Business / Technology

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Ford’s work on integrating computers and other digital systems into cars was presented by Chief Executive Alan Mulally in the final session of the All Things Digital conference. Mulally, who formerly led Boeing’s commercial airplane business, said Ford decided to focus particularly on the interface to help drivers safely manage the…

RANCHO PALSO VERDES, Calif. — Peter Chou’s hunch was right. His Taiwanese phone company, HTC, was founded in 1997 to pursue the vision that smartphones would be transformative. HTC went on to produce the first Windows smartphone in 1999 and later the first phone based on Google’s Android software. On Friday, it launches the first smartphone…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — AOL was overly focused on a few metrics — gross revenue and page views — according to Tim Armstrong, who left Google to become AOL’s chief executive last year. Now the venerable portal is remaking itself, in part by developing a sort of digital newspaper with local coverage and ad sales…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — A few weeks ahead of its launch, the OnLive online gaming service was demonstrated at the All Things Digital conference by founder Steve Perlman. Using a new compression technology, the service delivers console-type games that run on the company’s datacenter and are played through a small software client downloaded to a…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Walt Mossberg is interviewing Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie here at the All Things Digital conference. Mossberg started it off asking Ballmer about the economy, but the conversation heated up when they came around to competition with Apple and Google. Mossberg also elicited a bit…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher didn’t beat around the bush with Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, starting their All Things Digital interview by asking him about the social networking site’s controversial approaches to privacy. Zuckerberg said the settings grew too complex as the site added numerous features, each with…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Another interesting bit of tech history that surfaced at the D8 conference: AOL co-founder Steve Case said his company considered buying Apple and putting Steve Jobs in charge, to help sort out its troubled merger with Time Warner. At the time Apple’s market value was only about $1 billion. It was during…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Kno, a Santa Clara, Calif. startup, unveiled a dual screen tablet for students at the All Things Digital conference. The Kno tablet weighs 5.5 pounds, has dual 14-inch color touchscreens and pairs with an online platform that’s supported by higher education publishers, the founders said in their demonstration. The device…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller shared details of how her organization is extending to new platforms. The radio network has 34 million listeners who spend an average of six hours a week with NPR, she told Kara Swisher at the All Things Digital conference. “It’s very important for us to be on…

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Microsoft didn’t provide any new details of its Xbox Project Natal control system at the D8 conference, beyond showing its latest hardware publicly. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher — and her enthusiastic son, Louie =- tried the dodgeball game that Microsoft’s been using to demonstrate the system. At the end, Mossberg…