Here’s a video of an interview I did last week with CNN, on whether there was a bubble in valuations of start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Of course, the report was prompted by the mobile photo-sharing phenom Instagram’s recent sale to social networking giant Facebook for $1 billion.

My conclusion: It’s not a bubble exactly, but it is bubble-ish.

Enjoy:

Here’s all I will say about this video of CNN news host Anderson Cooper suffering what can only be described as a giggle fit, while doing a report on the Polish-American end-of-Lent holiday known as Dyngus Day.

The attack came during the part about women using pussy willows to strike men with.

Incredibly, this is Cooper’s second giggle crisis related to his RidicuList segment.

I’ll tell you what’s ridonkulous — if you miss this classic:

The Huffington Post co-founder, who sold his site to AOL a year ago, is working on another Web news start-up. But Lerer isn’t trying to replicate his old site. Instead, he’s trying to create a digital video news operation built to attract a generation of Web natives who watch Jon Stewart but not CNN or Fox News.

People who have heard Lerer pitch the start-up say he has been vague about the details but broad about his ambitions. Here’s what I know for now, which doesn’t include the project’s name:

• The site/service is a joint venture between Lerer’s Lerer Ventures and Bedrocket Media, the video start-up that Lerer invested in last year.
• Lerer is telling potential investors and employees that he’ll be actively involved in the project, along with former HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau and Bedrocket’s Brian Bedol.
• The service, which will launch this summer in advance of the U.S. presidential elections, will use a mix of livestreaming video and taped reports, and a mix of professionally produced segments along with contributions from amateurs.
• While Bedrocket has landed four YouTube “channel” deals for its programming, the new venture won’t be confined to any particular platform. Lerer and company have been promoting the idea that the service will rely heavily on social media like Facebook and Twitter for distribution.
• The site/service has started hiring production/back-end staff but hasn’t brought in “on air” talent yet. When it does, it will likely look for relatively unknown reporters, not established/expensive TV folks.

There are plenty of other folks trying to figure out how bring TV-style news to the Web, including the TV people themselves. And Web sites that have their roots in “print” journalism are diving into video news, too. That formula usually involves positioning a couple reporters in front of a newsroom camera to discuss the day’s events (if you’d like to see me talk, for instance, I’ll be on The Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” show at 1 pm ET today). Interesting to see if Lerer and company can figure out a new take.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Daboost)

Boy, oh boy, is Mike Daisey confused.

After a weekend of savage pounding by the media, Daisey, the opportunistic fabulist who was caught lying to one of the most respected radio documentarians in the history of broadcasting, reemerged in public today. In his latest attempt to mitigate the damage done to his reputation, he appears to compare himself to Mark Twain, opening his latest blog post by quoting — his words — another famous monologuist: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Instead he seems to be borrowing from Phineas T. Barnum, the great American showman who is often credited — perhaps apocryphally — with saying “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”

I couldn’t tell you how ticket sales to Daisey’s show have been affected by the ensuing controversy and, frankly, I don’t care. I know that Daisey addressed it in opening comments before his performance of “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” on the night of March 17 in New York.

In summary, his defense is that his work is theater based on a body of facts that are largely true, and though they shouldn’t have been aired as factual on “This American Life,” he stands by it as theatrical work. Never mind that he insisted, not once, but repeatedly according to one account, that the words “This is a work of non-fiction,” be printed on his show’s Playbills. (For an example see page 3 of this PDF.)

But the money quotes that give the deepest insight into his state of mind are these:

“Especially galling is how many are gleefully eager to dance on my grave expressly so they can return to ignoring everything about the circumstances under which their devices are made. Given the tone, you would think I had fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had ever seen before. …

“If people want to use me as an excuse to return to denialism about the state of our manufacturing, about the shape of our world, they are doing that to themselves.”

Right. Mike Daisey, a confessed liar who parlayed his appearance on “This American Life” into a months-long string of media appearances on CBS, MSNBC, HBO and PBS — which helped raise his public visibility, built buzz and goosed ticket sales — thinks he can retake the moral high ground?

