And then there was Schiller and Gore.

That would be Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller and former Vice President Al Gore, who round out the stellar list of speakers at our upcoming AsiaD conference.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21 in Hong Kong, the lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of Silicon Valley start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Asia head Rose Tsou; LivingSocial’s Tim O’Shaughnessy, along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul; Samsung mobile head Dr. Won-Pyo Hong; HTC CEO Peter Chou, who replaces Chairwoman Cher Wang.

Schiller, who reports to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook (and before that, Steve Jobs) is a member of the executive team of the tech icon, where he has worked for 17 years. He is responsible for a swath of Apple’s outward-facing businesses, including product marketing, developer relations and business marketing.

Today, in fact, he was onstage at Apple’s iPhone event, outlining some of its new product offerings. In addition, Apple just opened its first retail store in Hong Kong.

Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006, needs little introduction. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist.

Gore is on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, which is a neat trick. At the same time, he is a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a partnership that is focused on sustainable investing.

And, as most people know, he knows a thing or two about the Internet.

Walt Mossberg and I could not think of two better people to add to the lineup we have for AsiaD, which has very few seats left.

See you in China in two weeks!

With AsiaD just a little over a month away, Walt Mossberg and I are adding even more speakers to the list, for what we hope will be an awesome event in Hong Kong.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, the conference lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and more.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

Now, to add to the kitty:

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.

Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.

That’s it for now, but we will have more big names to come, as well as some pretty cool demos we will be putting onstage at AsiaD. So stay tuned.

With the continuing negotiations between AOL and high-profile TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington likely to come to some conclusion soon, the big question remaining is whether he will appear at its flagship conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, which officially begins tomorrow.

Sources said that seems more likely than not, although the talks between AOL and Arrington are not resolved as yet and his appearance at the highly lucrative conference is part of a whole package.

But it seems unlikely that neither Arrington nor AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and content chief Arianna Huffington wants to damage TechCrunch Disrupt, which makes piles of moolah from sponsors and fees, attracts thousands of attendees, and where a plethora of promising start-ups compete with each other.

And, in fact, some of the slated speakers I have contacted have said that they have not been told of any changes in the program.

A hackathon of those entrepreneurs is now taking place before the main event, where well-known Silicon Valley players will be interviewed on stage by the staff of TechCrunch.

The conference is mostly run by TechCrunch exec Heather Harde, as well as the site’s leading editor Erick Schonfeld.

But, of course, TechCrunch Disrupt has starred Arrington, the larger-than-life blogger now turned venture capitalist.

That shift and how badly it was done is at the center of complex severance negotiations.

As I previously wrote, sources said the company has so far refused Arrington’s bold demand, posted on TechCrunch itself, to either give the popular tech news site “editorial independence” or sell it back to him.

As I wrote last week:

The situation between the popular tech blogger and top execs at the Internet company — which bought his site earlier this year — comes after a week of increasingly testy back and forth between them, after it was revealed that Arrington was starting his own $20 million venture fund called CrunchFund.

The move caused a media firestorm over the ethics and propriety of the move, which was followed by an ugly internal war at the company, with Arrington and TechCrunch staffers on one side and Armstrong and Huffington on the other.

(Full disclosure: Although no one cares what I think, I consider the deal appalling and wrote that it was a “giant, greedy Silicon Valley pig pile.” Now, it seems to be 56 percent piggier!)

After many confusing messages from AOL, Arrington was removed from his longtime job at TechCrunch and placed in its venture arm, after editorial objections from Huffington.

That had supposedly been the the plan until it all blew up, with reveleations about what the CrunchFund deal — which includes $10 million from AOL — meant to TechCrunch and its news gathering.

That seemed clear from a widely cited quote from CrunchFund investor and well-know Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman to me last week:

“TechCrunch will get some real deal flow from entrepreneurs that we would otherwise not see, because they have established a prominent position as the SV/Tech industry information feed. As many tech entrepreneurs read it — both within Silicon Valley and globally — and view the information news feed to be their target for announcing themselves to the world, CrunchFund will have access to deal flow to these diverse and early stage companies. Some of these companies will be the kind of early stage companies with billion-dollar potential that Greylock invests in.”

There you had it: No one can afford to be out of the deal flow in these competitive times, even if it means cutting corners and using a tech news site as fodder.

