In an interview Thursday, Mr. Katzenberg said that since Paramount is expected to move into the “lower end of the animation business,” its new unit “isn’t going to impact DreamWorks at all.”

Mr. Katzenberg’s comments follow Paramount’s announcement Wednesday that it will open its own animation division, pitting it against Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

One of the best lines I ever heard from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — who has been very vocal about casting light on women’s challenges in the workplace — was about her service on the Disney board.

Discussing the depiction of its happy-ending female animated characters, she joked to me that what she always pushed for at meetings were “princesses with jobs.”

Sandberg seems to have gotten her wish now, with this upcoming movie from Disney unit Pixar, “Brave.”

Incredibly, it’s the first time in its dozen films that Pixar has a female hero at its center.

It’s about a red-headed Scottish princess named Merida, who insists on being a warrior — complete with rocking bow and arrow.

Finally.

I can tell you that Windows Azure is going to make the telematics systems in the next generation of Toyota cars smarter. And I also know that this unit of Microsoft has been in a state of management flux recently. Amitabh Srivastava, the Microsoft Distinguished Fellow, who in 2006 took over a project then known only as Red Dog that went on to become Azure, left the company in February.

It’s no secret that, like so many other companies, Microsoft has some big plans for cloud services. It recently disclosed that it plans to spend more than $8 billion in research and development funds on its cloud strategy.

On a recent visit to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, I got a chance to sit down with Doug Hauger, Microsoft’s general manager of Windows Azure. And my first question was really really basic.

NewEnterprise: Doug, there’s so much happening in the cloud computing space these days, and most of the time when people think of cloud services they think of Amazon Web Services. And if they mention Windows Azure, they think, well, that’s Microsoft’s answer to Amazon. But you describe Azure as more of a platform-as-a-service. Can you walk me through the differences?

Hauger: Windows Azure started about five years ago. At that point it started because the company, as with all service providers, was facing some challenges on providing large, scalable, manageable services, not just to consumers, but to businesses that could dynamically scale, and that we could innovate on quickly, and bring out new features. Originally it was meant to be a platform we would use internally for services that we would then deliver out to customers. We quickly realized that we should sell it to partners and customers, and allow them to build on it as a platform.

There are fundamental differences between infrastructure as a service and what we did as platform as a service. It’s different in key ways from, say, what Amazon does with EC2 and S3 or VMWare being implemented in a data center. Our starting point for the design was to see the data center as a unit. That means the networking structure, the load-balancers, the power management, and so on–rather than in infrastructure as a service, you start from an individual server and move up.

If you allocate a service into Windows Azure and say you want it available 100 percent of the time, we will allocate it across multiple upgrade domains and physical power domains in such a way so that if any individual rack goes down or if we’re upgrading the operating system, there’s no interruption in service. That’s just a fundamentally different starting point, with an individual server and moving up. And the way that we do that is we have built out an abstraction layer of APIs that let you write to a set of services, storage services, computer services, networking services, et cetera. As a developer you can write to the service, and give us your application, and it just gets provisioned through what we call a fabric controller, that controls the data center, and also across multiple data centers. That was a design point. That’s how we allow people to write services that can scale and won’t fail and will be available all the time.

The conversation about infrastructure as a service typically starts at cost savings. You go see a customer and they say they want to cut their IT budget and outsource their IT, and so they start there. Platform as a service you start at the cost savings, but very quickly you see 10, 20 or 30 percent cost savings. But the conversation quickly turns to the innovation life cycle that they can get out of the platform. It’s much faster than you can at infrastructure as a service.

The big point that everyone gets about the cloud is that they can use it to save money, but then they quickly start asking what more can they do with the cloud. Are you seeing the same thing?

Yes, exactly. In the enterprise, they’re starting to turn the crank on innovation. I talk to customers who are turning things around in six weeks or a month whereas before they would six months or a year. I actually just talked to a customer the other day, and they said their developers were spending 40 to 50 percent of their time managing services and they couldn’t use that time writing software which was their job. When they moved to a platform as a service, they didn’t have to worry about that anymore. We’re seeing this happening in the enterprise where people are doing this for internal development and on services they’re building for their customers.

