Qualcomm once had high hopes for the service. However, Jacobs acknowledged at a Churchill Club event last week that, outside of certain live events such as sports, it probably makes sense to offer mobile TV via on-demand streaming, rather than as a broadcast.

To be fully eligible for the rebate, customers must have purchased and activated the service, though there is also a form for those who didn’t even make it that far.

Qualcomm doesn’t want your unit back (apparently, it doesn’t want a bunch of FloTVs, either). Instead, the company’s Web site lists some recycling options. Or you could always keep it as a collector’s item–an early adopter badge of glory.

It’s worth noting that your service gets deactivated once the refund is processed, so on the off-chance you are still watching your Flo, you might want to wait until March to send in your form.

Today, well, not so much.

For those who have already forgotten what the smartbook even was, the idea was to have a low-cost device that looked a lot like a netbook, but offered far better battery life and instant-on capabilities.

But once Apple released the iPad, everyone started focusing on tablet devices rather than on little notebooks.

“Obviously, tablets are the flavor of the day,” Jacobs said in an interview on Tuesday, ahead of his panel discussion at the Churchill Club.

The good news for Qualcomm, Jacobs said, is that the tablet requirements are basically the same as those for a smartbook.

“We probably did ourselves a little bit of a disservice by using [the term] smartbooks because people then thought notebooks and therefore it was a clamshell form factor,” he said. “We always thought about them not in terms of form factor but in terms of what they did, meaning always on, instant on, always connected, always downloading–the tablet designs that are out are doing that.”

Jacobs said we will probably see some devices with a physical keyboard, but said that next year we’ll continue to see far more slates than clamshells. The same, he notes, is also holding true for the phone.

“Keyboards on smartphones have become less and less evident for most of them,” he said.

For its part, Qualcomm is working on making its processors faster and more power efficient. A dual-core chip, due in the first half of the year, will offer five times as much performance or provide the same oomph as the current chips while using only a quarter as much power.

Since Jacobs has a good view of all the various devices coming to the market, I asked him whether he thinks that a couple of years from now we will still see five or six competing smartphone operating systems.

“A couple years from now I think we will,” he said. “Five to 10 years from now, I think there will probably be some winners and some losers although it’s pretty hard to say who those are going to be because different companies bring different things to the table.”

The carriers will bring some pressure, he said, given they have to provide support and shelf space to all the different operating systems. However, he also said it’s likely that some alternate channels will emerge beyond just sales from the carriers.

“It’s hard to put a time frame on when more consolidation will happen,” he said. “I think right now we are in a period of expansion. You are going to see more stuff….Everybody is chasing [Google] Android and Apple right now, but I think there’s room for a lot of diversity, at least in the near term.”

Palm-CEO-turned-HP-exec Jon Rubinstein and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs faced off with Kara Swisher of All Things Digital at a Churchill Club event last night in an entertaining discussion on the future of mobile tech.

If you missed the live video feed of the event, check back with us–we’re working to repost the video. For those who want to read text, here is my liveblog of the event.

6:48 pm PT: We’re just finishing dinner. It was a chicken in some sort of puff pastry. Nothing is happening onstage, as if that wasn’t clear by the fact I am describing the meal. I think they will get started around 7:15 or so.

7:10 pm: Just about ready to go, with intros going on now. (And I just stole Kara’s seat at the head table.)

Kara: They’re both guys. Paul is taller and they work in tech.

7:14 pm: The plan is to talk about the future, but the event begins with a trip down memory lane as Jacobs holds up the Qualcomm PDQ–arguably the first smartphone combining a cellphone and Palm Pilot. For those who don’t remember, it it was bigger than a Palm Pilot and a huge phone strapped together.

7:20 pm: Digital device history continues. We’ve traced the last decade in digital devices, from the iPod through the Treo and iPhone. Don’t forget ringtones and cellphone bowling, Jacobs reminds us, referring to the Brew operating environment that Qualcomm developed.

The iPhone changed everything, Jacobs says, because it showed that the phone makers just weren’t putting enough work into the phone’s user interface.

7:28 pm: Talk is shifting to where we are today. What are the key things that are shifting? User interfaces, touch, etc. “The other things we are seeing is all of our lives are moving into the cloud,” Rubinstein says. On the limitation side, Jacobs points to the limitations of bandwidth: “We don’t have enough spectrum right now,” Jacobs says, adding that the industry and government are working on it. ‘We are just going to have to be more creative about how we get content to the devices.”

The other big limitation, Jacobs says, is battery life. You can do all this cool stuff on your phone, but then the battery dies three-quarters of the way through the day. He puts in a plug for Mirasol–Qualcomm’s low-power display technology.