Arrington obviously has another view of the deal he struck with Armstrong and, sources said, wants his powerful tech news platform back. He has been talking to many Silicon Valley power players about the situation, said sources.

More to come soon from this Silicon Valley soap opera. And, hopefully, it will be a happy — well, happy-ish — ending.

(Full disclosure: AllThingsD also runs conferences that could be construed as competitive to TechCrunch Disrupt, although we both we seem to do just fine. In addition, Walt Mossberg and I are getting along like peas and carrots, although we vigorously disagree over the humongous talent of Barry Manilow.)

After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

No rest for the weary D conference producers!

Which would be Walt Mossberg and me, since we are now hard at work — after a very successful ninth D: All Things Digital — on our newest event: AsiaD.

An international confab — this one will be held October 19 to 21 in Hong Kong — is a big deal for us and we’re making sure it is up to snuff for our audience there.

That begins with the speakers, which we will start announcing now and continue to as we add them onto the roster. As we have said before, we’re going for a lineup of both Asian and U.S. speakers, as well as demos from the region, with a focus on the critical emerging market.

That’s why with smartphones in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Silicon Valley Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, we are asking Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma onstage to talk more about his efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere. His recent bare-knuckled fight with Yahoo over Alipay, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena, even as others try to upend him.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

And Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

As usual with D, there will be more big names to come — and you can find out more here.

In the nine years that we’ve been putting on the D: All Things Digital conference, we’ve never streamed our always sold-out flagship show live.

Until this year, that is, when we will be live streaming three full sessions from the high-profile speaker line-up from our event in Palos Verdes, Calif.

They would be, in order and in Pacific Time:

* Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, on Tuesday, May 31 at 6:15 pm. He’ll also be demoing the search giant’s new mobile payment offering.

* Netflix CEO and Founder Reed Hastings, on Wednesday, June 1 at 8:15 am.

* Alibaba Group Founder and CEO Jack Ma, on Wednesday, June 1 at 4:30 pm.

(Lincoln is sponsoring the live streaming.)

With the mobile payments space rapidly heating up, we thought it would be a perfect time to add the person most responsible for that current disruption–Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey–to the speaker roster at the ninth D: All Things Digital.

By the way, Dorsey is the same man who also invented a little thing called Twitter, the groundbreaking microblogging service–where he also now serves as Executive Chairman and now its product guru once again.

In other words, Dorsey is just the kind of person Walt Mossberg and I are thrilled to have onstage at D9–a perfect entrepreneur to talk about the innovative product vision that has made tech in Silicon Valley so powerful.

Dorsey started Square in 2009, after serving as CEO of Twitter until 2008. A software engineer by training, he previously worked as a programmer at a bike courier dispatch service.

Just this week, Square made news by launching a new cash register for merchants and a new mobile wallet for consumers to make paying for retail goods extremely easy.

This is a quick development from the start-up’s original Square dongle and app, which allows consumers to use their smartphone or Apple iPad to accept credit card payments.

Square has distributed 500,000 of these dongles, which click into the headphone jack, and has recently said it is processing $2 billion in gross payment volume per month.

The new innovations should increase that if they catch on and Square can best a plethora of competitors, including a new digital wallet entry by Google (whose Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will also be at D9 onstage demoing it too).

As Tricia Duryee wrote about Square’s latest effort:

It starts with the user’s card case, which must be set up in advance with a user’s credit card information. From the card case, the user will be able to see the menu of the restaurant, cafe or spa they are visiting. Users can click to order. When they go up to the register to pay, the consumer doesn’t hand over anything but their name.

Consumers and retailers will have to believe that using Apple products can be as safe and secure as big enterprise-grade systems that everyone is accustomed to seeing.

Square will also have to go up against a ton of other providers coming down the pike, including solutions from [eBay's] PayPal and payment giants such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

The San Francisco-based start-up recently received an investment from Visa.

Given that the future of the massive, badillion-dollar industry is at stake, it should make for a great interview session at D9.

With only a week to go before the ninth D: All Things Digital conference debuts in California, we’re announcing the addition of Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky to an already heavy-duty line-up of speakers.

One of the five Microsoft presidents–it’s kind of like the kingdoms in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” but without big, clangy swords–he runs the flagship Windows and Windows Live division.

