keynote

Zappos CEO's shoes need a little more kick

AUSTIN, Texas--In the dot-com world, Tony Hsieh's story is pretty much canon.

We know he got his entrepreneurial start running a pizza delivery business in college, and eventually went on to co-found LinkExchange and sell it to Microsoft for $265 million.

Then, after founding a venture firm that invested in shoe retail start-up Zappos.com, he took over the helm of the company and has been there ever since. Now nearly 10 years old, Zappos has become renowned among the digerati for its heavy investment in top-notch customer service, quirky company culture, and use of Twitter to promote corporate … Read more

Review: iWork 09 Keynote Remote for iPhone and iPod Touch

Apple solved one problem of presenting with Keynote which is a part of iWork 09 by releasing the app Keynote Remote for iPhone and iPod Touch (iTunes Link) for $.99.

We found one thing a bit ironic and that was that the app wasn't free like the iTunes and Apple TV remote application. Especially when you have already paid $79 for iWork 09. Sometimes we just don't know if we'll ever understand Apple's logic behind these decisions.

The app lets you control your Keynote slide presentation that you present from our Apple computer using your iPhone … Read more

Alan Mulally talks up Sync 3.0 at CES keynote

Last year, GM CEO Rick Wagoner showed up to bring Detroit a little closer to CES, and at this year's show, Ford CEO Alan Mulally made an even stronger commitment to bring the kinds of electronics on show here into cars. Nothing could have set the tone of his keynote better than having Microsoft's Steve Ballmer come out at the beginning for a quick handshake and talk about working with Ford on Sync. Ballmer pointed out that Microsoft and Ford share a vision of making the car a connected environment, while Mulally said that Ford is learning to … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 887: Flip a you-know-what

CES has officially begun and we discuss a slew of offerings from the show floor, as well as the Steve Ballmer keynote. Also, Tom is offered the chance to record his voice for TomTom GPS devices. That's a lot of Tom!

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 887

Ballmer Keynote http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10131585-100.html http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/ces2009-microsoft-keynote.ars

Windows 7 goes Beta this Friday http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10135791-56.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10136418-75.html

Windows 7 might not come in '09 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10135943-56.html

CES Press conference roundup: … Read more

Is it time to kill the Apple press event?

After all the hoopla surrounding Steve Jobs' absence from Apple's last Macworld keynote subsided, it was finally time for us all to tune into Phil Schiller's remarks about the future of his company.

Speculation abounded over what Schiller would announce. A new Mac Mini? An updated Apple TV? We didn't know, but many of us were sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to find out.

And then we did. And it was a snoozefest.

Sure, it's nice to see that iTunes has finally gone DRM-free, even though Amazon.com did so last year, and the updated 17-inch MacBook Pro looks nice, even though the battery isn't removable--a major blunder, since the advertised 8 hours of battery life will probably never happen, and serial travelers require the use of multiple batteries.

But what else came out of Tuesday's announcement? An update to iLife is nice, and iMovie's new features make it a more capable video-editing alternative, but beyond that, Schiller's keynote speech was rife with details and demos that bored those who were looking for major updates.

Realizing that, is it time for Apple to finally put an end to its strategy of holding major events to unveil product updates?… Read more

Macworld Keynote: iPhone Highlights

Although this years Macworld Expo keynote address didn't include any major iPhone-related announcements, a few important feature enhancements were introduced:

iTunes over 3G Pushing ever-increasing data over the AT&T network, Apple is now offering the ability to push iTunes music files over 3G connections. Previously, the iTunes mobile app could only download songs over WiFi. First-generation iPhone owners are still out of the loop. This functionality requires no software update and works right now. Keynote remote control A new application, available through the App Store, allows users to control Keynote presentations from the iPhone. Priced at $.99, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 876: A year without lawsuits, how did you know?

The RIAA has given us the greatest gift of all this holiday season, a promise not to sue you. However they are enlisting the ISPs into their fight against piracy. We also talk about how Universal is making bank, Apple fans are planning protests (Shah), and wish a fond farewell to Majel Barrett. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 876

In these troubled times, RIAA can’t afford to sue you http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127003-93.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-recording-industry-moves-away-from-lawsuits-enlists-isps-in-piracy-figh/

Universal Music seeing ‘tens of millions’ from YouTube http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10126439-93.html… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 874: Ruining the economy since 2005

On a very special Buzz Out Loud, we discover that we, much to our surprise and chagrin, are the cause for the ongoing economic crisis in this country. Who knew? Also, of course, we dissect at length the news that Apple is pulling out of future Macworld Expo conferences after this year, and the even bigger news that Steve Jobs won't be giving this last keynote. Heartbreak ensues.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 874

Without Macworld, how will Apple create the buzz? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10124956-37.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/12/16macworld.html… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 805: See you all...tomorrow?

The Large Hadron Collider comes online tomorrow (Wednesday, September 10), so we're just kind of assuming we'll be here for tomorrow's show. Of course, if it uses .NET, we're definitely doomed, if Computerworld's speculations about the daylong outage of the London Stock Exchange are to be believed. In any case, if today is our last show, at least we brought balance to the force. We discuss new Zunes and new iPods in (mostly) equal doses.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 805

Microsoft confirms Zune details http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10034897-56.html http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-08ZuneFallUpdatePR.mspx … Read more

Hands-on with SlideRocket, a PowerPoint killer in the making

I spent some of this weekend using SlideRocket, a new service that's aiming to replace your presentation software with its flashy (actually Flexy) Web-based tools. Is it a real PowerPoint or Apple Keynote killer in its current iteration? Not yet, but I think it's off to a great start.

The service has all the flash and fervor of some other Adobe Flex-based apps we've seen like BuzzWord, Scrapblog, and Picnik. The transitions and stock slide templates are enough to distract you from how potentially boring your presenter is and thought has been put into making things look good from the get-go, no matter your design prowess. In many ways, the final results are indistinguishable from Apple's well-known presentation software Keynote, which has been a part of the company's iWork suite for Macs for the last three years.

Let's start by talking about what makes SlideRocket different from presentation software you might be used to. For one thing it's very Web-friendly. As I mentioned last week in our coverage of the company's demo at the Under the Radar conference (coverage), it's been designed to integrate media and information services you're already using. Big names on the list include Yahoo maps, Flickr, and Google Docs; I foresee others being added in the future--as long as the service has a data API.

Linking up to each of these services is handled with some grace, although I found performance to take a hit when adding several Flickr photos to a single slide since the service will check in with Flickr each time you load up the slide. It can be set to do the same thing for Google Documents, but this is actually a good thing in case the source data changes. I've been told local copies of the files will be able to be stored on SlideRocket's servers in the future to speed things up.

Speaking of local storage, SlideRocket has the beginnings of a very smart way to handle shared media. Similar to Keynote, all your files are put together in one place and can be sorted via keywords simply by name. The more time you spend categorizing it, the faster you'll be able to parse it, but the built-in search is instantaneous--which is very helpful. Users get up to 3GB of storage to share photos, music, and videos. These asset libraries are shared in the business editions.

So, how does it stack up against other Web-based presentation tools?… Read more