the way. [Me too!]

DEAN: Right. “Ads are great!”

But this is one of the reasons the ad industry wants to create lists for this. So they can distinguish tracking from nontracking.

Q: You’ve been talking about desktop browsers. Will these features come to mobile as well?

DEAN: “We’ll be talking about our mobile browser very soon, and I’ll just smile, and you can infer from that.”

Q: How much more value does tracking really add to advertising?

DEAN: Hard for me to answer that. Maybe the next time you have one of these things, you could have someone from the ad industry.

WALT: Good idea.

And we’re done.

Chartbeat Says the Rise of the Machines Won't Be So Bad if You're a Cyborg

Peter Kafka — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:46:17 +0000

Tony Haile has a vision of the future, and it involves turning people like me into cyborgs.

And Haile thinks this is a good thing! It’s part of his pitch for Chartbeat, a Web analytics start-up: He says that very soon “content producers” like yours truly are going to be faced with the choice of becoming robots–that is, replaced with algorithms and machines–or sticking around and injecting ourselves with big helpings of technology and data.

Chartbeat is supposed to help people like me with the cyborg route, by providing real-time information about the way the stuff I make performs on the Web: How many people are looking at a given story, where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying, etc.

Until now, most of Chartbeat’s 3,000 customers have handed that information over to managers and editors. But now Haile is rolling out Newsbeat, a tweaked version of the service that’s supposed to be delivered directly to rank-and-file stuff-makers like me. He’s been working with Web publishers like Gawker Media, Fast Company and Time Warner’s Time Inc. to get the rollout ready.

I’m not entirely opposed to my coming transformation, by the way: Unlike some of my peers–and these tend to be older peers–I like the idea of knowing more about the way people consume the stuff I make.

And it’s inevitable, anyway. On the Web, it’s impossible not to be exposed to performance data. The only question is what kind of data, and how much.

But still. I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do with all of this data. The version of Chartbeat that All Things D already uses gives me plenty of personalized information about my stories, and it’s narcotizing to sit around and watch my numbers flick up and down all day.

And if I were running a very big Web site, like, say, the Wall Street Journal, which also uses Chartbeat (and, like this site, is owned by News Corp.), I could put some of that data to work. I could figure out which stories I might want to highlight on the homepage, and try to analyze why others aren’t performing as well as they could, etc.

But from my worm’s-eye view, I don’t know what I’m really supposed to make of my Chartbeat report. Chartbeat tells me that my scooplet this morning on Rock Band is doing well, which is gratifying. But I could also get that information, with a longer delay, via services like Adobe’s Omniture or Google Analytics.

And in any case, then what? That information can’t help me make more scoops, or more interesting stories. And in the end, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I can I do a better job.

Haile disagrees, of course. So let’s let him make his own case in this interview, which we conducted in the semi-busy hallway outside his office yesterday.

[ See post to watch video ]

D: Dive Into Mobile: The Full Interview Video of Flipboard's Mike McCue

Kara Swisher — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:15:23 +0000

As promised, All Things Digital will be publishing the full videos of the interviews we did two weeks ago at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco.

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all.

Here’s Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose latest Apple iPad app is giving publishers and readers a glimpse of what digital reading could be.

The effort is not without some controversy, as how content is being delivered on the new devices is an ongoing debate.

(Full disclosure: ATD is part of Flipboard’s new publisher beta.)

Here’s the video of the interview that the Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret did with McCue:

[ See post to watch video ]

Next up: Former Palm CEO and now Hewlett-Packard mobile kingpin Jon Rubinstein.

Full Disclosure About Full Disclosure in Blogs

Kara Swisher — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:02:55 +0000

Earlier this week, the Knight Digital Media Center penned a post on the full disclosure policy of All Things Digital.

Titled “Transparency for Journalists: AllThingsD Shows What It Can Look Like,” it’s a very nice review of what we do on the site.