More importantly, Sinofsky is the guy who overhauled Office and then led the team that bailed Microsoft out of the Vista debacle.

The longtime company veteran–who joined Microsoft in 1989 as a software design engineer–will talk about the future of Windows in the era of all kinds of new devices and the cloud.

If you want to get some insight into his thinking, Sinofsky also wrote a book about the making of Windows 7–titled “One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making”–that’s a very compelling read well beyond management wonk types.

We expect Sinofsky to be just as interesting onstage at D9 too, along with other top tech and media speakers including Google’s Eric Schmidt, Bob Iger of Disney, Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreessen, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and more.

As BoomTown noted in January, the D: All Things Digital conference–after an initial foray into smaller, niche Dive events–has been mulling going global next.

So, my longtime partner in digital crimes, Walt Mossberg, and I–along with D biz honcho Lia Lorenzano–headed to China in January to visit some possible locations for our first AsiaD.

And now it’s official: We’ll be doing an event October 19 to 21 in Hong Kong.

While we are still working out all the location logistics, Walt and I are already hard at work with our Dow Jones partners there to bring the magical mystery tech tour that D has been here to the audience there.

It will be a pan-Asian event, bringing in speakers and demos from all over the region, as well as inviting some key U.S. digital players to be interviewed in what is clearly one of the most important markets going forward.

We’d welcome any feedback, of course, as well as suggestions.

And we’ll keep you updated to our progress too. As with big D, which is set to take place May 31 to June 2 (and has been long sold out), we’ll be posting reports and videos of AsiaD.

Until we can say more, here is a video of moments from the visit Walt and I had there, including a helicopter tour of the vertical city, delicious dumplings and, of course, a whole lot of tech:

And here is a funny doctored image Hong Kong’s tech blog, NeonPunch.com did in our honor:

Register for AsiaD »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/asiad-set-for-october-in-hong-kong-heres-the-mossberg-swisher-guided-video-tour/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110301/ted-again-iconic-conference-kicks-off-2011-with-gates-a-data-artist-and-a-wrongologist/ http://allthingsd.com/20110301/ted-again-iconic-conference-kicks-off-2011-with-gates-a-data-artist-and-a-wrongologist/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:15:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41148

Today, the formal program at the famous TED conference begins, with the theme title: “The Rediscovery of Wonder.”

BoomTown will be flying down to Long Beach, where the event is now held and runs through Friday (and where I will be sadly missing the Apple iPad 2 launch in San Francisco on Wednesday).

As usual, it’s a highly diverse and unusual speaker schedule, full of artists, scientists, educators and architects.

Among the most interesting to me are speakers such as: Data artist Aaron Koblin, who is now creative director of the Data Arts team in Google’s Creative Lab; Wrongologist Kathryn Schulz, who writes a Slate series featuring interviews with high-profile people about how they think and feel about being wrong; and roboticist Dennis Hong.

And, of course, I will be paying mind to whatever Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates has to say about his latest philanthropy efforts.

There is a lot more you can read about here in TED’s schedule.

What I like a lot about the TED event is that what’s onstage in terrific videos soon appears on its very robust Web site.

I will be taking my own videos, of course, so get ready.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110301/ted-again-iconic-conference-kicks-off-2011-with-gates-a-data-artist-and-a-wrongologist/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/exploring-istuff-at-ces-with-mobilized-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/exploring-istuff-at-ces-with-mobilized-video/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 01:14:59 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=2148 With a little time left at the end of the Consumer Electronics Show, I finally had a break from private meetings, press conferences and onstage interviews. I used the time on Saturday morning to briefly tour a section of the massive show floor.

Given that I only had about an hour for my grand tour, I decided, in true Vegas style, to explore the first thing that came to me when I entered the show floor. Fortunately, since I cover mobile stuff, that turned out to be the iLounge-sponsored Apple area. It took me back to my early days of covering MacWorld Expo, back when it was an event Apple attended.

Some of the vendors were names I recognized, like Speck and Griffin and Mophie–companies that I had covered since their early days, companies that I had watched transformed from start-ups to serious players amid the explosion in the market for companion products to the iPod and, later, the iPhone.

There were also plenty of companies that I had never heard of, eager to find global distribution for ideas ranging from an iPod speaker resembling a gramophone to stickers that make the back of an iPad appear to be etched with a portrait of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, among other famous faces.

