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In Memoriam: Tech Products We Lost Too Soon

Lauren Goode — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:30:54 +0000

The year is nearing its end, and while 2012 is expected to be increasingly cloud-y, voice-controlled and filled with more mobile madness, this seems like an appropriate moment to look back and remember those that have gone to the tech-product graveyard in 2011.

The Flip Camera
San Jose, Calif. — The Cisco Flip, a beloved handheld video recorder, was killed on April 12, 2011. Its untimely death was a result of the realignment of Cisco’s consumer electronics business.

Born in May 2006 as the Pure Digital Point & Shoot, the pocket camera went through many evolutions in its lifetime, later becoming the Flip Ultra and spawning the Flip Mino and Flip MinoHD. It found a new home in 2009, when it was acquired by Cisco for $590 million. The Flip was known as the life of the party at birthday and wedding celebrations, and will be remembered for its simplistic design and pop-out USB arm. “People literally flipped for the Flip when it first came out,” a friend of its parents, Pure Digital, said. It is survived by a number of boiled-down point-and-shoots and countless smartphone cameras, as well as video-sharing apps with annoyingly cute names like “Viddy.”

Its distant cousin, the Kodak Zi8, also went missing from the Kodak store earlier this year.

Guitar Hero
Santa Monica, Calif. — For Guitar Hero, Feb. 9, 2011, was the day the music died. The videogame franchise was killed when Activision announced during its fourth-quarter earnings call that it was shuttering the business unit dedicated to Guitar Hero.

The popular game was born in 2005 to Red Octane and Harmonix, and was distributed by Activision. Later iterations of Guitar Hero, which were developed by Neversoft, had band-specific titles and also incorporated more instrumental props, so fans could play drums or sing as well as play guitar.

But Guitar Hero sales fell off, and the game was eventually overshadowed by its record-breaking Activision siblings, the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft series. Revenues of Guitar Hero fell from $1.7 billion in 2008 to about $300 million in 2010.

Guitar Hero will be remembered for its love of music, with Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen among its favorite artists, and for creating living-room rock arenas for millions of users.

Guitar Hero is survived by Rock Band, Rocksmith, Rock Revolution and likely many other console and mobile games starting with “Rock” that we’re not aware of or haven’t been invented yet.

HP TouchPad
Palo Alto, Calif. — That flame which doth burn brightest often burns out quickly, or something like that.

The HP TouchPad was effectively killed on Aug. 18, 2011, at the young age of just 49 (that’s days). Prior to its demise, the TouchPad was praised for its bright 9.7-inch display, Beats audio and mostly for the fact that it ran HP’s intuitive webOS mobile operating system, though the tablet ultimately saw disappointing sales during its short life.

Hewlett-Packard, its maker, said webOS devices had not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers, and couldn’t justify continuing to produce hardware like the TouchPad around it.

HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, said later on, “I think we’ve got to walk before we run here.” The TouchPad is survived by a newly open source webOS system and a cult of rabid fans, as evidenced by its post-mortem fire sales. It joins the Microsoft Kin phone in a special Afterlife for Tech Products Less Than 50 Days Old, while its operating system remains in a state of purgatory.

Dell Streak Tablets and Mini 10 Netbook
Round Rock, Texas — The streak was not a long one.

Dell’s Streak 5 tablet, which was originally demoed at D8 in 2010, disappeared from store shelves in mid-August of this year. Dell hardly had time to recover from the loss before its sibling, the Dell Streak 7, was also discontinued.

Shortly after the loss of the Streak tablet, tragedy again struck the Dell family, when Dell confirmed it would no longer make consumer netbooks, feeling the pressure of tablets as well as an emerging shift toward thin, light “ultrabooks” in the laptop category. The Dell Mini 10 was known for being small, as netbooks are, and for being that laptop you knew you could always fit on the seatback tray on an airplane.

Apple MobileMe
Cupertino, Calif. — June 6, 2011, was Steve Jobs’s last appearance at an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It was also the day MobileMe effectively went away, with Jobs saying the $99 dollar service wasn’t Apple’s “finest hour.”

MobileMe launched at WWDC in July of 2008, and was meant to sync calendars, emails, bookmarks and photo galleries. For individual accounts, it came with 20 gigabytes of online storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.

While great in theory, our friend MobileMe was not without flaws. In fact, AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg said, in his review of the service, that MobileMe was “far too flawed to be reliable.”

Apple’s Internet-based sync services since 2000 have evolved, but have never truly gone away: Like an actual ghost, we know they’re there, and we see glimpses of how they work, but they still elude many people. MobileMe, in its earliest form, was iTools, and later on, the subscription service .Mac. Even now, we’re not entirely sure whether MobileMe was killed or simply reincarnated as something new — in this case, iCloud.

Adobe Flash on Mobile
San Jose, Calif. — This is the way mobile Flash ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

On Nov. 9, Adobe said it would no longer be developing Flash, its platform for interactive and rich media content, for mobile devices.

Macromedia Flash was born in 1997, the spawn of FutureWave’s FutureSplash Animator. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, thus becoming Adobe Flash.
As smartphone and tablet wars heated up in recent years, Flash support became one of the features that iPad competitors — mainly Google Android devices — touted to set themselves apart from Apple’s mobile products.

The tech world has contemplated what this could all mean for the future of Flash. As AllThingsD’s Ina Fried wrote, Flash’s death on mobile was seen as a vindication for the late Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products. Could Jobs once again have seen the future? Flash is not a completely dead standard yet, but with developers increasingly adopting HTML5 as the new standard for Web language, it’s unclear what exactly will become of Flash.

Google Buzz
Mountain View, Calif. — A standard housecleaning session turned fatal this past October when Google pulled the plug on its social networking effort. Google Buzz, the predecessor to Google+, aimed to create a social network through Gmail.

Social and gregarious by nature, Google Buzz was born in February of 2010. Its early life was filled with strife, as users struggled to grasp the real-time social interactions that were occurring within email chains, and real privacy concerns emerged.

Despite its short life span, the memory of Google Buzz surely remains, as the search giant eventually had to settle with the FTC over privacy violations and is now committed to 20 years of privacy audits.

Memories, indeed.

Google Buzz is survived by Google+, and follows Friendster and Myspace to the social graveyard, although technically those still exist.

Readers, what do you think was the greatest tech product loss in 2011?

There's Some Cheese in My Tech: Jonathan Kaplan's The Melt Opens Its Doors

Liz Gannes — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:13:08 +0000

Last week, I found myself at the secret preview opening of a grilled cheese restaurant.

That would be Flip creator Jonathan Kaplan’s The Melt line of grilled cheese restaurants, which was first announced at this year’s ninth D: All Things Digital conference.

It is Kaplan’s next act, after Cisco shut down the Flip handheld videocamera line in April.

Kaplan had actually left Cisco in February, and soon was planning this orthogonal and highly unusual move.

I stopped by The Melt’s first location at 115 New Montgomery in San Francisco on Friday, just after the restaurant had invited its Twitter followers and Facebook fans in for a free trial lunch. Needless to say, the atmosphere was festive.

The sandwich menu has changed since D9. No more The Walt and The Kara, although the “experienced gruyere” found in The Walt has now been relabeled “aged gruyere” and is part of The Wild Thing, which comes on white wheat with creamy wild mushroom soup.

(I sampled “The Mission,” which is jalapeno jack on sourdough, accompanied by sweet corn tortilla soup. I have no professional qualifications or training to assure you of this, but it was yummy.)

Both of the combos I described cost $8.95 each.

The Melt aims to be the cheesier version of Chipotle, the fast, casual and highly successful Mexican restaurant chain, and is backed by Sequoia Capital.

Kaplan said he’s well aware that many in the technology industry are rolling their eyes. But he said, “The reality is, tech gets you food and out the door.”

