HP has agreed to let Time Warner’s publishing unit provide subscriptions for magazines on the device maker’s new tablet, due out this summer, according to a Time Inc. source.

Time Inc. will initially sell four magazines via the HP device: Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune and People.

HP is about to show off the new device, built using Palm’s webOS platform, at an event today, so we should get a few more details then.

But for now the deal means that HP is the only tablet maker to give a big publisher the subscription terms it wants. Time Inc. and other publishers had expected to sell subscriptions via Apple’s iPad/iTunes ecosystem last summer, but those plans fell apart, and negotiations haven’t gone far since then. The crucial sticking point was control and access to subscribers’ billing information and other data that are crucial to publishers’ business model.

Publishers are also expecting to work with Google and its Android platform, but have yet to announce anything.

It’s worth noting that this arrangement is between HP and Time Inc., and not Next Issue Media, the joint venture that is also supposed to represent publishers in their discussions with tablet makers.

Last week, Barbara Walters did her annual television show “The 10 Most Fascinating People” of the past year.

Among the riveting folks that the veteran ABC interviewer sat down with were the inevitable Betty White and the unbearable cast from “Jersey Shore” explaining “smushing,” which you can watch below.

Also stuffed on the list–although without the requisite chat with Walters–was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, mostly it seemed for starring in the social networking movie not much about his life.

Okay, BoomTown will bite on that one and, so inspired, it seems that it’s time for our own such list at All Things Digital.

Thus, here’s a whole bunch of choices below for your selection–pick one only, or add to the list.

Also say why you did so and we’ll publish the winners in two weeks (and sorry the survey looks jammed, but we’re working on a redesign!):

That’s because Apple and the publishing industry haven’t been able to come to terms over magazine app subscriptions: Publishers want the ability to sell the subscriptions themselves, or at least the opportunity to hang on to subscribers’ personal data. And Steve Jobs won’t let them.

Here’s what Apple is offering publishers, according to publishing sources:

• The ability to sell app subscriptions through iTunes.
• 70 percent of the revenue from each sale.
• The ability to offer an opt-in form for subscribers that would ask them for a limited amount of information: Name, mailing address, email address.

That offer has been on the table for a “couple months,” I’m told, and so far none of the big publishers have gone for it. They don’t like the 30 percent cut that Apple wants to take, but their real hang-up is lack of access to credit card data: It’s valuable to them for marketing, and without it they can’t offer print/digital bundles, either.

So for now, they’re hoping to get what they want from Google and Android, and assume Apple will come around eventually.

That doesn’t mean you won’t see any magazine subscription offerings on iTunes in the meantime.

Newsweek has chosen to sell its iPad magazine as a standalone subscription without getting any data at all. And Time Warner has chosen to give away People magazine’s digital version to any print subscriber. You could see more of both those options in the near future, for different titles.

And for publishers who are launching digital-only products, like the “Daily” don’t-call-it-a-newspaper that News Corp. is working on, Apple’s restrictions are far less problematic: Publishers don’t need to worry about upsetting their valuable print subscribers, because they don’t have any. (News Corp. also owns this Web site. It’s free!)

Speaking at Business Insider’s Ignition conference, News Corp. digital head Jon Miller said today that the Daily wouldn’t launch until the first quarter of 2011.* When it does, News Corp. officials expect it to showcase a new “push”  feature from Apple, where a new issue will arrive at subscribers’ iPads without asking them to request it.

*For the record, Miller insisted that the Daily was a “rumor.” But it seems undignified to type that in the main body of this story, given that News Corp. has hired dozens of people and earmarked a budget of more than $20 million for the project.

Here’s a reminder of what that was like: Meet StyleFind.com, which is supposed to be live Tuesday morning. It’s a new shopping site from Time Inc.’s InStyle magazine, and you’ll figure it out as soon as you see it.

In case you don’t: The site helps shoppers pick through some 2,000 brands, from 150 retailers, and eventually sends them off to partner sites, which handle the actual purchase and fulfillment. InStyle will get affiliate fees for forwarding on customers, giving the title another revenue stream to complement circulation and advertising.

StyleFind sports the requisite Twitter and Facebook buttons, but this isn’t one of the new breed of social shopping sites that have cropped up in the past year, like Svpply.

Instead, StyleFind assumes that shoppers are interested in the sense and sensibility that InStyle exudes, translated here by a small team of dedicated editors who pick out clothes and accessories.