One example, Daimler just did their new version of the smart car. They wanted a service so you can check the status of your car when its charging from your smart phone, locate it, et cetera. They turned it around in a couple of weeks on Azure and launched it at the same time as the car launched.

We’re also seeing small players compete at the enterprise level. There’s a small company called Margin Pro and they do mortgage analysis and risk assessment on mortgages. Basically it’s a couple of economists and developers. They wrote the software on Windows Azure, and now they have 70 banks around the world, tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and they are competing with some of the biggest financial services companies in the world because of this back-end infrastructure data center they can use to deliver their results to their customers.

But do you have customers who run standard apps on it too?

Many standard applications have some level of customization, and so we’re seeing a lot of hybrid applications, where customers are extending them into Azure. We have a case with Coca-Cola Enterprises which has a back-end order-processing app that they’ve extended into Azure. And what they wanted to do was get more reach and more agility for the front-end. So they built a secure connection between their data center and Windows Azure and then extended the application out to their partners and customers, essentially people like Domino’s Pizza who order Coca Cola products. We’re seeing a lot of these cases of existing applications being extended like that.

We’re also seeing companies using the high performance computing workload. One example is a company called Greenbutton, which has done a high performance scheduling and billing system on Azure. Another is Pixar, which has an application called RenderMan, which does rendering. Most large animation houses have their own clusters they do this rendering on. Pixar wanted to open up a market for smaller animation houses, little Pixars if you will. They’re working with Greenbutton to embed their technology into RenderMan. They can farm their rendering out to Azure and be billed on a usage basis. That’s a case where you have a large company and a smaller one working together and leveraging the power of the cloud to open up a whole new marketplace where they can be competitive. We call it the democratization of IT.

At what point is the customers’ thinking right now? Are they still at that point where they want to see how much money they can save by moving things that are on-premise to the cloud or are they past that by now?

I would say there’s three buckets of customers. I’ve been in this role for three years and the conversations have evolved in some interesting ways. Three years ago I was telling people they should be adopters and get on board with this platform early. They all said to come back and talk to them in five years. Then about two years ago, the majority of customers were in the first bucket, interested in wanting to save money but they weren’t interested in doing any new innovation. And then there were a few willing to innovate a bit by extending their applications into the cloud. Today I would say many, but not the majority yet, but a lot of them say they get the cloud, they get the cost savings, and now they want to drive the innovation life cycle faster. And there is a growing percentage who are willing to do something completely different and compete in a new way and build a brand new business. It’s been exciting to see that.

What’s been really exciting has been seeing mid-sized companies realizing they can use the cloud to give them an advantage to innovate faster and compete against really big companies. So that is sort of the landscape. Interestingly, I’ve been seeing a lot more adoption among the financial services companies than I had anticipated.

Aren’t they the ones who are supposed to be the most conservative when it comes to IT? I mean, they’re aggressive on performance, but obsessed with security and so skeptical of using the cloud because they don’t want to let their data leave their hands.

Exactly. But think about financial services. They’ve been in cloud computing forever, but it’s just been running on their own proprietary clouds. And so they are very good about understanding their application portfolio, and what can run in a public cloud, what has to stay in a private cloud, and how they can span those clouds. You can basically say you want to do risk assessment on portfolios, you anonymize the data, and you run it on the public cloud, you do all the analytics, you bring it back on-premise and then you deliver it to your customer. Having that kind of mentality in that industry allows them to move very quickly.

Also, manufacturing is moving and adopting the cloud faster than I would have guessed. And interestingly enough, government–not so much federal, because there’s so many certification requirements–but state and local governments are embracing the cloud because of the economic situation, and these are not just governments within the U.S. In Australia and Western Europe, we’re seeing governments adopting and building out applications so they can get services out to their citizens.

So what’s keeping you up at night? What makes you worry?