The only benefactor of all this attention certainly hasn’t been Chinese workers, but Daisey himself. Some 70,000 people have seen his show in 18 cities, and tickets in New York have been going for $75 to $85.

Worse, he continues to believe it is he alone who has been shining a light on the problems that have emerged over the years with Apple’s manufacturing arrangements in China and around the world. “Given the tenor of the condemnation, you would think I had concocted an elaborate, fanciful universe filled with furnaces in which babies are burned to make iPhone components …”

Sorry, Mike, but the discussion about Apple, Foxconn and its employees was going on well before you elbowed your way onto the scene.

For openers, at the D8 conference in 2010, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg asked Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs about the situation at Foxconn, in the wake of a string of suicides.

That same year — indeed, only weeks after nine suicides by Foxconn employees — Bloomberg Businessweek’s Fredrik Balfour conducted a three-hour interview with Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, and also several unsupervised interviews with Foxconn workers, for a story featured on the magazine’s cover. The Atlantic Monthly considered Foxconn in the wider context of the rise of China as a leading economic power. The BBC looked at Foxconn after the suicides. Indeed, there had been a great deal of attention paid to matters related to Apple, Foxconn and workers in China, well before the days of Daisey. Who does he feel has not been talking about this?

In fact, let us not leave Apple itself out of that conversation. The way Daisey tells it, you might assume that the electronics giant is sweeping its dirty laundry under the nearest rug.

This is not the case. Awakened to allegations that emerged in 2006 of worker abuses and bad conditions at a Foxconn plant in Longhua — in a British tabloid newspaper, no less — Apple started issuing an annual document it calls its “Supplier Responsibility Progress Report.” The latest one, from 2012, is here (PDF). Reports are available from 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007.

These reports hardly let Apple off the hook. Rather, they document progress made, as well as progress yet to be made. Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted to The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that a priority for 2012 is to reduce the number of hours that employees at Foxconn and other companies work. It is, as you can see by Apple’s own admission, the most difficult of its China labor issues to solve.

Hard as this is to believe, employees often want to work long hours — and to earn the overtime pay that comes with them. In being too aggressive, they run afoul of Apple’s demand that no one work more than 60 hours a week, six days a week. And keeping accurate records that prevent employees from overworking themselves is proving difficult. If you visited Foxconn, Apple’s own disclosures suggest, you would probably have no trouble finding someone who recently worked more than 60 hours in a week.

What you would have trouble finding are the underage workers that Daisey said — in a now-debunked statement from his stage show and radio appearances — were so plentiful. Apple’s 229 audits found none of those at the final-assembly plants owned by Foxconn and others, and found only five active and 13 historical cases of underage workers at other facilities it does business with.

You would also have trouble finding people poisoned by n-hexane. As Apple documents in its 2011 report, a poisoning incident did happen, and when it did, Apple ordered the factory in question to stop using the chemical, the use of which I understand, is already a violation of Chinese law. Most of the 137 people who were poisoned had returned to work by the time the report was published. One plant using the chemical was shut down entirely by local authorities.

Read any of these reports by Apple, and you’ll find not the PR-sanitized language you might expect, but instead a rather unvarnished assessment of a company trying to come to grips with the human costs of a deeply complex industrial operation. Each report, which Apple releases voluntarily generates a new round of negative press coverage. Meanwhile, China is, despite its size, still a developing nation, and it will be some time before workplace standards there come close to resembling what we take for granted in the U.S. It is an evolving situation, one that will improve over time.

And while I readily admit that consumers and activists should continue to pressure and engage Apple on the subject of workers’ safety and rights, in China and in the other countries where it does business, it rarely gets any credit for the progress it has made and the leadership it has shown.

On that note, I think the discussion on the matter has been a healthy and engaging one for the better part of a decade. Contrary to his own inflated sense of self-importance, Mike Daisey has added nothing of value to it, and should consider shutting up.

I said as much on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” yesterday, and have embedded the video below:

CNN Reliable Sources March 18 2012 from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.

I’m new to SXSW, but this wasn’t exactly the vibe I expected.

