Coinciding with the release of her book “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” is McGonigal’s keynote tomorrow at the Gamification Summit in San Francisco, and I’ll be interviewing her onstage afterward.

While there’s been much industry discussion of gamification, it’s often about adding lightweight gaming elements to all sorts of things to entice people to participate. McGonigal, it seems, is talking about something different: Using the motivation, focus and creativity of massively multiplayer online gamers to solve real-world problems.

I’m interested to hear her apply her ideas to social games, the stripped-down mindless diversions like Zynga’s CityVille that are growing so fast and addictive to so many.

What would you ask McGonigal? Email me, comment or tweet your questions, and I’ll be sure to incorporate them.

Here’s McGonigal speaking at TED last year, calling for 21 billion hours of online gaming a week by the year 2020.

First things first, for those emailing me frantically about getting into our D@CES onstage interview event later today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: We’re sold out and have a very long wait list.

That said, people in Sin City tend to flake out, so if you show up at the Marcello Ballroom at the Venetian Hotel at 3 pm, you might snag a seat, as people did last year at the same event.

No guarantees, but it’s a betting town, so you might want to do so.

And, if you throw craps, our crack All Things Digital staff will be posting photos, reports and video quickly.

I am hoping there will be some juicy news for them to chew on, as we interview three fascinating subjects:

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Dean Hachamovitch, who heads the Internet Explorer browser team within the Windows unit at Microsoft.

Our latest event comes after our successful D: Dive Into Mobile conference, part of the D: All Things Digital juggernaut.

(Actually, it is more like a tiny red wagon, but it is really cool.)

This is our second D event at the CES, which is taking place this week.

Last year’s tech execs onstage were Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin.

As usual, our event will be focused on the consumer electronics arena, and the big trends impacting it.

The D@CES program is only this afternoon, with the new trio.

Costolo (pictured here), a longtime entrepreneur, took over from co-founder Evan Williams earlier this year and is charged with turning the microblogging service into a real, live boy, um, company.

Twitter is making a big push into the mainstream and also wants to be present for all the many devices shown at CES.

As noted before, I will be grilling Costolo. Well done, I hope!

Nvidia’s Huang (pictured here) is leading a big change for the company. Although known for its PC graphics chips, Nvidia is shifting an increasing amount of focus to other areas, such as mobile chips with its Tegra line.

Huang will be interviewed by Mobilized’s Ina Fried.

Walt Mossberg will take on Hachamovitch (pictured below), who heads the IE team at Microsoft.

Well known for sporting a different black shirt featuring a different saying made up of the IE logo and letters at every keynote speech, he has been at the software giant since 1990.

We thought bringing his voice was important, since Hachamovitch has been focusing on privacy using the browser, an increasingly key topic in tech.

So get ready for some fun–after all, it’s Vegas, baby.

Shares in ARM have nearly tripled in value from this time a year ago, and the most recent surge occurred in December, when the first reports emerged that Microsoft would do something that previously seemed almost unthinkable: Create a version of Windows designed to run on chips other than the x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Microsoft confirmed the news two days ago. If 2011 is going to be the year of the tablet, then chances are it’s going to be the year of ARM chips.

The funny thing is, practically every year has been a good year for ARM chips. They’re so widely used already that there’s a good chance you use them, probably several of them, every day. During its most recent quarter, more than 900 million ARM-based chips were sold in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, while another 600 million were used in devices as varied as TV, toys, cars, alarm clocks and remote controls.

ARM doesn’t build the chips itself; it designs the cores–or central brains–used on those chips. I like to compare it to selling a basic cake recipe. If you’re a baker whose expertise is making really great frosting, why bother dreaming up a brand-new cake recipe when you can use an existing one, and instead use your time and effort to make great frosting? A lot of semiconductor and electronics companies have reached the same conclusion, and paid to license ARM’s recipes for chips, and then built their own custom enhancements around the ARM core.

It’s a pretty popular recipe. The company issued more than 700 licenses as of last year to some 250 chip companies, which then turned around and sold the chips to more than 1,000 manufacturers. ARM estimates that in 2009 four billion chips based on its designs were sold, and that more than 20 billion have been sold in the two decades since the company launched.