There’s a few things I think about. While we drive customers to a very fast innovation life cycle, we need to stay ahead of that innovation life cycle ourselves. We’ve done a pretty good job with that. One example, when we first released in beta a few years ago, we had .NET but we didn’t have PHP or Java. We got feedback immediately, almost on the first day, that customers wanted those and right away. And so we turned it around and added those within three months. Our ability to turn the crank pretty quickly is there. And that is something that in the software industry and specifically Microsoft, we have to make sure we make this turn toward service delivery, where we have to innovate quickly so you can deliver services. I think we’re doing a good job, but it’s something top of mind for me.

What are they asking for now? Is there something new the customers want that they don’t have?

They’re asking for continued investment in Java. We have it now, but making it a truly first class citizen, which is what we’re focused on delivering. We also need to keep our ear to the ground around things like application frameworks, extending the modeling capabilities in Visual Studio and things like that. It’s just a matter of thinking about the developer. We need to understand what they want, that’s what we’re here for.

BoomTown is swanning around Los Angeles today, so it seemed apt to post this amazing video, in which one of its movies was made real in the skies.

That would be Disney-Pixar’s animated gem “Up,” in which a house was carried away by balloons.

The National Geographic Channel replicated that film;s iconic theme in real life for a new television cable series called “How Hard Can It Be?”

Hard, as it turned out, but still doable. It required a cluster of 300 helium-filled weather balloons to lift a 2,000-pound house–along with a lot of engineers and other smart folks.

The house sailed for about an hour, 10,000 feet up, which–for some reason, as goofy as the effort was–made my heart fly too.

Enjoy:

The official release below:

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REQUIRES SIX HIGH TECH COMPANIES TO STOP ENTERING INTO ANTICOMPETITIVE EMPLOYEE SOLICITATION AGREEMENTS

Settlement Preserves Competition for High Tech Employees

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice announced today that it has reached a settlement with six high technology companies–Adobe Systems Inc., Apple Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp., Intuit Inc. and Pixar–that prevents them from entering into no solicitation agreements for employees. The department said that the agreements eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees, and overall diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed a civil antitrust complaint today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, along with a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, the six companies entered into agreements that restrained competition between them for highly skilled employees. The agreements between Apple and Google, Apple and Adobe, Apple and Pixar and Google and Intel prevented the companies from directly soliciting each other’s employees. An agreement between Google and Intuit prevented Google from directly soliciting Intuit employees.

“The agreements challenged here restrained competition for affected employees without any procompetitive justification and distorted the competitive process,” said Molly S. Boast, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The proposed settlement resolves the department’s antitrust concerns with regard to these no solicitation agreements.”

In the high technology sector, there is a strong demand for employees with advanced or specialized skills, the department said. One of the principal means by which high tech companies recruit these types of employees is to solicit them directly from other companies in a process referred to as, “cold calling.” This form of competition, when unrestrained, results in better career opportunities, the department said.

According to the complaint, the companies engaged in a practice of agreeing not to cold call any employee at the other company. The complaint indicates that the agreements were formed and actively managed by senior executives of these companies.

The complaint alleges that the companies’ actions reduced their ability to compete for high tech workers and interfered with the proper functioning of the price-setting mechanism that otherwise would have prevailed in competition for employees. None of the agreements was limited by geography, job function, product group or time period. Thus, they were broader than reasonably necessary for any collaboration between the companies, the department said.

The department said in its complaint:

Beginning no later than 2006, Apple and Google executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Google on its internal “Do Not Call List,” which instructed employees not to directly solicit employees from the listed companies. Similarly, Google listed Apple among the companies that had special agreements with Google and were part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list;

Beginning no later than May 2005, senior Apple and Adobe executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Adobe on its internal “Do Not Call List” and similarly, Adobe included Apple in its internal list of “Companies that are off limits”;

Beginning no later than April 2007, Apple and Pixar executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Pixar on its internal “Do Not Call List” and senior executives at Pixar instructed human resources personnel to adhere to the agreement and maintain a paper trail;

Beginning no later than September 2007, Google and Intel executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google listed Intel among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list. Similarly, Intel instructed its human resources staff about the existence of the agreement; and

In June 2007, Google and Intuit executives agreed that Google would not cold call any Intuit employee. In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google also listed Intuit among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.

