French

Whitman: HP Decision on webOS Coming Within Two Weeks

Arik Hesseldahl in News on November 30, 2011 at 4:25 am PT

In an interview with a French newspaper, HP’s CEO says a final decision on what to do with the webOS software business will come before Christmas.

Potential Yahoo CEO David Kenny Now Much More Available

Peter Kafka in News on October 26, 2011 at 2:34 pm PT

Akamai president David Kenny has stepped down after a year on the job — and in the midst of Yahoo’s CEO search, where his name has come up as a possible Carol Bartz replacement.

France Brings in Tout Le Web Before the G8 Summit

Kara Swisher in News on May 23, 2011 at 3:03 pm PT

Bonjour! Tout le Web heads for Paris tomorrow for a big Internet confab ahead of the annual G8 summit. Can its organizer, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, sell Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on his idea that we all need a “civilized Internet”?

Liveblogging Demand Media's Q1 Earnings: Perky Perfecting!

Kara Swisher in Media on May 5, 2011 at 2:13 pm PT

Today, after Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations, its cheerful execs got on the horn with investors to explain how it plans to beat the Panda. That would be the beastly name for Google’s rejiggering of its search algorithm, in order to rid search results of poor quality content. BoomTown liveblogged the event, of course.

Vipshop Bags $20M To Bring Flash Sales To Chinese Consumers

Jonathan Shieber, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 8, 2010 at 1:19 pm PT

Chinese venture capitalists are buying into the country’s “flash sales” membership-based retail websites, as online shoppers in the country get a taste of steep discounts on the gilded life through offerings from retailers like newly funded start-up Vipshop.

SCVNGR Goes Global (Sort Of!)

Kara Swisher in News on November 2, 2010 at 1:00 am PT

BoomTown likes the sassiness of SCVNGR, the location-based service that’s not Foursquare, to do whatever it takes to stand out in the competitive space. Today, it is by “leveraging the most comprehensive places database in the world–the Google Places API,” which will essentially take the start-up global. It’s part of a lot of moves by the Cambridge, Mass.-based SCVNGR, which tries to go beyond simple check-ins by emphasizing the game aspect and posing real-world challenges for users to complete.

Liveblogging Google's SF Mobile Event: Voices Actions, Chrome to Phone, No Video-Calling, But Will There Be Donuts?

Kara Swisher in News on August 12, 2010 at 10:05 am PT

BoomTown was sitting front row center–better to scare Google Mobile Product Manager Hugo Barra–at the Silicon Valley search giant’s press event in San Francisco this morning. Google called together a group of reporters to discuss some “cool new features” for its Android operating system. While many have been expectantly waiting for Google to announce a video-calling offering, to match Apple FaceTime service, that was not to be here. Instead, it was a low-key rollout of a few whiz-bang features we can all ooh and ahh at.

Is the Facebook "Like" Button Like a Twitter RT? Loic Le Meur Talks About the Impact of the Giant Moves on Start-Ups

Kara Swisher in News on April 27, 2010 at 10:12 am PT

Here’s an interesting interview BoomTown did with Seesmic Founder and CEO Loic Le Meur, whose status update client is one of the more popular ones, at the Facebook f8 developers conference last week. In it, he talked about the various new features of Facebook that make it “very, very close to Twitter.” While it is true that Seesmic is more than just a Twitter client, Le Meur has to hope that competition between the microblogging service and the social networking giant is a good thing for smaller start-ups in their ecosystem, such as Seesmic.

Almost Famous: David Maher Roberts of The Filter

Drake Martinet, Intern, All Things Digital in News on April 16, 2010 at 8:56 pm PT

This week we caught up with the globe-trotting David Maher Roberts, CEO of The Filter, a media recommendation engine founded by music legend Peter Gabriel. David commutes between the United Kingdom where he lives and the United States, where he works. We found him during a stop in Texas, appropriately via Skype.

Liveblogging Google's Earnings Call: Où Est Eric?

Kara Swisher in News on April 15, 2010 at 1:41 pm PT

BoomTown liveblogged Google’s earnings call. CFO Patrick Pichette, whose delightful French accent livened up what was a newsless event, led the call. It turned out that the biggest news was changes in how Google will present its earnings calls going forward: No more CEO Eric Schmidt! But a parade of Google execs was there to replace Schmidt, all of whom said as little as he used to.