But I think Obama should wait to introduce Biden to Instagram. It seems to have gotten very, very boring in the last hour or so: My feed, at least, is full of pictures of news stories.

*Update: As Tim Fernholz points out, the image Obama (or his team) posted today isn’t actually from today but from July 16, 2011. And as Gabriel Snyder points out, the Twitter iPhone app doesn’t even work in landscape mode, which is presumably why the original White House caption for this photo says Biden and Obama are looking at “an app.” And if you want to be even more precise about it, it’s worth noting that Biden (or his team) has already been on Twitter before today. But today Biden (or his team) are announcing that the Twitter account is being “rebooted” for the 2012 campaign. And now this update is longer than the original text.

In the video, Obama and Biden bemoan, “We arrived in ’09 on a rainbow of hope, but 2010 blew it all up in smoke” and “Oh 2010, we can’t wait for you to jet like that guy from JetBlue.”

The video is also a departure from JibJab’s trademark dancing cut-out faces style, dating back to its first hit, “This Land.”

“Piracy is theft. Clean and simple. It’s smash and grab. It ain’t no different than smashing a window at Tiffany’s and grabbing [merchandise].”

– U.S. Vice President Joe Biden

Google CEO Eric Schmidt did one of his patented throat-clearers in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal today and it pretty much begs for translation.

Well, BoomTown shall not tarry from the task of decoding the extra-long rumination from the head of Google (GOOG), who was responding to the recent spate of aggressive attacks by traditional media publishers.

They have blamed the search giant for everything from their current business woes to the destruction of journalism to Tiger Woods’s dicey marital troubles.

Okay, not that! But the rest for sure.

First and foremost among the attackers has been Rupert Murdoch, CEO and ruler-of-all-he-surveys at News Corp. (NWS), which owns The Wall Street Journal and this Web site.

How ironic, yet still typically cozy from a corporate bigwig point of view! I call you a cur in public, but please use my newspaper so that I can get some decent traffic from this wrestling match.

But all is not what it seems in the Schmidt piece, of course, so here’s the translation:

What Schmidt wrote: How Google Can Help Newspapers

By ERIC SCHMIDT

Translation: We come in peace, always. You know, like the freakily calm lady from “V,” who is really a lizard under all that pretty and is actually secretly trying to decide between grilling and broiling all you whiny news people.

Also, you can address me in the future as Emperor Palpatine.

What Schmidt wrote: It’s the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load.

Some of these stories are part of a monthly subscription package. Some, where the free preview sucks me in, cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others are available at no charge, paid for by advertising. But these ads are not static pitches for products I’d never use. Like the news I am reading, the ads are tailored just for me. Advertisers are willing to shell out a lot of money for this targeting.

Translation: It’s the year 2015 in the United States of Google, where the new country colors are a festive green, blue, red and yellow.

As per the new Declaration of Googlependence, besides the tracking chip in your thighs, every citizen will be outfitted with a tablet running Chrome and looking suspiciously like a large iPhone, except that Apple (AAPL) was outlawed in the Fanboy Purge of 2010.

Every day, citizens will receive news specially aimed at them, such as “The Health Benefits of Sergey Worship.” Ads will also be tailored to citizens’ likes and dislikes, such as a pitch for Googley deodorant with the motto: “Search me, because I smell nice!”

Costs will be billed to your accounts at the National Bank of Google.

What Schmidt wrote: This is a long way from where we are today. The current technology–in this case the distinguished newspaper you are now reading–may be relatively old, but it is a model of simplicity and speed compared with the online news experience today. I can flip through pages much faster in the physical edition of the Journal than I can on the Web. And every time I return to a site, I am treated as a stranger.

So when I think about the current crisis in the print industry, this is where I begin–a traditional technology struggling to adapt to a new, disruptive world. It is a familiar story: It was the arrival of radio and television that started the decline of newspaper circulation. Afternoon newspapers were the first casualties. Then the advent of 24-hour news transformed what was in the morning papers literally into old news.

Translation: [Rachel: Please insert usual pap boilerplate here damning the newspaper business with faint praise. History of how change hurts, but is inevitable...blah, blah, blah. Please make sure to deliver a few digs too, like how--unlike Google--newspapers have no idea what their readers did last summer. Like we do. Cue evil Mwahahahaha laugh here.]

What Schmidt wrote: Now the Internet has broken down the entire news package with articles read individually, reached from a blog or search engine, and abandoned if there is no good reason to hang around once the story is finished. It’s what we have come to call internally the atomic unit of consumption.

Translation: “Atomic unit of consumption” is one of those terms we don’t expect you small-brained people to even begin to understand. Although you use only eight percent of your mental capacity, we here at Google use an average of 71 percent, tracking on our search share.

What Schmidt wrote: Painful as this is to newspapers and magazines, the pressures on their ad revenue from the Internet is causing even greater damage. The choice facing advertisers targeting consumers in San Francisco was once between an ad in the Chronicle or Examiner. Then came Craigslist, making it possible to get local classifieds for free, followed by Ebay and specialist Web sites. Now search engines like Google connect advertisers directly with consumers looking for what they sell.

Translation: I also don’t expect you Luddites will get this, but all your base are belong to us.

For those who need an older cultural reference, it is like the end of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Um, as much as you Hollywood types like a happy ending, Butch and the Kid did not make it.

What Schmidt wrote: With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.

Google is a great source of promotion. We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle. That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue–for free. In terms of copyright, another bone of contention, we only show a headline and a couple of lines from each story. If readers want to read on they have to click through to the newspaper’s Web site. (The exception are stories we host through a licensing agreement with news services.) And if they wish, publishers can remove their content from our search index, or from Google News.

Translation: Shut your overstuffed pie holes, you grumbling antiques. You were dying by the cell long before our superior technology arrived to save the day and help you out of your sorry mess.

Plus, we toss you all that traffic and you still manage to fumble our perfect pass like the pikers you are. (In truth, you are Charlie Brown and we are Lucy.)