Rubinstein concurs that battery and bandwidth are the two biggest issues. “Battery technology has not progressed at the same rate as all of the other things we are trying to do,” Rubinstein says.

7:38 pm: What about all the operating systems out there, Kara asks. Rubinstein: “There’s plenty of room in the market for multiple systems,” he says, adding it won’t be like PCs, where one operating system dominates. “It’s just different today.”

Rubinstein says it’s still the infancy of the major transition. Put on the spot to rank the operating systems, Rubinstein says that clearly Apple and Android are going gangbusters. The battle, he says, is for who is going to be No. 3. “We’d sure like to be that.”

Jacobs: “I agree. It’s very early days to be calling winners and losers.” He sees pretty wide diversity of operating systems, at least for the next five years, unless the operators really clamp down. Even then, there are some alternate distribution channels emerging. Either way, Qualcomm’s in good shape as an arms dealer, he points out.

7:45 pm: Discussion of carriers. While they are immensely powerful, Rubinstein says they won’t be the only distribution channel for every wireless device. “They are not all going to go through the carriers,” Rubinstein says.

More and more screens will emerge, Rubinstein says. If I fast-forward enough years, he says, the walls are going to be big displays capable of talking to other devices.

Jacobs notes that people will be able to use their device with any tool they have access to, from a big screen to a headset to a wireless keyboard. He says Qualcomm is working on a technology that would allow wireless headsets that could work in-ear like a hearing aid.

7:50 pm: Talk about some outlandish things. Rubinstein has already thrown out the idea of a headset in your pillow. Rubinstein points out that there will be a lot of sensors, pointing to the Nike+iPod as a really early example of what we can expect a lot more of.

7:55 pm: Augmented reality is also going to be big, the panelists agree. “The (StarTrek) tricorder is going to happen,” Jacobs says. Health care will also tap mobile technology, particularly in emerging countries where there is less regulation, carriers are trusted and there are fewer skilled health care providers available. “It’s a very efficient way to manage health,” he says. “Over the next few years we will see this happen,” he says. Eventually it will come back to developed markets, but today there is too much legacy and too much regulation in places like the U.S.

8:10 pm: Sorry for the delay–we were fixing some issues with the video coding, which hopefully should be solved now. Anyway, Rubinstein and Jacobs have been throwing out things that they expect in the next five years.

Jacobs’s list includes digital networked textbooks, cellphones as gateways for health care, as well as using augmented reality to translate all the signs and menus in a foreign country.

Rubinstein and Jacobs both see a digital wallet becoming a reality, with Jacobs throwing out the idea of an end to checkout lines as the phone could pay and the store could electronically disable the security on goods, allowing the whole transaction to take place without interaction with store personnel.

“Legal shoplifting, that’s interesting.” Kara says.

The technical hurdles aren’t that big, Rubinstein says. “Clearly NFC (near-field communications) is coming.” It’s more of a social problem than a technical one, Rubinstein says.

8:21 pm: Some good audience questions. One, on what does it take to deliver an Apple-like experience. Rubinstein, who has experience as part of Apple and trying to “out-Apple” Apple, says he thinks that the key is delivering an intergrated experience.

“I don’t think Apple is the only one that can do it, but I do think it is important to have all the elements,” he says.

Another question is on the future of mobile TV–a question that prompts Jacobs to cover his face (Qualcomm spent a bundle on its MediaFlo mobile TV service that saw very limited consumer uptake and Qualcomm is now evaluating what to do with it).

Too few people liked what the service had to offer, Jacobs says, referring to limits on content, screen size, etc. Jacobs said it appears that probably broadcast makes sense for live events, while streaming with TiVo-like controls makes sense for everything else.

“I actually believe strongly in mobile TV, still,” he says.

8:30 pm: Okay. That’s a wrap from me. Thanks for tuning in. If you want to hear more from Rubinstein, he will be speaking at next week’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference.

“Larry Ellison: We’re a big fan of open source–in fact, we’ve had the major transaction engine to MySQL–it’s something Oracle bought years ago and has invested in it to a higher level than it was invested in before. We believe in open source, we’re a huge supporter of Linux. MySQL and Oracle do not compete–at all….There’s a long list of database machines and database software we compete against–we never compete against MySQL. They’re both called databases, they address very different markets–furthermore, it’s open source.

Ed Zander: If they ask you to spin it off, will you?

LE: No.

EZ: If they told you to spin it off, would you?

