Gawker: valleywag, walt mossberg

A Vile Day for the Twitterati

Owen Thomas — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:59:59 EST

Was it the sad news of Steve Jobs's ailments? Or just bad fish-oil capsules? Something was off in the Twittersphere today.

Formerly famous podcaster Amanda Congdon kept it classy for another one of her forgettable post-Rocketboom projects.

Wall Street Journal gadget columnist Walt Mossberg got so distraught over Steve Jobs's health problems he couldn't type straight.

And like Jobs, Guardian writer Jemima Kiss overshared her digestive problems.

Blogueuse Ana Marie Cox, the former Wonkette, maintained her standards.

Vaguely employed gossipmonger Bonnie Fuller tried to make "cutes" a word.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us their username.

Mossberg blesses Googlephone as "first real competitor" to iPhone

Paul Boutin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:00:00 EDT

It's not an iPhone killer. But the G1 is the first viable iPhone alternative, says the Sage of Potomac. If you don't have time to read his full review, I've listed Walt Mossberg's talking points:

Specs: 3G, $179, Amazon MP3, App Store, 1GB, Copy and Paste
The Google apps work great.
You can swap out the battery to avoid recharging on the go.
But it lacks the iPhone's finger-flick UI.
It falls short of Apple's music, picture and video apps.
T-Mobile's high-speed network is not so widespread as AT&T or Verizon. Check before you buy.

Michael Arrington mocked by Kara Swisher at Demo

Jackson West — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:00:00 EDT

In the war of words being fought between the organizers of the DemoFall and TechCrunch50 startup conferences, AllThingsD reporter Kara Swisher unleashed quite a salvo yesterday: "Being lectured on journalism ethics by Michael Arrington is like getting parenting tips from Britney Spears." Zing! She proceeds to call out the TechCrunch50 organizers attacks on Demo for what they are — "Marketing 101." Walt Mossberg was a bit more diplomatic, offering more subtle jabs like, "It never occurred to me not to come here [Demo]." Here at Valleywag, we maintainthe highest standards of impartiality through our willingness to get kicked out of any and all such events.

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Walt Mossberg pans Google's Chrome browser

Owen Thomas — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:40:00 EDT

With Chrome, Google is trying to reinvent Web browsing. What's that old saying about not fixing it if it ain't broke? Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's make-or-break gadget reviewer, has played with Chrome for a week. His conclusion: the browser has "promise" — which, if you're familiar with Mossbergspeak, means he thinks it sucks, but he's willing to review the next version in a year. The harshest part: "Despite Google’s claims that Chrome is fast, it was notably slower in my tests at the common task of launching Web pages than either Firefox or Safari."

Mossberg's stunt double solves Windows Mobile's media problems

Paul Boutin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:40:00 EDT

"A single tap on its surface instantly zooms in on images; a flicking gesture moves one photo off the screen and pulls another one on. Menus appear with clever animation, and actions like downloading and emailing photos and videos are intuitively incorporated." No, not the iPhone. It's the Kinoma player for Windows phones. WSJ contributor Katie Boehret solves all of Walt Mossberg's problems with this tidy report on using Kinoma to serve Flickr, YouTube, SHOUTcast and other services on a Windows phone. There's good news for Linux and Symbian fans too:

Kinoma Play seems to totally take over the device's multimedia functions, hiding every trace of Windows Mobile's clunky, antiquated, menu-driven operating system.

It's also a fast search engine for multimedia content on the phone, on the Web or even on your computer via remote search. Kinoma Play works with services including YouTube, Audible, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, Orb and SHOUTcast.

I selected Flickr from Kinoma Play's list of services and signed into my Flickr account in just a few steps. My photos and those of friends were easy to browse.

A section called the Kinoma Guide compiles over 100,000 podcast episodes, radio stations, videos, live television and Webcam clips, panoramas and photos into easy-to-browse categories.

With a touch on the Menu Pod icon, users can add any media to favorites or to an "on-the-go" list. This same tool also sends multimedia to others via email.

I wish it could entirely replace the dated Windows Mobile user interface.

Kinoma is working on Symbian, Linux and even iPhone versions of its application and will release one of those versions by the end of this year.

(Photo by Kimona)

iPhone day 14: Walt Mossberg finds 12 bugs in MobileMe

Paul Boutin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

"Apple's MobileMe is far too flawed to be reliable," the Sage of Potomac pronounced yesterday. It's a rare swipe from Walt Mossberg, the guy better known for writing Steve Jobs's marketing slogans ("the most elegant desktop computer I've ever used.") What's important is that Mossberg isn't complaining about MobileMe's launch glitches — even when it works, he says, it's not solid. Here's the bullet list of Walt's gripes:

Using two Macs, two Dell computers and two iPhones, I ran into problem after problem.

While changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best.

The Web site was sluggish.

occasionally calendar entries wouldn’t load at all.

Sometimes, you have to manually refresh the Web pages to see changes made on your devices

when I tried to open my Web-based file-storage page directly from the MobileMe control panel on Windows, I got an error message on both Dells.

MobileMe calendar appeared as a seprate calendar in Outlook.

My address-book groups [showed up in Outlook] as separate address books.

On one occasion, my synced contacts on the iPhone appeared as names only.

Certain emails simply disappeared [instead of being routed by rules to different folders.]

Twice, MobileMe was unable to sync my bookmarks at all. When it did, their order was scrambled.

My custom ringtones for particular contacts were lost.

Walt Mossberg in a suit? Gotta be Photoshop

Paul Boutin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:40:00 EDT

It's not just me. The sight of Walt Mossberg, the Big Guy of gadget journalism, in a tie and jacket for an ad promoting his appearance on the Fox Business cable network was such a surprise that even Walt's longtime colleague Kara Swisher blogged about it. Fox has been caught Photoshopping opposition journalists. Did they likewise suit up Mossberg in postproduction? Hope so. A suit is a suit, but a 'shop is a story. Memo to Fox: Computer experts are like Trace Adkins. "Work boots, one blue suit / Size too small, won't wear it at all / Unless somebody kicks or gets hitched / It don’t fit, and it makes me itch." Keep it real, Walt!

Mossberg: iPhone 3G will cost you more than the old model

Paul Boutin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Yes, the new iPhone 3G is "much, much faster at fetching data" — 200 to 500 kilobits per second in New York and Washington, D.C. tests. Prices start at $199, half that of the old model. But the only gadget reviewer who can make or break a product warns that the new King of Phones will, like a Mach 3 Turbo razor, cost you more than you realize over time. Also, "There’s no copy and paste function, no universal search, no instant messaging and no MMS for sending photos quickly between phones." You're buying one anyway, but read our excerpt of Walt's two ways the new iPhone will cost you more in time and money than the original.

First, in my tests, the iPhone 3G’s battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks. This is an especially significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can’t be replaced with a spare.

Second, Apple’s exclusive carrier in the U.S., AT&T Inc., has effectively negated the iPhone’s upfront price cut by jacking up its monthly fee for unlimited data use by $10. Over the course of the two-year contract you must sign to get the lower hardware prices, that adds $240, overwhelming the $200 savings on the phone itself. If you want text messaging, the cost rises further. With the first iPhone, 200 text messages a month came free. Now, 200 messages will cost $5 a month, or another $120 over the two-year contract.

New iPhone just waiting to fall off a truck in the East Bay

Jackson West — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:20:00 EDT

The new iPhone that has the panties of Apple fans in a bunch? It's already here. The latest shipment arrived in Oakland on May 6, and was then trucked to a distribution center in nearby Fremont. So if you want to get your hands on one before the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg — if it's not already too late — it might be a better idea to make friends with the International Longshore Workers Union than top Apple flack Katie Cotton. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

The passive-aggressive passion of Kara Swisher

Jackson West — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:40:00 EDT

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 her camera and, above all, more than a little envy when it comes to the status her colleague at the Wall Street Journal Walt Mossberg enjoys. At one point, she even asks a staffer who grants access to the conference, "Are you dangling hope and then snatching it away, which was our instruction?" Yes, yes they are.

Security ejects Valleywag from D6 conference

Owen Thomas — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:46:02 EDT

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 client" had asked that I be shown the door. "The client" being Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, the conference organizers, and "the door" actually just the way to the hotel bar, where I'm having a lovely fruity beverage. And Swisher and Mossberg were too late with the bum rush. I'd already been working my camera for hours. While Bill Gates bores attendees with a preview of Windows Seven, Microsoft's latest attempt to annoy the majority of computer users, you can enjoy the snapshots I took. Among the nerdspotting: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Max Levchin of Slide.

Sometimes that new iPhone is just a cigar

Owen Thomas — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:00:00 EDT

Sexygenarian gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg and feisty gossipmonger Kara Swisher, the disgrumptive pair behind the Wall Street Journal's D conference and AllThingsD.com website. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments, and the winner will become this post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: digital2 for "Google: Organizing the world's crap." (Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com)

Invading D6, the Wall Street Journal's posh pooh-bah conference

Owen Thomas — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:40:00 EDT

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, the diminutive media commentaterrorist of AllThingsD.com. In exchange, they get to seem classy and witty, if only by comparison. It is the sort of elite event to which Valleywag is not invited. We showed up anyway.