Also, have you ever heard of “fair use”? It’s the law now and we can hire more lobbyists in Washington, D.C., than you with the bazillions and gamillions of dollars we make from all those tiny little blue links.

You do realize I have a key to the the White House and visit more times than Joe Biden?

What Eric wrote: The claim that we’re making big profits on the back of newspapers also misrepresents the reality. In search, we make our money primarily from advertisements for products. Someone types in digital camera and gets ads for digital cameras. A typical news search–for Afghanistan, say–may generate few if any ads. The revenue generated from the ads shown alongside news search queries is a tiny fraction of our search revenue.

Translation: Here’s an easy formula for you to grok: Michael Jackson+the pretty boy from “Twilight”+digital cameras=Big bucks for Google! Some thumbsucker you did on Afghanistan, however worthy and important for our nation’s future=14 cent CPM, but only if a drunken Lindsay Lohan story is in close proximity.

What Schmidt wrote: It’s understandable to look to find someone else to blame. But as Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry.

Translation: [Rachel: Please insert Rupe quote that actually hangs him here.]

What Schmidt wrote: We recognize, however, that a crisis for news-gathering is not just a crisis for the newspaper industry. The flow of accurate information, diverse views and proper analysis is critical for a functioning democracy. We also acknowledge that it has been difficult for newspapers to make money from their online content. But just as there is no single cause of the industry’s current problems, there is no single solution. We want to work with publishers to help them build bigger audiences, better engage readers, and make more money.

Meeting that challenge will mean using technology to develop new ways to reach readers and keep them engaged for longer, as well as new ways to raise revenue combining free and paid access. I believe it also requires a change of tone in the debate, a recognition that we all have to work together to fulfill the promise of journalism in the digital age.

Translation: Really–we’re from Google and we’re here to help! Mwahahahahaha.

Seriously, you guys, please go back to demonizing Microsoft (MSFT) or those banker salaries or the health care bill.

While my gabillions of dollars are more than protecting me from the blows you are trying to land, I am not liking the hairy eyeballs I got at the Allen & Co. conference at Sun Valley last summer. I think Washington Post head Don Graham even short-sheeted my 600-thread count Frette bedding there.

What Schmidt wrote: Google is serious about playing its part. We are already testing, with more than three dozen major partners from the news industry, a service called Google Fast Flip. The theory–which seems to work in practice–is that if we make it easier to read articles, people will read more of them. Our news partners will receive the majority of the revenue generated by the display ads shown beside stories.

Translation: [Rachel: Please insert some kooky-named Google 20 percent project we have no intention of really going large on here, so they think we really are working on something to save them. Those media folks like Hail Mary tech solutions, even if they don't even know how to turn them on.]

What Schmidt wrote: Nor is there a choice, as some newspapers seem to think, between charging for access to their online content or keeping links to their articles in Google News and Google Search. They can do both.

Translation: You de-indexin’ me? You de-indexin’ me? You de-indexin’ me? Then who the hell else are you de-indexin’? You de-indexin’ me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the %*#! do you think you’re de-indexin’?”

What Schmidt wrote: This is a start. But together we can go much further toward that fantasy news gadget I outlined at the start. The acceleration in mobile phone sophistication and ownership offers tremendous potential. As more of these phones become connected to the Internet, they are becoming reading devices, delivering stories, business reviews and ads. These phones know where you are and can provide geographically relevant information. There will be more news, more comment, more opportunities for debate in the future, not less.

The best newspapers have always held up a mirror to their communities. Now they can offer a digital place for their readers to congregate and talk. And just as we have seen different models of payment for TV as choice has increased and new providers have become involved, I believe we will see the same with news. We could easily see free access for mass-market content funded from advertising alongside the equivalent of subscription and pay-for-view for material with a niche readership.

Translation: Smartphones are the answer! Sure! Your aging demo loves reading teeny-weeny writing on a device they want to throw against a wall.

Or maybe you can be like HBO! Except you’ll need more borderline porn and Mafia guys.

What Schmidt wrote: I certainly don’t believe that the Internet will mean the death of news. Through innovation and technology, it can endure with newfound profitability and vitality. Video didn’t kill the radio star. It created a whole new additional industry.

Translation: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

“I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

Her dreams of heading up the World Bank dashed, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, the architect of one of the worst tech mergers in history, has turned her attention to the U.S. Senate.

After months of speculation, Fiorina officially announced her candidacy today. She’ll run as a Republican against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.). Of course, to do that, she must first win the Republican primary. Fiorina broke the news in an op-ed in the Orange County Register.

“Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been,” she wrote. “For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered because I didn’t have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result. I realize that thinking was wrong.”

Reflecting on her personal history, Fiorina continues: “As I grew throughout my career, beginning as a secretary and eventually becoming a CEO, I saw how government impacted business. I learned more as a member of advisory boards at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. I now understand, in a very real way, that the decisions made by the Senate impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. This is what motivates me to run for the U.S. Senate. And so today I am announcing my candidacy to serve the people of California as your next U.S. senator….Together we can turn things around.”

Together we can turn things around? Not if Fiorina’s performance at HP is any indication. Before she was forced out of the company by its board of directors, she was so at odds with the uniquely Californian “HP Way” that her corner office could have been powered solely by Bill Hewlett spinning in his grave.

UPDATE: Here’s another Fiorina op-ed from earlier this year in which she discusses executive pay. Unsurprisingly, she is against President Obama’s efforts to restore “common sense” to CEO compensation. And why wouldn’t she be? After all, she walked away from HP with a $21 million severance package.

UPDATE: For those of you just joining us over at CNet, the headline is a joke referring to HP’s ill-starred merger with Compaq.

For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and in its hiring of some big talent for key positions.

Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site.

How to help marketers to better understand the site and, therefore, spur this significant monetization will be his main focus at the Huffington Post, said Greg Coleman to BoomTown in an interview over the weekend.