Aside from the three ARM-based chips from Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Qualcomm that Microsoft demonstrated running Windows as part of CEO Steve Ballmer’s Jan. 5 keynote presentation at CES, the list of companies using ARM includes Samsung, Broadcom, Toshiba and scores of smaller chip companies.

ARM also has an interesting history. It was founded as a joint venture between Apple and a British outfit called Acorn Computers in 1990. Apple’s interest was to create and develop a chip that would run the Newton, and spur the development of a new-age handheld computer that the Newton was supposed to bring about. (As a few commenters note below, the first ARM chips were used in desktop computers sold primarily in the U.K.) The Newton went nowhere, but the vision for ARM as the chip of choice for mobile computing was right on the money. ARM chips from Motorola (now Freescale) landed in devices from Palm and early handhelds running Windows Mobile. ARM flourished and went public on the London Stock Exchange in 1998. Between 1998 and 2004, Apple sold off its ARM shares for combined proceeds of almost $800 million.

Now having built a considerable lead in the wireless world, ARM-based chips look awfully strong as the battle over tablets shapes up. And beyond that lies higher-end computing opportunities like servers. Some think Intel should be worried. Despite this week’s launch of its Sandy Bridge generation of PC processors, Intel’s shares are trading lower today than they did at the start of the week.

I caught up briefly with ARM Executive Vice President Antonio Viana by phone from CES to talk about the year ahead for ARM.

There’s been a lot of attention around ARM coming into the Windows fold, and everyone knows it from its strength in the wireless devices. How is 2011 shaping up for ARM?

We got our start more than 20 years introducing a chip architecture aimed primarily at the mobile industry. We offered a chip design that’s efficient in the way it consumes power. What happened was the technology moved beyond the cellphone: Into the home, cars, printers. And that trend is continuing. Consumers want features that require a lot more computing power. Some of these devices are handhelds, some aren’t. What makes the ARM architecture central to all that is that industry brings their own secret sauce, their own pieces to the table. The development with Microsoft is just a small microcosm of that.

Are there new licensees coming on?

Our roadmap is constantly evolving, and we’ve developed the architecture for a pretty broad set of use cases. We license to companies like NXP that are relatively simple 8- and 16-bit microcontroller chips that go into industrial equipment, or meters or toys. But because of the network connectivity requirements that are starting to come to those devices, you’re starting to see some of these move to more versatile 32-bit chips and the costs are manageable because developers are so used to working with ARM. Then if you swing way out to the other extreme we just launched our A15 architecture. That’s a multicore design, and it’s finding its way into next-generation servers.

Who’s using that?

Unfortunately, we can’t say yet. A15 was announced last year. We think we’ll start seeing production silicon in the latter half of next year, and there will be samples before that. When you start seeing samples then the partners working with it will start announcing products.

Obviously Intel has its Atom processor, which it has aimed at tablets and handhelds and many other market segments you’re involved in. What kind of competitive threat do you see from Intel?

The competitive threat is certainly there–x86 is incredibly robust and it has the incredible capital resources of Intel behind it. ‘Nuff said. Intel will be successful in various markets they go after. We’d be fools not to acknowledge that. But the question is who’s going to grow more? Who is going to leverage off the market trends right now? Tablets are a wonderful example of that. Right now about 90 percent of all tablets in the marketplace are ARM-powered. At a show like CES you see a lot of things that indicate the market trends. You always have to take a step back and wonder which of the things you see may never happen. But the trends are usually accurate. One of those trends is for always-on, always-connected power-efficient devices. When you look at it that way I’m pretty comfortable with ARM’s position.

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

Maybe it’s just me, but is this video from Microsoft, featuring “Chet”–the software giant’s “creative presentation consultant” for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week–freaky or not?

It’s a Zen-style joke, of course, but what is the sound of one hand clapping?

CEO Steve Ballmer will be giving his usual keynote speech on Wednesday night and is about as anti-Chet as it gets.