But, if I’ve learned anything in the last few hours in Austin, it’s that anything goes at this conference, which blends, tech, film, music and more. CNN invited the Texas governor to its “grill” to go behind the scenes on his now-ended run for the White House.

Things started with Perry talking about his campaign for president and how he came to operate his own Twitter account.

“It made a lot of sense, particularly for reaching into the younger community, my kids’ age,” Perry said, noting that he used it during his campaign for Texas governor. “This is the name of the game.”

He noted that it allows political candidates to bypass the mainstream media.

“I don’t think that, I know that,” he said. “Nobody has got a lock on what’s happening, what’s news.”

The CNN moderator also relived some highlights of Perry’s campaign, including his dozen debates and now-infamous “oops” moment where he couldn’t remember the three federal agencies he would eliminate.

“Thank you,” Perry said, clearly happy to relieve that moment. The many debates, he noted, were a double edged-sword.

“We were getting loaded rich,” he said. At the same time, he noted that it had changed the nature of presidential campaigning.

Asked to predict whether Romney would be the nominee, Perry said it was too soon to tell, noting that a brokered convention remains a possibility. In that case, he said, Gingrich, whom Perry endorsed, still stands a chance.

“I’m not wringing my hands and going ‘Oh my God, we’ve got a nominee,’ ” he said.

It took a bit, but Perry did manage to work in a plug for the fact that Apple is doing a bunch of hiring in Texas as it expands its operations in Austin.

Perry showed up to Friday’s event with his arm in a sling, the result of orthopedic surgery to help heal from a mountain biking accident from a few years ago that didn’t heal.

“It didn’t look that steep,” he joked.

Ahead of Perry’s appearance, CNN’s Peter Hamby talked with political operatives on both sides of the aisle about how tech is transforming the electoral process. As much as we hear about online fundraising and campaigning, both representatives agreed that politics is still a huge laggard.

The reason, said Democratic consultant and Ruck.us co-founder Nathan Daschle, is that most people are only going to run for office once in their life and as a result are reluctant to try anything new.

“We still spend so much money on direct mail,” said Daschle, son of the former senator. “People are just now spending money on technology.”

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Something seems to have resonated with Jon Stewart and his “Daily Show” writers, who weighed in yesterday. Note that almost all of the footage they use in this one seems to come from a June 1, 2010, CNN report:

Previously, both apps had been iPad-only.

Zite users have been “clamoring” for an iPhone app, said CEO Mark Johnson. Zite for iPhone is pretty similar to the iPad version but with some modifications, like a thumb-ready scrolling wheel of categories. (Flipboard, by contrast, made some relatively major adjustments.) Also new this week: Google Currents for both Android and iOS devices.

Zite prides itself on its personalization skills, delivering to each user content that is filtered for its high interestingness, topic relevance and proximity on the Twitter social graph; it gives users tools to tune those filters.

Johnson said Zite’s iPad users read content from many different sources, rather than just famous ones. “Our top publisher gets less than 2 percent of total clicks, and click curve is very flat,” he said, adding that peak usage so far has been on nights and weekends, which is typical for iPad apps but may change now that the app is available on phones.

One feature I’d like to see that Zite doesn’t have yet: Marking content as read across multiple devices, so you can load up your iPhone where your iPad left off, and vice versa.

Zite was bought three months ago by CNN, and it continues to be developed independently, with its new parent company taking care of operational stuff.

Johnson said CNN hasn’t yet put any pressure on Zite to figure out the whole monetization thing.

After promises to get it out midyear, Flipboard is finally releasing its much-anticipated mobile app for the Apple iPhone.

The popular social reader is perhaps the most high-profile available on the iPad, in an ever-crowded field that includes such offerings as Yahoo’s recently launched Livestand; another one code-named Propeller, still upcoming from Google; AOL’s Editions; as well as existing news readers like CNN-owned Zite and Pulse. (Katie Boehret takes a look at the new Flipboard app along with some of those competitors in The Digital Solution this week.)

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard, which has raised a pile of money from prominent funders at a big valuation, has been beefing up its advertising business, and a move into mobile was critical.