Security may prevent me from attending the formal program. But the hotel bar is lovely, I hear, and I intend to camp out there, to overhear what I may and hold court with brave (or incautious) tipsters. Folks I'm looking forward to running into:

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who threatened to shoot me
Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, or rather, his rumored chaperone at the event — Marcy Simon, Google CEO Eric Schmidt's ex-girlfriend
Yahoo president Sue Decker, who is negotiating a divorce at the same time as a merger

And that's just for starters. See why I don't get invited to these things?

For you, gentle reader, I can endure a few awkward conversations and more. Peruse the list of speakers, think of questions you'd like me to ask, and I'll do my best to buttonhole them for you.

Mossberg denies he bleated iPhone release date

Jordan Golson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:20:00 EDT

"If I knew [the release date for the new iPhone], why would I announce it in the middle of a sentence at the Finnish embassy, rather than report it in the Wall Street Journal?" — mid-six-figure-salary Journal gadgeteer Walt Mossberg, on earning his keep. Left unanswered: What was he doing at the Finnish embassy in the first place? [Silicon Alley Insider]

Rupert putting "special things" behind WSJ subscription wall

Jordan Golson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:20:17 EST

News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, commented on the future of the Wall Street Journal website: "We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of The Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering" for subscribers.

The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive."

This likely means more articles will be free, but what will end up in the subscription-only section — behind the paywall, in blogger jargon? Our money is on a 24/7 Walt Mossberg/Justin.tv lifecast — a live, streaming, online video "documenting" Uncle Walt's life. We'd pay at least $5.95 a month for that.

At Macworld, all press are created equal, but some are more equal than others

Jordan Golson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:44:14 EST

At CES 2008, respectable press and barely-tolerated bloggers were separated into groups with different badges but mostly similar levels of access. At Macworld 2008, there was, theoretically, only one badge for all types of press. In reality? Some hacks were more equal than others.

The lowest level goes to bloggers and reporters from sites with few readers — they get onto the show floor for free, but don't get entry into the all-important Steve Jobs keynote.
The standard press badge, pictured above, gives access to all the floor and the special media section of the keynote.
The truly special press have the VIP ribbon (left) affixed to their badge. We spotted one on John Markoff of the New York Times, Newsweek's Steven Levy, and Walt Mossberg of the Walt — sorry, Wall Street Journal. A Macworld veteran told us they're reserved for "geezers."
When the doors opened for press to enter the keynote, broadcast media were let in first — but Mossberg used his clout to cut in line. "I'm VIP," he said, waved his badge and walked past. The rest of us had to deal with security guards with a small Apple logo emblazoned on their black shirts like we were paparazzi waiting to get into a restaurant where Britney Spears was eating.

We didn't rate VIP status, but we had something better: Fake Steve Jobs!

Gizmodo chief Brian is a sleepy little Lam

Jordan Golson — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:17:02 EST

Blogging can be tiring, especially when you blog blog blog almost nonstop like Gizmodo's Brian Lam. When you're reporting from a show like CES where there is so much stuff to cover, you have to grab a few minutes to rest whenever you can. Don't worry, Brian. It'll all be over soon. Lam told us he used to tease Walt Mossberg about his age but stopped when he realized that the 60-year-old Wall Street Journal columnist has more energy than he does. (Photo by Curtis Walker)

This week was a wash

Paul Boutin — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:57:24 EST

Ahh, that feels good right there. I don't think we'll be talking about this week next week. The Facebook pile-on continued. Amazon's Kindle reader suffered a surprise media backlash. I'd hoped for another bank-employee-in-tutu photo to liven things up. Instead we got Gerstmanngate. At least we still have jobs — oh wait, Valleywag party girl Megan "Leggy" McCarthy is heading to Wired. I think I'll go curl up in the tub with my INVISIBLE PUPPY. (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

Mossberg slams Kindle — was he bitter about Newsweek exclusive?

Jordan Golson — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:44:27 EST

Walt Mossberg, surprisingly slow out of the gate, has finally deigned to review Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader. He was not kind, calling it "mediocre" and "marred by annoying flaws." He also says that Amazon "nailed the electronic-book shopping experience," which is no surprise given the success of Amazon.com, "but it has a lot to learn about designing electronic devices." Harsh words from a top reviewer who can make or break a device. Here's our question: what took him so long?

Newsweek had an glowing exclusive review from Steven Levy and New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue wrote up the Kindle soon after it was made public, but it took Mossberg more than a week to review the device. What happened? Another tech columnist told us that Mossberg "was only interested in reviewing it if he could be first. When Steven Levy got it first Walt threw a tantrum." Classy. We also hear Mossberg tried to edge out other reviewers to be first on the iPhone — but got turned down. Incidentally, I still haven't gotten any response from Amazon PR about a review unit. What's up with that? I'll be nicer than Mossberg — maybe.