Until then, here are the two Chet videos:

However, while the company is set to discuss the effort at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, there is still a lot that must be done before such products can hit the market.

Among the steps needed is for hardware makers to create ARM-compatible drivers, a time-consuming effort that explains in part why Microsoft is talking about the initiative well ahead of any products being ready.

It took Microsoft years, for instance, to move mainstream Windows users from 32-bit versions of the operating system to 64-bit versions, in large part because it took that long to get all of the necessary hardware drivers to enable the shift.

Microsoft has scheduled a press briefing for 1 pm PT on Jan. 5, ahead of Steve Ballmer’s keynote later that night. The event is expected to be the forum where Microsoft will discuss the ARM effort. A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the reported ARM move.

However, speculation about such a move has been increasing since the two companies signed an expanded licensing agreement back in July. Microsoft was deliberately vague at the time regarding the impact of the new agreement, making reference to then-existing efforts such as Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile.

“ARM is an important partner for Microsoft and we deliver multiple operating systems on the company’s architecture,” Microsoft general manager KD Hallman said in a July statement. “With closer access to the ARM technology we will be able to enhance our research and development activities for ARM-based products.”

Moving to ARM processors as an option for full-fledged Windows could pave the way for machines with significantly longer battery life–an issue that has become more important as competing mobile devices, especially tablets and smartphones, have been able to best the PC in that regard.

While much of the speculation regarding ARM-based Windows machines has centered on the impact this could have on tablets, the move is said to be as much about netbooks and low-power notebooks as it is about slates.

Though the Windows tie to Intel-architecture chips is legendary, it’s not the first time that Windows has run on chips other than the standard fare from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Windows once ran on chips from Digital Equipment, and Microsoft has also done server versions that supported Intel’s Itanium chip. However, such efforts are expensive and time-consuming. The fact that Microsoft is going ahead with the undertaking highlights the size of the threat posed by devices running on the lower-power-consuming ARM chips.

Although CES is an unusual venue to reach PC hardware makers, it does provide a big stage for Microsoft to reconfirm that it is serious about playing in the ultramobile device category.

Bloomberg first reported Microsoft’s plans to bring Windows to ARM earlier on Tuesday.

After our successful D: Dive Into Mobile conference last week, the D: All Things Digital train keeps chugging away and is now headed to Las Vegas just after the new year.

There, we will do a second D event at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will take place from January 6 to 9, 2011.

It will, natch, be focused on the consumer electronics arena, and the big trends impacting it.

Unlike our other conferences, the D@CES program is only one afternoon, on Friday, January 7, at the Venetian’s Marcello ballroom, followed by a party at the hotel’s V Bar.

Last year’s tech execs onstage were Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin.

This year, the trio will be: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Dean Hachamovitch, who heads the Internet Explorer team within the Windows unit at Microsoft.

Costolo (pictured here), a longtime entrepreneur, took over from co-founder Evan Williams earlier this year and is charged with turning the microblogging service into a real-live boy, um, company.

Twitter is making a big push into the mainstream and also wants to be present for all the many devices shown at CES.

BoomTown will be grilling Costolo. Well done, I hope!

Nvidia’s Huang (pictured here) is leading a big change for the company. Although known for its PC graphics chips, Nvidia is shifting an increasing amount of focus to other areas, such as mobile chips with its Tegra line.

Huang will be interviewed by Mobilized’s Ina Fried.

Walt Mossberg will take on Hachamovitch (pictured below), who heads the IE team at Microsoft.

Well known for sporting a different black shirt featuring a different saying made up of the IE logo and letters at every keynote speech, he has been at the software giant since 1990.

We thought bringing his voice was important, since Hachamovitch has been focusing on privacy using the browser, an increasingly key topic in tech.

D@CES is invitation only, but if you want to go, email me at Kara@AllThingsD.com and I will send an invite, as long as supplies last.