Coleman–a former Yahoo (YHOO) advertising exec, as well as one for Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL–was named president and chief revenue officer a month ago by Huffington Post’s new CEO, Eric Hippeau.

Hippeau, who was himself just appointed in June, is another well-known online media exec and has been a big investor and board member of the Huffington Post. (You can read a thorough interview by Staci Kramer with Hippeau on paidContent.)

“It’s important for advertisers to know how big we have gotten, while also highlighting this amazing audience of influencers we have gathered,” said Coleman, in his first media chitchat since taking on the job. “I think it is the beginning of a tipping point.”

Well, of course, Coleman would say that, as the guy looking to drum up interest among marketers in spending their money on the Huffington Post.

But stats seem to indicate that consumers are increasingly liking what the Huffington Post is creating, because it is starting to surpass some well-known media icons on the Web in traffic.

While more of this increase is going to be due to a socialization of the news–the Huffington Post has an aggressive deployment of Facebook Connect called HuffPost Social News–the growth is more about building a brand people trust and seek out.

According to recent reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online, for example, the site just became larger than several online brands of big media companies, such as the Washington Post (WPO), in terms of unique monthly visitors.

In its September report, Nielsen clocked the Huffington Post at 9.47 million uniques, up 26 percent, while the Post site was at 9.2 million–a drop of 30 percent.

According to the Nielsen, the Huffington Post is within spitting distance of USA Today’s Web site (9.9 million), a Gannett (GCI) property.

And, it is bigger than Hearst Newspapers Digital (7.9 million) and the BBC (7.2 million).

For September, comScore has the Huffington Post (at 6.83 million) besting the Post (6.77 million)–as well as WSJ.com (6.7 million), a unit of Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS).

(The Wall Street Journal site, to be fair, makes a chunk of its revenue from subscription fees, rather than relying solely on advertising from traffic like the Huffington Post. And full disclosure: Dow Jones owns this site.)

In any case, big traffic is key for most news sites, and internal numbers from Google (GOOG) Analytics that Huffington Post execs cite are higher, as is typical for most sites, pegging traffic at about 27 million monthly uniques with more than two million reader comments per month.

Huffington Post co-founder and blogging icon Arianna Huffington attributes the recent boost in traffic to the site’s proclivity to “start conversations” that interest readers, such as her recent suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should resign.

“We are aiming to go beyond just facts, to create a narrative,” said Huffington, who thinks the speed of news helps attract visitors to the site. “We think bringing journalism to a new level is exactly what people are looking for.”

Perhaps. But, even if traffic increases continue to bear her theories out, she and others have said that the Huffington Post still has not been regularly profitable despite doubling annual revenue–mostly in advertising–to what some estimate to be about $8 million in 2009.

While the site is aiming to invest rather than focus too hard on showing profits, Coleman said he would like to make revenue seven times larger in the next years, building on the performance of the site to vaunt past old media giants online.

“This kind of thing is a milestone for the marketing community,” he said. “Our goal is to be the top Internet newspaper, and this points out that we are on our way.”

To do that, he will have to spend some of the $37 million in funding that the Huffington Post has raised from venture investors.

While the edit side is using the money to expand the number of news categories, Coleman said his focus will be on building a higher caliber team of sales and marketing execs with deeper relationships to big clients.

“Unlike selling an auto page on Yahoo (YHOO), our site has a more complex sales process that takes some time for people to understand,” said Coleman. “But once they get it, it should be an easier sale.”

Until then, check out the video of the entire interview I did at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Huffington and Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth in which they talk about the future of journalism and more:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091020/as-traffic-booms-is-huffpo-ready-to-make-some-real-dough/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090225/amazons-kindle-2-improves-the-good-leaves-out-the-bad/ http://allthingsd.com/20090225/amazons-kindle-2-improves-the-good-leaves-out-the-bad/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:02:07 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090225/amazons-kindle-2-improves-the-good-leaves-out-the-bad/ Amazon.com has fixed the worst design flaws in the Kindle, its popular electronic-book reader, while maintaining the excellent book-buying experience that made the first Kindle model tolerable despite those problems.

This week, the company released the Kindle 2, a new version that is much thinner, a tad lighter and a bit taller. It has much more built-in memory, better navigation controls and a slightly improved screen. I’ve been testing the Kindle 2 for a few weeks and consider it a vast improvement over the first Kindle, released in late 2007, which was clumsy and annoying to use. Overall, I found the Kindle 2 to be a well-designed, satisfying piece of hardware.

The new model carries the same relatively high $359 price tag as its predecessor, but it offers faster page rendering and 25% better battery life. The catalog of books available on both Kindles has now swelled from about 90,000 in 2007 to over 230,000 today, and titles still typically cost around $10. You can still subscribe to periodicals and blogs, and there is still a crude Web browser built in — but this gadget is mainly for reading books.

Like its predecessor, the new Kindle has a built-in cellular wireless modem that allows you to download books or update periodicals on the fly, without using a computer. As before, there is no monthly fee for this wireless service.

Most important, Amazon (AMZN) has remedied the most irritating flaws of the original model. It’s no longer easy to accidentally turn pages, because the page-turning buttons have been redesigned. You no longer have to reach around to the back of the device to turn it on or off. You no longer scroll through menus and text with an odd little wheel whose progress was only visible in a thermometer-like strip separate from the main window. And the book-like cover no longer falls off.

But the improvements in this dedicated e-book reader, while admirable, may pale beside Amazon’s next move. Amazon says it is working to make the Kindle e-book catalog available on other mobile devices, such as smart phones, that people already own. The online merchant, which is so secretive it makes Steve Jobs seem like Joe Biden, isn’t saying which devices will get the Kindle service or when. I would bet it will be sooner rather than later.

Amazon’s Kindle 2

This makes perfect sense. While the Kindle project has often been compared with Apple’s iPod, because both are hardware devices seamlessly connected to online-content stores, there is a fundamental difference. Apple (AAPL) offers content to sell hardware. Amazon offers the Kindle to sell content.