The new iPhone app, said Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, was built from the ground up, and is different than the iPad version.

For example — don’t get all excited — it flips up rather than side to side. Wheeeeee!

It also introduces “Cover Stories,” which gives you a curated-for-you look at news and social updates.

In related news, after being banned, Flipboard announced earlier this week that its iPad app was now available in China.

Oh, why hear all about it from me? Here’s McCue in a video interview, at the end of which he also dismisses my offer for him to be CEO of Yahoo (apparently, life is too short!):

(You can read a review by The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret of the Flipboard app here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111206/mike-mccue-talks-flipboard-finally-launches-app-for-apple-iphone-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/ http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:54:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=150077 Update: Facebook has confirmed it is hiring Gowalla’s core team, while the Gowalla product will be shut down.

Even Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t pretending a deal for Facebook to buy the location-sharing company isn’t happening, as you can read below in an email he sent to his investors.

Both companies declined to comment on a story on Friday and over the weekend. CNN had the scoop about the social networking giant acquiring Gowalla, which I have taken to calling Not-Foursquare.

That’s because — despite its often clever approach and innovation — it never caught up with the leading social location service.

Gowalla, which changed its approach several times, had been for sale for some time, said several sources.

The Austin-based start-up has raised just under $11 million from a range of investors, including Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners and the Founders Fund, along with a batch of well-known angel investors.

But let’s put this one to bed with the email that Williams sent out after the CNN story broke Friday, which was read to me tonight, so I might not have all of it perfectly and it is missing a sentence about I-will-smack-the-leaker):

Subject: Rumors and speculation

CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.

The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.

But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.

The second confirmation email has apparently not yet been sent, but I will try to get it when it is, along with the price.

So, until the official official yes, here’s a video interview I did with Williams in April of 2010 about the location “wars”:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/ http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:35:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=137646

Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you’re about to get some bigfoot company.

Next Wednesday, according to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will finally officially unveil its offering, called Livestand.

And perhaps as early as next week or in the weeks soon after, Google will also weigh in with its version of the genre — code-named Propeller — which also might be the product’s name. Another moniker under strong consideration: Currents.

As I have previously reported, Google Propeller is an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android — essentially a souped-up version of similar apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping users better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies on tablet devices.

Flipboard, the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, is now available only on the Apple iPad.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

According to sources, Propeller will launch with a plethora of media partners, as well as integration into the Google+ social network. The aim of the search giant is to offer media companies easy tools for publishing content on these devices, as well as a better path to monetization.

That is essentially the same plan at Yahoo, which has been working on Livestand with hopes of it being a product that will woo publishers into tight collaboration with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Livestand was announced by Yahoo’s now-fired CEO Carol Bartz in February, at a speech at the World Mobile Congress in Spain.

At the time, Bartz demoed a magazinelike platform that would allow publishers to put up content easily and give users the ability to personalize their selections based on search history and interests.

Bartz called it “content in context.” (You can see the demo video below.)

But while Bartz promised the product within three months, development has been slowed by its complex technologies, bugs and the need to sign on publishers.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is pushing the product hard as a way for the company to reinvigorate its media products.

It’s not clear how many publishers Yahoo will have at launch, and neither are the distribution plans, beyond flacking it from the Web site and being present in app stores.

Google, on the other hand, has its Android platform to push out Propeller, although it all must work as well on Apple’s iPad, which is the dominant tablet on the market.

But just because both Yahoo and Google are big companies is by no means a guarantee of success — think Yahoo 360 or Google Wave or Buzz — and their lateness might be a hindrance.

And, in fact, other news reader apps are much further along. The leader, Flipboard, has already had four million downloads and 50 partnerships with leading publishers.

It also has started to introduce rich advertising products and, perhaps most importantly, has tight social integration with Twitter and Facebook.

There will be social elements on both Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller. But news reading will be stressed more, making them more like Pulse, a tiny but highly innovative start-up.

Each of the existing apps will presumably compete by adding on more features. Pulse recently added cross-platform, cross-device syncing, while Flipboard is close to unveiling an iPhone version it has said it was working on.

