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Whitman Talks to ATD About New Job at HP: “This Is an Icon”

Kara Swisher in News on September 22, 2011 at 2:21 pm PT

Meg and Ray — HP’s new tag team — speak!

Jawbone’s Newest Headset Comes With a Built-In Nerd

Ina Fried in Mobile on August 30, 2011 at 7:00 am PT

Jawbone’s new version of its Icon HD can be connected simultaneously to both a phone and a computer, thanks to a handy USB add-on, aptly dubbed the Nerd.

News Byte

Bridge Parties Mark International Women's Day

Voices in News on March 8, 2011 at 9:36 am PT

Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, and if you click through Google’s appropriate doodle for the occasion, you can scan the global scope of Join Me on the Bridge, a campaign by Women for Women International to hold celebrations on bridges (and at other venues) around the world, from California to the Congo. One other Google nod: On Google Maps today, Pegman–the Street View icon–has been replaced by Pegwoman.

Google Goes To the Cloud For New Idea In PC System

Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology on December 15, 2010 at 6:03 pm PT

Walt tests an early-stage version of Google’s Chrome OS for computers–an attempt to challenge the Microsoft-Apple duopoly. One drawback of the new operating system, due next summer, is having to give up familiar local programs and dwell in the cloud.

News Byte

Google Gets Even More Instant: Launches Instant Previews

Beth Callaghan in News on November 9, 2010 at 9:46 am PT

This morning, Google made a strikingly useful visual addition to its search results with the launch of Instant Previews. When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon that now appears next to each search result, a snapshot of the page loads to the right, and previews for the other results preload in the background so they’re, um, instantly available upon mouseover. The overall effect is very efficient–it’s much easier to tell whether or not a result is relevant.

Aliph Collaboration Deal With Cisco for Jawbones in the Workplace Launches

Kara Swisher in News on September 30, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

In April, Cisco unveiled a wide-ranging collaboration with Aliph–a San Francisco start-up that is famous for the noise-canceling Jawbone Bluetooth mobile headset–to deploy its software and device in Cisco’s IP phones in the enterprise. It launches today. The idea 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.

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.

Google’s App Store for the Web

John Paczkowski in News on May 19, 2010 at 1:41 pm PT

At its annual I/O conference Wednesday, Google previewed a Web applications storefront it plans to build into its Chrome browser and forthcoming Chrome OS.

Opening a Window on the Mac

Katherine Boehret in The Digital Solution on December 22, 2009 at 3:13 pm PT

A quick guide for new Apple users that explains some of the ways the Mac operating system differs from Windows.

Turnabout Is Fair Play: BoomTown Decodes Rupe's Journalism-Is-Not-a-Free-Cow Op-Ed!

Kara Swisher in News on December 14, 2009 at 9:05 am PT

Last week, BoomTown translated an opinion piece written by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and published in The Wall Street Journal that focused on defending the search giant from criticism that it was, well, killing journalism. One of the louder critics, in fact, has been Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., who has leveled a series of high-profile verbal attacks on Google. Last week, Murdoch published his own piece in The Journal, in which Google was never mentioned by name. So in the interest of equal-opportunity balloon-pricking, I must also render Murdoch’s post through my decoding machine, because it’s only sporting!