Thus, customers can create an order for their grilled cheese from their computers or mobile phones and receive a QR code that they then bring to a Melt location and scan at the counter. Only when the sandwich is ready does the customer’s credit card get charged.

Each sandwich takes two minutes to cook, and has a shelf life of about half an hour, Kaplan said, so time is of the essence, and the QR code system helps make everything happen fast.

As for the connection between sandwiches and personal videocameras?

“Flip was also a crazy idea,” said Kaplan. “It was equally nutty to compete with Sony.”

With a restaurant, it’s much easier to get feedback and make quick changes than with a gadget that has to be manufactured and distributed, he noted.

Kaplan said he’s aiming for 500 company-owned restaurants with 20,000 employees in five years.

Two other ways The Melt sets itself apart: Everything served is compostable or recyclable, so you won’t find a trashcan in the store. And the combos contain only about 615 calories, Kaplan said.

Here’s the video of Kaplan at D9:

[ See post to watch video ]

Cisco's Profit Drops 36 Percent

Joan E. Solsman — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:07:56 +0000

Cisco Systems Inc.’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings fell 36 percent, though the decline wasn’t quite as steep excluding significant charges and severance costs from restructuring, as the networking giant’s weaker margin offset a modest revenue increase.

The company, which has posted three straight quarters of lower profit on a long margin slide, has been broadly restructuring into what Chairman and Chief Executive John Chambers has called a “leaner and more focused” operation. That included plans announced last month to lay off 9 percent of its work force, as well as a review of its product portfolio for places to cut back. The changes build on similar strokes earlier this year, such as an internal reorganization in May to simplify structure and the sale of the Flip video camera in April.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Here's Why Sequoia Thinks Melt Is Worth Millions: The D9 Demo (Video)

Peter Kafka — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:11:56 +0000

In the fall of 2008, Sequoia Capital declared “RIP: Good Times” and told entrepreneurs to batten down the hatches because it was now going to be next to impossible to get venture money.

Flash forward to present tense: Sequoia is now putting millions into The Melt, a new grilled cheese shop chain from former Flip CEO Jonathan Kaplan. Kaplan demoed the concept — and talked a bit about the demise of his last company after it was acquired by Cisco — earlier this month at the D9 conference.

[ See post to watch video ]

Digital Grilled Cheese D9 Poll Results Are In: "The Kara" Edges Out "The Walt"

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:34:28 +0000

Personally, I preferred “The Walt” over “The Kara.”

But the attendees of the ninth D: All Things Digital conference seemed to like the grilled cheese sandwich made of “sharp” cheddar more than “experienced” gruyere.

In sampling by hungry D9 folks, 53 percent selected “The Kara” (sharp cheddar on potato bread with tomato basil soup) and 47 percent chose “The Walt” (experienced gruyere on white wheat with wild mushroom soup).

That’s according to founder Jonathan Kaplan, who demoed his new company called Melt.

With Melt, the focus is on grilled cheese, in an unusual mashup of smartphones, automation and comfort food.

You can order with Melt’s mobile app or from the Web and have your grilled cheese choice ready for you when you want it in a minute in his casual, fast-food restaurants.

The first stores open in San Francisco in August, but there are many more to come via many millions of dollars in funding from Sequoia Capital.

Obviously, grilled cheese is a very orthogonal move for Kaplan, who brought the world the ground-breaking Flip video camera.

Bought by Cisco for $590 million in 2009, the networking giant closed the unit down in April and killed the Flip. Kaplan still does not know why, he said onstage.

While I still mourn the Flip, I can say that the grilled cheese is pretty tasty.

Here’s a video of the Melt in action at D9 in a demo by Kaplan, as well as a video interview he did with Katie Boehret at the Science Fair booth at the conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

Jonathan Kaplan Still Doesn't Know Exactly Why Cisco Killed the Flip (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:17:36 +0000

Jonathan Kaplan, founder of Pure Digital, the company behind the Flip Digital video cameras, says he still doesn’t know exactly why Cisco Systems, the networking giant that acquired the company in 2009 for $590 million, unceremoniously killed the product as part of a reorganization earlier this year.

Asked while onstage with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference today, Kaplan said he could only guess why Cisco killed it, without apparently trying to sell it first, but he had a good guess. “I think that it’s only conjecture, big corporations do things aren’t necessarily well understood. One of the things is the technology that we created. And if I had to guess, one of the reasons is that a lot of that technology we created is being used in products that Cisco needs to create….It may have been touching the hearts and minds of millions of people, but to Cisco it was just another product. Sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater.”

Later on Kaplan said he thinks it would have been difficult for Cisco to “unwind some of the technologies that we created” from Cisco products, and that given Cisco’s huge size, and the relatively small contribution that the Flip line was contributing to Cisco’s overall sales, it would not have been worth the effort to the company’s senior management.

Oddly enough, as a major Cisco shareholder, Kaplan says he agrees with the decision because he wants Cisco to do well. “I think it was the right decision for Cisco, because I want them to be successful….But do I think the world is worse off because Flip is no longer? Yes.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Here's The $10 Million Melted Cheese Store Everyone's Talking About (Nope! Not a Joke!)

Drake Martinet — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:54:25 +0000

What do you do when Cisco buys your consumer product company and abruptly closes it down?

If you are Jonathan Kaplan, creator of the popular (discontinued) Flip camera line, you make a lot of grilled cheese.

Kaplan has been building a secretive start-up called The Melt, which, near as we can tell, brings together smartphones, automation and comfort food.

We’ll let him explain further.

9:57 am: Jon Kaplan takes the stage and Kara starts right off—what happened to Flip?

9:57 am: Kaplan says that Flip was not a very big part of Cisco, and sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater.

10:00 am: Kaplan says that even as they grew Flip in technology, the business of Cisco writ large was being eroded.

10:01 am: Kaplan answers the question–he did have a pretty good idea that Cisco was going to kill the Flip when he left, months prior.

10:02 am: Kaplan: “Flip was only contributing a billion dollars to Cisco’s top-line revenue.”

10:03 am: Kara asks again—why wasn’t Flip sold to anyone? Kara says she got calls, after the news broke of Flip’s cancellation, from people who would have wanted to buy.

10:04 am: Kaplan moves on, and is now talking up his new company–The Melt. It’s about grilled cheese. Really.

10:05 am: Kaplan: “We created a set of applications and mobile technology to allow you to order your Melt anywhere.”

10:06 am: Kaplan explains that you can order your Melt anywhere, any time, and then, when you are ready to eat, you walk into a Melt store, and get your order within a minute.

10:07 am: Kaplan says the whole D9 audience is going to get grilled cheese and be happy.

Now he moves on to the how.

10:08 am: Kaplan says the real innovation is a machine that makes the Melt. The real idea is to make the next generation of fast, casual restaurants.

10:09 am: Kaplan says restaurauteur Michael Mina is on the board of The Melt.

10:09 am: Kaplan picks his sandwich–The Walt, complete with “experienced” gruyere cheese–and scans his iPhone at the onstage laptop. He also orders The Kara.

10:11 am: About 30 seconds later, a waiter walks out on stage with the sandwiches and soup.

10:12 am: Kaplan says Sequoia Capital led investment, and that they raised enough to open 20 stores, at half a million to a million dollars each.

10:13 am: Kaplan on why Sequoia wants into the restaurant biz: Look at the market cap of Chipotle.

10:13 am: Kaplan says Melts will be $5 and combos will be $8.

10:13 am: Kaplan walks off–Walt and Kara invite the audience to grab a grilled cheese during the break.

[ See post to watch video ]

Video: After Cisco Sacrifices His Baby to the Gods of Wall Street, Flip Founder Jon Kaplan Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:08:28 +0000

Right after BoomTown heard the sad news this morning that Cisco was jettisoning its Flip digital video camera division–part of a transparent effort to assure Wall Street that it was no longer serious about its wacky foray into the consumer market–I lobbed in a call to its founder Jonathan Kaplan to get him on video talking about the loss.