Pretty straightforward stuff, and you can find versions of it elsewhere on the Web, and from other publishers as well. The major difference here is that Time Inc. built and operates the site itself, based on technology it acquired when it bought Boston-based StyleFeeder nearly a year ago for a price reported as “well into eight figures.”

Following that deal, Time Warner’s publishing unit then hired Bluefly vet John Carles to head up e-commerce for its Style group. Assuming Stylefind pans out, Carles will be able to use the same model for other titles, including People and even Entertainment Weekly, the publisher says.

Here are Bewkes’s prepared remarks from Time Warner’s earnings call this morning:

In Magazines, Content Everywhere means offering our subscribers a convenient, attractively-priced way of enjoying our titles in print and enhanced electronic versions, across as many devices as possible.

If you’ve downloaded an iPad version of one of our Time Inc. magazines, you know it’s a rich and compelling consumer experience. As you’d expect, we want to offer our customers a range of purchase options including single copy sales, digital subscriptions and combined print and digital subscriptions. For instance, subscribers to People’s print edition can now access the People iPad app for free.

In the near future, we expect to announce deals with other tablet makers that offer our readers flexible ways to access all our electronic titles. We’re confident that as competition increases in that space, every tablet manufacturer will want to give its consumers the same range of choices and the same value.

That’s a classic bit of corporatespeak, since it doesn’t pin Time Warner or its Time Inc. unit down to anything, with anyone. But it’s also easy to translate: “We were psyched about the iPad, but now we’re frustrated over the ongoing subscription standoff. But we bet Google will be very happy to help us out–and maybe that will prompt Apple to come around.”

It’s no secret that Time Inc., like every other magazine publisher, would very much like to work with Google*. Both because they think the new Android tablets will be a hit, and because publishers want leverage when they talk to Steve Jobs.

And it would make sense for Google to go out of its way to give content makers what they want–in this case, the ability to sell magazine subscriptions and keep all of the customer data–because more content makes its tablets more attractive.

We still don’t know what that will look like in practice. For instance, will publishers be able to sell subscriptions “in app,” or will they have to do it via a Google store?

And we also don’t know if the inability to buy digital magazines via subscriptions is what’s really holding back buyers, or if it’s just something they like to complain about on iTunes comments (which, it turns out, publishing executives take very, very seriously–every time I talk to one, they cite the anonymous scribblings).

But now Bewkes says we ought to know in the “near future.” Stay tuned….

*Yes, the content guys want to work with Microsoft on its Windows-flavored tablets and even RIM and its BlackBerry device, too. But Google’s the real focus here.

Okay, this is a freaky Friday video–a trailer for the upcoming movie “Wrecked,” starring Adrien Brody. He wakes up after a car accident at the bottom of a ravine in the deep forest and has no idea how he got there. Also, there are lots of dead people with him.

Really freaky:

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event.

The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook.

The theme, according to Microsoft (MSFT) SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, was search with “a little help from your friends.”

Let’s hope it’s not: “Help, I need somebody.”

11:35 am PT: Mehdi kicks off the show, announcing the line-up, which includes Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, it just got 100 percent more interesting here in this nondescript auditorium.

Mehdi talks a little bit about the future of search and making it better. He talks about social being an important part of it.

While I’d have gone with Barry Manilow, he quotes the Beatles.

Mehdi is followed by Microsoft Online Services Division President Qi Lu, who throws more love bombs at Facebook.

“With the partnershop of Facebook and Bing, we will be able to unlock…how people in a social relationship can be first-class citizens in a search experience,” said Lu.

It sounds so lofty, even though it is mostly trading movie review recommendations or good places to take the kids on a rainy Sunday.

Lu thanks Zuckerberg effusively and invites him onstage.

11:54 am: No hoodie.

Zuckerberg is also “honored to be here,” giving us a little history lesson about the origins of the social networking giant and its various and sundry efforts.

I’ll be honest, the lack of donuts is making me distracted.

He’s not actually saying more than bromides about “what would social search look like.”

And looking around at who would be the right partner in the arena. Microsoft! Of course! That giant investment way back when was nice too!

“They’re really the underdog here,” said Zuckerberg in the first interesting comment, noting that overdogs–that would be Google (GOOG), which he does not mention by name–never innovate much.

His take: Underdogs are the best.

12:01 pm: Mehdi is back to show off the wares in a demo.