There were also T-shirts, headphones, keyboard attachments and even a booth with a representative of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

My only purchase of the day came after I had left the show entirely, though. With some urging from BoomTown’s Kara Swisher, I splurged on Pinball Magic, an accessory that transforms an iPod Touch or iPhone into a pinball machine, which was on clearance for $25 at the Brookstone store in the Las Vegas airport.

Here’s a video look at some of what I found.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/exploring-istuff-at-ces-with-mobilized-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:00:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38204

Tonight, All Things Digital will debut its first extension of the D: All Things Digital conference, with D: Dive Into Mobile.

The original nickname for the event was “mini-d,” since it is shorter than big-D, focused on one key topic and has a more intimate audience.

But the speakers Walt Mossberg and I have assembled are anything but small on the critical topic of mobile–beginning with tonight’s opening session with Google Android kingpin Andy Rubin.

There is a lot to talk, about from monetization of the ever-popular operating system to its rivalry with the Apple iPhone to its relationship with wireless carriers.

D: Dive Into Mobile continues all day Tuesday, with speakers that include: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie; and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

D: Dive Into Mobile is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

For more information, click here for D: Dive Into Mobile news and more.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/lets-get-mobilized/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/lets-get-mobilized/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:00:20 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=11

Welcome to Mobilized, the latest All Things Digital blog devoted to all things mobile. Mobilized will cover the wireless world from cell phones to tablets, as well as the networks they run on (or drop calls on).

In other words, all the issues raised by having the tiny little machines with us at all times.

If you are reading this on your Apple iPhone, Amazon Kindle, BlackBerry from Research in Motion, Google Android or other non-PC device: Congratulations, you are already Mobilized.

But, if you are sitting in front of a laptop or desktop as you are reading this–you might be a little behind the times, although on the plus side, you don’t have to squint nearly as much.

And, even if you printed this article out, I am happy you took the time to read it (Hi, Dad!).

In any case, I am hoping to cut through the jargon and the hype, so that this will be a spot that both the early adopters and the merely curious will be able to find items of interest.

And whether you are a mobile geek or not, mobile technology is poised to reshape your life. Cell phones aren’t just mini-computers and tablets aren’t just notebooks with their keyboards cut off. These products are reshaping not just how we consume media, but also the ways we interact with each
other.

Let me take a moment to introduce myself.

For those that don’t know me, I spent the last decade at CNET, covering everything from Apple and Microsoft to ill-fated products from the Audrey to the Foleo.

While mobile hasn’t been my full-time beat, I have always been a device junkie. I owned a Windows CE 1.0 device and several of the first attempts to marry a phone with a Palm Pilot. Most recently, I have spent the past several years covering Microsoft full-time and recently did a three-part series on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

I am passionate about technology and telling the stories about the people making the products that are changing the way we live. I hope to find room to tell all kinds of different stories in these pages.

I plan to start things off with an interview I did last week in New York with Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci. I also had a chance to catch up there with multitouch pioneer Jeff Han, who is beginning to shift some of his work from giant touchscreens to mobile devices.

Meanwhile, next week is the inaugural D: Dive into Mobile conference. I’ll be providing lots of coverage, of course, including backstage interviews with many of the speakers.

So, that’s my spiel. Be sure to sound off in the forums, whether you think I am right on track or completely off base. You can also drop me a note at the easy-to-remember email: Ina@AllThingsD.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/lets-get-mobilized/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101122/googles-android-kingpin-andy-rubin-will-open-d-dive-into-mobile-plus-one-more-surprise/ http://allthingsd.com/20101122/googles-android-kingpin-andy-rubin-will-open-d-dive-into-mobile-plus-one-more-surprise/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:01:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37564

While everyone is considering whether to brine or deep-fry the turkey this week, All Things Digital HQ will be busy with our preparations for D: Dive Into Mobile.

That includes setting the program, which takes place in two weeks and will open with an evening interview with Google’s Andy Rubin (pictured here).

As the search giant’s mobile chief and principal force and creator of its Android operating system, Rubin is responsible for the ongoing development of the major rival to the Apple iPhone.

Many have challenged Android, including a recent jab from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, questioning its overall experience and whether or not it’s actually open.