Yahoo and Google PR declined comment.

Here is the Livestand demo video from February:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111021/zite-doctors-up-the-ipad-for-multiple-personalities/ http://allthingsd.com/20111021/zite-doctors-up-the-ipad-for-multiple-personalities/#comments Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:47:32 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=135693

When I first bought my iPad, I thought it would be a household device, but by the time I had my Twitter push notifications and my Angry Birds high scores up and running, it was pretty clear who it belonged to.

So I was interested to see that personalized news reader app Zite today launched a new version that allows users to have multiple profiles.

CNN-owned Zite justified its new “Sybil” features with a survey in which one third of iPad-owning respondents said they shared their devices. (The research was conducted as a poll on Ask Your Target Market with 330 participants.)

Support for multiple users seems particularly helpful for an app like Zite, which learns over time what kind of stories each user is likely to enjoy. Of course it might be even better if Apple offered a multiple user feature on the iPad as it does on other devices.

Various developers have released and mocked up multi-user tools for the iPad. Berg London designer Matt Jones wrote last year, “The individual nature of the UI and user-model of the iPad seems so at odds to me with its form-factor, the share-ability of its screen technology and its emergent context of use.”

Also, its price!

Image credit: Matt Jones

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111021/zite-doctors-up-the-ipad-for-multiple-personalities/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110919/viral-video-my-last-word-on-circuscrunch-we-will-now-go-back-to-our-regularly-scheduled-tech-scoops/ http://allthingsd.com/20110919/viral-video-my-last-word-on-circuscrunch-we-will-now-go-back-to-our-regularly-scheduled-tech-scoops/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:25:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=121919

Me and my new man crush Paul Carr both went on CNN’s weekly media show “Reliable Sources” yesterday in separate interviews with its host Howard Kurtz.

It’s a pretty good summation of the two sides of the argument about what’s been going on with the popular TechCrunch news site. (That is, until the next mantrum by one of its staffers.)

Actually, I truly hope the site, which has some very fine journalists, will add some more talent (they’re looking!) and get back to business.

Covering the tech business, I mean, and so will I.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110919/viral-video-my-last-word-on-circuscrunch-we-will-now-go-back-to-our-regularly-scheduled-tech-scoops/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110915/its-called-google-propeller-and-its-aimed-at-flipboard-and-facebook-too/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/its-called-google-propeller-and-its-aimed-at-flipboard-and-facebook-too/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:25:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=121348 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

“I heard from someone working with Google that Google is working on a Flipboard competitor for both Android and iPad,” posted Scoble. “My source says that the versions he’s seen so far are mind-blowing good.”

If blowing the minds of hot Silicon Valley start-up Flipboard and Facebook is the goal, then Scooby-Don’t's rumor is pretty spot-on.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Google is indeed working on rolling out the new product, which is currently called Propeller.

Sources said Propeller is apparently one of a number of new socially focused announcements Google is prepping, including new apps. But the timing for their launch is unclear.

Here’s what is: Propeller is a souped-up version of similar reader apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Yahoo’s Livestand, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

Facebook is also making social versions of publications available within its site. So, instead of just seeing a sidebar on a news site of what stories your friends liked, you’ll get a personalized and reformatted version of the latest news when you visit that publication’s page within Facebook.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping them better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies.

Flipboard is the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, available only on the Apple iPad. The company is working on an iPhone version, too.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

Propeller is probably a better name, I will admit.

It’s not clear what Google’s Propeller will include in the product, such as Facebook integration, since the pair of Silicon Valley behemoths have not been able to partner over data exchange.

Which is an understatement, I know.

But sources said it would be available on both Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android tablets.

In any case, stay tuned and thanks to Scoobs for the tip!

[Photo credit: This Noogler Propeller Hat -- which is given to all new Googlers -- is in the collection at the Computer History Museum, the gift of Marcin Wichary; the image is by Mark Richards.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110915/its-called-google-propeller-and-its-aimed-at-flipboard-and-facebook-too/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110830/zite-sold-to-cnn-for-just-over-20-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20110830/zite-sold-to-cnn-for-just-over-20-million/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:06:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=115291 Zite, the magazine-style reading app for the Apple iPad, has been sold to news giant CNN for $20 million to $25 million.