First, what’s there. Web search in Facebook and Facebook status updates on Bing.

Zzzzzzzz. Get to the good stuff!

First, a module that brings in a Like module from Facebook into the search, with all the other information provided by Bing.

It is, said, Mehdi, particular for a person.

“This is going to profoundly change how we search,” he said of personalized experiences.

Mehdi also shows off a way to differentiate your friends who have names of famous people, who are the ones who come up on search first.

Interesting, but people search is not the biggest problem I have.

He also says more is coming, such as friend experts surfacing in search and Like in every result on a page that it was possible. Yipes!

Also, thank the Lord, the ability to turn it off.

12:15 pm: Now Facebook exec Dan Rose comes up and starts talking about the Facebook-Microsoft bromance.

Apparently, four years is an eternity in Silicon Valley in terms of a relationship.

Actually, four weeks is long, so congrats you two crazy kids!

I’d celebrate with a donut if they were here.

“More and more” social in Bing, said Rose.

It’s a match made in digital heaven!

12:22 pm: Q&A time!

So what more? The press is so unsatisfied! Yes, we are.

Zuckerberg takes the lead. New interfaces! More!

A privacy question. “This is Instant Personalization,” said Zuckerberg, who said that Facebook has five partners in that effort.

He explains Instant Personalization, saying he wants to clear up misconceptions.

It’s private enough, you oversharers!

“Just because it is all public information about you, this is really good,” he said.

But is it by default? Of course, it is. That’s Facebook modus operandi!

Opt-out should be tattooed on employees at Facebook as a requirement.

Bing does put up a warning at the top of the page, but only five times. Then, you need to go foraging to turn it off.

Next: Does Bing search queries get sent back to Facebook? Not necessarily.

But, “everything is going to be social eventually,” said Zuckerberg, as long as it is public.

Public is apparently the new black.

More questions about new Facebook Groups and other deets, none of which is that bracing.

Apropos of nothing, I am considering asking a question about the ever-exciting Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) scandal, just to jack up the volume.

I try to ask a question about Zuckerberg’s underdog comment, but no more time.

But Zuckerberg sort of addresses it, going on about why he has picked Microsoft as the favorite.

While he does not say it, it’s because Facebook is the overdog here and, as you know, every overdog needs an underdog.

Speaking of cartoon heroes, here is the opening of that classic television show:

Until now, Elowitz has been in the business of helping other publishers build sites with wiki-based tools. But now he’s opening up his own shop at Wetpaint.com, which should be working by the time you read this. (If not–take a look at the sample screenshot at the bottom of this post.)

Elowitz is presenting Wetpaint as a sort of upscale, thinkier version of content factories like Demand Media. Like Demand, Wetpaint uses technology to help it figure out which stories to assign–in Wetpaint’s case, via an “ingestion engine” that is supposed to crawl the Web looking for spiking stories on discussion boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The difference is that Demand is primarily interested in finding lots and lots of stories that will appeal to a relatively small group of searchers, which is how it ends up with search bait like “How to Donate a Used Car in Dallas.”

But Wetpaint is trying to create a destination site for a large number of eyeballs, and says it will use its tech to get them more of what they want, produced by a core group of 10 editorial employees and a freelance squad of 20.

“We don’t care about Google,” Elowitz says. “We’re not trying to get long-tail, we’re not trying to get search traffic.”

Okay. So that’s a bit of hyperbole–Elowitz would like some Google (GOOG) juice as much as the next publisher, which is one of the reasons he’s using the existing Wetpaint name for his site.

But he’s clearly set on exploiting social networks, too. He says Wetpaint.com, via its focus on Facebook-friendly TV shows, has already garnered 500,000 fans on the social network.

Elowitz is also positioning himself as a competitor of pop/gossip Web sites published by old media brands, specifically Time Warner’s (TWX) People, TMZ and Entertainment Weekly sites. But the people who read that stuff online don’t limit themselves to a handful of brands, which is why big Web players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) are there, too.

Add in freelance upstarts like Perez Hilton and millions more you’ve never heard of, and it’s a very, very crowded field. Elowitz will need a very clever tech team to make this work.

During his introduction of Facebook’s Places geo-location offering yesterday afternoon, like any good geek on launch day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hopping excitedly onstage about the rollout and promised more to come in the months ahead.

“We have a lot of other interesting launch nights coming out this summer,” he said to the crowd of media gathered in the decked-out cafeteria of the social networking behemoth’s HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.