If, say, this electronic content were available not only on the Kindle reader, but via Kindle software apps on Apple’s iPhone or the BlackBerry, the e-book market could explode.

Meanwhile, Kindle’s design has gone from chunky and clunky to smooth and sleek. The power switch is now easily reachable on top of the device, and the all-important buttons for paging forward and backward through a book are now smaller — and work by pushing them firmly inward toward the screen instead of outward toward the edge of the device. This means they can no longer be easily activated by stray finger movements.

The weird thermometer system has been replaced by a little joystick that moves an on-screen cursor. The Home button is now large, and has been moved off the keyboard, which has been reduced in size, but is still quite usable.

The screen is the same 6-inch, high-resolution E-Ink display, which has a comforting contrast ratio for reading and uses battery power only when you turn the page. But, while it still can’t display color and still can’t be read in the dark, its gray-shade graphics are much more detailed.

The battery is now sealed in, but it is larger. Amazon claims you can read for four or five days with the wireless turned on, or up to two weeks with it turned off. In my tests, those claims proved true. I took the Kindle on a trip for a week with the wireless turned off and the battery indicator barely budged.

Memory has been greatly expanded, so you can store 1,500 books, up from 200, though you can no longer add extra memory.

There are also a few cool new features. The Kindle 2 looks up words in the dictionary automatically, as soon as you move the cursor to them. It can optionally read books aloud in a computer voice that’s surprisingly decent. And, if the wireless function is on, the Kindle service will remember the last page you read in a book and synchronize a second Kindle to that same place in the book.

There are some drawbacks. You still can’t organize your books into groups of your choice. Amazon now charges $29 for the cover, which was formerly free. And the Kindle still doesn’t work with some of the open e-book formats that other devices support.

But for serious book readers who are tired of toting around stacks of books and periodicals, the new Kindle is finally a pleasure to use.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090225/amazons-kindle-2-improves-the-good-leaves-out-the-bad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090206/microsofts-steve-ballmer-talks-innovation-at-democratic-policy-confab-the-full-speech/ http://allthingsd.com/20090206/microsofts-steve-ballmer-talks-innovation-at-democratic-policy-confab-the-full-speech/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:14:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=9469

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made an appearance at the three-day U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Retreat today to talk about innovation and, let’s be real, the very bad economy and the impact on businesses like the tech giant.

Held at the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va., the confab has already seen an appearance by President Barack Obama yesterday and one by Vice President Joe Biden this morning. Ballmer got the lunch spot.

The annual gathering is more crucial this year, given the pressure to pass the massive economic stimulus package to try to revive the moribund economy.

Ballmer was not reassuring. “The bubble has burst,” said Ballmer. “We can no longer rely on consumption by refinancing our homes or inexpensive money to fuel economic growth, and that’s certainly had a huge impact.”

And also: “In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset.”

Microsoft (MSFT) should know all about that. The powerful company recently announced weak earnings, a foggy outlook and layoffs of 5,000 employees.

Here’s Ballmer’s speech to the group:

Well, I want to thank Jay, I want to thank the speaker and all of you for the opportunity to be here today and chat with you. It’s a real honor to have a chance to share some thoughts on the economy and on innovation, and hopefully spur some thoughts on how we all participate in restarting long term economic growth.

As Jay was telling my story, so to speak, I thought I’d put in one parenthetic that might be of interest. When I got to Microsoft and we were this tiny little company, we didn’t have the budget to put people up in hotels, so I lived with Bill. And every time I sat down, in every corner, nook and cranny of couches, tables, I’d find these little yellow pieces of paper with Bill’s writing that had a bunch of people’s names and companies’ names and numbers.

So, finally–I think of myself as pretty good pattern matching. Actually I was sitting next to Congressman Frank, and we were both trying to see which of the six states that are going to be still bigger than North Carolina by 2015. So, we’re going through the pattern matching game, and I just couldn’t figure out what these numbers were.

So, finally I said to Bill, what is this? He says, Steve, I’m really always worried about whether we’re going to have enough cash to pay people. So, every night I write down everybody who works for us and how much we pay them, and every contract we have and how much it’s worth. I’ve got to count the pennies tightly and that’s why you’re here now.

In this economic climate, whether you’re talking about businesses or consumers, everybody I think is having the little yellow sheets of paper out, and counting pennies pretty tightly.

I’m going to make one thing clear up-front: I’m not going to claim to be an economist. On the other hand, I think it’s sort of the responsibility of every businessperson to really form a model of what’s going on in the economy, if you’re going to provide proper stewardship to your business; big company, small company, it’s important to have a model of what’s going on, and certainly have been thinking a lot about the economy in the context of how we think about and plan for the future of Microsoft.

For the past 25 years, the world has certainly enjoyed incredible, incredible global growth. Average incomes around the world grew at unprecedented rates, millions of people moved from out of poverty into the middle class for the very first time.

I think that expansion was built on three things: innovation, globalization, and debt, increasing debt.

American technology was certainly at the heart of the innovation that played the central role in the process. The PC, the Internet, fiber optics: Those things were things that continue to keep America at the forefront of technology, and really at the lead of a growing global economy.

But over time, over the last period of time, the balance has really shifted. Instead of innovation and productivity driving growth, it’s really been unsustainable levels, particularly of private debt, that have been a key driver of economic growth.

The hard truth is this, in my opinion: The private sector of our economy has borrowed too much money, businesses and consumers alike, fueled by the a lot of different things, some notion that housing prices would go up forever, that you could borrow money cheaply.

I gave a speech at Stanford Business School a few years back, and I was talking, we’re a company that has been conservative, per the yellow pieces of paper. We like to keep cash. And a very smart Ph.D. in the audience puts his hand up and said, “Why don’t you borrow money?” I said, “I don’t like to borrow money.” He said, “But it’s so cheap; you’re depriving your shareholders.” I think it reminds us that essentially consumers and businesses alike have really borrowed too much money.