The arena for news readers on tablets and smartphones is competitive, with high-profile efforts such as Flipboard, Livestand from Yahoo, AOL’s Editions and start-ups such as Pulse and Zite.

The reason for CNN’s acquisition interest — as well as look-sees from several other publishers — is not a surprise: As readers turn more toward using these mobile devices to consume content, big media companies are trying to acquire the technology to serve up their fare to them.

It is a dicey arena, though, where content aggregation meets (and crashes into) content lifting. Vancouver-based Zite, for example, was sent a cease-and-desist letter in March, by a panoply of media companies (not CNN!) alleging various copyright violations.

That happened right after it was launched, with $4 million in funding from angel investors and Canadian grants and an innovative personalized article-picking algorithm.

As Liz Gannes wrote then:

[Then] Zite CEO Ali Davar describes the iPad as a way to “emancipate the technology” his team originated at research at the University of British Columbia.

It had previously been put to work in a browser plug-in called Worio. And, as you might have guessed, browser plug-ins are a tough business.

The free Zite app imports a user’s Twitter tweets, follows and Google Reader subscriptions, offers lists of pre-made categories, and then solicits feedback and refines over time a list of topics and sources the user is interested in. It features articles based on their popularity, number of shares from a user’s network and topic relevance. (Davar said he thinks a person’s Facebook network data is too heterogeneous to reliably recommend articles, so it’s not included as an option.)

Last week, a Canadian site called Techvibes first wrote about the possibility of the sale of Zite to CNN, which is based in Atlanta and owned by Time Warner.

In a press release, CNN said Zite would remain a standalone unit, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNN, and that CEO Mark Johnson will continue to run Zite’s operations, but now in San Francisco. CNN also said that Davar will remain an executive director and Mike Klass will continue as CTO.

In a statement, Johnson said: “Zite is thrilled about combining forces with CNN to create a world-class news discovery platform. In CNN, we have found a partner who shares our vision and passion. Being part of the CNN family gives us the capital to grow Zite’s business and continue to innovate in the space.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110830/zite-sold-to-cnn-for-just-over-20-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110829/why-cnns-don-lemon-carries-not-one-but-two-iphones/ http://allthingsd.com/20110829/why-cnns-don-lemon-carries-not-one-but-two-iphones/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:00:54 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=114572 While AT&T touts the fact that its iPhone can talk and surf at the same time, CNN anchor Don Lemon goes for a different approach — he carries two iPhones and uses one to talk on and the other to tweet or surf the Web.

“I can tweet and talk,” Lemon said, demonstrating his dual-screen pose. At other times, Lemon has Reddit open on one phone and Twitter on another. At one time, Lemon had a personal iPhone and a work BlackBerry. However, after dropping his BlackBerry in the ocean on a Key West vacation over Memorial Day, Lemon’s work got him a second iPhone.

A frequent tweeter, Lemon is something of an Apple addict, also toting an iPad and a MacBook Pro.

Lemon was in Philadelphia for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association convention, where he was a featured speaker.

With Hurricane Irene making its way through Philly, Lemon was forced into weather duty, taking at least one of his iPhones out for his live shots, though he had placed it in a Ziploc bag for a little protection against the elements. (Thanks to Barbara Dozetos for the photo of Lemon out in the rain.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110829/why-cnns-don-lemon-carries-not-one-but-two-iphones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110728/jon-stewart-points-out-the-downside-of-tvs-twitter-love/ http://allthingsd.com/20110728/jon-stewart-points-out-the-downside-of-tvs-twitter-love/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:47:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=103629 Excellent twofer from “The Daily Show” last night: Deflating Twitter and TV news in one three-minute segment.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Bonus factoid: When this segment aired on the East Coast last night, @ladybigmac — whose profile describes her as a “political junkie that likes to watch golf and NASCAR races” — had 19 followers. As of 7:44 am, she has 1,397. She may not be aware of her newfound celebrity, though: She’s been tweeting to @cnnAM all morning, but has yet to acknowledge her national shout-out.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110728/jon-stewart-points-out-the-downside-of-tvs-twitter-love/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110718/cnn-hln-to-stream-on-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20110718/cnn-hln-to-stream-on-web/#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:22:00 +0000 Sam Schechner http://allthingsd.com/?p=99058 Time Warner Inc. is increasing the number of TV channels and programs it pipes over the Internet to people who have conventional pay-TV subscriptions, as the television business faces growing competition from Web-video services.