Nonetheless, Rubin and Android have proven to be a disruptive and fast-growing force in the mobile space, aiming for dominance akin to Microsoft’s on the desktop.

Ironic? Yes.

Rubin started as an engineer at Apple and later worked at General Magic, where he participated in developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for handheld devices. When Magic Cap failed, Rubin joined Artemis Research, founded by Steve Perlman, which became WebTV and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.

After several years, Rubin left to found another smartphone effort called Danger, which was also acquired by Microsoft, in 2008.

Disillusionment with his ouster as CEO of Danger motivated him to found Android, which was later acquired by Google.

Now, it seems Rubin is poised to make good on his first efforts at making a truly smart smartphone ubiquitous.

And he is only one of many of the industry heavyweight speakers at D: Dive Into Mobile, among them: Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google advertising czar Susan Wojcicki; and Glenn Lurie, president of Emerging Devices for AT&T.

Plus, there is also one more big speaker we’ll be announcing soon, so stay tuned.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco on December 6 and 7.

It represents the very first brand extension of our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating. What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews, where real news is often broken.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Along with Walt Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

But there’s nothing like being there, so you can sign up for the D: Dive Into Mobile conference here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101122/googles-android-kingpin-andy-rubin-will-open-d-dive-into-mobile-plus-one-more-surprise/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100715/location-location-actually-geo-location-boomtown-talks-digital-real-estate/ http://allthingsd.com/20100715/location-location-actually-geo-location-boomtown-talks-digital-real-estate/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:05:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30683

Here’s an interesting video interview I did earlier this week with Sherry Chris for the Better Homes and Gardens blog on the impact of digital technology on the real estate industry in the age of consumer empowerment and ubiquitous information availability.

The reason: I was a speaker at the Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco, where about 1,500 real estate professionals gathered to talk apps, cloud computing, tablet devices, mobile innovations and more.

It’s a good idea, since real estate is one of the industries that has been massively disrupted by digital shifts.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100715/location-location-actually-geo-location-boomtown-talks-digital-real-estate/feed/ 15 http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live-2/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 17:15:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28458

The conference site for the eighth D: All Things Digital is now up.

There are posts related to D8, and we will be adding more in the next two weeks, ahead of the June 1 start of the conference.

The site also includes D8 speaker pages, which display a bio, big graphic, prior photos and videos. When the conference kicks in, these pages will also be populated with up-to-the-minute posts, photos and videos.

There will also be a Twitter feed module on all the D8 pages, which will show tweets from All Things Digital bloggers and more.

Onstage in interviews with Walt Mossberg and me at the event:

Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs; Hollywood director James Cameron; Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer; AOL (AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong; Steve Burke, COO of Comcast (CMCSA); Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski; Web leader Steve Case; Peter Chou, CEO of HTC; John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay (EBAY); Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm (QCOM); Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG; Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford (F); Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, in a session with Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO Paul Steiger of ProPublica; Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of National Public Radio; and, last but hardly least, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live/ http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 17:15:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=336

The conference site for the eighth D: All Things Digital is now up.

There are posts related to D8, and we will be adding more in the next two weeks, ahead of the June 1 start of the conference.

The site also includes D8 speaker pages, which display a bio, big graphic, prior photos and videos. When the conference kicks in, these pages will also be populated with up-to-the-minute posts, photos and videos.

There will also be a Twitter feed module on all the D8 pages, which will show tweets from All Things Digital bloggers and more.

Onstage in interviews with Walt Mossberg and me at the event:

Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs; Hollywood director James Cameron; Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer; AOL (AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong; Steve Burke, COO of Comcast (CMCSA); Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski; Web leader Steve Case; Peter Chou, CEO of HTC; John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay (EBAY); Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm (QCOM); Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG; Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford (F); Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, in a session with Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO Paul Steiger of ProPublica; Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of National Public Radio; and, last but hardly least, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100518/the-d8-site-is-now-live/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100427/welcome-back-steve-apple-ceo-jobs-will-appear-onstage-at-d8/ http://allthingsd.com/20100427/welcome-back-steve-apple-ceo-jobs-will-appear-onstage-at-d8/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:01:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27776

Apple (AAPL) CEO and Co-founder Steve Jobs will appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital, in an interview on the opening night, kicking off our tech and media conference that will also include famed Hollywood director James Cameron, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

(Jobs is pictured above at D5 in 2007.)