The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the companies from engaging in anticompetitive no solicitation agreements. Although the complaint alleges only that the companies agreed to ban cold calling, the proposed settlement more broadly prohibits the companies from entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees. The companies will also implement compliance measures tailored to these practices.

Today’s complaint arose out of a larger investigation by the Antitrust Division into employment practices by high tech firms. The division continues to investigate other similar no solicitation agreements.

Adobe Systems Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in San Jose, Calif., and 2009 revenues of nearly $3 billion. Apple Inc. is a California corporation with its principal place of business in Cupertino, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $42 billion. Google Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Mountain View, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $23 billion. Intel Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Santa Clara, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $35 billion. Intuit Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Mountain View, Calif., and 2009 revenues more than $3 billion. Pixar is a California corporation with its principal place of business in Emeryville, Calif.

The proposed settlement, along with the department’s competitive impact statement, will be published in The Federal Register, as required by the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act. Any person may submit written comments concerning the proposed settlement within 60 days of its publication to James J. Tierney, Chief, Networks & Technology Enforcement Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 Fifth Street N.W., Suite 7100, Washington D.C. 20530. At the conclusion of the 60-day comment period, the court may enter the final judgment upon a finding that it serves the public interest.

The companies, which include Google Inc., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and Walt Disney Co. unit Pixar Animation, are in the final stages of negotiations with the government, according to people familiar with the matter.

The talks are still fluid, these people said, with some companies more willing to settle to avoid an antitrust case than others. If negotiations falter, both sides could be headed for a defining court battle that could help decide the legality of such arrangements throughout the U.S. economy.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Yesterday, BoomTown headed to the well-appointed downtown San Francisco HQ of Twitter as part of a renewed quest that I have dubbed “Meet the Twits.”

No, really! Since Twitter has been on a significant hiring spree for all kinds of execs and staffers–it now has almost 250 employees–I have been in need of some serious meeting and greeting to see what’s going on there at the microblogging kingpin.

In fact, on my way to chat with COO Dick Costolo and Vice President of Engineering Michael Abbott–newly arrived from Palm and going full Ahab on the fail whale–I ran into former Google (GOOG) exec and spanking-new Twitter international head Katie Stanton and February-appointed CFO Ali Rowghani, formerly of Pixar.

It’s exec-mania over there!

Thus, the first place to start had to be a chit-chat with Costolo, who is about to have his one-year anniversary at Twitter as No. 2 to CEO and co-founder Evan Williams.

Costolo, as anyone who knows him well will tell you, is a very funny guy and also pretty forthright on what’s happening at Twitter.

He’d know, of course, as an early adviser and investor at the start-up–who came to Twitter rather suddenly after leaving Google, which had bought Costolo’s Feedburner.

Here’s the interview I did with Costolo, in which he talks about new execs, promoted tweets and trends, what’s next for the Silicon Valley darling and also the false, but funny, rumor of an IPO “craving” he has:

(You can also click here to see MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka’s video interview with Costolo in April about its ad business and his thoughts on Twitter’s third-party developers.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100818/twitters-coo-dick-costolo-talks-about-management-monetization-and-ipo-cravings/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100716/the-facebook-movie-is-a-money-maker-for-twitter/ http://allthingsd.com/20100716/the-facebook-movie-is-a-money-maker-for-twitter/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:46:44 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=21571 You won’t see ads for the upcoming Facebook movie on Facebook. But you can see them on Twitter: “The Social Network,” Sony’s Mark Zuckerberg-inspired drama, is currently a “Promoted Trend” on the messaging service.

It’s not surprising that the movie is using Twitter as a launching pad. Hollywood studios have been some of the prominent, um, friends of Twitter’s new ad platforms.

Twitter launched Promoted Trends–the most conventional ad platform it has used so far–with a “Toy Story 3″ campaign from Disney’s (DIS) Pixar, and Disney was also the first to use Twitter’s new “@earlybird” e-commerce promotion, for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” News Corp.’s (NWS) 20th Century Fox has bought Promoted Trends time for its “Predators.”