The Flip, of course, has been my go-to tool to harass and annoy Silicon Valley moguls, since it appeared on the scene many years ago. The technique for the simple device was to essentially stick it up someone’s nose until they cried “Uncle!” and told me what I wanted to know.

It’s not entirely clear why Cisco didn’t make more of an effort to sell Flip–I got three calls from big consumer Internet and electronics companies that would have been logical buyers this morning alone, all of whom said they would have seriously considered purchasing the iconic brand. It remains the top-selling camcorder in the U.S., with 21.6 percent of the market.

Cisco bought the start-up behind Flip, Pure Digital, in March of 2009 for $590 million in stock, and the product has sold many millions of units in its short and cruelly ended life.

The first commercially-branded Flips were, in fact, introduced at the third D: All Things Digital conference in 2005 by Kaplan, and he first talked with Cisco CEO John Chambers about selling the innovative Flip at D4 in 2008.

While Wall Street has been worried about the impact of smartphones, especially the iPhone, on Flip’s business–helped in part by Apple CEO Steve Jobs making that point in the photo here at a music event in the fall of 2009 (after which, Cisco defended Flip on Twitter)–it still boggles the mind why Cisco could not have found a new home for it, rather than lopping off all those jobs.

Flip has reportedly been profitable on a standalone basis, several sources said, although probably not when you glom all those shared Cisco corporate costs on top of its puny shoulders.

Flip’s axing, in fact, is clearly a lame attempt to get serious by Cisco–whose shares have been suffering of late–in order to assuage investors that it was focusing on its core business of networking after a series of consumer-facing experiments. While these consumer efforts were but a drop in the giant Cisco revenue bucket, killing them gets lot of ink.

Expect more such “We’re back!” announcements from Chambers and Cisco in the coming months, as it is part of the classic CEO Playbook 101.

Kaplan remained mum on all that in our chat in the Noe Valley Starbucks, which you can see below, along with my favorite Flip moment, where I got all up into Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s business. I also added two other videos I did when my various Flip cameras met new versions in 2008 and in 2010.

Big single tear–it’s just not the same with an iPhone:

[ See post to watch video ]

Early Adopter: Smartphone Not Enough Like HAL? Satarii Wants to Give It an All-Seeing-Eye

Drake Martinet — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:11:06 +0000

Today, the mark of smartphone obsession is bringing one everywhere with you–to dinner, to bed, to funerals, to the altar at your weddings.

If fledgling accessory maker Satarii has its way, the bar on obsession may be raised to having your phone follow you, even when you aren’t holding on to it.

Defining what Satarii is releasing exactly is tricky, as the product only half exists.

Satarii was the brainchild of Vladimir Tetelbaum and Brian Lamb, both of whom were product designers at D2M, a Mountain View, Calif-based product design firm.

Its first product, the Satarii Star, will cradle your Apple iPhone or small, Flip-style video camera and pivot to continually face whomever or whatever is wearing the included tracking fob.

The whole device, or at least the “looks-like” prototype, resembles a large black bar of soap out of which unfolds the phone cradle. Battery powered, it swivels horizontally to keep the smartphone’s camera aligned with the user.

The desired result is that one might have an intimate Facetime chat or record a video while walking around the kitchen making dinner, or across a stage giving a presentation, or around the yard playing with the kids.

I say “desired,” because Satarii is going a route that has grown popular with small hardware makers, by launching a crowd-sourced funding campaign before a single, integrated unit has been built.

Lamb said that their reason for seeking crowd-funding, in this case with IndieGoGo, a clone of the more famous Kickstarter service, had partly to do with good design practices and partly to do with the rarities of starting a hardware company in Silicon Valley.

“We wanted to open it up to crowd sourcing, so we could get really great feedback from the early users, and see how they were using it,” Lamb said.

Satarii’s fundraising goal is only $20,000 (they’ve made nearly $17,000 of that with almost a month left in the funding drive), which seemed like an amount that one might get from an angel investor as well.

So why not the easier route?

“It’s not as easy to get venture money for a hardware company as for a software company,” said Tetelbau. “I mean, what is the profit margin on a virtual tractor…100 percent. There’s no way a piece of hardware can compete with that ever.”

That reality does raise questions about the climate for product innovation and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, at least outside of existing major product producers like Griffin.

Lamb added,” “If you look at most successful small product companies, they have either an independently wealthy founder, or a wealthy relation as an early backer.”

He gave the example of the RED Camera Company, which was founded by Oakley Sunglasses founder Jim Jannard.

The sticking point doesn’t seem to be the $20,000, which Satarii will use to create a few hand-built units for the early backers.

The problem is that scaling production to thousands of units requires paying up-front costs for making manufacturing dies and custom fabricated parts, and finding a Chinese factory to do the assembly.

Those costs, just to reach a scale to be possibly profitable on a single product, can easily reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And none of those expenses guarantee distribution or sales.

Thus, there is a long road ahead for Satarii, and just about any company looking to make something new.

For Satarii and the Satarii Star, the next step will be to build the first units to satisfy the initial crowd of funders.

Lamb said he expects that order to take about six months to fill, and that the unit they deliver should look almost exactly like their prettier prototype.

Or so Satarii hopes.

A recent post on WakeMate, the sleep-tracking device out of Y Combinator, highlighted over a year of delays on a device with venture backing and no moving parts.

Whether Satarii is going to manufacture dozens of precise little devices or mainly produce delay notices remains to be seen, but Tetelbaum and Lamb did drop by recently and let us play with both prototypes which worked sufficiently well to creep us out a little.

Enjoy the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Early Adopter is a new column on early-stage start-ups and ideas that will be written weekly by Drake Martinet.)

Digital Cameras Improve Zooms, HD Function

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:26:27 +0000

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, so, too, comes the start of the holiday shopping mayhem. Once again, digital cameras are rocketing to the top of wish lists, and once again, shoppers are tentatively entering electronics stores with bewildered looks on their faces.

[ See post to watch video ]

To alleviate some of that shopping stress, I’ve compiled a buyer’s guide for different camera categories with prices and pointers to innovation. This year, manufacturers have improved photo-location tagging and are offering artistic photo alteration and clever ways to label images for future sharing on social networks.

Let’s Get Physical

Consumers are starting to understand that better sensors make it possible to do things like taking photos in low light, which can really make a difference in photo quality. Some high-quality sensors are making their way into affordable models, like the CMOS sensor in Nikon’s $300 Coolpix S8100. High megapixel counts aren’t overly important, though more megapixels per photo still make it easier to zoom in while editing and give higher resolution in a larger photo or poster. A 14-megapixel camera like the Olympus FE-47 costs just $100, but a recent Consumer Reports review gave it low marks in handling shake and liquid-crystal-display screen quality. Optical zoom, or the physically manipulated distance between the camera and a subject, is still more important than digital zoom, and it’s easy to find many models with 7x optical zoom or better. LCD screens on digicams are so large that they leave little room for optical viewfinders, thus making built-in image stabilization all the more important. Image stabilization comes on nearly all new cameras. And more digicams than ever are capable of recording high-definition videos.

Breaking It Down

Digital cameras can be divided into four broad categories: pocket-size, point-and-shoot, super- or mega-zooms and digital single-lens reflexes (D-SLRs). I’ll leave SLRs out of the discussion, since they’re still primarily aimed at hobbyists who don’t mind the cost and effort of buying additional lenses, filters, flashes and other accessories.

Most pocket-size digital cameras cost between $100 and $300, weigh no more than seven ounces and lack optical viewfinders, forcing users to look at LCD screens to compose pictures. Most of these LCD viewing screens measure between 2.6 inches and 3.5 inches diagonally. Samsung, however, has an even bigger touch-screen LCD, at 3.7 inches, on its CL80 camera priced at $350.