The bubble has burst. We can no longer rely on consumption by refinancing our homes or inexpensive money to fuel economic growth, and that’s certainly had a huge impact.

At our own place, what we think about PC sales, they are discretionary in most home budgets, the second, the third PC. Consumer electronics has that characteristic. Fifty percent of capital spending in this country is on information technology. Less capital, less spend on information technology. No sector will be immune.

There’s a natural tendency to want to blame somebody for the economic crisis. In reality, I think you have to say we’ve all contributed to a culture of spending and private debt. And I distinguish private debt and government debt, because I think you have to be much more–the private sector has less ability to be thoughtful, and the government sector needs to be quite thoughtful. But there certainly has been too much use of debt.

At Microsoft, we’ve studied these developments. We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime economic event, but it’s not unique frankly in U.S. history. The current situation looks a lot like several–not one but several previous cycles of long-term private sector debt.

In 1929, for example, just before the stock market crash, the private debt-to-GDP ratio was 160 percent. Last year, private sector debt as a percentage of the GDP: 300 percent; far more leverage. And you can see it’s been a steady increase basically since almost the end of World War II.

In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset. The economy is going to have to re-establish itself at a level of spending that reflects the real value of underlying assets before we can all start growing again at a healthy rate.

This may not be the thing that people really want to hear, but it’s certainly what we’re planning on, and it’s the truth on which we’re basing sort of our model, if you will, at Microsoft.

In our opinion, in order to reach the reset point, three things need to happen. First, the economy must be deleveraged. Private debt as a percentage of GDP has to be reduced. Restoring health to the nation’s financial system is a fundamental part of this.

Just for historical note, not only during the Depression, but actually in 1837 and in 1873 we had similar style resets in the economy. We actually have at least three historic periods that we can study in which similar phenomenon occurred. I think it was 1873 where even the state of Florida filed for Bankruptcy. So, we need to be thoughtful about being students I think of the history.

Second, confidence must be restored. The stimulus package, in my opinion, is vital. It will provide a cushion as we reach the reset point and it will help restart our economic engine. I certainly want to applaud the steps that the House has taken under the speaker’s leadership to quickly pass a strong stimulus package and to help shore up our financial institutions.

Third, America really has to return to growth that’s built on innovation and productivity, rather than leverage and private debt. That must happen.

The good news is that the U.S. economy is still the world leader in innovation. Our universities are the envy of the rest of the world. The American workforce is the best on the planet, and U.S. companies continue to drive technological progress in almost every industry.

But the time has come when we need to renew our innovation capacity.

We went back and studied what innovation companies did during the time of the Great Depression. One company that stands out, if you study the Depression, is RCA.

Now, the fact that RCA is not around today, this has nothing to do with their behavior during the Depression. There’s probably good learnings for a lot of technology companies in that.

But during the time of the Depression, RCA was probably the most broad-based R&D-centric company in America. And while it cut costs certainly to survive the Depression, it never retreated from its commitment to core research and development. And as a result, after the Depression had ended, it really led and the U.S. led TV technology developments for the next 25 years.

That was good for RCA; it was good for America.

In my view, American companies aren’t going to be able to weather this economic downturn just by cutting costs either. You may have heard that Microsoft, our company has decided that we need to reduce 5,000 positions. What you may not know is that at the same time we’ve decided we’ll also create two to three thousand new jobs–mostly in the U.S.–as we continue to push into new areas that require investment.

In addition, despite the tough economy–I might even say because of the tough economy–our company will continue to invest more than $9 billion a year in R&D, because we think it’s that R&D spending that will cause us to remain strong.

People ask me, are you upbeat or not, and I say, about technology I’m super upbeat. The industry that we’re in, information technology, stands at the threshold of again a new revolution.

I joined Microsoft essentially for the PC revolution. The Internet revolution, we have the revolution of what I might call pervasive computing. Computers that are as thin and light as this on which you can have access to the world’s information will be kind of expected over the next five and 10 years.

So, being optimistic and positive about what technology can accomplish is very, very important.

If you take a look at it today, there is increasing ubiquity and power in the computing platforms. A laptop today has more computer power than a mainframe did when I came to Microsoft. Mobile phones today are more powerful than the PCs that existed 10 or 12 years ago, at the start of the Internet era.

But over the next few years, we’ll continue to go into uncharted territory as many-core chipsets and devices become common, and we develop new ways to write programs to help us model the world’s climate, the world’s population, the world’s energy needs; all of that will be super possible.

This is going to lead to breakthrough applications, more intelligent, more aware of their environment, and where we can really help anticipate the information you need and the capabilities that you really want to have.

The next few years are going to see dramatic changes in the way you interact with technology: touch, gestures, handwriting, speech recognition. Instead of telling my secretary to get me ready for my trip to the House Democratic Caucus, I’ll just type it in or speak it to my computer. It can look up, it turns out, who you all are, and where you’re all from, and it’s got all–it’s all out there. We just need to automate it in ways that real people can get access to information.

Some of this I’m sure sounds a bit like science fiction, but we’re rapidly nearing a time when interacting with technology really will be like interacting with people, which will make technology more accessible and really unlock the potential of computers to individuals and communities to help solve tough problems.

A third trend, as I talked about, is screens and displays. Literally every wall, every tabletop, you’ll be able to roll up your computer, if you will, and put it in your purse or put it in your pocket. That’s what we have to look forward to.

All of these trends are going to help create a computing platform that extends from PCs and phones and TVs out into the massive storage and connectivity out in the Internet.

All of this will enable us to transcend the barriers that exist between technology today, and seamlessly connect people to the information and applications that you’re interested in, no matter where you are, no matter what kind of screen you have in front of us.