It is a little surprising that Sony is buying ad time now for a movie that won’t show up until the fall. All of the earlier Twitter movie campaigns have been timed to films’ opening weekends, which makes sense, given Twitter’s “whatishappeningrightnowatthisverysecondimustknownow” vibe.

But given that Internet typists like myself are busy typing away about the ad buy, it’s obviously a success.

And! A good excuse for me to show off the new trailer for the David Fincher/Aaron Sorkin collaboration, featuring a choral version of Radiohead’s “Creep.” Looks excellent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100716/the-facebook-movie-is-a-money-maker-for-twitter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100610/marketers-face-zooming-costs-as-espn-launches-3-d-channel/ http://allthingsd.com/20100610/marketers-face-zooming-costs-as-espn-launches-3-d-channel/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:00:28 +0000 Suzanne Vranica http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=25864 Walt Disney Co.’s (DIS) ESPN network has convinced three major advertisers to produce expensive 3-D commercials for its new sports channel debuting Friday with the 2010 World Cup broadcast.

It is the first major test of marketers’ appetite for 3-D pitches. Procter & Gamble Co. (PG), Sony Corp. (SNE) and Disney’s Pixar will all experiment with spots on the new 3-D sports channel. ESPN has previously aired several 3-D telecasts, including the Masters Tournament.

Trying to convince the ad industry to embrace the in-your-face technology is tough. Ad executives say 3-D ads are costly and represent a time-consuming effort since there are so few production firms skilled enough to create these types of spots.

Prices to create regular, 30-second ads, for major marketers, can cost between $500,000 to $1 million and 3-D commercials can increase the price by 30 to 40 percent, say ad executives.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100610/marketers-face-zooming-costs-as-espn-launches-3-d-channel/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100510/toy-story-3-web-site-flash/ http://allthingsd.com/20100510/toy-story-3-web-site-flash/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 13:16:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40131 As Disney’s largest shareholder and most prominent board member, Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs may have left his fingerprints all over the media giant’s new retail strategy, but they aren’t quite so visible on its Web strategy.

Certainly, Disney’s (DIS) Web design team doesn’t seem to have received Jobs’s recent memo on Adobe (ADBE) Flash, because its site for the upcoming Pixar film, “Toy Story 3,” appears to have been built using Flash. Below, the official “Toy Story 3″ Web site as viewed on an iPad:

[Image credit: John Gruber]

UPDATE: That was fast. Looks like Disney’s tweaked the site to support the iPad. As of 1:46 PM PST the site works just fine on Apple’s new device.

UPDATE: Disney claims today’s cock-up was the result of a technical glitch that “led some iPad users to be inadvertently redirected to the Flash-based site, instead of the iPad enabled site.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100510/toy-story-3-web-site-flash/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100427/1980s-nostalgia-youtube-pixars-awesome-toy-story-3-viral-ad/ http://allthingsd.com/20100427/1980s-nostalgia-youtube-pixars-awesome-toy-story-3-viral-ad/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:57:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=18783 Good going, Pixar! I don’t really need extra prodding to pay attention to Toy Story 3 this summer. But now you’ve gone ahead and made sure I’m all in, with this excellent new ad campaign.

Yahoo News has the details, but the short version is that Disney’s (DIS) animation unit is introducing a new character for the franchise . And it’s doing so via a fake retro commercial it has seeded on Google’s YouTube (GOOG).

That’s clever enough. But what I really appreciate is that the Pixar folks have gone ahead and populated an entire YouTube “channel” for “MrCrazycommercials“, who describes himself as someone who loves “classic commercials that remind me of the good ol’ days, when things were happy and carefree!”.

Which means we also get to see real 1980s commercials that are going to resonate with people of a certain age.

Like this beauty:

And this one.

If you’re really into this stuff, it turns out there are plenty of other YouTube viewers just like you. You can check out out channels like “MrClassicAds“, which looks to be the work of a real person. And features awesome clips like this 1977 ad for the IBM 5100, a 50-pound “portable” computer.