These small but powerful machines capture images with 10, 12 or 14 megapixels and their optical zoom lenses usually range from 3x to 7x, though a handful of manufacturers are boosting their cameras’ optical zooms. The $170 Casio Exilim EX-H5, for example, is equipped with a 10x optical zoom lens.

Today’s point-and-shoot digital cameras are sleeker and more stylish than they used to be, though they remain somewhat bulkier than their pocket-size relatives. The point-and-shoot size can allow for better optical zoom lenses, and these models sometimes cost less than the pocket sizes. The $300 Canon PowerShot SX210 IS and $280 Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 are equipped with 14x and 12x optical zoom lenses, respectively.

Super-zoom or mega-zoom digital cameras satisfy people who want the power of a great zoom and optional manual settings without the hassle and expense of an SLR. At a glance, you might mistake these models for SLRs due to their bulkier bodies, and, in some cases, detachable (or hot-shoe) flashes. Nikon’s $400 Coolpix P100 offers a 26x wide-angle optical zoom, and Olympus’s $350 SP-800UZ is the smallest camera with a 30x wide-angle optical zoom. Both cameras have built-in flashes, but the Nikon includes an optical viewfinder while the Olympus offers only an LCD screen for viewing and capturing photos.

Shaking It Up

Camera manufacturers are adding creative new features to these devices. Starting the week of Thanksgiving, Casio will provide Hybrid GPS on its $350 EX-H20G, which geotags (adds digital location information to) images indoors where GPS satellite signals can’t reach. This works using a combined GPS radio and motion sensor to measure the direction in which the camera has moved, and how fast. When you’re back in satellite range, the camera corrects the geotag by cross-referencing its own estimates with satellite-provided latitude and longitude.

Olympus now has art filters, which let you view your subject with special effects before capturing the photo. Some filters supply gentle sepia, soft focus or grainy film. There is also a drawing filter, which makes a subject instantly appear as a sketch.

Samsung’s $150 PL90 model has a pop-out USB arm that reminds me a lot of the pop-out USB connector on Cisco’s popular Flip camcorders. Samsung’s USB arm eliminates the need for messy wires, or the removal of a memory card to transfer photos from a digicam to a PC.

Many cameras have and continue to supply guides that appear on screen as a photo is being captured. Sony’s NEX-5 offers this, and the Olympus Live Guide let you preview photo adjustments—like brightness or color saturation—on the screen as you make them. Nikon’s Scene Auto Selector, found in the Coolpix P7000, Coolpix S8100 and Coolpix S80, will automatically adjust the camera’s settings so users can stop worrying about scrolling through menus to select the right scene from a list.

Fujifilm offers the only true (not simulated) three-dimensional digital camera in its $500 FinePix REAL 3D W3, which I reviewed in August. These 3D images can be seen through the camera’s LCD viewing screen but not on laptops or television sets unless they’re 3D-capable and you’re wearing 3D glasses.

Kodak is trying to encourage sharing with its cameras by including a Share button that, when pressed, digitally tags images and videos with labels for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Kodak Gallery or email, then automatically sends the photos to those places when you next plug the camera into a PC.

One last warning: Don’t be seduced by lower prices or better technology alone. Be sure you try a camera in the store before buying it. The way it feels or works for you is just as important as any technological specification.

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

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….

Video Editing Made Easier

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 23:18:18 +0000

Have you ever watched someone editing photos and videos on a Mac and wondered why they seem much more talented and tech savvy than you are with your Windows PC? These Mac users have a leg up thanks to Apple’s iLife software, a suite of programs that comes loaded on every Mac, making it a cinch for consumers to work with videos, photos and music. Just last week, Apple announced the 9th version of iLife with a new edition of iMovie for editing and sharing home videos.

[ See post to watch video ]

But what’s a Windows user to do with home videos? Many resort to Web-based services for editing and storage, but these require uploading media from camera to PC and then from PC to website. Some use a Microsoft program called Windows Live Movie Maker or editing software that comes with their video camera. But many people will assume there aren’t any good options and give up on editing.

This week, I tested Adobe’s $99 (before $20 mail-in rebate) Premiere Elements 9 video editing software program. This installs on the computer via DVD or by downloading and aims to help mainstream consumers edit, organize and share videos. All past iterations of this product were only available for Windows PCs, but Premiere Elements 9 is also available for the Mac, giving Apple users an iMovie alternative.

Other new features of Premiere Elements 9 include the ability to simply import and edit video clips from Cisco’s popular Flip hand-held camcorder, as well as built-in ways to store and share videos via the Web using Adobe’s Photoshop.com site. Several editing features have been improved and some are new, like one tool that removes irksome humming in the background of your video and another that converts your footage into a cartoon in one step.

I tested Premiere Elements using videos I captured with my Nikon Coolpix P90 digital camera and Flip minoHD camcorder on a recent vacation to Argentina and Uruguay. I installed the video-editing software on both my Windows 7 PC and on my MacBook Pro, and used it to edit out the noisy background noises of an airplane in one video captured from 30,000 feet, and the sounds of a bottle-labeling machine in another video I took during a vineyard tour.

Adobe’s $99 Premiere Elements 9 video editing software program

But I found myself spending more time trying to figure out how to edit videos rather than simply editing. Editing tools are buried in several layers of menus and are poorly named. The option that turns a video clip into a cartoon is called “NewBlue Cartoonr Plus,” found in the Edit tab under Effects at the bottom of a long, scrolling list of other options.

The tool that eliminates background din is called “NewBlue Hum Remover” and is only discovered by opening Edit, Effects and an almost unnoticeable drop-down menu called Audio Effects. A spokesman for Adobe said these new features aren’t exposed differently than existing effects because that would have been confusing. But I found it aggravating to frequently hunt for features and tools.

Adobe separates Premiere Elements from an Organizer application, where all photos and videos are held. This is confusing because a Share tab in Premiere Elements offers to help you upload videos to Photoshop.com, YouTube, or Podbean (for podcast hosting), but Organizer offers additional sharing options like Facebook, SmugMug, and Flickr. If you didn’t dig around in Organizer, you’d never know these options were available.

Adobe signed me up for a Plus account, which costs $50 to renew each year or can be bought with Premiere Elements for $139 (before rebate). Adobe also sells its digital photo organizing software, Photoshop Elements 9, with Premiere Elements 9 in a $149 bundle (before rebate). The extra cost of a Plus account includes 20 gigabytes of online backup and storage—roughly four hours of DVD-quality video or 15,000 photos—versus the 2 gigabytes allotted to regular accounts.

The cartoon function is hard to find in Premiere Elements 9.

I worked on my Mac and PC, dragging video clips down into what Adobe calls a Sceneline (a timeline is also viewable), which shows still clips of each video and lets you drag effects on to those clips to put them into action. For example, I dragged the Old Film effect on to a video clip of tango dancers at a Buenos Aires street market and the footage suddenly looked like an old black and white movie.

I often used Smart Trim Mode, a feature that was added in the last version of Premiere Elements and automatically analyzes footage to suggest what could be trimmed due to blurriness, shaky footage, low contrast or brightness.

Another helpful feature called Smart Tags automatically sorted my still photos and videos into several categories like One Face, Two Faces, Small Group, High Quality, Low Volume, Dialog and Shaky. I selected Dialog and High Quality and instantly found two video clips that I wanted, without scrolling through my library.

Adobe Premiere Elements produces good-looking stuff, even without the extra upgrade cost for a Plus account. But new users should expect to take some time to learn the system and read through directions. If Adobe cleaned up its long, scrolling lists and gave its editing tools more mainstream names, people would feel more comfortable using it.