Top 10 Paid iPad Apps

1. Pages
2. GoodReader for iPad
3. Numbers
4. Angry Birds HD
5. Keynote
6. Glee Karaoke
7. WolframAlpha
8. Pinball HD
9. Friendly for Facebook
10. Star Walk for iPad

Top 10 Free iPad Apps

1. iBooks
2. Pandora Radio
3. Netflix
4. Google Mobile App
5. Solitaire
6. Movies by Flixster–with Rotten Tomatoes
7. IMDb Movies & TV
8. Kindle
9. Google Earth
10. Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD

Top 10 Grossing iPad Apps

1. Pages
2. Numbers
3. Keynote
4. LogMeIn Ignition
5. SCRABBLE for iPad
6. Documents To Go® Premium–Office Suite
7. Angry Birds HD
8. Real Racing HD
9. Plants vs. Zombies HD
10. Proloquo2Go

Top 10 Paid iPhone Apps

1. Angry Birds
2. Doodle Jump
3. Skee-Ball
4. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
5. Fruit Ninja
6. Cut the Rope
7. ALL-IN-1 GAMEBOX
8. The Moron Test
9. Plants vs. Zombies
10. Pocket God

Top 10 Free iPhone Apps

1. Facebook
2. Angry Birds Lite
3. Words With Friends Free
4. Skype
5. Tap Tap Revenge 3
6. The Weather Channel®
7. Paper Toss
8. Bing
9. ROCK BAND FREE
10. Talking Tom Cat

Top 10 Grossing iPhone Apps

1. MLB.com At Bat 2010
2. Angry Birds
3. Call of Duty: Zombies
4. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
5. FriendCaller 3 Pro
6. Zombie Farm
7. TomTom U.S.A.
8. TETRIS®
9. Plants vs. Zombies
10. Doodle Jump

Although Andy Rubin’s keynote at D: Dive into Mobile is scheduled for just before dinner, expect to hear a lot of talk about dessert. On the menu are Froyo, Gingerbread and perhaps even a hint of Honeycomb.

Google did release a couple of tasty treats already on Monday–announcing plans for the Samsung co-developed Nexus S as well as the release of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). But I hear the cookie jar isn’t quite empty yet.

In between sugary snacks, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg will pepper Rubin on the many issues facing Android and the wireless industry. Mobilized will have live coverage of the session at this spot beginning around 6:45 pm PT.

Liveblog

6:37 pm: The crowd is still settling into their seats here at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, the swanky home to the inaugural D: Dive Into Mobile.

6:40 pm: Lights dim. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg take the stage. “My husband, Walt Mossberg, and I would like to welcome you to this intimate dinner,” Swisher quips.

6:42 pm: Ironically, the crowd was asked to silence their mobile devices, but Kara says they should just feel free to leave them on.

6:44 pm: It’s Rubin time (and he has brought a satchel of goodies with him).

Rubin is asked about the Nexus One and why it didn’t shake up the business model. “We bit off a little more than we can chew.” Rubin says that they were hoping for a model more like that in Europe, where people can pick a phone and then separately pick service, typically at retail stores like Carphone Warehouse. “We were trying to do that model in the U.S. and only do it online.”

6:46 pm: Kara: So have you given up on that business model?

Rubin: With Nexus S, which is the thing we announced today, we still have that notion of an unlocked phone. But we are not selling it ourselves, but through traditional channels, in this case Best Buy.

6:48 pm: Walt: How is Android doing?

Rubin: Android started as an eight-person start-up. “During that time at Google we obviously staffed up.” Now there are 172 different phone models using Android after the OS was launched two years ago with one, the T-Mobile G1.

Rubin credits the quality of the software and the open nature of it.

6:49 pm: Walt: I notice more and more they are taking on the personality of the carrier, not Google, not the handset maker. There are lots of what I would call craplets. Verizon, for example, swapped out Google for Bing. Is there a danger it is being taken over?

Rubin: That’s the nature of open. That’s actually a feature of Android.

He takes a swipe at Windows Mobile, saying that the alternative is a commoditized world where all the phones have to have a start menu in one place and all the icons have to be tiles.

6:54 pm: Kara: Do you consider yourself the Microsoft of phones in that regard?

Rubin: No. We’re probably more like the Linux of phones, and that’s a true statement.

Walt: You mean hard to get drivers for, only for geeks, no real consumer would buy it?

