Fly On The Wall

CARLSBAD, Calif., June 5, 2006

What do Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Al Gore, actor John Cusak and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom have in common?

Well, for a short time last week they all took up residency in Carlsbad, Calif., to attend the Wall Street Journal's "D" All Things Digital Conference.

This was the fourth annual "D" conference, hosted by the Journal's technology columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

The gathering, attended by about 500 people, brings together the elite of the technology world, along with some journalists and a small cadre of others who seem to enjoy hanging around what is once again the "in" industry.

Although they were around for the entire event, Martha Stewart and John Cusak didn't have any onstage roles. The homemaking maven did put on a very amusing performance during Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer's question and answer period - standing up holding a bag containing a gaggle of power supplies and cords from Sony products she had with her at the conference.

Why, asked Stewart, can't Sony make just one power supply that works with all its products? A query that resulted in a very amusing exchange between the Omnimedia founder and Sir Howard, who suggested she needed a "native bearer" to help her carry the stuff around.

Martha really got the crowd's sympathy (or at least a few chuckles) when she pointed out that "you need all of these things at all of your houses," though she was far from the only person in this well-heeled crowd to have more than one home.

The best line of the day, however, came from another participant who wondered out loud why Martha couldn't just create a macramé with all those cords. I later asked her if anyone put her up to this (it was far too perfect) and she swore that she really does carry all this gear around and that having to manage multiple power supplies really does bother her. It bothers me, too, though I have one advantage over her. I don't have to deal with multiple houses.

Martha Stewart wasn't the only celebrated person who cracked up the crowd. Bill Gates, on opening night, discussed his company's plans for Windows Vista as well as how Microsoft is working to build more powerful software into mobile devices.

The Microsoft chairman's best line came when he described the new Motorola Q Windows SmartPhone as a "reality acquisition device." That's a term I hadn't heard before.

What he was talking about is the ability to use mobile devices to enhance real world experiences such as being able to view an instant replay while you're in the stands at a ballpark or getting detailed information about an historic building while you're there.

Gates also said he likes to browse through YouTube, a site that houses an enormous collection of user-supplied video clips. YouTube has been under fire from many media companies (including CBS News) for failing to take down copyrighted material that users have posted without permission, but apparently the world's richest person is as guilty as many others in partaking of this material.

Gates admitted that he uses the service to watch old Harlem Globetrotters videos. When asked if any of these Globetrotter clips might have been "stolen," Gates replied "stolen is a strong word. Let's just stay that the owners of this material weren't being paid."

Although it didn't come up during his talk, I later had a chance to ask Gates about Microsoft's FlexGo initiative (introduced at a conference I attended the previous week) to bring computers to the developing world. Gates, along with MIT media lab Guru Nicholas Negroponte's "One Laptop Per Child" project, wants to bring computing power and Internet access to the billions of people around the world who are on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Gates said he wants to extend his company's initial mission statement to "a computer on every desk." He was optimistic not only about getting computers cheap enough for use in very poor areas but also about the ability to bring the Internet to remote regions.

"Spectrum (available radio frequencies) in those areas is a lot easier to come by than it is in developed areas," he told me, suggesting that the developing world will eventually get a wireless connection to the Net.

Negroponte also spoke at "D," showing off a working prototype of his "$100 laptop" initiative which he said is likely to be available within the next year or so to governments at a price, initially, of between $130 and $140 per unit. That price will go down further, he said, to $100 when it goes into mass production.

Negroponte also said the governments of Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, Argentina. China, India and Egypt are evaluating the device. The system will use "mesh networking," which means that the radio in each device is actually a router which helps re-transmit signals to other devices.

Then there was former Vice President Al Gore, who referred to himself as the "former next president of the United States" as he made his debut appearance at the conference.

Gore, enjoying the success of his global warming documentary, "Inconvenient Truth," used his time at "D" to switch back and forth between his passion – saving the planet – and his business interest: the TV channel Current.

In introducing the latter, Gore gave a long lecture about the history of media from the time the monks controlled all written words to the Guttenberg printing revolution to the Internet and, naturally, his interactive TV network. My main concern during that part of his talk was to keep from snoring but I woke up when he passionately described the effects of global warming and his belief that it's not too late for mankind to rally to the cause of the earth.

At his worst, Gore is a didactic bore like some professors I remember from college days. At his best, he's an inspirational messiah.

Fortunately for Gore, he ended on that note which is why – I suspect –several people in the audience all but begged him to make another run for the presidency.

Considering the money in the room and the money he's likely to make from his film, Gore might be in a position to bankroll such a run.

Don't expect it, says the former veep, who explains he's now engaged in a "different type of campaign" - on behalf of the environment.

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