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Video: BoomTown Gets a Taste of Umi and Chomps into Cisco Execs Too!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:16:20 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown dragged my weary bag of bones to downtown San Francisco for the unboxing of a new consumer telepresence product from Cisco called Umi.

The networking giant is making yet another big foray into the competitive space for, well, space in the living room with the device, which will cost $599 with a $24.99 monthly fee.

The Cisco (CSCO) brand name Umi is a variation on “you-me.”

The Umi unit works with your existing high-definition television and high-speed broadband. It’s in three parts: A camera, a remote control and a set-top box. It will work with Google (GOOG) Voice Chat–but not Skype and Apple (AAPL) iChat yet.

Here’s a video I did–using Cisco’s Flip video camera, natch!–to capture the proceedings at the launch event and demo, as well as to interview Umi head honcho Gina Clark about the effort, competition and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

Web Meme: BoomTown and the Internet Is on #TeamSlater and His Inflatable-Slide Rage

Kara Swisher — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:15:56 +0000

The story of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater–who, after being abused by a passenger, did a full “Norma Rae” and huffed off the airplane via an inflatable slide–spread like wildfire across the Internet yesterday, almost immediately after the incident occurred.

It’s too much to hope that someone on the JetBlue (JBLU) flight had a Flip camera and is uploading the incident on YouTube right now, but video is unnecessary after the tale of flight rage got out and details piled upon details.

This is just the kind of silly, but true-to-life, story that everyone loves to share, and share it they did, with #teamslater quickly gaining ground on Twitter, and online comments and news stories exploding.

And why not? Everyone has encountered the entitled jerk who gets up before the plane has stopped, grabs his bag from the overhead compartment and then shoves his way to the front. Slater was simply doing his job by asking this passenger to sit down, and then decided he had had it when the bag struck him and he was cursed at.

We’ve also had our share of surly service from airline personnel, but this incident shed light on exactly why they might be a little more tetchy than we expect at times.

Maybe the cursing back on the intercom system and the dramatic beer-drinking exit was a bit over the top, but so what?

Slater is now, for better or worse, a Web hero.

Just like Norma Rae, seen in the video clip from the movie’s big scene below:

(The image is from Slater’s MySpace page here.)

Is iPhone 4 the Biggest Leap Since the Original iPhone? Analysts Say Probably.

John Paczkowski — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:00:32 +0000

The first analysts’ notes on Apple’s new iPhone 4 have begun rolling in and they sound a common theme: While not the revelation it might have been (for obvious reasons), the device may well be, as Steve Jobs claimed Monday, “the biggest leap since the original iPhone.”

“Yesterday, Steve Jobs unveiled, at his WWDC keynote, new iPhone 4 hardware and software,” said Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu. “While this was widely anticipated, we believe the rich features, refinement, and higher build quality are worth noting and difficult to comprehend without seeing and using the new iPhone first-hand. We believe the combination of a new form factor and software will likely serve as a powerful catalyst for iPhone 4 sales, as we have seen in the past with several AAPL products including the MacBook Pro, iMac, and iPod nano, to name a few.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster felt much the same way. “While the announced features of the iPhone 4 were as expected, the reality is this phone is significantly more advanced than the next best alternative,” Munster wrote in a note to clients. “We see the iPhone 4 as the most meaningful revision since the iPhone 3G two years ago. As such, we believe more existing iPhone users will be inclined to upgrade to the iPhone 4 than we saw with the iPhone 3GS.”

Munster notes as well that gee-whiz features like iPhone 4’s FaceTime video calling app, its HD video camera and iMovie video editing software are together creating an integrated experience that typically requires multiple devices. “The bottom line is the iPhone is taking unit and dollar share from other device categories,” he writes.

Indeed, it was hard to watch Apple’s (AAPL) demo of the device’s HD video camera working in concert with iMovie Monday and not think that it’s going to eat the Flip Video camcorder and Kodak’s (EK) Zi8 alive as soon as it arrives at market. And things don’t look much better for Google’s (GOOG) Android “superphones,” though obviously, there’s a much bigger battle to be fought there. Certainly, the company and its hardware partners have some serious work to do in the months ahead. (Yes, the EVO’s a great start. But its battery issues are troubling, as even HTC CEO Peter Chou conceded at D8 last week.)

Said RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, “Recent competitive Android smartphone launches by Android-powered phones have raised competitive intensity; however, to us, iMovie for iPhone (demonstrated at WWDC) may be illustrative of Apple’s advantage in vertical integration (software/ hardware). We expect Apple to launch other ‘Super Apps’ on iOS that advantage the platform (multimedia, geo-positioning, touch interface, etc). Bing introduction on iOS may portend a further shift away from reliance upon Google for mobile search….The ‘repositioning’ of Apple’s iPhone OS–to iOS–at WWDC accelerates Apple’s (re)assault to lead personal computing, as the industry evolves to mobile.”

Aliph in Collaboration Deal With Cisco–Jawbones in the Workplace?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:40:39 +0000

Today at a partner event, Cisco will unveil a wide-ranging collaboration with Aliph–a San Francisco start-up that is famous for its noise-cancelling Jawbone Bluetooth mobile headset–to deploy its software and device in its IP phones in the enterprise.

It is a big win for Aliph, since the networking giant is a dominant player in the arena to provide telephony solutions to businesses, part of its Voice and Unified Communications division.

The idea, said sources, is to use the Jawbone device and the software that manages it to allow workers to move around an office and have the call move with them, echoing increasingly mobile consumer behavior.

BoomTown had heard rumors of intense interest in Aliph by Cisco (CSCO) months ago and assumed a purchase to add to its growing consumer portfolio, such as its recent acquisition of Pure Digital’s Flip camera line.

But that did not turn out to be the case–instead it is more a partnership, said sources, to use Aliph’s technology.

The company was formally launched in 2006–in fact, at the D: All Things Digital conference–by Alexander Asseily and Hosain Rahman, who met as Stanford University undergraduates. It is funded by Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

With the stylish and innovative Jawbone–the most recent of which is reviewed here by The Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret–Aliph turned a lot of heads in the wireless headset space, aimed directly at high-end consumers.

Now, it is apparently pivoting into the workplace.

While Rahman confirmed the collaboration, he did not give a lot of details, although he did agree to sit down with me last night to broadly sketch out the new relationship.

Here’s the video of the interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Cisco's SlideHD Debuts: A Video Encounter of the Flip Kind

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:01:05 +0000

Tonight, Cisco unveiled the latest version in its popular and innovative Flip digital videocamera line, the SlideHD.

The new device, which can record up to four hours of high-definition video and store up to 12 hours of content, has a dramatic slide-up touchscreen and a slide navigation bar.

These make the new Flip much bulkier than the last version, the Mino, recalling the earlier Ultra line.

Presumably, the reason for the new look is to offer a product that consumers can use for instant playback and to hold more video.

Cisco (CSCO) said the SlideHD will cost about $280.

Here’s a video BoomTown did introducing my many old Flips to the new one:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s the official press release:

CISCO LAUNCHES THE ALL-NEW FLIP SLIDEHD

The world’s first shoot and show camcorder features unique new design with full widescreen playback and more hours of video

April 13, 2010–San Francisco, CA–Cisco today announced the newest member of its groundbreaking Flip Video™ line, the Flip SlideHD™. It’s an all-new Flip, with an all-new form factor, designed to make it even more fun to capture, watch and share HD videos anytime, anywhere. With Flip SlideHD, active consumers and families can record up to four hours of HD video, or store up to 12 hours of content, and then view it instantly with a stunning slide-up full widescreen.

“Since its launch less than three years ago, Flip Video has changed the way the world captures and shares video,” said Jonathan Kaplan, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Consumer Products. “Now Flip is once again re-inventing the video market with the amazing new Flip SlideHD, which raises the bar for making video easy and fun to capture, share and show.”

