AllThingsD » helicopter

Deep Diver James Cameron Talked Ocean Geekery Way Back at D8

Kara Swisher — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:43:48 +0000

Famed Hollywood movie director James Cameron has always been a geek, most especially an ocean geek, so it’s no surprise that he would be the one to dive seven miles down into the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep.

That would be into the Earth’s deepest place, in a tiny, vertical green tube. He’s the first person to do the treacherous dive alone — technically, it is 6.8 miles or 11 kilometers — an exploration he did with National Geographic.

It took about two hours to get down and a little over an hour to come back up. When he got back to the surface, Cameron was first spotted by the helicopter owned by his friend, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (more power-nerding!), who was also along for the adventure.

While down in the bottom of the sea, Cameron gathered samples and readings, but he also found time to tweet:

Just arrived at the ocean’s deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can’t wait to share what I’m seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge

— James Cameron (@JimCameron) March 25, 2012

The well-known filmmaker has done two big movies related to the ocean — “Titanic” and “The Abyss,” but it is less well known that the lush landscape of “Avatar” got its color and design concepts from the sea.

I know all this and more about Cameron’s watery interests from an interview he did at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in 2010. In it, he talked a lot about diving, including wanting to use submersibles to make sure the BP oil company was telling the truth about its spill back then.

Here’s the full video interview from D8, which is well worth a watch:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is a fantastic animation video National Geographic did of the dive:

AsiaD Set for October in Hong Kong–Here's the Mossberg-Swisher Guided Video Tour

Kara Swisher — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:59:21 +0000

As BoomTown noted in January, the D: All Things Digital conference–after an initial foray into smaller, niche Dive events–has been mulling going global next.

So, my longtime partner in digital crimes, Walt Mossberg, and I–along with D biz honcho Lia Lorenzano–headed to China in January to visit some possible locations for our first AsiaD.

And now it’s official: We’ll be doing an event October 19 to 21 in Hong Kong.

While we are still working out all the location logistics, Walt and I are already hard at work with our Dow Jones partners there to bring the magical mystery tech tour that D has been here to the audience there.

It will be a pan-Asian event, bringing in speakers and demos from all over the region, as well as inviting some key U.S. digital players to be interviewed in what is clearly one of the most important markets going forward.

We’d welcome any feedback, of course, as well as suggestions.

And we’ll keep you updated to our progress too. As with big D, which is set to take place May 31 to June 2 (and has been long sold out), we’ll be posting reports and videos of AsiaD.

Until we can say more, here is a video of moments from the visit Walt and I had there, including a helicopter tour of the vertical city, delicious dumplings and, of course, a whole lot of tech:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is a funny doctored image Hong Kong’s tech blog, NeonPunch.com did in our honor:

A Video Smorgasbord From the Churchill Club's "Sixth Annual What's Hot and What's Not in Personal Technology"

Kara Swisher — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:15:26 +0000

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

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

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

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

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

[Photo courtesy of Dan Farber of CNET.]

BoomTown Flew Under the Golden Gate Bridge, So You Don't Have To!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:02:40 +0000

I have no reason to post this video, other than it is a super-cool use for my little digital video camera. My family and two friends took a helicopter ride all over the San Francisco area Sunday and this is the roller-coaster part where we fly over–and, then under–the Golden Gate Bridge.

And yes, that’s my 5-year-old son saying afterward: “Do it again.”

BoomTown would rather just relive it digitally. See here:

[ See post to watch video ]

Air Larry

Kara Swisher — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:29:07 +0000

Can I resist?

Nope!

So here’s a link to a lovely movie of Google founder Larry Page arrving at Foo Camp this weekend via helicopter. The video and also these photos of the helicopter and Page (and former Googler and Blogger founder Evan Williams) were taken by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid (how does a squid laugh?), a site that says it is dedicated to “art, culture and technology from San Francisco and beyond.”

I wrote a post and did a video yesterday about the annual alpha-geek confab, run by tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, where hundreds come to kibitz about the outer reaches of the future of technology and also, well, camp in tents.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.