But be warned! You can lose a lot of time here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100427/1980s-nostalgia-youtube-pixars-awesome-toy-story-3-viral-ad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100311/good-news-for-netflix-web-users-disney-reups-with-starz/ http://allthingsd.com/20100311/good-news-for-netflix-web-users-disney-reups-with-starz/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:51:13 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17290 Premium TV network Starz Entertainment has re-upped with Disney on its distribution deal, assuring access to the studio’s movies through 2015.

Why are you reading about this on a site that pays attention to digital media? Because the Starz renewal includes the rights to redistribute Disney’s movies on all platforms, including digital.

Meaning that Netflix (NFLX), which has been able to stream Disney (DIS) movies via its own Starz deal, will continue to do so.

This news will be a bit surprising to some observers, who expected that Disney would shut down that option sooner or later.

Here’s the release:

Disney and Starz Entertainment Extend Pay TV Output Agreement
 
Burbank, Calif. and Englewood, Colo. – March 11, 2010 – Starz Entertainment, LLC, and Disney-ABC Domestic Television, a division of The Walt Disney Company, announced today the signing of a new, exclusive long-term licensing agreement for theatrical releases from The Walt Disney Studios through 2015. The previous output agreement was set to run through 2012. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
 
The deal extension provides Starz with exclusive pay TV rights to exhibit theatrically released Walt Disney Studios ?live-action and animated feature films, including those from Marvel Entertainment, on its Starz, Encore and MoviePlex linear channels, and its related on-demand and IP-based services, both in standard and high definition. Walt Disney Studios theatrical releases in the agreement, in addition to Marvel, include pictures produced under the Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney-Pixar, Touchstone Pictures, and Hollywood Pictures labels. Theatrical releases from DreamWorks Studios and Miramax Films will not be licensed to Starz under the new agreement.
 
Janice Marinelli, president, Disney-ABC Domestic Television, and Bill Myers, Starz Entertainment president and chief operating officer, announced the agreement on behalf of the companies.?

“Disney and Starz have been partners since the launch of the flagship Starz premium channel back in 1994, and we are pleased to be able to extend our very successful relationship,” said Marinelli. “With this long-term extension, Starz’s subscribers will continue to experience the magic and excitement of our Walt Disney Studios motion pictures,” she continued.
 
Myers said, “Commercial-free movies from Disney have always been a cornerstone of our programming and will remain so for years to come even as we add original series to our movie mix.” Myers noted that Starz has been a leader in making use of new technology to allow subscribers to enjoy programming in more convenient ways. ”This agreement secures our ability to meet the needs of current and future subscribers in a fast-changing media landscape,” he said.
 
Walt Disney Studios animated movies and live-action feature films coming exclusively to Starz in 2010 include: Up, The Princess and the Frog, The Proposal (starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds), G-Force, Old Dogs ?(starring Robin Williams and John Travolta), Hannah Montana: The Movie, Alice in Wonderland; and Race to Witch Mountain.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/good-news-for-netflix-web-users-disney-reups-with-starz/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100307/omg-its-steve-jobs-im-the-only-one-yelling-at-him/ http://allthingsd.com/20100307/omg-its-steve-jobs-im-the-only-one-yelling-at-him/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:09:46 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17079 That’s the most excellent caption for this photo (below), posted Sunday night by blogger Wayne Sutton.

Squint and you can see the Apple (AAPL) co-founder and CEO in the middle of shot, standing to the right of the woman in a white dress (click to enlarge).

Thanks to CNET’s intrepid Caroline McCarthy for spotting the shot. I asked Sutton to expand on the caption and he obliged, via email:

“I was a part of the Kodak red carpet guest blogger access. Steve looked surprised when I was yelling his name. I was the only one yelling from my section of the bleachers. Others were like, ‘Who’s he and why am I yelling,’ because he’s not in a movie.”

Jobs, of course, does have a good reason to be at the Oscars: Pixar, the company he sold to Disney (DIS) in 2006, is in the running for multiple Academy Awards. Note that he does not seem to be carrying a sack of iPads to hand out.