Starting Monday, the New York media giant plans to make live simulcasts of its CNN and HLN cable-news channels available on the Web to people who subscribe to participating TV distributors, including Comcast Corp., Dish Network Corp., and Verizon Communications Inc.

Subscribers can sign in to watch on CNN’s website or on Apple Inc. devices like the iPad. The simulcasts—which will mirror everything shown on TV, including ads—will be made available on other mobile devices in coming months, CNN said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110718/cnn-hln-to-stream-on-web/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:57:49 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3498 Wael Ghonim, the Google marketing executive who was detained for his role in organizing the Egyptian uprising on Facebook, was jubilant today after longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak finally capitulated to 18 days of protests and stepped down.

“If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet,” Ghonim said in an interview with CNN.

Ghonim gives credit to the young Egyptians who organized themselves on Facebook, dating back to last June when activist Khaled Said was killed. Ghonim commented on how a video posted on Facebook (where he is administrator of a page commemorating Said) would be quickly shared by 50,000 people, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a personal hero.

Ghonim said he plans to write a book on the topic called “Revolution 2.0.”

Mubarak’s government had shut down much of Egyptian Internet access and SMS service for nearly a week during the protests, then made concessions to not run for another term, but protests only intensified until he finally agreed to step down today.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:00:08 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3379 Though Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss no-commented me and other reporters in a San Francisco court last month, they can’t seem to stay away from bashing Mark Zuckerberg for long. The twins, who are waiting to hear if appeals judges will invalidate a previous settlement with Facebook, offered videos and TV interviews to multiple outlets, which posted them online Tuesday. It’s still the same old Mark-Zuckerberg-stole-our-idea stuff, plus some creative camera work. And hey, at least they’re not outright stalking Zuckerberg like some other people.

Here’s one from CNN. The Winklevii tell Piers Morgan that it’s not ironic that they are now active Facebook users, despite their ongoing legal and moral crusades against the company. “Technically we’re using our idea….It’s really our product and we’re the originators.” (The two grown men, somewhat oddly, make little effort to differentiate from each other, so I’ll just attribute those comments to both of them.)

And here’s one from the Daily, which shot crazy amounts of creative B-roll of the Winklevosses’ rippling muscles and chiseled jaws (they are Olympic rowers, after all). This is part one of a three-part series by the Daily’s Erin Ade, who discloses she’s a childhood friend of the Winklevii. Cameron and Tyler say they want to tell Zuckerberg to “grow up and admit to the world and yourself what you already know is true…because the moment you do that the chapter will be closed and you can move on as an individual.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/mobilized-gets-hands-on-with-googles-honeycomb-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/mobilized-gets-hands-on-with-googles-honeycomb-video/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:32:10 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3413 After Google finished putting Honeycomb through its paces, the throngs of reporters were turned loose into a packed and quite small demo area to get our hot little hands on some Motorola tablets running the OS.

Although we spoiled a lot of the surprise with our preview stories, there were demos of the OS itself, as well as partners like Sports Illustrated, Zynga and CNN showing off their Honeycomb apps.

I’ll also have more later today based on some comments from Hugo Barra, who chatted about the work that went into Honeycomb, as well as how some of the features will make their way back to the phone version of Android.

In the meantime, enjoy the video.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/mobilized-gets-hands-on-with-googles-honeycomb-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:05:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28426 One day, maybe not that far off, we won’t distinguish between video we watch on the Web and the stuff we see on TV. But for now, TV is still the big leagues–the place you go if you want the biggest stage, and the most money.