Jobs has been onstage many times at D, including in a famous joint session with Microsoft (MSFT) Co-founder Bill Gates. In the interview, which was conducted by Walt Mossberg and me, the pair of tech legends talked about their long history in the industry (you can see the video of that interview below).

There is much to talk to Jobs about, obviously, including the new iPad, the mobile market and the iPhone, its tense relationship with Google (GOOG) and the next innovations from the Silicon Valley computer icon.

It should be a news-filled year at D. Also onstage: Ballmer, who is appearing with the software giant’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie. In addition, Cameron will discuss the impact of tech on the film industry and his mega-hit movie “Avatar.”

Also onstage: Steve Burke, COO of Comcast (CMCSK), which recently purchased NBC Universal; Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski; former AOL (AOL) leaders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis; Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, which is embroiled in an ugly legal fight with Apple; John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay (EBAY); former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, who is now a candidate for U.S. Senate in California; Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm (QCOM); Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG; Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford (F); Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, in a session with Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO Paul Steiger of ProPublica; Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of National Public Radio; and, last but hardly least, Zuckerberg of Facebook (yes, Mark, there will be a question about competition you’ll need to answer–and not via a question about the question either–be prepared!).

We also have a few more speakers to announce, so stay tuned.

Here is the Jobs-Gates video from 2007:

And here’s our official press release:

STEVE JOBS, JAMES CAMERON AND STEVE BALLMER TO SPEAK AT THE EIGHTH ANNUAL “D: ALL THINGS DIGITAL” CONFERENCE

NEW YORK (April 27, 2010)–All Things Digital today announced the speaker lineup for the eighth D: All Things Digital, The Wall Street Journal executive conference that will be held from June 1-3, 2010 near Los Angeles, Calif.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be this year’s opening-night speaker, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will make his fourth appearance and “Avatar” director James Cameron will appear onstage at D for the first time on the annual event’s second night.

Founded by co-producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in 2003, the D conference is a gathering of the most influential figures in media and technology. Each year, Mossberg and Swisher put these top players to the test onstage during unrehearsed, unscripted conversations. The results are candid, entertaining sessions that provide glimpses into the strategies of the industry’s most creative thinkers.

D8 will also showcase leading executives from the mobile, digital, media, automotive and political arenas including:

• Steve Burke, COO of Comcast
• Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution
• Peter Chou, CEO of HTC
• John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay
• Carly Fiorina, Candidate for U.S. Senate, California
• Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the FCC
• Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm
• Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG
• Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus of AOL, Chairman of Revolution Money and Owner of Washington Capitals
• Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford
• Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect of Microsoft
• Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media
• Vivian Schiller, President and CEO of National Public Radio
• Paul Steiger, Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO of ProPublica
• Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook

Live blogs and photos from each session will be available on AllThingsD.com during each interview, with video highlights posted shortly afterwards.

The D conference has been sold out since January. For more information, full D coverage and video of past conferences including the historic joint appearance by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5, see http://allthingsd.com/d/.

D8 is sponsored by AMD, Houlihan Lokey, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NYSE Euronext, Qualcomm and Thomson Reuters.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100427/welcome-back-steve-apple-ceo-jobs-will-appear-onstage-at-d8/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/ http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:48:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25653

According to numerous sources inside and outside the company, Yahoo is poised to slam dunk–I apologize, but sports puns are so easy–an acquisition of an online sports site this week.

And, predicted several of those sources, it is most likely to be San Francisco-based Citizen Sports, a maker of popular apps and games that allow fans to interact on the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Facebook.

Interestingly, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz is the keynote speaker at the high-profile sports business conference IMG World Sports Congress Wednesday morning in Los Angeles.

There is a plethora of interesting Web sports sites for Yahoo to choose from, including Yardbarker, SB Nation and Rotowire.

With Yahoo’s strong sports content business, especially in fantasy sports and news, and Bartz’s recent statements about making smaller talent and tech acquisitions–as well as the company’s recent focus on social networking and mobile integration–Citizen Sports is a perfect choice.

Citizen Sports started off in 2005 as ProTrade, an “athlete stock market entertainment company,” with $10 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners Kevin Compton and Doug Mackenzie through Radar Ventures.