With SlideHD, anyone can capture an exciting event and then relive the moment with immediate playback as friends gather around. In addition, with up to 12 hours of on-board storage, SlideHD makes it easy for people to bring their videos and photos with them as they travel or meet up with friends or family. It’s like having your own portable life book for spontaneous viewing anywhere. SlideHD’s 3-inch widescreen playback makes it ideal for many occasions such as entertaining the kids with their own personal video show or fine-tuning a tennis serve.

The Flip SlideHD is the first Flip Video camera that lets consumers shoot up to four hours of HD video or store up to 12 hours of videos, photos, and content from Flip channels. SlideHD is also the first Flip to enable real-time video sharing on a stunning 3- inch widescreen with a unique slide-up design. SlideHD’s simple touch screen and innovative slide strip make it easy and fun to quickly navigate through your library to locate a video or photo.

Following the success of Flip’s popular and stylish Mino line, SlideHD lets users choose from thousands of designs from artists, leading design firms, celebrities, and iconic brands, or they can easily upload their own image to create a one-of-a-kind camcorder.

The new Flip SlideHD joins the popular Flip Video family which includes the Flip Ultra™ and Flip Mino™ lines. Like all Flip models, the SlideHD is pre-loaded with the proprietary FlipShare™ software that allows consumers to easily organize, create and share their videos. Using a PC or Mac, Flip video content can be instantly uploaded and ready for one-click sharing in a multitude of ways both privately and publicly. From social media sites–Facebook™, MySpace™ and YouTube™–to email, mobile devices, Flip Channels, and the TV; FlipShare is the easiest solution for consumers to share their videos.

Since the debut of the Flip Video family of video cameras in 2007, more than four million have been sold and millions of videos have been shared using FlipShare software.

Flip SlideHD Product Specifications:
• Color: White/Silver and Personalized
• Recording Time: Up to four hours
• Storage Time: Up to 12 Hours
• Memory: 16GB
• Screen: 3-inch wide transflective touch screen
• Video Resolution: High Definition; 1280×720 (30fps)
• Video Format: H.264, MP4
• Battery: Internal Li-ion rechargeable
• Battery Life: up to two hours
• TV Output: HDMI Widescreen
• Zoom: 2x digital
• Audio: Stereo speakers, headset jack

Price and Availability

SlideHD is immediately available for an MSRP of $279.99 at major retailers, online retailers and at the Flip store, www.theflip.com/store.

Feeling at Home With a Router

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:02:29 +0000

Like a hornets’ nest, the home router sits undisturbed by those who know better than to touch it. This antenna-enhanced box sends data to and from desktops, laptops, smart phones and TiVos (TIVO) throughout the house. Its indicator lights glow, signaling all is well with the network.

[ See post to watch video ]

But setting it up can be a major ordeal. People beg their techie friends for help. Some sit for hours on the phone with customer support. A few brave souls muddle through a sea of acronyms and secure codes in an attempt to install the router. Once it is set up, many are afraid to change its settings for fear of disrupting it and losing Internet connectivity.

Enter Valet (TheValet.com), a new wireless router designed for people who are tired of being intimidated by a blinking box. Valet is designed by the people who brought us the Flip video camcorders, the ultra simple handhelds with ultra simple software that just work. And it comes from Cisco (CSCO), which also owns Linksys—a router brand that people know and trust.

I’ve been using Valet for the past week, but it took me only 10 minutes, from start to finish, to get it going, thanks to a simple USB key that plugs into the computer and sets everything up in the background in less than five minutes. I tried it on a Windows 7 PC running and on an iMac, as well as on mobile devices, including a BlackBerry, Palm (PALM) Pre and the HTC HD2. The Valet is available Wednesday for $100 on Amazon.com (AMZN), TheValet.com and Staples (SPLS) stores. Over the next two weeks, it will be sold at Best Buy (BBY), Target (TGT) and Wal-Mart (WMT). There’s also the $150 Valet Plus, with a Wi-Fi range about 20% greater than the Valet.

I ran into a bug while trying to install the Valet software on a Mac: I plugged in the USB key but its built-in software didn’t install and I got a message telling me that Valet wasn’t able to set up on my computer. A Cisco representative said this was a rare Mac bug that will be fixed over this week and next week.

Along with its simple setup, Valet automatically creates a guest network to go with the main network so visitors can log onto a household’s Wi-Fi—either with or without a password, depending on settings—and not gain access to files shared within that network. The Valet software has parental controls that make it a cinch to set up restrictions like blocking certain Web sites or cutting off Internet access after a certain time on school nights or weekends.

The Valet isn’t the first router to enable parental controls and guest-network access. Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) $179 AirPort Extreme Base Station allows users to set up guest networks. Likewise, Netgear’s (NTGR) six most recently introduced routers, priced from $70 to $190, offer guest networks and parental controls. But just as the Flip camera’s built-in software simplified the process of editing, uploading and sharing home videos, the Valet’s software makes networking approachable for anyone—regardless of technical skill.

The Valet comes in a box with a USB Easy Setup Key, wireless router, Ethernet cable and power adapter (the last two are hidden under the box’s interior packaging). Instructions on the box told me to plug the USB key into a PC or Mac. Then on-screen directions popped up, instructing me to plug the Valet router into the wall with the power adapter and then into my home’s modem using the Ethernet cable. I selected the “connect” option on the computer screen, and four minutes later, the network was set up.

The device’s software, called Cisco Connect, is divided into four categories: Computers & Devices, Parental Controls, Guest Access and Settings. With these, I could quickly see how many devices were connected to my network and learn the name and password for the guest network if I forgot it. (Valet networks have pre-set, randomly selected names and passwords that people can easily change. My network’s default name was RubyPanda and its password was mango62—both simple word/number combinations that are easy to remember.) If the guest network is password-protected, guests have to enter that password on a Web browser page, like at a hotel. This could be confusing for people used to entering network passwords at the operating-system level, right as they select the Wi-Fi network. A Cisco representative said using a Web browser page is a more consistent way of entering passwords and it saves people from having to answer questions they may not be able to answer if they’re logging onto the main network, like the name of the “WPA key.”

If people get stuck during setup, which happened with me when I ran into the Mac bug, a screen immediately displays a customer-service number for Valet that’s available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I spoke to a woman who tried several troubleshooting methods, but she didn’t know about Valet’s rare Mac bug. Once a computer is set up with the Valet network, the USB key can be taken to other computers to update them with the same network passwords and settings.

Using the parental controls couldn’t have been easier. After a password is set up, Web content can be blocked at a teen or child level on some or all devices. Specific sites can be blocked, and when I blocked Facebook on a connected Mac, it wouldn’t open on that computer without the parent password. Time restrictions on Internet usage can be set up here, with different settings for school nights and weekends.

Though the $100 Cisco Valet is more than twice as expensive as some wireless routers, its built-in software puts great emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, and turns setting up and using a a home network into an unusually pleasant experience.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

"My Life on the D List" Meets All Things D

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:15:32 +0000

While in Washington, D.C., this week, BoomTown got to go to a dinner in honor of comic Kathy Griffin.

Griffin’s reality television show is called “My Life on the D List,” and we’re proud to share the same terrific letter.

She made much hay of her relationship with Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak on the show, so there’s yet another tech link.

And, in the video–in which she talks about her lobbying on Capitol Hill to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military–she also uses a very naughty term for tweeting on Twitter.

So, apropos of it being Friday, here’s the video of Griffin, who also told me she is a big fan of the Flip digital video camera:

[ See post to watch video ]

Index Invests $25 Million in Sonos (Plus a Video Interview With VC Mike Volpi)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:57 +0000

Earlier this week, BoomTown had lunch with Michelangelo “Mike” Volpi, the high-profile tech exec who turned into a venture capitalist recently at Index Ventures.