“What I like about these statements is that they aren’t cookie-cutter corpspeak or legalese. They’re human–and even humorous–revelations,” wrote Amy Gahran. “Each writer gets to decide which topics she or he wants to cover, and how. This can get pretty personal, and that’s a good thing. “

We think so too at ATD, which is why you should check in with a whole new bunch of full disclosures we have posted recently, since adding a half-dozen new staffers.

You can click in from our About Us page to read a disclosure penned by each person on the site with editorial responsibilities.

It’s important to us to have them there, as we feel that being transparent and honest to readers is the first step in our commitment to fairness, accuracy and ethical standards.

The Knight story had some good advice at the bottom of its report for crafting a solid disclosure policy:

Publish your key disclosures in one place.

By publishing the ethics statements as static pages, they’re not only easier for readers to find–they’re easier for search engines to index and rank. Transparency is not just about disclosure, but about visibility (which in the online age entails findability). If you dole out disclosures in dribs and drabs, buried within specific articles or posts, you’re less likely to gain the visibility needed to make transparency effective.

Leave what to disclose up to the individual.

The most effective transparency statements are personal, not cookie-cutter. Don’t require journalists to disclose information that they would prefer to keep private. But similarly, don’t prohibit them from sharing whatever personal information or context they wish to offer. Ultimately, these disclosures are about people, not organizations. Editors and managers can supply examples and encourage good judgment–but if a writer really thinks it’s important to let readers know that he votes Republican, vacations in Brazil, volunteers as an abortion clinic escort, loathes cilantro, or has a favorite Beatle, that’s his business.

Make it easy for journalists to update their statements.

Life goes on–which means life circumstances, current concerns, and personal views constantly evolve. New issues always come up, so a journalists’ transparency statement should be a living document that the journalist can modify at will. Make sure your content management system makes this easy. It’s not a good idea to edit this document daily (that could make you look obsessed with what others think), but it should be revisited at least annually or every few months.

They Made What? Gadget Guy Greg Harper Visits Dive Into Mobile (Video)

Peter Kafka — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 05:56:25 +0000

Gadget freak Greg Harper (official title: President of Harpervision and co-founder of Gadgetoff) dropped by D: Dive Into Mobile to show off…gadgets, of course.

Not the stuff you’re used to seeing from the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft, but the kind of odd products you have to look awfully hard to find. And the kind of stuff you might think very hard about before using. Or not!

This is definitely one that’s better to show, not tell, so take a look at the assorted what-the-heck-is-that stuff that Harper brings to the stage. And check out the All Things D archives for a trip down gadget memory lane.

[ See post to watch video ]

And in case you wanted to garner a few extra geek points, here is Harper’s list of gadgets, starting with the historical time line and ending up with his mobile gadgets of the moment.

1985: Motorola Dyna Tac “Gordon Gekko Phone”

1992: HP 95/LXZ Viking Express
1993: Bell South/IBM Simon ($900)

1995: Motorola Marco Radiomail ($1400)
1996: Motorola Page Writer/Star Tac ($3000)/Nokia 9000
1997: Original Blackberry
1998: Iridium Satellite Phone
1999: Nokia 7110 (Matrix Phone)/Mobile Web
2000: Samsung Uproar/Handspring Visor/Data
2001: Palm-Kyocera smart phone/ Erricson Bluetooth headset
2002: Camera phone/Tmobile sidekick/Microsoft Windows 3 Smartphone
2003: Treo 600
2004: Razr

2006: EVDO USB 720
2007: iPhone

2009: Android

Current Gadgets:

iPhone ibottleopener case

Square credit card reader

Parrot AR drone

PLX car interface

Zeal GPS heads up goggles

Zephry HxM bluetooth heart rate monitor

Verizon LTE 4G modem PanTech UML290

OverBoard Waterproof iPhone case with Waterbuoy miniature flotation device

Cellphone flask

Intern Becomes Real Live Blog Dude–ATD Hires Drake Martinet

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:29:51 +0000

It is always nice when an intern makes good, and that is entirely the case with Drake Martinet (pictured here), who joins All Things Digital–as of yesterday, in fact.