It’s very important. As the computing environment becomes richer and more pervasive, and more universally useful, it will enable citizens to be more active participants in our national economic recovery. If we do our jobs right, the computer revolution will help amplify our ability as individuals and as a nation to tackle the pressing problems of society: education, health care, energy independence; and at the same time, continue to enhance our productivity and economic competitiveness.

They say GDP is consumption plus investment, plus government spending, plus productivity growth and innovation, and I’m very bullish on what will happen in our industry.

Imagine, for example, an intelligent energy system in your home that’s linked to a smart energy grid. With that infrastructure, your dishwasher and washing machine would know to run when electricity is cheapest. That kind of intelligence and control could really have a major impact on residential power consumption, which is a very large piece of energy consumption in this country.

There are similar scenarios in healthcare, where genomic research will open the door to personalized treatment; and in education for sure, where technology will enable all teachers to use the very best teaching methods and connect with students in new ways.

The truth though, we can barely guess what is possible. With the kinds of technologies we envision, other people, many people in many fields, fields of science and social science and many, many others, will come forth with an incredible outpouring of new ideas and innovation that will continue to expand the universe of what’s possible. So, the enablement not only of information technology and the productivity it brings directly, but other new forms of innovation I think will really be important for long term growth and prosperity across many, many fields of endeavor.

To harness this potential of this transformation, I think it’s going to take a lot more than investment by the private sector. We need investment and we need leadership by government as well. I don’t understand all of the issues and interests that you have to deal with. As I was sitting listening this morning, I understand more that there are hundreds of unwritten things that citizens just don’t really know about what it takes to catalyze these things to happen. But I would at least like to offer a couple suggestions on some things I think are important.

First, we really need the federal government to invest in human capital, in the citizens of our country.

I sit here and talk, talk, talk about innovation, but it’s people who turn ideas into positive and productive innovation. And in today’s knowledge-driven world, innovation will depend on people who are actually technologically sophisticated, have strong critical thinking skills, have expertise in math and science and engineering.

This is true not only for people who live in places like Seattle and work at places like Microsoft, but live in places like Detroit, where I grew up, and work for companies like Ford Motor Company, where my father worked when I was a child. I think this is going to be true for anyone, anywhere in this country, who hopes to earn a wage that can really properly support their family.

This means investment in education is critical, and I’m really encouraged by the very heavy emphasis on education that’s in the stimulus package.

We really need to transform math and science education in America. We need to improve teacher training, teacher quality.

I was talking earlier in the day with some folks about just how many of our math and science teachers don’t have the correct training and accreditation, and that stands in the way of us really breaking through.

For those who are already in the workforce, we need programs that provide ongoing education and training, so they can be successful in this knowledge-based economy. For those who are unemployed, we need new technical skills training to give those people a start back up the economic ladder. And we are going to need lifelong learning programs to keep people fresh, as innovation and technology continues to power the economy.

The second thing we need–and I’ll tell the Speaker this was written even before our meeting this morning–we need greater government investment in our nation’s science and technology infrastructure.

I came in, flew in red eye, was a little groggy this morning when I got here. I sat down with the speaker at 8:00 AM, and she woke me right up. She said there are four things I want you to make sure you understand are a priority: science, science, science, and science. I was awake by the end of the fourth science for sure, and I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly.

Science and technology is the backbone for productivity and innovation; has been, not always information technology, but science and technology has been a driver of economic success. Government investment in science and engineering as a percentage of GDP is half, in this country, what it was in 1970, and it would be growing rapidly, particularly in countries in Asia, off a small base albeit, but in places like India and China and Korea the trend is the other direction.

We need to pursue breakthroughs over the coming years in green technology, alternative energy, bioengineering, parallel computing, quantum computing. Without greater government investment in the basic research, there is a danger that important advances will happen in other countries. This is truly I think not only an issue of competitiveness, but also in a sense of national security. Companies like ours and others can do our fair share in terms of funding of basic research, but government needs to take the lead.

This is also a moment when government should invest, I think, in information technology to help transform healthcare. We deliver information technology that we think can help create a connected health system that delivers predictive, preventive, and personalized care, a system that I think can improve the health of Americans and reduce the cost of health care in this country.

Government support for innovative development, rapid adoption of information technology in health care is important. I was talking to Congressman McDermott this morning. Government has a big role to play, including the fact that Medicare and Medicaid pay over 50 percent of all health. If Medicare and Medicaid want to take on some issues and use its authority to push health information standards, I’m sure this industry and this area of technology innovation can move even more quickly.

There’s always broadband. My number one encouragement to you is start with government itself. Every school, every hospital, every government building, is it wired, have we funded that infrastructure; very important.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis. There is a lot of history around that, and frankly if you stop and think about it, 1837, ’73, ’29, 2008, it’s almost exactly a whole lifetime between each of the major economic difficulties that we face. But I think it’s also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to think about our priorities again and make the investments that put us on the right foot.

In his inaugural address, President Obama said we need to assume more responsibility and make the hard decisions that have been postponed for too long.

The president’s remarks actually reminded me of something I heard a lot from my dad when I was growing up. My dad was an immigrant to this country. He came from Switzerland after World War II. He went and was an interpreter with the US military at the war trials in Nuremberg; came to Detroit with some of the soldiers he had met there, who sponsored him in this country; went to work at Ford Motor Company, was there for 30 years. Never finished high school never went to college, but he had a simple model: “If you’re going to do a job, do a job. If you’re not going to do a job, don’t do a job.”

You could say, okay, that’s probably a good thing to tell a 10-year-old, but what it really came to mean to me was that if you want to accomplish anything at all, you’ve got to be committed, you’ve got to be motivated, you’ve got to be tenacious, you’ve got to be smart. And, of course, that’s not really just my dad’s message to me and my sister as we were growing up; it’s really the essence of the American work ethic, and I think it’s been passed down to millions of American children every generation.