And here’s a more intimate shot of Jobs at the event, via Jon M. Chu (who is the director of something called “The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers,” which has an Oscar performance planned for the evening).

On the off chance that the Jobs sightings and photos are part of a baroque prank/publicity stunt, I’ve asked Apple PR to confirm his attendance at tonight’s awards.

Oh. And here’s first iPad commercial, which ran during the broadcast (via Engadget):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100307/omg-its-steve-jobs-im-the-only-one-yelling-at-him/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100226/almost-famous-pat-hanrahan-of-tableau/ http://allthingsd.com/20100226/almost-famous-pat-hanrahan-of-tableau/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:16:20 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21457 A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We dropped by the Gates Computer Science building at Stanford University for an interview with Pat Hanrahan, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, as well as chief technology officer at Tableau, a business intelligence start-up with Ph.D level chops in data visualization.

Who: Pat Hanrahan

What: Chief Technology Officer

Why: Last Thursday, Tableau launched a public version of the data visualization product it sells to the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), eBay (EBAY) and Google (GOOG). Tableau Public is a free service aimed at journalists, bloggers and academics who want to create original, data-driven graphics similar to those from major news outlets.

Where: tableausoftware.com (Web site); @tableau (Twitter); Seattle and San Francisco (analog places)

Who else: Tableau competes directly with huge enterprise software companies like Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM) and SAP (SAP). Tableau Public, on the other hand, signals its entrance into a new market where the field is wide open.

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Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job Ever: I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve had mostly good jobs. I guess the worst was when I worked in a paper mill in college. I’d be on fire duty, which meant standing around with a hose and doing nothing. That said, if you go a week in a paper mill without a fire, you are doing well. All that dust accumulates and practically becomes explosive.

Geek Crush: Francis Crick, the molecular biologist. I got my Ph.D in biophysics, and he was one of the only physicists ever to be successful in biology. He also brought theory to biology at a time when it was unheard of, and I thought that was a really big thing. This was back in the late 1970s when it was basically impossible to be a theoretical biologist. I’m a big fan of the mixing of theory and practice. He kind of brought the two of those together.

Gadget of the Moment: You know, I’m a little bit of a gadget guy, but I’m more of a maker type. I like electronics, mechanics, chemistry–lots of things. My favorite recent project was building a cat wheel. It’s like a hamster wheel, but giant, four feet in diameter. I’ve got a Bengal cat. He’s very energetic.

Secret Fame: Pat has two technical Oscars for his founding work on the RenderMan software at Pixar.

Secret Shame: He can’t sing or dance to save his life.

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Bio in 140 Characters

Pat grew up in Green Bay. Wisconsin made him a Ph.D chess champion. A self-taught programmer, now he’s a CS professor and entrepreneur.

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The Five Questions

You say Tableau is in business intelligence, but what do you really do?

Well, Tableau’s center is really about answering questions with data. A lot of data visualization research is really about making pretty pictures, but we worked with psychologists and graphic designers to understand how people deal with visual data and process it. Let’s say you could answer a question by making a picture that shows the answer. If you want to know what the maximum selling product is, you make a picture where maximum stands out. If you want to know spatial distribution, you make a map. We create pictures that answer questions, but we do it for businesses that want to know things about their own metrics. It has been termed visual analysis–sort of doing a Q&A with data and images.

Who is using it well?

I’ve been really surprised by how many businesses use the sorts of metrics that work well with Tableau. We sell to category managers at eBay, for instance. Google uses us a lot for managing its data centers. We are not really vertical at all. Tableau is useful for anyone who has data.

A really interesting example is our relationship with Xbox. They record all the game play and then offer data through us to their game developers so that the developers can see what the actual game play experience is like. When are people dying? Are players spending time where the developers think they should? Stuff like that.

It is really everything. Some churches use us to keep track of who is donating what on Sundays. Most of our users are the Excel user; maybe they have data, but not a way to visualize it. It’s amazing to me how quantitative so many people are.

So how does Tableau Public differ from your enterprise product?