We could not be happier. Plus, we knew he was our kind of geek after he agreed to spend the night in a tent next to Robert Scoble, to cover last year’s Apple iPad release.

That was when Drake was an ATD intern, until he headed to the New York Times this past summer to work on social media efforts in the newsroom.

And that’s one of the many things he will be working on here, making ATD more Facebook-worthy, Twittified and YouTubed within an inch of our lives.

Drake will also be working on upgrading our multimedia efforts–which is to say, figuring out a more sophisticated strategy for us than BoomTown’s Flip video camera assaults, helping mesh up business development efforts with our editorial integrity, analyzing our analytics and even making sure our new interns are up to snuff.

And, for his next trick, he will also be doing posts on interesting early start-ups and emerging ideas, much in the same way he did a bang-up job with a feature called “Almost Famous” when he was an intern.

Whew! Then again, he is young!

Still, Drake has done a lot so far.

After receiving his masters degree from Stanford University’s graduate program in journalism this year, and spending time in the school’s design program (the d.school), Drake moved to Brooklyn to work for the Times.

In addition to his weekly start-up column for ATD, his written, photographic and video work has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and numerous Web sites and blogs.

A native of San Diego, Drake first moved to Northern California to attend the University of California at Davis. He has lived in the greater Bay Area for the last eight years, excepting short stays in Louisiana, Washington D.C., New York and Chile.

When not working on a story or doing a little Web development, Drake can be found at his workbench building all manner of things physical and electronic, like the solar-powered Timbuk2 backpack that accompanies him almost everywhere.

He also loves to twist through the Peninsula hills on his classic Triumph motorcycle. (And, now that he is our employee again, perhaps we’ll make him do it with Scoble in tow.)

Drake joins a spate of recent hires at ATD, including: Liz Gannes on social (now appearing here in her new blog, NetworkEffect); Tricia Duryee on e-commerce; Ina Fried on mobile; and, last but not least, Arik Hesseldahl on enterprise.

And, as usual, much more to come….

Welcome to ATD: The Very Enterprising Arik Hesseldahl

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:20:53 +0000

And Arik Hesseldahl (pictured here) makes it four.

New reporters and bloggers for All Things Digital, that is.

The well-known tech writer–based in New York–will be covering the enterprise arena, as well as chips, for us.

As most regular readers know, this site has been expanding its staff, adding even more top-notch editorial might to our already terrific work.

That includes Ina Fried on mobile, Liz Gannes on social and Tricia Duryee on e-commerce.

All are key areas of tech coverage for ATD, obviously. But, as we thought about it, it was clear that there was not nearly enough cutting-edge tech journalism going on in the enterprise space.

It’s an important topic, involving a range of companies, such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and a spate of interesting start-ups. And, did you hear Google’s moving into enterprise?

While all the attention in the tech press is usually focused on the latest minor innovation from Facebook or some other Silicon Valley phenom, enterprise is also a hotbed of change and disruption, as businesses seek to understand and adapt to what digital technologies mean to them.

Thus, we turned to Arik, who has a long history covering a wide range of beats in tech.

He’s most recently been working for Bloomberg Businessweek, where for five years he covered it all: PCs, consumer electronics and semiconductors.

He was also the third person to write Businessweek.com’s popular “Byte of the Apple” column, and contributed to a companion blog of the same name.

Before joining Businessweek, Arik spent five years at Forbes.com, covering pretty much every aspect of tech, writing a daily column called “Ten O’Clock Tech,” a daily survey of a single new tech product that predated properties like Engadget and Gizmodo.

Before that, he cut his tech teeth learning all there was to know about the chip industry as a reporter for a now-defunct trade newspaper called Electronic News, which is notable for being the place where the phrase “Silicon Valley” was first used in print.

One Friday in March, 2000, in fact, he actually got to say “Stop the presses” to editors in San Jose, Calif., as the paper was being put to bed, with the dramatic news that AMD would the following Monday announce its first chip to run at the then-blistering speed of 1GHz.