This country has what it takes to succeed. We have talent, we have technology, we’ve got the track record. We’ve got to be really honest about where we are. We’ve got to take the kind of bold steps that the vice president so well characterized in his remarks this morning, and we certainly have to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves back on the path of the kind of innovation that will drive the kind of economic success that I know we all want.

I thank you again for the opportunity. It’s been my pleasure.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090206/microsofts-steve-ballmer-talks-innovation-at-democratic-policy-confab-the-full-speech/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20081108/weekend-update-11808/ http://allthingsd.com/20081108/weekend-update-11808/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:00:43 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=8091 It was an eventful week–a new President-elect, Yahoo still playing the field with no takers, and the hovering recession beginning to hit a little harder, a little closer to home. It was hard to keep the story lines straight, so let’s approach it thematically.

Election 2008
Whether or not those voting machines malfunctioned or miscounted votes, Barack Obama was set to become the 44th President of the United States, much to the chagrin of comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who–since the beginning of the McCain/Palin partnership–were handed once-in-a-lifetime material. Between the brilliant “Saturday Night” Live parody sketches of (and by) both Palin and McCain, and Obama’s victory speech, the other big winner (by a mile) was Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. All 500 video versions of the speech generated nearly seven million views. It doesn’t beat the nearly-naked Britney Spears, with over nine million views, but one can dream.

Yahoo
This week, Yahoo (YHOO) was kind of like a high school senior with a prom night dilemma: Since Microsoft (MSFT) backed out of acquisition negotiations earlier this year, Steve Ballmer insists there’s no deal, but there’s a lot of back-and-forth that makes BoomTown wonder. Google backed out of the much-discussed search ad partnership with the company after the DOJ made it clear that it was not going to happen without a fight. The also-much-discussed merger with Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL has not fared much better. According to BoomTown, where you’ll find the straight dope on all of the rumors, all of this (for starters) has turned CEO Jerry Yang into the Internet’s human pinata.
You know what they say: “Play hard-to-get and you won’t get got.”

Econalypse
Rupert Murdoch admits business is worse than he previously thought. Disney (DIS) admits that ad spending has been declining for more than a year. Does that make it official? Either way, reality sinks in further among the non-start-up set–Time Inc. is laying off hundreds and reorganizing the rest. Viacom (VIA) may or may not have layoffs. Among the start-up set, as witnessed at the recent Web 2.0 conference this past week, companies are in survival mode, getting lean for the downturn. Well, not everybody. MySpace’s over-arching theme, judging from this BoomTown video of the giant’s Web 2.0 party, is “Masque of the Red Death.” Party on, Garth–and have a pleasant tomorrow.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081108/weekend-update-11808/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081104/election-day-2008/ http://allthingsd.com/20081104/election-day-2008/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:07:08 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=5684 Thanks to the Web, 2008 marks a high point in the level of engagement between American voters and their presidential candidates. As Arianna Huffington declared yesterday, “I am ready to declare a winner in the 2008 race. The Internet.”

On Election Day itself, that statement is more apt than ever. Sites like fivethirtyeight.com and politicalwire.com will provide the virtually up-to-the-minute numbers on every race. It’s a level of immediacy that was hard to imagine before now–but it’s also hard to imagine we ever had it any other way.

Here’s a quick index of AllThingsD’s digital-eye view of the fracas:

• An overview of the tech policies of both candidates.
• Election in your pocket: Walt Mossberg discovered Election ’08, a data-packed app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses an algorithmic calculation of who’s winning in each state based on multiple available polls.

Some would argue that this race could be decided by viral video campaigns, rather than strictly political ones. Here is the evidence:

• “Saturday Night Live” was the heavy hitter here, and it was kind of a toss-up whether John McCain and Sarah Palin’s respective appearances trumped the outright parodies of each one.
• Then there was Hollywood’s ironic plea not to vote.
• And Google’s plea (with help from The Donald) to employers for a “Vote Hour.”
• No one came close to Sarah Silverman in terms of outright exhortation, though.

Last but not least, in what might be considered either a digital or a paper story, depending on where you live and vote, ongoing questions about the reliability of digital voting machines persist. Let’s hope this one’s over on Election Day.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081104/election-day-2008/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081006/sarah-palin-and-tina-fey-a-perfect-marriage/ http://allthingsd.com/20081006/sarah-palin-and-tina-fey-a-perfect-marriage/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:47:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=4836

The third time is charming, in fact, as has been every appearance on "Saturday Night Live" by Tina Fey impersonating Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

This one, of course, is on last week's debate between Palin and Democratic VP candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, with Queen Latifah also doing a perfect double-taking turn as moderator Gwen Ifill.

Whatever happens in the election, of the many impersonations on "SNL," Fey's of Palin is a classic, which started with a striking resemblance and has turned into a perfect union of characters.

Here is the first, with Fey and Amy Poehler as Sen. Hillary Clinton and Fey with Poehler playing CBS's Katie Couric.

Here's the new video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081006/sarah-palin-and-tina-fey-a-perfect-marriage/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081002/kung-fu-election-biden-versus-palin/ http://allthingsd.com/20081002/kung-fu-election-biden-versus-palin/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:25:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=4776

BoomTown admits herewith that I am officially a teenage boy, given how much I really like Atom’s Kung-Fu Election site, an online fighting game for the general election.

In advance of tonight’s much-anticipated debate between the vice-presidential candidates–Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin–here’s a video of them duking it out digitally in hiiii-ya style.

Of course, Palin gets the Xena-Warrior-Princess look with a hockey stick and gun as weapons, while the sharp-tongued Biden gets a big sword and is dressed like some refugee from “Shogun.”

Let’s hope the verbal sparring to come is as gripping.

Here’s the video:

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081002/kung-fu-election-biden-versus-palin/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/ http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:04:48 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=5133

I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says Sarah Palin’s not the only politician unqualified to lead HP

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080826/kinoma-touches-up-clunky-windows-mobile/ http://allthingsd.com/20080826/kinoma-touches-up-clunky-windows-mobile/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:36:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080826/kinoma-touches-up-clunky-windows-mobile/ Think about a mobile device with a touch screen that’s designed to work with smart software. A single tap on its surface instantly zooms in on images; a flicking gesture moves one photo off the screen and pulls another one on. Menus appear with clever animation, and actions like downloading and emailing photos and videos are intuitively incorporated, rarely more than one step away.