Rubin: No, I think we’ve already proven that wrong. Bad analogy.

6:55 pm: Discussion about all the crapware that comes on many phones.

Rubin: The consumers are voting and the consumers are voicing their opinions.

6:56 pm: Rubin has some relatively nice things to say about the iPhone.

“I think everybody is embracing the iPhone. They are pretty open.”

Rubin says that most developers actually are having a pretty easy time getting their apps approved by Apple.

6:57 pm: Kara: How do you consider Apple as a competitor?

Certainly they make great products, Rubin says–robust, solid, good user experiences. A lot of consistency across applications. More recently I see them getting involved in the other end of the spectrum–services like a bookstore, the app store.

6:59 pm: Walt: What about Apple’s massive data center? That’s another area of competition for you guys.

Rubin talks about the power of Google’s ad-based model, which allows the core advertising to fund all kinds of applications.

Walt: Do you think Apple has the DNA to do this?

Rubin: “My assumption is Apple is a company that learns from its mistakes.”

7:01 pm: Kara and Walt: Are you profitable? Is Android profitable? Does Android make any money?

Rubin: We’re making money on the advertising that’s generated through Android.

Walt: Are you profitable if it was broken out as a separate business?

Rubin: Yes. [Wow. I'm curious about the math, but maybe if you add all the searches on Android-based devices.]

There’s no way I would have ever been profitable as a start-up. I probably wouldn’t have made it as a separate company.

7:06 pm: Walt: How do you see the rest of the competition beyond Apple?

Rubin: I don’t think it’s ever going to be just two [Apple and Android]. There’s a lot of innovation and a lot of ideas out there.

Rubin says there is a fundamental advantage to Android and iPhone since they are new and designed from the ground up.

He notes even Windows Phone 7 has legacy code from the original Windows Mobile from way back when.

“You just have this package of stuff that was invented before the Internet,” Rubin says. “When the architects built that product, they didn’t have the Internet in mind.”

7:08 pm: Walt: Is there anything you do like about Windows Phone 7?

Rubin: It was a big bet. They struck upon that notion of the centerpiece of the main tiles. It’s a good 1.0 product. It does look different and it does look unique. It’s solid. I’m not the predictor of being successful.

He says if he were to give advice to Microsoft, he would suggest that it give more freedom to carriers and phone makers so the devices don’t look the same.

Kara: Have you gone to Finland to woo Nokia?

Rubin: I haven’t been to Finland.

Walt: Forget Finland, have you tried to convince Nokia?

Rubin just laughs (a-ha).

7:12 pm: Kara: The discussions with Nokia–talk about them in detail.

Rubin: The company has new leadership [referring to CEO Stephen Elop]. They are evaluating lots of alternatives. I’m open-minded and a big proponent of Android.

Rubin again declines to talk about any meetings he may have had.

7:14 pm: What about the challenge of iconic products like RIM?

Rubin: Talks about the challenge of legacy and points out Motorola had that problem when it became overly dependent on the Razr. Then, “they bet the company on Android,” he points out.

Rubin said RIM is doing the right things–acquiring assets like QNX and DataViz to build a more modern operating system.

7:16 pm: Walt points out that RIM will be here Tuesday–PlayBook tablet in hand.

7:16 pm: Back to the discussion about persuading companies to use Android.

Rubin: If it’s good–and we all believe that it’s good–everybody can use it.

“You don’t need to be a partner of Google to run Android.”

7:17 pm: Walt asks about tablets. Are they exciting to you? Are they important to you? Can they replace laptops for some people?

Rubin: I think what is going on in tablets is interesting. It’s fundamentally changing the model of computing interaction.

It is much more physical. You touch it. You feel it.

7:19 pm: What changes in the paradigm? It’s not a laptop. It’s not a phone.

Rubin points out that we used to have PDAs, but the cellphone eventually replaced it. The tablet is a sort of in-between device so the use case is less clear. You might definitely have it on the couch, but maybe not on the subway.

7:21 pm: Walt: What makes it more interesting and more immersive? There is something different there?

