CARLSBAD, CA — In her bid to rob her new boss of all remaining dignity, conference organizer Kara Swisher has arranged to have gene-analysis startup 23andMe map aging media mogul Rupert Murdoch's chromosomes at the D6 conference, AllThingsD's John Paczkowski tells us. Come on. At 77, does he have any left? Leave the…
CARLSBAD, CA — The other night, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and I were talking about what he'd learned about Bill Gates's brain. Our conclusion: Like an overstuffed hard drive, he needs defragging — the utility that rebuilds a drive bit by bit to put it in proper working order. Buried in software wizardry, Gates has lost…
CARLSBAD, CA — Mark Zuckerberg has learned nothing. Taking the stage at D6, he uttered nothing but bromides and nonsequiturs. Examples: "Facebook is a technology company ... a technology company is a company that creates technology"; "Religion, that's a big thing around the world". At his South By Southwest keynote,…
CARLSBAD, CA, BUT NOT AT THE FOUR SEASONS AVIARA RESORT — Was it something I wrote? I can't claim to have been minding my own business at D6, the Wall Street Journal's hoi-polloi-need-not-apply tech conference. After all, my business is to mind everyone else's. But I can't think what exactly I did was that…
CARLSBAD, CA — On stage at D6, Sue Decker couldn't offer any explanation why she was qualified to be president of Yahoo. But if you ask Valleywag, she's doing a bang-up job of pursuing Yahoo's strategy of embracing openness. For example, by holding a meeting within camera-lens length of Valleywag in the Four Seasons…
CARLSBAD, CA — How rarely can one give one's enemies an in-your-face comeuppance? For Yahoo's Scott Moore, the chance came during Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes's interview at D6. Bewkes claimed that AOL was No. 1 in news, finance, and a host of other categories. "Where are you getting your numbers?" asked Moore during…
CARLSBAD, CA — For most of their D conference interviews, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg trade off interview duties. But why was Mossberg the one to do the D6 interview with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and president Sue Decker? Swisher frequently covers Yahoo in her AllThingsD.com blog; I can't think of the last time…
CARLSBAD, CA — Who are those cool cats in sunglasses at D6? Why, it's Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, a board member at Facebook, lunching with Wendi Murdoch, wife of the News Corp. CEO and chairwoman of MySpace China. Also at the table: Martha Stewart, seen here to the left; Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures; and Anne…
CARLSBAD, CA — Here's Microsoft dealmaker Hank Vigil chatting up AOL COO Ron Grant over lunch at the D6 conference. Why is that interesting? Because we overheard Vigil gabbing away on his cell phone earlier today about the "economic terms" of some deal. Microsoft famously made a run at merging its online businesses…
CARLSBAD, CA — I'll be unabashed about it: Part of the fun of a conference like D6 are the casual mogul sightings. Look! Barry Diller in a schlumpy brown sweater! Say, isn't that Jeff Bezos chatting up a Googler? But my favorite happenstances are the reunions of frenemies. Take, for example, this chance encounter…
Attempting to edit down Kara Swisher's epic two-part behind-the-scenes opus on the making of D6 into something more manageable, it was hard not to note a certain passive aggression. The deadpan delivery of criticisms quickly couched as attempts at humor, the needling of uncomfortable minions with the constant gaze of…
CARLSBAD, CA — Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are doing an excellent job of keeping out gossip-blog riffraff, but they're not doing so well at warding off the camp followers, according to attendees. Overheard in the hotel bar:
CARLSBAD, CA — One of the best things about AllThingsD.com is John Paczkowski, the site's sardonic tech blogger, whom Kara Swisher cleverly poached from the San Jose Mercury News's Good Morning Silicon Valley blog. At the D6 conference, there has been no sign of John Paczkowski — only an overly sincere reporter…
Lame lame lame Guitar Hero world tour demo ... Paula Abdul is judge
After being kicked out of D6 — kicked out of mere proximity to D6, really — I learned I didn't miss much. Want a summary of Bill Gates's presentation at D6 of Windows Seven, Microsoft's supposedly exciting new operating system with multitouch features similar to the year-old Apple iPhone? "Windows Seven is…
CARLSBAD, CA — What's this on my table at the Four Seasons Aviara's Lobby Lounge? Why, it's a copy of the program for D6! How careless for someone to have left it out in a public space, where anyone might read it. And there's even an attendee list! I won't bore you with the name of everyone who's going, but here are…
CARLSBAD, CA — I wasn't just eighty-sixed, folks. No, I was eight-D6'd. There I was, charming my way through the crowd at the Wall Street Journal's D6 conference — why hello, Sir Howard Stringer of Sony! Oh, was that Steve Case? — when a woman announced herself as "in-house security" and informed me that "the…
CARLSBAD, CA — Next month, Bill Gates is retiring from his day job at Microsoft. That means his appearance tonight at the D6 conference is his last hurrah. To go out with a bang, he is debuting Windows Seven, John Paczkowski reports on the conference's AllThingsD website. Details are scant, but we've heard Microsoft…
CARLSBAD, CA — D, the Wall Street Journal schmoozefest which opened today with a round of golf at the Four Seasons Aviara Resort, is not the conference for the rest of us. It attracts a host of tech and media CEOs who agree to be harangued onstage by Walt Mossberg, the sexagenarian of sexy gadgets, and Kara Swisher,…