LE: No. We’re not gonna spin it off. The U.S. government cleared this, we think the Europeans are gonna clear this, and we are not going to spin anything off.”

– Excerpt from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s September Churchill Club interview with former Sun CEO Ed Zander

Looks like Oracle has managed to ease European regulators’ antitrust concerns over its $7 billion acquisition of Sun–perhaps even enough for them to approve the thing.

This morning, Oracle (ORCL) and the European Commission both said they have had “constructive discussions” about the company’s plans for Sun (JAVA) and more specifically, its open-source MySQL database software.

Driving those discussions: A 10-point list of commitments from Oracle intended to ensure that MySQL will remain a competitive force in the database market. In the list, Oracle spells out plans for the database software, promising to boost spending on research and development, refrain from seeking commercial licenses from makers of MySQL storage engines and to establish a customer advisory board of MySQL users.

These concessions went over well with the EC, which is clearly warming to the idea of a Sun-Oracle union. “Today’s announcement by Oracle of a series of undertakings to customers, developers and users of MySQL is an important new element to be taken into account in the ongoing proceedings,” said the EC in its statement.

“In particular,” the EC continued, “Oracle’s binding contractual undertakings to storage engine vendors regarding copyright non-assertion and the extension over a period of up to 5 years of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses are significant new facts.”

European Union regulators have until late January to make their decision.

Last week, Walt Mossberg and I hosted the seventh annual gadgetfest, called “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology,” at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of innovative new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

Before the show, Walt and I displayed our wares for ZDNet, which posted videos, below

Here are the videos:

Walt

Kara

Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted our seventh annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” program for the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Every year, we show off a range of new tech toys to the crowd, helped by our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, and by guest “tech geek” celebs.

This year, they were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering.

They brought a range of old and new favorite and innovative gadgets, including a Squeezebox Wi-Fi music player, a bizarre plush bear with GPS and other such tech features, and a facial brush that Sandberg tested on BoomTown’s flawless skin.

Also on the bill: A tie that takes pictures, a camera that stalks smiley people, a 3-D camera and digital photo frame, an Android netbook, a Nook e-reader, a bizarre head massager and a “Harry Potter”-like remote-control wand.

Here’s a video I did at the event, including interviews with Sandberg, Schroepfer, Mossberg, Harper, the bear and my son, Louie, who manned the digital hand vacuum from Dyson:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091204/freaky-geek-bear-nooks-3d-cameras-head-massages-and-a-facial-for-boomtown-the-churchill-club-gadgetfest-video/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091130/dont-miss-the-annual-gadgetfest-at-churchill-club-thursday-featuring-facebook-celeb-geeks/ http://allthingsd.com/20091130/dont-miss-the-annual-gadgetfest-at-churchill-club-thursday-featuring-facebook-celeb-geeks/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:32:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21168 This Thursday, my All Things Digital partner, Walt Mossberg, and I are hosting–for the seventh year running–the annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” program for the Churchill Club.

This year, our guest “tech geek” celebs–drawn from the gadget-mad players of Silicon Valley–are Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Schroepfer, the social networking site’s VP of Engineering (pictured here).

In fact, Sandberg was scheduled to be our guest last year but had a last-minute snafu, so Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams filled in for her.

Among others, past geek celebs have included Google (GOOG) co-founder Larry Page, Yahoo (YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.

Also along for the ride is our regular gadget freak, Greg Harper, president of HarperVision Associates and co-founder of Gadgetoff, who brings new meaning to the term. (He also packs so much hardware and software that he is on the TSA’s list.)

The evening starts at 6 pm with a buffet dinner at the Crowne Plaza Cabaña Hotel in Palo Alto, Calif. That’s followed by the program, in which each of us shows off some of our favorite innovative or just plain weird gadgets, while the others opine on the selections.

You can sign up early online or get a pricier ticket at the door.

Here’s a rather longish video from last year, which is well worth watching for the animatronic Elvis alone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091130/dont-miss-the-annual-gadgetfest-at-churchill-club-thursday-featuring-facebook-celeb-geeks/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091009/former-mysql-boss-to-ec-approve-oracle-sun-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20091009/former-mysql-boss-to-ec-approve-oracle-sun-deal/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:32:08 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=26338
Though he resigned earlier this year, former MySQL boss Mårten Mickos still has strong opinions about the open-source database outfit, which was acquired by Sun in 2008. In a letter to the European Commission Thursday, Mickos urged regulators to green-light Oracle’s (ORCL) takeover of Sun (JAVA), arguing that to delay it will only harm competition.