Rubin: If you do a good job, what you’ve done is make it a reflex. Like a car. You learn how to drive and you can drive almost any car. You don’t get distracted by things. That’s the result of many, many years of evolution. That’s true of any consumer product. They become almost like second nature for you.

7:24 pm: Kara and Walt ask about privacy.

Rubin: There is nothing in open source Android OS that sends keystrokes or what applications you use to Google.

He encourages people to look at the source code.

Walt: There are Google services that do collect certain things?

Rubin: Yes, like on other platforms. But he encourages people to read the company’s privacy policy.

7:27 pm: How do you overcome the perception that Google wants to collect more information than the others?

I think you just have to be transparent. You have open source–be inspectable. Any other interpretation is either FUD or just people who don’t understand.

7:28 pm: On to the goodie bag. Rubin pulls out a Nexus S. Says it is his personal device.

Kara: Oh good. She grabs it and pulls it close to her.

Now Rubin is showing the features, screen, etc. He’s talking about the Near Field Communications technology that is actually printed inside the back of the case. NFC allows a phone to scan specially printed tags.

Walt: Is that what sends all the information back to Google?

Rubin: Laughs. Goes back to demoing NFC and showing the Nexus S scanning a tag, which sends a URL for a video of the Nexus S to the phone, which then starts playing.

7:31 pm: Rubin talks about the applications: Buying coffee, getting coupons.

What we are hoping is third-party developers create a lot of cool apps. Devices can also use NFC to exchange contact info between two devices as well, kind of like beaming in the old Palm days.

7:32 pm: Rubin is talking abut the Nexus strategy.

To give a “Pure Google” phone. Google works with the hardware maker to take maximum advantage of Android’s features.

7:35 pm: What’s new with Gingerbread?

We added a garbage collector. Added broader voice over Internet Protocol support. Can cut, copy and paste without a trackball.

7:36 pm: Walt: What about video calling? I know there are third-party apps that do that. It seems like a natural thing that it belongs in the phone function.

Kara: FaceGoog or GoogleTime.

Rubin: There’s a whole bunch of software engineers hitting their keyboards back in Mountain View. If consumers want it, we’ll add it. [He strongly hints that it is coming, points out there already is Google video chat for PC.]

7:38 pm: Rubin reaches into his bag of tricks again. Pulls out a prototype Motorola tablet to show a forthcoming version of Google’s mobile map application.

7:38 pm: Shows the improved 3-D abilities and new panning and zooming options. What we are showing off here is some pretty cool performance.

“It will be available for cellphones in a matter of days,” Rubin says.

What allows the new presentation is that maps are no longer a series of tiles, but rather vector graphics.

7:40 pm: Vector data is smaller and more efficient, so users can load data in case they go offline. “You could load a whole state,” Rubin says.

This app runs on Android only for now, though it will work on tablets and phones.

Walt: What about PCs?

Rubin: That would be a natural extension.

7:41 pm: What version of Android is running on that tablet?

Rubin: Honeycomb [the next version of Android, due out some time next year]. There are no buttons on the Motorola tablet. He’s showing his personal email again.

7:43 pm: More on Honeycomb: We added new APIs to Honeycomb that allow an application to split its views to multiple views. On a a tablet they can be side by side, while on a phone they might be one after the other.

7:46 pm: On to Q&A.

7:46 pm: What about the Chrome OS team? What’s the delineation between the two?

Rubin: That’s a good question. Google was born on the Web. “I don’t think it would be doing its job unless it reinvested in the Web.”

But evolution of the Web had stagnated a bit, prompting Chrome. “It’s kind of slowed down a bit.”

Apps vs. Web?

There’s no need to argue. We’re doing both, Rubin says.

7:50 pm: What are the plans for the Android team to focus on the enterprise?

We did a little bit, Rubin says, but he likens it to baby steps. Support for VPN and some secure browsing. Gingerbread has some added features like remote wipe. Each release you will see more and more.

7:51 pm: App discovery. What are your plans?

Rubin: This is all evolving. The Android market is evolving as well. Gingerbread allows “related applications.” We are always adding features.

