Weekend Update 5.29.10–The Countdown to Weekend Update D8 Edition
We’re in the final countdown for the D8 conference, which will kick off this Tuesday with Steve Jobs, live and unscripted. The pillows are being fluffed, the furniture arranged and the festive D8 crew bowling shirts distributed. You do not want to miss this. But before we can bring you all the D8 awesomeness, we should, as always, do a little wrap-up of what was a fairly wild week in tech news, Weekend Update-style.
As promised, Kara began BoomTown this week with another Steve Jobs blast from the past, this time at D5. It has all been a big countdown to Steve’s upcoming interview live on stage at D8 this coming Tuesday. It’s not just Jobs though. Head on over to the D8 site to see the full roster of tech execs in line for Kara and Walt’s hot seat. Midweek, Kara got a little video time with Keith Lee, CEO of Booyah games, maker of MyTown, the check-in-based social game that, with two million users, dwarfs Foursquare. The start-up just completed a healthy round of funding and apparently used the money to buy a giant Princess Leia doll…watch the video. Kara ended the week on one of her favorite subjects: Who’s departing this week from Yahoo (YHOO)? Looks like Tapan Bhat, head of the Internet giant’s front page, has left the building. Kara got the exclusive skinny.
John was at the Digital Daily ticker the moment the big story hit. Let us mark this down in our calenders as the week Apple exceeded Microsoft (MSFT) in market capitalization. How do you top a story like that? Well, John does it by following the saga of the social network editor that everyone love to hate at the moment. John gave a blow-by-blow of the privacy changes that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg laid out for his staff. Verdict? Less bad, maybe. To end the week, John covered some of the expectations around the international release of the iPad. Everyone is watching to see if the tablet outsells the Mac and will then proceed to stump about what that means for Apple (AAPL).
Twitter came in for a landing all over MediaMemo on Monday. Peter opened with a post trying to make sense of its new “ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” profit model. The media shuffle is always in Peter’s crosshairs, and this week’s installment was about Forbes buying up True/Slant. Wait…was that a media company acquiring something? Not selling it off? Peter ended his week with a cautionary tale for all this season’s commencement speakers: Don’t plagiarize your speech. Or, if you do, don’t steal it from YouTube. Nothing is more humiliating than being exposed virally.
Walt stepped out of the writer’s chair for Personal Technology this week and gave Geoffrey Fowler a shot at the keyboard. He turned in an insightful piece on the complicated world of e-bookstores and some useful advice on how to navigate their ins and outs.
The whole AllThingsD crew is feverishly preparing this weekend for D8, and even the lowly Weekend Update crew will be getting on a plane bound for LA. We’re packing plenty of sunscreen and NoDoz. Those shouldn’t interact badly…right?