We also did a video interview (see below) about his new life as an investor, based in London, although Volpi managed to leave out the big news.

That would be a just-inked $25 million investment by Index from its growth equity arm in wireless home music system maker Sonos, as well as a new board seat there for Volpi. (Sonos’s hot new S5 unit is pictured here.)

In an interview this morning, Sonos CEO John MacFarlane said the money would be used for expansion at Sonos, which is just about to introduce its products to China and Japan.

“This investment is going to help us grow,” said MacFarlane. “We have wind at our back and this will help us a lot in keeping up that momentum.”

MacFarlane said the focus for Sonos, which has garnered $65 million–from BV Capital and mostly angel investors–with the Index investment included, is growth. He declined to give Sonos’s valuation in the new round.

The private company has been profitable, MacFarlane said, but its goal is to break even as it takes advantage of interest in its devices globally. Only about 35 percent of its business is now in the United States.

While running a small independent consumer electronics company is a dicey proposition, MacFarlane said Sonos is not interested in selling, as Pure Digital–maker of the Flip digital camera–did to Cisco (CSCO) a year ago for $590 million in stock.

In fact, Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos, which is well known for its innovative top-line (and high-priced) music players, recently moved its business more mainstream with the introduction of the S5 unit in November.

The S5 allows control of the system via an Apple (AAPL) iPhone and only costs $399. (Here is a review of it by The Mossberg Solution’s Katie Boehret.)

The basic idea? A smart speaker paired with a smartphone.

The S5 has been a big seller and has increased product registration–when the software is activated by a user–by five times previous numbers so far, according to the company.

That could get a further boost with the April launch of the iPad, which seems perfect for controller software apps.

“The popularity of the iPhone is great for us,” said MacFarlane. “And we’ll do something great with the iPad.”

It will be nice to have a big score for Volpi, the former Cisco wunderkind. In fact, he invested in one of MacFarlane’s previous start-ups, Software.com, in 1995 when he was in charge of a variety of businesses there.

But the affable Volpi hit a bad patch recently while CEO of a much hyped but ultimately failed video service called Joost. It was that job that landed him in even hotter water.

In the wake of the decline of Joost, which he left to join Index, he was personally sued, along with Index, by its litigious co-founders over Index’s planned investment in Skype, the online telephony service they also co-founded.

Confused? Well, it was confusing.

And not the best start in the investment business for Volpi, after Index pulled out of the high-profile deal in a settlement of the lawsuits.

But, that’s “ancient history,” as Volpi said in the video interview below, which focuses on what’s next.

(News of the Index involvement in Sonos was first reported by TechCrunch earlier this week, though it did not have any details on the amount of funding.)

Although he did not mention the $25 million Sonos funding specifically in the video, Volpi does discuss his bullishness for consumer electronics.

Volpi presumably hopes others share his enthusiasm.

Here’s the video of my interview with him:

[ See post to watch video ]

Cisco Unveils "Next-Generation" Routing System to Speed Up Video on the Web

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:04:53 +0000

Cisco today announced a new version of its key routing system, which the networking giant said has a dozen times the traffic capacity of competitors and three times as much as the company’s previous version.

Cisco’s CEO John Chambers said the CRS-3 Carrier Routing System is aimed at the huge growth in video on the Internet, a trend that has also caused slowdowns.

Pankaj Patel, SVP and GM for the service provider business, claimed the system could in just a few minutes deliver all the movies ever made or allow everyone in China to make a video phone call at once.

It had better. The consumption of video online is growing like crazy and a constant bottleneck is likely without some relief.

“Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform.”

Along with Chambers and Patel, AT&T (T) Labs CEO and President Keith Cambron was on the call discussing deployment trials the telecom giant has been doing with the CRS-3.

CRS-3 (pictured here) will be available within the calendar year, said the Cisco execs on a press and analyst call this morning.

Cisco had said weeks ago that it was making “a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments.”

Significant? We’ll see, of course. For sure, it was a highly hyped announcement by Chambers.

But due to the speculation about what Cisco was unveiling, its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday. It dropped slightly this morning after the call.

Many others are getting into the high-speed act on the Web.

Google (GOOG) said recently that it is planning on building a superfast broadband service. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil its own ambitious plan to improve high-speed Internet access across the United States.

Cisco has gotten deep into the video business of late, both in pushing its networking gear and in acquiring a video device maker like Pure Digital, the company behind my beloved Flip digital camera.

It is also working on innovative holographic and television-based home telepresence technologies.

Here is a pair of Cisco videos about the CRS-3 and the official press release below them, with all the deets:

Cisco Introduces Foundation for Next-Generation Internet: The Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System

Advanced Platform Designed to Deliver New Wave of Video, Mobile and Data Center/Cloud Services

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 9, 2010–Cisco today announced a major advancement in Internet networking–the Cisco® CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS)–designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet and set the pace for the astonishing growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services through this decade and beyond.

With more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system, the Cisco CRS-3 is designed to transform the broadband communication and entertainment industry by accelerating the delivery of compelling new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace.

Overview:

The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, with up to 322 Terabits per second, which enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

The Cisco CRS-3 enables unified service delivery of Internet and cloud services with service intelligence spanning service provider Internet Protocol Next-Generation Networks (IP NGNs) and data center. The Cisco CRS-3 also provides unprecedented savings with investment protection for the nearly 5,000 Cisco CRS-1 deployed worldwide. Cisco’s cumulative investment in the Cisco CRS family is $1.6 billion, further underscoring the company’s commitment.

AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 in a successful completion of the world’s first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology, which took place in AT&T’s live network between New Orleans and Miami. The trial advances AT&T’s development of the next generation of backbone network technology that will support the network requirements for the growing number of advanced services offered by AT&T to consumer and business customers, both fixed and mobile.

The Cisco CRS-3 is currently in field trials, and its pricing starts at $90,000 U.S.

Highlights and Capabilities for the Next-Generation Internet:

Unmatched Scale: With a proven multi-chassis architecture, the Cisco CRS-3 can deliver up to 322 tbps of capacity, more than tripling the 92 tbps capacity of the Cisco CRS-1 and representing more than 12 times the capacity of any other core router in the industry.

Unique Core and Data Center/Cloud Services Intelligence: In addition to capacity requirements, the growths of mobile and video applications are creating new multidirectional traffic patterns with the increasing emergence of the data center cloud. The new Cisco Data Center Services System provides tight linkages between the Cisco CRS-3, Cisco Nexus family and Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) to enable unified service delivery of cloud services. This intelligence also includes carrier-grade IPv6 (CGv6) and core IP/MPLS technologies that permit new IP NGN architectural efficiencies required to keep pace with the rapidly growing cloud services market. Unique capabilities include:

Network Positioning System (NPS)–provides Layers 3 to 7 application information for best path to content, improving consumer and business experiences while reducing costs.

Cloud virtual private network (VPN) for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)-enables ‘pay-as-you-go’ for compute, storage and network resources by automating Cisco CRS-3 and Cisco Nexus Inter-Data center connections for Cisco UCS.

Unprecedented Savings: The Cisco CRS-3 offers dramatic operational expense savings and up to 60 percent savings on power consumption compared to competitive platforms. The Cisco CRS-3 also delivers significant capital expenditures savings and investment protection for existing Cisco CRS-1 customers. The new capabilities in the platform can be achieved by reusing the existing chassis, route processors, fans and power systems with the addition of new line cards and fabric. These upgrades can be performed in-service and be provided by Cisco Services to ensure a smooth transition.

Silicon Innovation: The Cisco CRS-3 is powered by the new Cisco QuantumFlow Array Processor, which unifies the combined power of six chips to work as one, enabling unprecedented levels of service capabilities and processing power. Making this implementation even more unique is its ability to deliver capabilities with a fraction of the power required by lesser performing chipsets. The Cisco QuantumFlow Array chipset was designed to provide the new system the ability to scale with the ever increasing demands being placed on the IP NGN by the many different applications and billions of devices being used by both businesses and consumers in the Zettabyte era.