As a search company, if we can’t help you discover apps, I think we have a problem. We should be very easily able to organize a few hundred-thousand apps.

7:53 pm: Question about mobile payments; What is Andy Rubin’s vision? Groupon?

Rubin: I think there is a lot of opportunity. It is not an opportunity that is going to be seized by one company. Today Android does carrier billing integration, so you can put apps on your carrier bill. Creates an efficient micropayment option.

With Nexus S having added gyroscope capability, can see things from even within a store. Should help make, for example, better coupon apps.

7:57 pm: Android on TVs?

Rubin: That’s exactly what Google TV is. It is Android running on a set-top box. The first versions of that are running an Intel processor.

Have demonstrated the same app can run on both a three-inch screen or a flat-panel TV.

People are building all kinds of things. Refrigerators, ovens, automotive. Rubin says the nice thing about open source is that he and Google don’t have to be involved in every use. “We knew what to do to make it scale as widely as possible.”

7:58 pm: Question about carrier data plans and pricing.

Rubin: Average usage on an Android phone is 440MB a month. Rubin points out we are at a bandwidth crunch, but that it tends to be a cycle. New networks tend not to be overwhelmed by demand at first, but then the demands grow. Then new networks come along.

How should OEMs try to differentiate?

Rubin: I think HTC has done a really good job with Sense. Motorola has Blur. People are really differentiated.

Rubin says he often hears complaints about fragmentation. “Fragmentation” is the wrong word. Different phones do things differently, but that’s differentiation. Basically the apps are still compatible, Rubin says.

8:04 pm: Is Android too clunky? Will we see a sea change where Android really gets more user friendly?

Rubin: I would probably characterize Android today as an enthusiast product for early adopters–or wives of tech enthusiasts.

8:05 pm: Rubin says the company made some concessions that led to “geeking it out.” But then there are apps that offer easier customization and personalization.

8:07 pm: Walt points out places where it requires an extra step to do things like compose an email, while the iPhone does it in a single step.

Rubin: Yep. We get it. You will see the fruits of that investment in the tablets first and then in the phones. It’s going to get better. Honeycomb will be a good start

8:08 pm: Applause and they exit stage. ‘Night.

No love notes in the cloud for Marc Andreessen, maybe–but everything else is fair game.

That’s one of the funnier exchanges in an onstage interview BoomTown did earlier this week with Andreessen, the well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and now venture capital kingpin, and eBay CEO John Donahoe.

It took place at the PayPal X Innovate 2010 conference in San Francisco, in a keynote that focused a lot on the move to mobile payments and cloud computing.

And, according to both Andreessen and Donahoe, the smartphone is at the center of the action going forward, especially by shoving all the heavy lifting of information to the cloud.

While talking about music service, using Spotify as an example, Andreessen noted: “Everything should be configured to a social experience. Everything except love notes, or anything like that. That probably doesn’t belong in the cloud.”

I disagree, Marc! Love is lofty!

Interestingly, though, Andreessen–the man responsible for creating the invaluable Web browser–still thought it would remain as durable as ever going forward.

See him talk about all this and more in the longish video below, in which Donahoe also does a slip-’n’-slide on the stage’s carpet.

Here’s the video (don’t click on the main video screen or you’ll be jumped to another screen; click on the toolbar instead):

This will be Ballmer’s third time headlining CES, and after his first two appearances, I don’t think anyone’s expecting too much. The highlight of his 2009 keynote: The widely expected announcement of the Windows 7 beta. The highlights of his 2010 address: An ill-starred Windows-based tablet and Project Natal, a controllerless game interface system the company debuted at E3 months earlier.

Exciting stuff.

Said Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro, “As leader of one of the world’s most innovative technology companies, a keynote address from Steve Ballmer is the perfect way to kick off the 2011 International CES.”

Wonder what we have to look forward to this year? A new Windows 7 service pack?

This week, BoomTown took a big jet plane east to check out the doings during Internet Week in New York, as well as to moderate a keynote panel at the Digitas Digital Content NewFront with media moguls Martha Stewart of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post.

