13 posts and columns on author

Facebook (Eye)PO: Early Investor Reid Hoffman on Mission Vs. Payday

in Social on February 15 at 2:55 pm PT

The Start-Up Whisperer knows all!
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Zuckerberg Tops Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment” List Again (And Look Who’s No. 40)

in Media on August 31, 2011 at 9:00 pm PT

Vanity Fair magazine put out its high-profile “New Establishment” list of the top 50 people — and guess who made the cut from tech?
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Viral Video: Google Inside Out With Steven Levy

in News on April 26, 2011 at 12:27 am PT

The Churchill Club posted this video of a morning interview session I did with author and journalist Steven Levy last week in Silicon Valley. Levy talked about his new book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.”

Video: Steven Levy Talks About Google Book "In the Plex"

in News on April 21, 2011 at 6:15 am PT

Earlier this week, BoomTown interviewed longtime author and tech journalist Steven Levy about his new book, “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.” I met Levy at the Plex in question–the Googleplex–to chitchat about what he learned after being embedded at the Borg, um, search giant for years.

Microsoft and Some Big Thinking Heads at Farsight 2011: "Beyond the Search Box"

in News on February 1, 2011 at 8:15 am PT

Oh dear, BoomTown is still jetlagged from a recent trip to China and now Microsoft Bing is offering up a head-requiring event later this morning in San Francisco to explore the future of search. There better be donuts. A lot and with sprinkles, since speakers include the lugubrious investor and hedge fund philosophizer Peter Thiel and skunk-at-a-Web-garden-party author Malcolm Gladwell.

Why Is Google Spending $10 Million on Fflick? Perhaps to Predict Box Office Success.

in Enterprise on January 25, 2011 at 4:36 pm PT

Fflick tells you what movies your Twitter friends like and dislike. Google may be dropping $10 million on the service for something far more valuable than that.

Wi-Fi Hotspot Safety and Mac Viruses

in Mossberg’s Mailbox on December 29, 2010 at 2:50 pm PT

Walt answers readers’ questions on just how safe are Wi-Fi hotspots and should Mac owners worry about computer viruses.

Opposite Day: Scribd E-Book Writer's Jump to Mainstream

in News on September 29, 2009 at 2:34 pm PT

Earlier today, BoomTown posted a video interview with Scribd CEO Trip Adler about the online publishing start-up. Now, here is a video of a chat I had with Kemble Scott, an author who has made use of the service in an innovative backwards effort at traditional publishing.
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Blogger and Author Paul Carr Speaks!

in News on April 17, 2009 at 9:00 am PT

Last week, BoomTown had a delightful lunch with sharp-witted Brit Paul Carr, part of our meet-the-blogger series in which this column endeavors to introduce you to the Web’s more lively voices. Actually, I mostly just wanted to meet Carr, whose work always cracks me up, whether he is cleverly dissing the Le Web conference in Paris last year or, more recently, writing in his regular column for the Guardian about how a “meeting with the Irish Tánaiste leads to a stolen bottle of Guinness and a lesson in handling the truth” online.
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Michael Wolff Has Been Trash-Talking the Internet Since 1998–See the Video!

in News on December 2, 2008 at 2:39 am PT

Ah, Michael Wolff! Always throwing stink bombs and making deliciously wackadoo declarations about the Internet. In a recent dinner interview the author had with BusinessWeek’s media columnist Jon Fine this week, Wolff slaps around News Corp. social network MySpace, with a series of his trash-buckling phrases, some of which are true and some a bit more of a stretch. But it’s par for the course for Wolff, as you can see here in an appearance with BoomTown on the “Charlie Rose” show a decade ago. “It’s craziness, it’s loco, it makes no sense,” said Wolff about the Internet, circa July 27, 1998. And later: “I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”