“Every new day of uncertainty is potentially very harmful to the various businesses of Sun, reducing competition in the market,” Mickos wrote. “A delay in the closing of this transaction is therefore only going to work against the respectable goal that you set out to achieve when launching the probe into this acquisition.”

Oracle, says Mickos, has far better reason to ramp-up Sun’s MySQL business than it does to harm it.

“Even if Oracle, for whatever reason, would have malicious or ignorant intent regarding MySQL (not that I think so), the positive and massive influence MySQL has on the DBMS market cannot be controlled by a single entity–not even by the owner of the MySQL assets. The users of MySQL exert a more powerful influence in the market than the owner does,” he continues. “Many expected Oracle to harm MySQL as far back as 2005, when they acquired the InnoDB storage engine that plays a crucial role for many MySQL customers. And yet Oracle increased their investment in InnoDB since that time, making MySQL a stronger player in the market.”

An interesting argument and one that appears to offer Mickos little personal gain. Now an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital, Mickos says he has no financial interest in the transaction. So why bother making it? “I couldn’t live with the fact that I’m not taking action,” Mickos told News.com.

Mickos’s letter will no doubt be welcomed by Oracle, which has repeatedly said it has only the best intentions for MySQL. “No, we’re not going to spin [MySQL] off,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told attendees of a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley earlier this year. “We are keeping everything. We’re keeping tape. We’re keeping storage. We’re keeping x86 and SPARC. And we’re going to increase investment in all of them.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091009/former-mysql-boss-to-ec-approve-oracle-sun-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091002/another-one-of-these-cloud-computing-rants-and-you%e2%80%99ve-got-yourself-a-stand-up-routine-larry/ http://allthingsd.com/20091002/another-one-of-these-cloud-computing-rants-and-you%e2%80%99ve-got-yourself-a-stand-up-routine-larry/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:38:43 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25847 The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation.

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” Ellison said. “I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements….These people who are writing this crap are out there. They are insane. I mean it is the stupidest. Is it ‘Oh, I am going to access data on a server on the Internet.’ That is cloud computing?…Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

In conversation with former Sun (JAVA) CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.

Cloud’s water vapor….Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing.

…Salesforce.com has been around for a decade. And so has NetSuite…and people are saying, “Well, that’s cloud computing.” Google is cloud computing. Everyone is cloud computing….Everything is in the cloud now….It’s this nonsense.

…But it’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?…Water vapor? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and microprocessors and the Internet!

…And the VCs, I love the VCs. [They ask their start-ups] “Oh…is that cloud?” [And the start-ups go] “Oh! Oh! Microsoft Word! Change ‘Internet’ to ‘cloud’! Mass change. Give it back to these nitwits on Sand Hill Road.”

…What do you mean by “cloud computing”?…All the cloud is is computers on a network.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology….You can’t just come up with a [slogan] like “Let’s call that ‘cloud.” [But] it sure beats innovation.”

Below, the full video. Ellison’s rant begins around the 45:54 mark.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091002/another-one-of-these-cloud-computing-rants-and-you%e2%80%99ve-got-yourself-a-stand-up-routine-larry/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090922/do-you-uh-yhoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20090922/do-you-uh-yhoo/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:00:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25260

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090922/do-you-uh-yhoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090922/qotd-192/ http://allthingsd.com/20090922/qotd-192/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:30:10 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25198

“If, just for one dollar, if we could buy IBM, HP, Sun or some other tech company, I’m not sure we wouldn’t pick Sun.”

– Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

The European Commission’s inquiry into Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun is costing the database giant dearly. Speaking at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley Monday evening, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Sun is losing $100 million a month because of the extended European antitrust review.

The uncertainty around the deal has sent some shaken Sun (JAVA) customers running to rivals like IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). “The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose, and that’s not good for anybody,” Ellison said. “We want to get this done to save as many jobs as we can.”

That said, Ellison is confident the deal will be approved. “The U.S. took their time and deliberations and cleared it. They said it was overwhelmingly a pro-competitive deal,” he said. “The Europeans have to do their job too, but I think they’ll come to the same conclusion.”

And once they do, once Oracle (ORCL) begins peddling high-performance computer systems that integrate its technology with Sun’s at the engineering level, the company will be well on its way to becoming the next IBM.

In Ellison’s view, anyway.

“I would like us to be the successor to IBM,” Ellison said. “But we want to be T. J. Watson’s IBM. Not Gerstner’s IBM. Not Palmisano’s IBM,” he said, referring to the company’s other CEOs. “That’s when IBM really was the dominant software company.”

