Saturday, October 31, 2009
Weekend Update 10.31.09–Heartbreaks, Heartthrobs and Heart Attacks

BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.

BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.
We knew it had to happen. There was no way the great white (and blue, and whatever color Yahoo is) search engine sharks could resist the fire hoses full of text chum Twitter produces 24/7. Heck, Twitter even chops its textual fish heads into lovely bite-sized chunks.

November 9. That’s the day on which Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers are to submit an amended version of their book settlement, one that addresses concerns that it might give them unfair advantage over other digital libraries or violate copyright laws abroad.
Kara was half James Bond, half Indiana Jones in the cities and jungles of BoomTown this week. She jet-setted, jet-lagged and still managed to report on a genuine cougar fight.
Geekfighting may never become its own UFC event, but following tech news this week seemed, in places, like a view to a big, well-funded cage match.
While the highlight
of the week was undoubtedly Apple’s Rock and Roll event on Wednesday featuring Steve Jobs 2.0, that was only the anodized aluminum, candy-colored, video-shooting cherry on top of another week of tech sector reporting from All Things Digital.
As of this week, pretty much anyone can tell you–“Skank” blogging just doesn’t pay. Unless your $15 million privacy lawsuit against Google ends up going your way, that is. Rosemary Port, the person who used Blogger to anonymously insult former model Liskula Cohen, was unmasked last week after months of speculation and promptly sued Google for turning over her information. Hilarity ensued, complete with dueling morning TV appearances.
The week ending Aug. 21 began Aug. 17 with another round of digital musical chairs–BoomTown reported that David Dickman, VP of West Coast sales for Yahoo, will be leaving the company at the end of the month for Warner Bros. to work in digital sales. Also, after a five-month tour of Europe and its finer Web establishments, Yahoo seems poised to name a new international head.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” So begins Apple’s response to the FCC’s inquiry into its rejection of the app and of its App Store approval process. Seems Google Voice was withheld from the App Store not because of any ill feeling toward Google or a nefarious request from AT&T, but because it too closely mimics the iPhone OS.
There’s not much of a business yet in Apple TV, as Apple’s leadership often notes. But there may be soon, with the market for connected TVs evolving as it has been. In a research note issued this morning, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says the time is right for Apple to release the next iteration of Apple TV and to begin work on a full-fledged Internet-connected television set.
It’s been a long time between weekend updates, and a long week without Peter Kafka, All Things D’s intrepid MediaMemo reporter. He returns Monday, and just in time, too, since John Paczkowski and Digital Daily will be out all next week. Must be August–do Europeans still take the whole month off? Or is that an urban legend? No matter; it definitely has not been sleepy around here.

This Weekend Update is particularly exciting because of all the things happening here at All Things Digital. There is, of course, the upcoming D7 Conference, which promises to be more tech-extravaganza fun than a tweet from @sockington (if only half as cute), but this past week has also seen the launch of our very own iPhone app, meaning that ATD has gone mobile–smart news for your smartphone (we’re still working out potential taglines).
Welcome back to Weekend Update, where we showcase some of the highlights from this site over the past week. In the umpteenth round of the old versus new media match, the Associated Press in its annual meeting this week played into the stereotype of the grizzled no-nonsense editor who shakes his fist at the new interweb thing (or was it intertube?) and its feisty friend, Google News, who are running amok on his lawn.
Another week into challenging times, and the theme for Weekend Update is undoubtedly cost-saving, with a healthy dose of revenue-seeking.
On the revenue-seeking side, BoomTown’s Twitter Business Plan Count-Up hasn’t yielded any real keepers yet. There is a real contender, though–since Jennifer Aniston so publicly broke up with her boyfriend John Mayer on account of his Twitter “addiction,” BoomTown suggests offering “Twitter rehab” for those not willing to lose their relationships just yet.
In Silicon Valley, it’s hard to believe that not everyone follows each shiny new thing on the Web, tracks OS versions as intently as the storyline for “Battlestar Galactica” and remains jacked-in pretty much 24/7. But it’s been known to happen.
For instance, BoomTown was in Rome earlier this week attending a conference on business, brand and innovation that happens only once every seven years–and one of the biggest takeaways? Hardly any Italians have heard of Twitter, and those who have don’t really use it.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”