Other investors included Kleiner Perkins partner Will Hearst, said the Citizen Sports Web site, “as well as major sports figures, including former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and three-time Super Bowl champ Troy Aikman; Arizona Diamondbacks General Partner Jeff Moorad; legendary NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh; and Northgate Capital Venture founder Brent Jones, the former all-pro San Francisco 49ers tight end.”

But the site has morphed into an innovative digital enabler of interaction among fans of all kinds of sports, via its fantasy sports games and Sportacular iPhone app, as well as numerous apps on Facebook.

It also has tight relationships with Sports Illustrated magazine and other sports partners.

Most interesting is that one of its co-founders, Jeff Ma, was one of the members of the infamous MIT blackjack team, made famous in the book, “Bringing Down the House” and the film, “21.”

It is unclear how much Citizen Sports would sell for, but estimates put its price at about $40 to $50 million.

Both Citizen Sports and Yahoo declined to comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100312/index-invests-25-million-in-sonos-plus-a-video-interview-with-vc-mike-volpi/ http://allthingsd.com/20100312/index-invests-25-million-in-sonos-plus-a-video-interview-with-vc-mike-volpi/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25424 Earlier this week, BoomTown had lunch with Michelangelo “Mike” Volpi, the high-profile tech exec who turned into a venture capitalist recently at Index Ventures.

We also did a video interview (see below) about his new life as an investor, based in London, although Volpi managed to leave out the big news.

That would be a just-inked $25 million investment by Index from its growth equity arm in wireless home music system maker Sonos, as well as a new board seat there for Volpi. (Sonos’s hot new S5 unit is pictured here.)

In an interview this morning, Sonos CEO John MacFarlane said the money would be used for expansion at Sonos, which is just about to introduce its products to China and Japan.

“This investment is going to help us grow,” said MacFarlane. “We have wind at our back and this will help us a lot in keeping up that momentum.”

MacFarlane said the focus for Sonos, which has garnered $65 million–from BV Capital and mostly angel investors–with the Index investment included, is growth. He declined to give Sonos’s valuation in the new round.

The private company has been profitable, MacFarlane said, but its goal is to break even as it takes advantage of interest in its devices globally. Only about 35 percent of its business is now in the United States.

While running a small independent consumer electronics company is a dicey proposition, MacFarlane said Sonos is not interested in selling, as Pure Digital–maker of the Flip digital camera–did to Cisco (CSCO) a year ago for $590 million in stock.

In fact, Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos, which is well known for its innovative top-line (and high-priced) music players, recently moved its business more mainstream with the introduction of the S5 unit in November.

The S5 allows control of the system via an Apple (AAPL) iPhone and only costs $399. (Here is a review of it by The Mossberg Solution’s Katie Boehret.)

The basic idea? A smart speaker paired with a smartphone.

The S5 has been a big seller and has increased product registration–when the software is activated by a user–by five times previous numbers so far, according to the company.

That could get a further boost with the April launch of the iPad, which seems perfect for controller software apps.

“The popularity of the iPhone is great for us,” said MacFarlane. “And we’ll do something great with the iPad.”

It will be nice to have a big score for Volpi, the former Cisco wunderkind. In fact, he invested in one of MacFarlane’s previous start-ups, Software.com, in 1995 when he was in charge of a variety of businesses there.

But the affable Volpi hit a bad patch recently while CEO of a much hyped but ultimately failed video service called Joost. It was that job that landed him in even hotter water.

In the wake of the decline of Joost, which he left to join Index, he was personally sued, along with Index, by its litigious co-founders over Index’s planned investment in Skype, the online telephony service they also co-founded.

Confused? Well, it was confusing.

And not the best start in the investment business for Volpi, after Index pulled out of the high-profile deal in a settlement of the lawsuits.

But, that’s “ancient history,” as Volpi said in the video interview below, which focuses on what’s next.

(News of the Index involvement in Sonos was first reported by TechCrunch earlier this week, though it did not have any details on the amount of funding.)

Although he did not mention the $25 million Sonos funding specifically in the video, Volpi does discuss his bullishness for consumer electronics.

Volpi presumably hopes others share his enthusiasm.

Here’s the video of my interview with him:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100312/index-invests-25-million-in-sonos-plus-a-video-interview-with-vc-mike-volpi/feed/ 1