While still exhausted from the D: All Things Digital conference last week, how could I turn down such a pairing?

I could not!

No surprise, the two delivered a rocking show for the large crowd, including Stewart saying she would be all digital if she were starting out today and Huffington noting that she did not kill newspapers.

Here are video interviews I did with both before the panel, as well as some shots from a party Gawker Media threw at its lower Manhattan HQ for Internet Week, including a short chat with its terminally hyper CEO, Nick Denton.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100610/kara-visits-the-big-apple-geeks-plus-martha-and-arianna/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100608/meet-the-two-grad-students-who-freaked-out-the-nyt-the-pulse-ipad-app-creators-speak/ http://allthingsd.com/20100608/meet-the-two-grad-students-who-freaked-out-the-nyt-the-pulse-ipad-app-creators-speak/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:17:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29246

The first thing to strike you about the pair of Stanford University graduate students (pictured here) who made the banned and then unbanned news-reading iPad app, Pulse News Reader, is how they look like an advertisement for all that is good about entrepreneurship.

Sweet-natured, slightly naive, energetic and very product focused, they are the last techies you’d choose to be the ones who got the New York Times (NYT) in enough of a tizzy to force Apple to pull the aggregator from its App Store.

BoomTown met Akshay Kothari, 23, and 22-year-old Ankit Gupta this afternoon at a hotel near the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Pulse was called out yesterday by name by Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs for excellence only hours before the company had to stop offering it to users.

At first, the shy pair said they did not want to call attention to themselves or rail on Apple or the Times. After much convincing by me, they agreed to talk about their unusual situation in the video below, focusing on the product and its origins.

It started out simple enough, creating Pulse for the Launch Pad class at Stanford, which requires students to develop and put out a product. Both students are at Stanford’s Institute of Design and created a company called Alphonso Labs when Pulse was done.

It took them only four weeks to develop and, within weeks after it was approved for sale in the App Store, Pulse became a red-hot paid seller for the fast-growing tablet device–putting Pulse at No. 1 at times on the list of paid apps on iTunes.

In fact, the app was so well regarded that the Times wrote a rave about it last week.

The high culminated for Kothari and Gupta when Jobs named Pulse first in a list of the most-promising apps for the iPad in his keynote speech at the WWDC yesterday.

Unfortunately, that was the last hurrah for them, since the business side of the New York Times–after seeing the article about Pulse in the Times–had already fired off a letter to Apple demanding that the app be taken down.

“The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use,” wrote Times lawyer Richard Samson to Apple on June 3. “Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.”

Sources at the Times said that while there are many other similar readers for online news that do exactly the same thing, Pulse’s combined framing and use of the paper’s RSS feed for commercial gain–as well as, let’s be frank, its popularity–caused execs to make what looks like a pretty boneheaded move.

(Could they have called the pair first? Of course they could have, but they did not.)

So, after the Times lawyer wrote Apple, Apple wrote Kothari and Gupta, telling them of the removal of Pulse from the App Store: “The New York Times Company believes your application named ‘Pulse News Reader’ infringes The New York Times Company’s rights.”

Today, though, the app was suddenly back up with no comment from Apple.

A Times spokesperson said this might be a mistake and that the media giant did not know what had happened.

Neither did Gupta and Kothari, who said the app on sale now is the same as the old one, although they had submitted a new version without the Times as a default earlier today.

“It’s a mystery,” said Gupta. “Although it is sad that we were off the App Store right when people might have heard about us.”

The next step? Who knows?

UPDATE: Sources close to the situation said that the Pulse iPad app was reposted because the new version submitted earlier today does not automatically include the Times properties and that older versions sold will soon be updated.

Other sources also noted that the Times has had issues with many other third-party news readers in the past, though not one as visible as Pulse.

And it remains to be seen if Pulse’s creators face other irked content owners or not.

In any case, one thing is still certain: Like its creators, the innovative Pulse is sweet, and it is on sale for $3.99 at iTunes.

For now, that is.

Until the next twisty development, here’s the video interview of Kothari and Gupta:

[Photo by All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet--taken before the recent controversy.]

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