Supporting Quotes:

Keith Cambron, president and CEO, AT&T Labs

“We are entering the next stage of global communication and entertainment services and applications, which requires a new set of advanced Internet networking technologies. AT&T’s network handled 40 percent more traffic in 2009 than it did in the previous year, and we continue to see this growth in 2010. Having leading edge experience in managing the largest global data network, we are pleased to continue our close working relationship with Cisco and its groundbreaking Cisco CRS-3 platform.”

Pankaj Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco

“The next generation Internet is upon us and we are confident that the Cisco CRS-3 will play a crucial role as service providers like AT&T deliver an exciting, new array of video, mobile, data center and cloud services. The Cisco CRS-3 is well positioned to carry on the tradition of the Cisco CRS-1, become the flagship router of the future and serves as the foundation for the world’s most intelligent and advanced broadband networks.”

What Is Cisco Announcing This Morning to "Forever Change the Internet"? A Foursquare-Enabled Jet Pack?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:15:53 +0000

Bright and early this morning at 8 am PT, BoomTown will be jacked into the matrix for an invitation-only media and analyst briefing to hear exactly what the heck Cisco (CSCO) has been yammering on about of late.

Last month, the networking giant said in a mysterioso email that it would be making “a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments.”

Significant? Forever? It had better be good.

Like a jet pack from which you can communicate your Foursquare location (“I’m Mayor of the Clouds!”).

Or perhaps a chip you can implant in your head that will give you live updates of every single Apple (AAPL) iPad rumor.

Or a cogent explanation of how to extricate yourself from Google Buzz.

Or, at long last, maybe Cisco has figured out a way to fix the dropped calls crisis on the AT&T (T) mobile network–a tech solution I would nominate for a Nobel Prize if it ever came to pass.

In all seriousness, due to the speculation around what Cisco will unveil, its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday–up 92 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $26.13–and analysts were speculating on what the company will say.

The consensus: A new router to improve–please, oh Lord, please–wireless transmission of Web video and heavy data that often slow mobile and ISP networks.

It’s part of a new focus on the ever-growing but ever-slowing wireless data networks.

Google (GOOG) said recently that it was planning to build a superspeedy broadband service. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil its own ambitious plan to improve high-speed Internet access across the United States.

Well, it’ll be good, since the consumption of video online is growing like crazy and a constant bottleneck is likely without some relief.

Cisco has gotten deep into video of late, both in pushing networking gear and in acquiring video device maker like Pure Digital, the company behind my beloved Flip digital camera.

It is also working on innovative holographic and television-based home telepresence technologies.

So, is it too much to ask Cisco for a simple jet pack that works? I think not!

BoomTown Visits 4A's "Transformation 2010″ Confab and Finds Ad Agencies Unusually Social

Kara Swisher — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:20:00 +0000

BoomTown hightailed it down to the Hilton in San Francisco yesterday for the 4A annual conference.

4A stands for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and this year’s gathering is titled “Transformations 2010.”

That meant about 1,000 people from the marketing communications industry converged to hear sessions that seemed to focus almost completely on what’s causing all the transformation, with the answer mostly being: Social media and the Web.

Such as a panel by the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington on “How Social Media Has Transformed the Social Media Landscape.” Or Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz on “Transforming Yahoo!” Or another panel simply called: “How Social Media Is Transforming Everything.”

The event goes through Wednesday.

Well, I also had to transform a little after leaving my Flip digital camera in the Mini by accident and having to do this video, below, of the event with my Apple (AAPL) iPhone video camera.

I am not sure I like it (my already loud voice is really loud), but you be the judge of the variety of interviews:

[ See post to watch video ]

New TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:32:26 +0000

Yesterday–in a very precious San Francisco tea cafe of BoomTown’s choosing–Rey Ramsey was unfailingly and politically polite, despite my rat-a-tat questions and the shoving of a Flip video camera in his face on his first visit to California after nabbing his new job as president and CEO of TechNet.

Ramsey better get used to it, though, as he takes over the bipartisan political network of tech types, which is heavy with Silicon Valley power brokers who are often at odds.

They include an executive council with co-chairs John Chambers, CEO of Cisco (CSCO), and mega-venture capitalist John Doerr, as well as Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini and Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt.

Member companies include Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), Apple (AAPL), Dell (DELL), craigslist, eBay (EBAY) and more.

While they are often wrangling competitively, it will be Ramsey’s job to get them on the same page on a wide range of issues they do agree on, such as visas, the need for more broadband, support for innovation and especially, blocking net neutrality regulation.

With the Obama administration more engaged in digital issues, it might be a good time for TechNet, which was founded in 1997 (I wrote the story about that in The Wall Street Journal, which dates me!). Unusually, it has not had as high a profile over the years as it should have.

But Ramsey, who has deep political ties to the new administration, also has a lot more tech savvy than past TechNet leaders. He co-founded One Economy, a laudable group that tries to bring tech to less privileged parts of society.

How to bridge the digital divide in a way that is more than words is another important issue Ramsey will have on his plate.

Here is the video of my interview with him talking about this and more (in which Ramsey mistakenly seems to say Apple was not a member of TechNet, but was referring to being on its Executive Council):

[ See post to watch video ]

The Entire BoomTown Video of the Mossberg-Jobs Chit-Chat at Apple iPad Launch!

Kara Swisher — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:03:38 +0000

A video BoomTown posted earlier this week–following around my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg at the launch of the Apple iPad–has gotten an awful lot of attention, due to a little over two minutes of him kibitzing about the device with CEO Steve Jobs.

I get the interest in the video, since it is not often you see the highly controlled Jobs just chit-chatting and even making the case about an Apple (AAPL) product, as he does in the video.

Since the Jobs section of my longer video was in the middle, I decided to put all the Jobs clips I had together, all done in my usual shaky spycam style and which you can see below.

In the video, Mossberg asks Jobs about the iBooks application and the price of e-books, and Jobs insists the price will be the same on Apple as on Amazon (AMZN).

“The prices will be the same,” said Jobs, before getting in a little dig at the maker of the Kindle e-reader. “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they’re not happy with it.”

Jobs also told Mossberg that the iPad will have “140-something hours, I think, of continuous music playback” and that the 10 hours of battery life for the iPad was more than enough for anyone.

“It’s all about the display….Our chips don’t use hardly any power,” said Jobs.

He also said consumers don’t necessarily need even more battery time “because you just end up pluggin’ it in. You end up docking it or whatever you’re going to do with it. It’s not a big deal. Ten hours is a long time, because you’re not going to read for 10 hours.”

Mossberg also asked Jobs if he should pen his review of the iPad on the iPad and if he could convert it into a Word document, which Jobs endorsed.

“Write it in Pages, you could make a Word version and send it in an email to your editors,” Jobs said.

Asked Mossberg: “All from here?”

“Yeah,” said Jobs.

I also had another video of Jobs talking to Mossberg about why he used the iPad name, which has been made fun of my some.

Unfortunately, my Flip camera ate it–after I watched it and took notes–when I was transferring it.

But, according to my notes, Jobs dismissed all the incoming flak he said he expected to receive about the name.

“You forget, but they made fun of iPod name when it came out,” he said, in part. “What matters is the product and what it means to consumers.”

Jobs noted that in a year’s time, the name iPad would become rote to people, as long as they like the mobile device and consider it innovative and its software useful.

In addition, he said it was an inevitable brand extension from iPod and iPhone.

“Plus the fonts look great together…iPod, iPhone, iPad,” he said.

That particular exchange is not in this video, but here’s what I did shoot in the demo room at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco after the launch Wednesday:

[ See post to watch video ]