Since summer is ending in a few weeks, he and I had a short chat after the presentation about exactly what that meant.

“This is just the start of a lot more to come, because I think it’s important that we bring out as many features and innovations as quickly as we can,” said Zuckerberg, whose kinetic demeanor appeared to be channeling a 12-pack of energy drinks.

He talked about a start-up night, as well as one devoted to Facebook’s recently released beta Questions product, which he said he thinks could be massive.

The feature, like Yahoo Answers or Quora, gives users the ability to get answers to their questions from friends and even the larger community.

“The way we do search right now doesn’t address exactly what people might be looking for,” said Zuckerberg. “Instead of messing around on Web pages, someday, you should put a request into a phone and have it beep with the right answer.”

I don’t think Zuckerberg was meaning to delivering a specific smack upside the head to Google (GOOG)–he must like the search giant a little since he has hired so many of its employees–although that’s the market that Facebook is aiming at, of course.

And, indeed, it’s aimed changing how search is done, using a smart melding of people knowledge and deep troves of data to deliver more than the brute-force results consumers get now via search.

Zuckerberg declined to name what else was up–”We have not made that public yet”–but it’s good to see a founder so engaged, in the style of Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL), Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN) and also, of course, the Google twins, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

While Facebook was clearly riding in the wake of the innovation of others in geo-location–such as Foursquare–with its Places entry, the race might not always be to the swift.

In fact, Zuckerberg seems to be hoping it is to the pretty fast and very steady.

Seems resistance from photo agencies trying to squeeze People for some extra money to allow their images to be used on the magazine’s iPad app wasn’t quite as bad as it had been made out to be. Either that or the publication agreed to pay photographers an additional iPad usage fee that acknowledges the device isn’t simply a promotional tool, but a new distribution mechanism and revenue stream.

Notably, the People iPad app is the first Time Inc. (TWX) offering free to print subscribers. The rest of the company’s flagship mag iPad apps are expected to join it in the next 30 days or so. As will the rest of the publishing industry’s for-tablet offerings.

This one, which Editor Terry McDonell showed off at Google’s I/O developer conference today, looks a whole lot like the one the publisher says it is bringing to Apple’s gadget soon. The real difference here is the way readers/buyers get their hands on the thing: Rather than buying it from Apple’s App Store and downloading it to your iPad, you would access it via your Web browser, after purchasing it from an app store Google manages.

For most users, this may not matter very much. Regardless of which store you buy it from, the magazine should function the same way. (Don’t get hung up on the fact that it’s a Web-based app.)

But for publishers like Time Inc., the Time Warner (TWX) unit that puts out Sports Illustrated and titles like Time and People, it’s potentially a big deal: It opens up a much wider audience for the company’s publications, since they should work on any device that supports Google’s Chrome browser. Just as important, it gives Time Inc. another vendor to work with, one that might be willing to grant it concessions Apple (AAPL) won’t–like control over subscriber information, perhaps.

But all of this is a little speculative, as neither Time Inc. nor Google (GOOG) has released concrete details about the app store or the magazine. But the hope is that both will be ready in the fall.

Meantime, here’s McDonell’s presentation. He’s introduced at the event by Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management.

And here’s cleaner version of a similar demo, which McDonell taped in advance:

This doesn’t look remarkably different from the tabletized magazine demos Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated have shown off before. That is, SI (and mag publishers in general) are still primarily concerned with porting their printed product to digital form, adding some audio and video, as well as selected links to the Web. This makes sense given that both demos were produced with the Wonder Factory design shop.

See for yourself: Compare and contrast today’s demo with the one SI showed off last fall:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100519/video-sports-illustrated-shows-off-a-google-ready-magazine/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/ http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:40:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=18035 Many Web publishers are scrambling to make some or all of their sites “iPad ready,” which basically means stripping their homepages of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash. Some, but not all, are being rewarded with a shout-out from Apple, via a page that identifies “iPad Ready” sites.

Here’s the list of publishers Apple (AAPL) says “deliver content that looks and functions beautifully on iPad”:

CNN
Reuters
New York Times
Vimeo
Time
Major League Baseball
The White House
Virgin America
Sports Illustrated
Flickr
People
TED

Apple acknowledges that this isn’t a complete list of iPad-compatible sites–both NPR and The Wall Street Journal, for instance, are overhauling their pages for the gadget–and it’s unclear whether Apple has any criteria for calling out these sites in particular. (For the record, I’m told that All Things Digital should work just fine, too).