Well, the market we’re going after right now is individual content producers who might want to put data online. The New York Times (NYT) is often held up as an example of these good graphics, but an individual blogger doesn’t have a huge graphics department.

We offer the service for free, with some limits on number of views, and if the graphics take off, then maybe we’ve earned a paying customer. Also, on the free version, the data is public. It’s good for us because we get exposure, and it’s good for others because they get free access to the technology.

We aren’t immediately concerned about making money with Tableau Public. We already have a robust business selling to other businesses, so we sort of came to the freemium model backwards of most start-ups.

Can you guys really compete with the likes of IBM, SAP and Oracle?

Well, one big reason we get our customers is the whole visual analysis thing that is at the core of what we do. It’s unique to us. We’re also really well known for being easy to use and easy to deploy. A lot of times, what happens in enterprise software, you get these monolithic, giant systems that can be clunky and painful to add new features to. This can be true especially in the analysis arena.

The Dallas Cowboys are a good example. The sales manager there would go to his data guy and say, “I want to know how many jerseys I sold yesterday.” And they’d start giving all these technical answers about the data cube not being connected to the servers and so on. He was sold on us because he could plug in a complex spreadsheet, and we could tell him that answer in a very concrete way in a reasonable amount of time. It all goes back to having that Q&A with your data.

You are a professor of computer science and electrical engineering; you must have a pretty amazing early technology memory that turned you on to the sciences.

For me, it was just science in general, just being a nerd and a scientist. I remember when I bought my first chemistry set from a company now called Elemental Scientific. I remember that I was about eight or so, and most of the research I did was just so I would know what to buy. I saved up all my money and went to the store with my grandmother and came out with this giant box of retorts and flasks and all kinds of stuff. I had a great time the rest of the summer just doing reactions.

The other big thing with me and science was chess. I was the Wisconsin state chess champion in high school, and that is what taught me to really study things. I’ve always been more interested in ideas than technology I guess.

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The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100226/almost-famous-pat-hanrahan-of-tableau/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:48:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34666 Twitter has finally found a chief financial officer.

Ali Rowghani, currently CFO and senior VP of strategic planning at Pixar Animation Studios, will bring his financial acumen to the microblogging service come March, making it, for better or worse, a “legitimate” company.

“Ali will be an important member of a growing team focused on creating value for our users and capturing the financial opportunities that result from it,” Twitter CEO Evan Williams said in a statement. “His thoughtfulness on retaining a great culture to work and staying consistent with your principles will also be a significant contribution.”

Great. But how is he with IPOs?

Rowghani’s pre-Twitter bio:

Ali Rowghani is Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Pixar Animation Studios, Disney Animation Studios, and Disney Toon Studios. In this role he oversees the finance teams at each animation division, the Facilities and Real Estate functions at Pixar, as well as the business aspects of Pixar’s RenderMan software group.

Ali joined Pixar in 2001 and has held a variety of finance positions at the studio. He was appointed Director of Pixar’s Production Finance and Strategy group in 2004. Before joining Pixar, Ali was an Associate at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. During his time at McKinsey, Ali was based for nine months in Germany. He later spent one year in Japan with McKinsey Global Institute, the Firm’s renowned economics think tank.

Ali holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Business Administration degree, both from Stanford University. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and spent a year studying at the University of Bonn in Germany. Born in Iran, Ali moved to Dallas, TX with this family when he was five years old. He remains a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100127/apple-special-event-live-blog/ http://allthingsd.com/20100127/apple-special-event-live-blog/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:00:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=33518 After months of feverish speculation and as many years of wishful thinking, Apple uncrated its tablet computer–the iPad–at an invitation-only event in San Francisco this morning.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

• iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
• Full capacitive multitouch
• 16GB-64GB flash storage
• iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
• Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?
• Apple’s Tablet: MacBook Airbus?
• Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”
• Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27
• Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected
• Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.
• The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?
• $1.9 Billion in Capex? What’s Apple Planning?
• Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?
• Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates
• Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?
• New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad
• Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?
• iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed
• iFugly

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