The story was flashed to subscribers of a daily fax newsletter–quaint, no?–that night before tearing out that issue’s front page. Previously, chip speeds were measured in Megahertz.

Arik attended the University of Oregon, and is originally from that state. After a two-year stint reporting for a daily newspaper in Idaho, he moved to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia University.

He has been a New Yorker ever since. When not working, he can often be found catching a jazz show at the Village Vanguard.

Welcome to ATD: The Very Enterprising Arik Hesseldahl

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:20:44 +0000

And Arik Hesseldahl (pictured here) makes it four.

New reporters and bloggers for All Things Digital, that is.

The well-known tech writer–based in New York–will be covering the enterprise arena, as well as chips, for us.

As most regular readers know, this site has been expanding its staff, adding even more top-notch editorial might to our already terrific work.

That includes Ina Fried on mobile, Liz Gannes on social and Tricia Duryee on e-commerce.

All are key areas of tech coverage for ATD, obviously. But, as we thought about it, it was clear that there was not nearly enough cutting-edge tech journalism going on in the enterprise space.

Thus, we turned to Arik, who has a long history covering a wide range of beats in tech.

He’s most recently been working for Bloomberg Businessweek, where for five years he covered it all: PCs, consumer electronics and semiconductors.

He was also the third person to write Businessweek.com’s popular “Byte of the Apple” column, and contributed to a companion blog of the same name.

The story was flashed to subscribers of a daily fax newsletter–quaint, no?–that night before tearing out that issue’s front page. Previously, chip speeds were measured in Megahertz.

He has been a New Yorker ever since. When not working, he can often be found catching a jazz show at the Village Vanguard.

ATD Welcomes Ina Fried as Our New Mobile Reporter

Kara Swisher — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:59:56 +0000

Here at All Things Digital, we’ve always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging.

So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter and blogger, covering the critically important mobile beat. She is pictured here.

Her new beat will range from wireless carriers like AT&T; to handset makers, such as Nokia and Research in Motion; to the smartphone kingpins, Google and Apple.

And if Facebook ever does make a phone, Ina will surely have the scoop.

Mobile is a beat that reaches across companies and is at the dead center of Web 3.0.

Ina is one of several new journalists we will be announcing over the next week, part of an expansion of the ATD universe. That includes a recently announced new conference series, beginning with D: Dive Into Mobile.

There is much more to come, but let’s focus on the stylings of Ina first.

As most people know, she has been at CNET for the past 10 years, most recently covering Microsoft as a senior writer.

And although she hasn’t been focused solely on mobile, Ina has been covering the area since 2000, when folks like Kyocera were trying to shove a Palm Pilot and a phone together, most recently doing a behind-the-scenes series for CNET on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

During her time at the tech news site, she also covered Apple for four years and led CNET’s coverage of the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, as well as covering all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the Audrey (I have no idea what that is, but Walt Mossberg does).

Before that, she covered the chip industry for financial wire service Bridge News and also worked at the Orange Country Register and Orange County Business Journal.

She’s a graduate of Miami University (she reminds me that’s the one in Ohio not Florida, pointing out they are better at ice hockey than football.)

Beyond breaking all kinds of stories on the Microsoft beat, Ina has closely followed Bill Gates in his shift from software titan to global philanthropist, interviewing him frequently and tagging along on his college speaking tour earlier this year. (Last week she published separate interviews with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the same day.)

Ina also traveled to Brazil and Colombia to explore the impact of computing in emerging markets.

She’s a former vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and has won a number of journalism awards, including some that she says would be seriously dangerous during an earthquake.

For example, she was named three times as one of the top 30 financial journalists under 30 by TJFR and has also been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Western Publishers Association, among others.

A huge softball fanatic, part of the reason she won’t start at ATD until late November is that her women’s softball team is headed to the gay softball World Series in Las Vegas (I wonder if Audrey is going).

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Ina by following her on Twitter at Twitter.com/inafried.

ATD Welcomes Ina Fried as Our New Mobile Reporter

Kara Swisher — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:59:42 +0000