But for whatever reason, the list appears to be particularly heavy on sites owned by Time Warner (TWX). CNN makes the cut, as do Time Inc. magazines Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

One other note: Check out the description Apple uses for each of the sites it calls out and you’ll see that “iPad-compatible” doesn’t mean “completely free of Flash.”

In many cases, Apple can’t say that all of the sites’ videos will play on the gadget. Just “most” videos, or “recently published” ones.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091013/fighting-words-time-warner-says-nbccomcast-as-dumb-as-time-warneraol/ http://allthingsd.com/20091013/fighting-words-time-warner-says-nbccomcast-as-dumb-as-time-warneraol/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:02:39 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12006 Just in case anyone thought Time Warner had any lingering interest in NBC Universal, this ought to put it to rest: Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes just compared the proposed Comcast/NBCU deal with the disastrous one his company made with AOL nearly a decade ago.

At a TVWeek conference in Manhattan, Bewkes repeated arguments he has made in the past: Chiefly, that big media mergers have a lousy track record and that he couldn’t see how Comcast (CMCSA) could unlock any value by buying a majority stake in NBC Universal from GE (GE).

“Somebody has finally noticed that these things don’t work out so well,” he said, adding “We love to see our competitors taking risks.”

But just to hammer that point home, Bewkes compared the proposed deal to the one his company made nine years ago when it embarked on an ill-fated merger with AOL. That deal (made when Bewkes was running Time Warner’s HBO unit)  “basically made no sense” at the time, he said.

The main talking point in favor of that transaction–that connecting Time Warner’s content with AOL’s Internet distribution would create synergy–was “nonsensical,” he said. But “these kind of arguments, you’ll hear some of them this week, in the other merger that we’ve been talking about,” Bewkes said.

Clear enough?

Wall Street, by the way, remains unimpressed with the proposed deal as well: Comcast shares are down about 10 percent since word got out.

In other reiteration news, Bewkes also said, again, that he doesn’t plan on selling his Time Inc. publishing unit. Though he left himself a tiny window of wiggling room by noting that “no public company can ever say that it wouldn’t consider restructuring some part, whether it’s Warner, HBO, whatever.”

But Bewkes insisted that Time Inc.’s best-known magazine brands, including “Time, People, Sports Illustrated, InStyle,” are holding their own as print products and that the challenge will be turning them into online successes.

“We have basically a healthy business in terms of our relationship with readers. These brands mean something and they’re evolving…,” he said. “If you can’t take the leading titles that people have known for decades, and use the new world to make them relevant, really, shame on us.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091013/fighting-words-time-warner-says-nbccomcast-as-dumb-as-time-warneraol/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090930/sprints-htc-hero-may-be-your-scene-in-smart-phones/ http://allthingsd.com/20090930/sprints-htc-hero-may-be-your-scene-in-smart-phones/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:02:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090930/sprints-htc-hero-may-be-your-scene-in-smart-phones/ Super-smart phones based on Google’s Android operating system have been relatively slow to take off since the first one appeared a year ago. Despite Google’s iconic brand, they have yet to develop the strong bond with U.S. consumers achieved by the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry or the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. And, after a year, Android has less than 10% of the 85,000 apps the iPhone now offers.

But Android is beginning to blossom in the market for this class of device, which is really a hand-held computer that performs many laptop-like functions.

In August, T-Mobile began offering a new $200 myTouch Android phone. Motorola (MOT) will shortly launch a new $200 Android model called the CLIQ. And, on Oct. 11, Sprint (S) will start selling perhaps the most unusual Android phone so far, the $180 HTC Hero. I’ve been testing the Hero, a touch-screen phone without a physical keyboard that has some important distinctions from earlier Android models. In general, I like the Hero and can recommend it to Sprint customers, or others looking for something powerful, but different.

HTC, a veteran Taiwan-based maker of phones, has altered Android more than anyone else so far. It has been gradually developing its own signature software layer that sits atop phone operating systems. With the Hero, it has applied this software for the first time to an Android phone, and that’s what sets the Hero apart from its Android brethren. The latest, beefed-up, version of this HTC software is called “Sense.”