Which might explain why the Onion has not one but two shows on TV right now, both based on the great stuff the satirists are already doing on their Web video site.

There’s SportsDome on Comedy Central, a beat-for-beat replication of ESPN’s SportsCenter. And starting tonight on IFC, there’s the Onion News Network, an uncanny amalgamation of News Corp.’s Fox News, Time Warner’s CNN, Comcast’s MSNBC et al.

Here’s a representative sample:

Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation’s Idiots

I think it’s pretty great, but I’m a 100 percent biased observer, since I’ve been friends with some of the Onion crew for forever–think pre-Netscape. If you want a less objective take on the new show, you can check out this glowing New York Times review, or this measured one from Time.

Last week, I stopped by a promo for the show–a real/fake press conference starring the fake newsreaders, in character, moderated by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who appeared as himself–and then sat down for a chat with Carol Kolb, a longtime Onion writer (and a pal–see above).

We talked in a makeshift green room set up at the very serious Paley Center for Media, and midway through, our conversation gets interrupted by the show’s cast. But that just makes it more real, right? If your coworkers aren’t cool with a few f-bombs, then this isn’t safe for work:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/backstage-at-the-onions-new-tv-show/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:53:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38730

Tonight is Larry King’s last show on CNN, which did this retrospective from some key interviews on “Larry King Live” over his 25 years at the cable news network.

Personally, BoomTown likes when he forgets things, but the Marlon Brando smooch is still pretty good television.

And here is the actual goodbye:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101216/viral-video-larry-king-and-suspenders-bid-goodbye-to-cnn/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:00:35 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=823 For years now, Jeff Han has been working on large-screen multitouch displays.

Han and his company, Perceptive Pixel, are best known for creating the giant touch wall that John King and others at CNN use to break down elections.

While Apple, Microsoft and others have targeted consumers, Perceptive Pixel has focused on niche professional markets, especially the defense and government sector.

But, after years of watching the small touchscreen device market from the sidelines, Han said he thinks he is pretty close to creating his first products that will run on those devices.

“Mobile is interesting,” he said in an interview last month at his New York offices (in the Manhattan building that Google is buying, with the amazing roof view seen below). “How can you ignore a billion devices being sold every year?”

Han said there is a reason he has stayed focused on the high end of the market.

“I have a personal bias,” he told Mobilized. “I want computers to be functional, not just playful.”

The modern tablet, he said, is the first consumer device that has enough pixels and the precision sensors to potentially be of interest to Perceptive Pixel. In particular, Han said he is intrigued by the idea of using tablets to allow meeting participants to interact with a nearby larger touchscreen that might be in use by someone leading a meeting.

“We’re looking at mobile and slate devices as a way to tie into this family of collaboration [products],” he said, noting that’s where Perceptive Pixel is spending its energy when it comes to mobile, as opposed to coming up with some killer app that works only on smaller screens. “There are a lot of smart people creating mobile apps.”

Han said his first mobile efforts should come out early next year–in the first quarter or early in the second quarter, though he wouldn’t give more specifics.

Whatever Perceptive Pixel ends up doing in the tablet space, Han said his plan is to eventually have it support multiple operating systems, though Han said the company will probably only qualify certain devices. So far, he said, Apple’s iOS and the iPad seem best suited to the applications he has in mind, while the real-time touch performance on Android has certain issues.

“We’re not going to just let it run on anything out there,” he said. “Some of them just can’t guarantee a good user interface.”

Here is the video interview Mobilized did with Han:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101123/qotd-twitter-trumps-tv-says-twitter-guy-linking-to-tv-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20101123/qotd-twitter-trumps-tv-says-twitter-guy-linking-to-tv-site/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:42:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=26243

“Something crazy going on between the Koreas now. TV news rundown had nothing, so watching it unfold on Twitter right now http://t.co/LL7o4mM”

– Twitter biz dev executive Tony Wang, engaged in simultaneous media criticism and product promotion.

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