Continuing, Ellison noted that “T.J. Watson’s IBM was the greatest company in the history of enterprise in America because its combination of hardware and software was running most of the enterprises on the planet. We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM. That’s our goal. We have a deep interest in the systems business. We think that by combining our software with hardware that we can deliver systems that can be the backbone of most enterprises in America and around the world.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090922/qotd-192/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081119/a-video-smorgasbord-from-the-churchill-clubs-sixth-annual-whats-hot-and-whats-not-in-personal-technology/ http://allthingsd.com/20081119/a-video-smorgasbord-from-the-churchill-clubs-sixth-annual-whats-hot-and-whats-not-in-personal-technology/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:15:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6720

Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted yet another annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” event for the Churchill Club.

A brief rundown of the Palo Alto gadgetfest show-and-tell: An animatronic singing Elvis freaked out my No. 1 son, Louie, who played an excellent Luke Skywalker/gadget boy for my presentation; our guest gadget geek was Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams, who was a delight with a mini-helicopter, a flat-screen reader and a wry wit; Walt showed off the new Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM), the alleged Apple (AAPL) iPhone killer (maybe not so much), as well as a fuel cell and more; and our crazy gadget maven, Greg Harper, co-founder of Gadgetoff, went perfectly insane with everything from tiny projectors to a creepy probe to minicellphone towers to USB ties and eyepads.

It was a lot of fun with a packed crowd, even in this econalypse-impacting Silicon Valley.

Here is a rather longish video, which is well worth watching. Yes, BoomTown is–along with Louie and Elvis–wearing a Yahoo (YHOO) hat.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

[Photo courtesy of Dan Farber of CNET.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081119/a-video-smorgasbord-from-the-churchill-clubs-sixth-annual-whats-hot-and-whats-not-in-personal-technology/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20080515/at-the-churchill-club-the-top-10-tech-trends/ http://allthingsd.com/20080515/at-the-churchill-club-the-top-10-tech-trends/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 07:01:29 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/20080515/at-the-churchill-club-the-top-10-tech-trends/ I’m at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif., tonight, for the Churchill Club’s annual Top 10 Tech Trends Dinner. This is the club’s 10th annual tech trend panel. Making the picks:

• Steve Jurvetson, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
• Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures.
• Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital.
• Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners.
• Joe Schoendorf, Accel Partners.
• Tony Perkins, of Always On, is the moderator.

Perkins, McNamee, Jurvetson and Schoendorf have done this before. Kopelman and Khosla are the panel newbies.

Lots of mobile phone predictions. Green energy. Water. And more phones.

Here’s the pundits’ list of trends, with some responses from their fellow panelists.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080515/at-the-churchill-club-the-top-10-tech-trends/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080318/like-it-or-not-youre-in-the-media-business-atd-reader-discount/ http://allthingsd.com/20080318/like-it-or-not-youre-in-the-media-business-atd-reader-discount/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:33:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080318/like-it-or-not-youre-in-the-media-business-atd-reader-discount/ One of AllThingsD.com’s greatest friends–integral to its creation, in fact–has been Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and former president of the Dow Jones Consumer Media Group.

Crovitz knows a thing or two about the transition mainstream media has been making to new media and, more importantly, was never scared of the change. For us, that was critical, since he consistently said yes to our efforts to create a new kind of tech site within Dow Jones.

Tonight, he appears at a Churchill Club event called “Like It or Not, You’re in the Media Business: It’s Time to Make the Publishing Upheaval Work for You.”

Other speakers include: Neil Chase, VP of author services for Federated Media; Ken Doctor, affiliate analyst of Outsell Inc.; and Jeanette Gibson, editor-in-chief of News@Cisco (CSCO). The event is moderated by Sam Whitmore, editor of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey.

A description of the event: “Internet technology has made you a publisher. How can you turn that into a huge win for your career and your business? Well, first you might want to study what traditional publishers have learned, and what they’re doing to transform their business. After all, they ought to know. Then look at all the commercially successful bloggers: how did they do that? Then consider Cisco Systems, one of the world’s most successful tech vendors, and why it is now a successful publisher in its own right.”

It takes place tonight, starting at 6 p.m. for dinner, followed by the program at 7 p.m. at the San Mateo (Calif.) Marriott.

Best of all, friends of AllThingsD.com can save $15 off the general rate of $82 by using the discount code here when registering in advance. After inputting your name badge information, you will be shown a payment screen where you can input the discount code: gAllThingsD. If you encounter any difficulties in registering online, email your name, title and company to the Churchill Club at registration@churchillclub.org.

BoomTown video on this interesting topic to come, of course!

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