Bet you’re thinking about Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

I’m actually describing a Windows Mobile device. In fact, any touch-screen Windows Mobile device made in the past couple of years can perform the aforementioned functions — as long as it’s running a new application called Kinoma Play.

This much-needed shot in the arm for Windows Mobile comes from Kinoma Inc. and for $30 can be downloaded onto a computer or directly onto a device from www.kinoma.com. It works on touch and nontouch screens alike, though touch features do add a lot of pizzazz. After installation, Kinoma Play seems to totally take over the device’s multimedia functions, hiding every trace of Windows Mobile’s clunky, antiquated, menu-driven operating system.

Kinoma Play in action, clockwise from top left: a media interface, touch-screen navigation, upload to YouTube, picture rotation, search by characters, and photo zoom.

It smoothly opens and displays all types of media, including photos, videos and music. But it’s also a fast search engine for multimedia content on the phone, on the Web or even on your computer via remote search. Kinoma Play works with services including YouTube, Audible, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, Orb and SHOUTcast. And a section called the Kinoma Guide compiles over 100,000 podcast episodes, radio stations, videos, live television and Webcam clips, panoramas and photos into easy-to-browse categories.

After almost a week with this application, I changed the way I thought about on-the-go Web browsing for media. I forgot about typical browser functions like typing a Web site’s name into a URL bar and instead did plenty of things online with my portable device without deliberately thinking about being online.

Kinoma Play is so well-designed that I wish it could entirely replace the dated Windows Mobile user interface, which still lags behind the iPhone’s. But, alas, it’s about media only. It isn’t designed to supplant, and doesn’t change or improve, any of the phone’s more common functions, like overall email and Web browsing, calendar, contacts or productivity programs.

Kinoma is working on Symbian, Linux and even iPhone versions of its application and will release one of those versions by the end of this year.

I ran into a few problems while using Kinoma Play. On three different occasions using two different devices, my touch screen froze when I tried to start the application, and the only way I could fix the problem was by completely rebooting my device. Once in a while, I experienced slow performance, though this could have been attributed to my network connection. And Kinoma Play lacks a one-step shortcut to its home screen; currently, users must press a “Back” soft key on each screen until they reach the home screen.

But the pluses of Kinoma Play outweighed these hassles, especially considering how enjoyable this application was to use. I tested Kinoma on two Palm (PALM) devices running Windows Mobile: the not-yet-released Treo Pro, which will be available here in the fall for an unlocked, unsubsidized price of $549, and the $250 (after discounts and two-year-contract rebates) Treo 800w available from Sprint (S). Both have touch screens that work best with an included stylus, though a fingernail or fingertip worked for me in most cases.

Upon installation, Kinoma Play automatically scans a device’s media and organizes it into categories under a section called My Media Files. I was especially eager to see how photos were handled, so I started out in the Pictures category.

All Kinoma screens have a set of familiar navigational tools that appear as soft keys at the bottom of the screen; they show up when the bottom section of the screen is touched and disappear when touched again. On the bottom left, a “Back” arrow takes users to the previous screen. On the bottom right, a list-like icon represents what Kinoma calls the Menu Pod. When touched, this pulls up three succinct menus — for media, settings and another action related to the program that’s open.

I opened some photos that were stored on the Palm Treo Pro and touched the center of the screen with my finger. A quick tap on the screen zooms in on each photo, and a small inset of the photo with a box representing the magnified area appears on the lower right of the screen. I dragged this tiny box around in the inset image to change where I was zooming. To zoom in on a photo slowly, I simply touched and held my finger on the screen for a longer period of time. A quick tap after either zooming method will quickly snap the image back to normal view.

I moved from one photo to the next as I do on my iPod Touch: by placing a finger on one edge of the photo and flicking left or right across the screen. Rotating was fun and easy to do when I drew a circle on the photo with my fingertip in the direction that I wanted it to rotate. The image followed whatever motion I drew. To rotate the photo 180 degrees, I drew a larger half-circle.

I selected Flickr from Kinoma Play’s list of services and signed into my Flickr account in just a few steps. My photos and those of friends were just as easy to browse as my own photos, thanks to Kinoma Play’s built-in tools. The Menu Pod icon offered a one-step way to play all photos in slide shows; music could be selected to play in the background.

With a touch on the Menu Pod icon, users can add any media to favorites or to an “on-the-go” list. This same tool also sends multimedia to others via email; I used it to send friends photos of a recent trip to California as well as a YouTube link to video footage of Sen. Joe Biden speaking.

Kinoma makes something out of every action. The Menu Pod button seems to jump into the center of the screen when summoned, and each of its three menus spins like a tiny top to get out of the way so another menu can be seen. Other screens seemed to do a mini back flip as they opened or closed. And long lists seemed to bounce when scrolling reached the top or bottom.

In the Services menu, I used Audible to listen to part of an audio book and listened to rock and country songs on Web radio stations from SHOUTcast and Live365.

I particularly liked using the Kinoma Guide, which is constantly updated with material that streams to your devices when you open it. I found a Restaurant Guys podcast in which chef Cat Cora was interviewed, and even saved it for later listening by downloading this seven-megabyte podcast to my device in one clean step. Kinoma wisely adds all downloads to a special section that’s easy to find. The last 100 things you looked at on Kinoma Play can be found in a section called History.

These days in the tech world, much attention is being paid to applications sold on Apple’s App Store for use with the iPhone or iPod Touch. But Kinoma Play is one application that is desperately needed by Windows Mobile users, and it just might remind them that they can better navigate media-related Web services — without having to buy a new mobile device.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find all our columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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