Sense includes handsome, large widgets with extra features that go beyond the vanilla Android experience supplied to everyone by Google (GOOG). So the Hero looks and behaves somewhat differently. For instance, a contact page in the address book application consolidates that contact’s Facebook and Flickr accounts. The music player and photo album look better, and the Hero with Sense can use Microsoft’s Exchange service to synchronize mail, calendars and contacts.

Sprint’s HTC Hero

Sense also offers something called Scenes—entire collections of sets of screens and apps, either canned or customized, that can change the phone software’s look and feel. With just a couple of clicks, you could switch between a work-oriented “scene,” that prominently features apps such as a stock tracker and your work email, and an entertainment-oriented scene filled with the music player, photo album and other apps.

As with Sprint’s Palm (PALM) Pre, the Hero’s price is a bit deceptive. To get the phone for $180, you must remember to mail in a rebate form worth $100. At purchase, you have to put up $280. On the other hand, Sprint’s monthly fees can be much cheaper than those for other carriers. You’ll have to pay at least $70 a month to use the Hero, the same minimum fee that AT&T charges iPhone owners. But Sprint’s fee, unlike AT&T’s (T), includes unlimited text messaging and unlimited free calls to any mobile number on any network.

The Hero’s hardware isn’t especially beautiful. It’s a dull grey, noticeably thicker than the iPhone, with a smaller screen and six buttons plus a trackball, which adds another navigation option to the touch screen. It’s the same length as an iPhone, but is a bit narrower and lighter. It comes with just two gigabytes of memory, compared with eight gigabytes on the $99 iPhone and 16 gigabytes on Apple’s $199 model, though the Hero’s memory, unlike the iPhone’s, is expandable via a hard-to-reach slot under its removable back cover.

One big drawback is battery life. Sprint is only claiming up to four hours of talk time for the Hero, versus five hours for the Pre and iPhone. But, unlike the iPhone’s, the Hero’s battery is removable. Another drawback: I sometimes found the touch screen unresponsive, requiring multiple pokes at an icon.

On the plus side, the Hero has a much higher resolution camera than the iPhone’s or Pre’s—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It also functions as a video camera, and in my tests, both still photos and videos I took looked very good. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were clear and strong, and the phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in addition to Sprint’s high-speed network, which in my view is better than its reputation. Web browsing was adequate.

HTC’s Sense gives the Hero seven screens on which to place apps, versus Android’s standard three screens.

And, in addition to the standard Android apps and the 8,000 downloadable apps from Android’s Market app store, there are a variety of large, beautiful HTC “widgets” you can use. The downside of these is that they can occupy an entire screen.

The most impressive widget is called People. It’s an address book in which each contact’s page features a scrolling bar at the bottom with icons that allow you to see that person’s most recent Facebook status, photos from Facebook and Flickr, plus emails and text messages she’s sent to you and recent calls between you. This is somewhat similar to Palm’s Synergy feature, which is also based around people.

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

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/20090930/sprints-htc-hero-may-be-your-scene-in-smart-phones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090928/time-warner-dumping-its-magazines-not-so-fast/ http://allthingsd.com/20090928/time-warner-dumping-its-magazines-not-so-fast/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:00:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11419 Add another voice to the chorus of people who think Time Warner will get rid of its Time Inc. magazine group: Media investor Gordon Crawford is predicting that CEO Jeff Bewkes will shed his conglomerate’s namesake publishing unit.

Crawford’s thinking: After Time Warner ditches AOL, which is scheduled for a spinoff later this year, the company will ditch its magazine business as well. That will leave it with a portfolio made up only of a movie studio and cable networks, and a big cash pile to play with.

Time Warner won’t comment, but I’m sure the company has heard Crawford make this prediction before. His Capital Research Global Investors owns more than eight percent of Time Warner shares, which means he gets plenty of access to Bewkes and his lieutenants.

But here’s the thing: The body language from Time Warner executives in recent months makes me think they intend to keep at least part of their magazine business in the family. More than body language, actually: “Time Warner without People? I can’t imagine it,” one well-placed Time Warner official told me recently.

That said, I won’t be surprised if the publisher employs fewer people, producing fewer magazines in the future.

Time Warner officials have repeatedly said that Time Inc. has too many titles: The magazine unit publishes 23 magazines in the U.S. How many can you name? And last year’s mass layoffs, while unprecedented for the publisher, were still fairly modest compared to other publishers’ cuts. The six percent reduction left Time Inc. with some 9,400 people on the payroll.

But executives at the publisher love to stress, off the record, that its flagship titles–Time, People and Sports Illustrated–are each on track to generate millions of dollars of profit this year, even though ad pages and revenue are down. And while Time Inc. certainly hasn’t figured out its digital business yet, at least some of its print properties could and should do well on the Web, as People.com is already doing.

There are certainly assets that Bewkes and company could dispose of fairly easily. For instance, its U.K.-based IPC Media unit, which handles many of the 90-plus titles it publishes outside the U.S., is frequently brought up as a sale candidate. But I’d be surprised if he got rid of Time Inc. and its iconic brands altogether.

For the record, here’s how Time Inc. performed in the first half of the year. The company has already said it expects similar numbers for the remainder of 2009 (click table below to enlarge).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090928/time-warner-dumping-its-magazines-not-so-fast/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090909/to-kai-fu-lee/ http://allthingsd.com/20090909/to-kai-fu-lee/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:00:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=24271

Kai-Fu Lee’s uneventful departure from Google to start a Beijing incubator really belies the spectacle that attended the beginning of his tenure at the search giant.

Lee’s train-hopping from Microsoft (MSFT) to Google (GOOG) back in 2005 touched off a five-month pitched battle marked by all manner of inanities. Among them was this account of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s now-infamous alleged chair-tossing tantrum told by former Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Mark Lucovsky:

Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure…At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “F–king Eric Schmidt is a f–king p–sy. I’m going to f–king bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f–king kill Google.”

Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay…Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”

And there were others as well. Certainly, the sourcing of some of Microsoft’s legal docs was amusing. As I wrote at the time:

Kai-Fu Lee may be a top-drawer research engineer, but his understanding of the mechanics of Microsoft’s desktop environment leaves a bit to be desired. Turns out Microsoft recovered Lee’s employment contract with Google, which figures prominently in its suit against the search leader (see “And, if you’re beaten by Microsoft thugs, our generous health plan will cover you”), from the “recycle bin” of one of Lee’s computers. Odd that Lee would choose to browse offers from his employer’s rivals on his work computer. Odder still that having done so, he would neglect to scrub them with a secure erase program. Clearly, he must have been a bit lightheaded after learning of Google’s promise to allow his stock options in the company to vest even if he was unable to start work for a year.

Then there was Lee’s testimony about a meeting with Bill Gates, during which the Microsoft chairman blew his top, shouting that the Chinese people and the Chinese government had “f—ked” Microsoft.

And, finally, there were the videotaped depositions, like one from Ballmer that included this great bit:

Ballmer: “Kai-Fu had a–a distinct commitment and responsibility on behalf of the company for being the senior executive here in Redmond, with responsibility for godfathering, shepherding all of our R&D activities in China. It’s a structure we also use for India. We have a senior executive with knowledge of India be the R&D godfather for India, encourage work to go there, shepherd, and–and mentor people in the area. Kai-Fu had that broad, important responsibility for China.”

Deposing lawyer: “This term, ‘godfather’–is that an official title within the Microsoft organization?”

Hard to believe Kai-Fu Lee’s tenure at Google China ended with such a whimper, although there are many quiet rumblings of trouble he had with Google’s top execs in Silicon Valley, given the bang it began with.

But it did. And here endeth the history lesson.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090909/to-kai-fu-lee/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090728/a-preview-of-time-warner-earnings-bummer-at-aol-bummer-at-magazines-just-a-bummer/ http://allthingsd.com/20090728/a-preview-of-time-warner-earnings-bummer-at-aol-bummer-at-magazines-just-a-bummer/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:00:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16525

When Time Warner reports its second-quarter earnings tomorrow morning, before the markets open, most Wall Street analysts are not expecting much from the media giant, as it continues to slog toward a rejiggering of itself.

Time Warner (TWX)–which owns assets like the Warner Bros. movie studio, the AOL online unit, the HBO and Turner cable television networks and Time Inc. magazines–is expected to earn 37 cents per share, compared to 72 cents a year ago, according to a poll of analysts from Thomson Reuters (TRIN).

Revenue is expected to be $6.97 billion, down from $11.56 billion in the same quarter last year. This drop is mostly due to the March spinoff of its cable unit, Time Warner Cable.

With movies like “The Hangover” and the sixth in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” doing well, there is some strength at Time Warner.

But the advertising market has been weak all over, which hits the company hard.

That’s why both AOL and the magazines are expected to keep up their drag on Time Warner’s financial prospects–at least until the November spinoff of the online unit.

Until then, most expect another miserable quarter from AOL advertising revenue. Sources noted that any turnaround won’t show till end of year at the earliest, due to the weak economy and a retooling of the company and its sales force.

That restructuring is not over, most agree, with expectations of more layoffs of some of its 7,000 employees coming. With the 100-day overview by new CEO Tim Armstrong now over, sources said, the staff size is likely to be adjusted accordingly.

Most also expect to see continued weakness at the long-suffering Time Inc. magazine division.

People outside the company think that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes will want to sell or spin off Time Inc. once AOL is done.

And people inside the company talk about the fact that Time has some 125 titles, although most of the revenue and profit only come from a few titles, such as People, Sports Illustrated and Time.

According to sources at the magazine division, talk of a new round of layoffs has also been also circulating there of late.

[The t-shirt image courtesy of Zazzle.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090728/a-preview-of-time-warner-earnings-bummer-at-aol-bummer-at-magazines-just-a-bummer/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090415/a-miserable-three-months-for-the-magazine-business-sales-down-202-at-least/ http://allthingsd.com/20090415/a-miserable-three-months-for-the-magazine-business-sales-down-202-at-least/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:16:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6320 If you talked to any remotely candid publisher about magazine performance during the first three months of this year, the response would be a glower and an epithet. Here’s what that translates to in numbers: Ad revenue was down 20.2 percent, and ad pages were down 25.9 percent.

Those numbers come from the Publishers Information Bureau and they probably understate the case: The revenue numbers are based on publishers’ rate cards, which are usually a polite fiction to begin with. So when you look a the title-by-title numbers provided by the Magazine Publishers of America, assume that things are worse than they seem.

So that can’t be good for the two publications that logged the biggest drops I could see at first glance: U.S News and World Report, down 68.8 percent, and Condé Nast’s Portfolio, down 60.9 percent. But those titles have had struggles for quite a while. Not so stalwarts like People, which has been a reliable moneymaker for Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. But that title saw a 13.7 percent drop, too.

What’s coming up? A few publishers have told me that their Q2 doesn’t look substantially worse, which qualifies as good news these days. What doesn’t: Some publishers also tell me that some of their Q2 ad pages reflect ad budgets that were committed many months ago, timed to product launches and other events that can’t be scrapped. So it’s hard to tell if we’re even level yet.

A better indicator: how many more publishers go back for another round of layoffs, as Forbes did last month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090415/a-miserable-three-months-for-the-magazine-business-sales-down-202-at-least/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081210/more-not-bad-news-from-time-inc-peoplecom-booming/ http://allthingsd.com/20081210/more-not-bad-news-from-time-inc-peoplecom-booming/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:39:07 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=1939 That was fun writing not-bad news from Time Inc. yesterday. Let’s try it again:

While it’s true that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit is embattled, there are bright spots in the portfolio. Take People.com: The gossip magazine has always been one of Time’s strongest performers (good luck trying to find a discounted subscription). Now its companion Web site is, too.

The site boasts 8.6 million unique monthly visitors, per comScore (SCOR), up 36 percent in the last year, and generates a staggering 700 million page views per month–per Omniture (OMTR). Meanwhile, once-hot sites like TMZ.com (another Time Warner property) have tailed off.

Much of the credit for that goes to Mark Golin, the awesomely sharp and frumpy editor best known as the man behind Maxim magazine’s rise, way back in the late 1990s. He’s successfully broadened the site beyond just Britney/Paris/Lindsay news by adding features like a game channel, a shopping channel and the like.

One of the most successful expansions came via acquisition: When People.com bought Celebrity Baby Blog back in May, it was generating 6.9 million page views per month. Now it’s doing 30 million, Time execs say. And before my fellow journobloggers dismiss the work that the people at Celebrity Baby Blog do, ask yourself this: Did you know that Ashlee Simpson has named her kid Bronx Mowgli? Aren’t you glad you know now?

In any case, all those page views are translating into actual dollars–not digital pennies, as NBC’s Jeff Zucker would say. Time Inc. says People.com is now one of its 10 most profitable titles–that’s out of all of the company’s 174 properties, on or offline.

The company won’t attach numbers to that claim, of course. But given that Time Inc. generated $162 million in operating profit during a very lousy third quarter, you can get some sense of the property’s success. Now Time just needs many more just like it.

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