Google I/O dissected on Reporters' Roundtable

We're recording this Roundtable on the final day of the Google developers conference, Google I/O. From my perspective as a jaded and grumpy tech journalist, it has been a pretty cool conference. Google launched its own 7-inch Android tablet, a new living room entertainment streaming appliance called the Q, Chrome for Apple's iOS, a competitor to Evite called Google+ Events... and that's just the shipping products. We also saw wing-suit skydivers wearing Google glasses jump out of an airship hovering over Mosone Center and glide to a landing on the convention center roof.

So there's a lot to talk about, and I've got two great guests to run down the important topics that came out of the Google I/O conference:

In the studio: Stephen Shankland, CNET News senior writer and alpha geek. Via Skype: Esther Dyson. Dyson is an investor in Internet startups in the U.S. and elsewhere, on the board of Airship Ventures (the company that took the Google wing-suit jumpers up), and former chair of the Electronic Fronteir Foundation and of ICANN.

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Google VP maps out new Google Earth 3D tech

Although there were no announcements about any upcoming versions of Google Maps for iOS, Google did show off some impressive 3D technology to make Google Earth feel more like you're touring over cities in a low-flying plane. In fact, the company is using a fleet of planes to "collect 45 degree imagery, flying with the four cardinal compass points at 45 degrees combined with straight down," according to Google VP of Engineering Brian McClendon.

You can listen to my four minute interview with McClendon by clicking below.

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'Heckerty' stories come to life on tablets, phones (podcast)

Heckerty, a 409-year-old green-faced witch, can't seem to get anything right, but fortunately she has a loyal cat named Zanzibar who comes to her rescue. The iOS and Android app, Meet Heckerty, is based on a series of stories by Anne Rachlin. They are narrated by Rachlin's daughter Jan Ziff. Ziff, whose daily radio show Sound*Bytes is heard on CBS Radio News stations, is a longtime broadcast journalist with stints at the BBC and Voice of America (Disclosure: CBS Radio News is owned by CNET's parent company CBS and I also broadcast for CBS News).

There … Read more

Should you buy Facebook stock? Roundtable panelists discuss

As Facebook was trading as a public company for the first time today, we assembled a group of tech and finance experts to talk about the new stock. Is it worth buying? What will it do for technology overall? Can Facebook compete on mobile? Our panelists to debate these and related topics:

Jill Schlesinger from  CBS MoneyWatch.com. Jill can help us sort out the pros and cons for investors interested in buying into this mega IPO.  Andy Rachleff, CEO of  Wealthfront, an Internet-era investment advice service. Andy's a venture capitalist at Benchmark Capital. He also teaches entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He wrote about Facebook's IPO on CNET News in February. Tom Merritt, host of  Tech News Today on the TWiT network. Tom takes the pulse of the tech world every day on his show. Paul Sloan, the main guy covering the Facebook IPO at CNET News.

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Live: Reporters' Roundtable on Facebook IPO

It's happened. Facebook is a public company. Should you invest in this massive offering? Join us live at 9:30 a.m. Pacific/12:30 p.m. Eastern to talk about the IPO and what it means for you. And also how it might change the economics of technology forever.

We have great people to talk about this IPO:

Jill Schlesinger from  CBS MoneyWatch.com. Jill can help us sort out the pros and cons for investors interested in buying into this mega IPO.  Andy Rachleff, CEO of  Wealthfront, an Internet-era investment advice service. Andy'… Read more

It's Facebook IPO on Reporters' Roundtable, live on Friday

Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Pacific (12:30 p.m. Eastern), I'll be hosting a special live episode of Reporters' Roundtable with three great guests, to discuss and debate the Facebook IPO.

Joining me tomorrow are:

Jill Schlesinger from  CBS MoneyWatch.com. Jill can help us sort out the pros and cons for investors interested in buying into this mega IPO.  Andy Rachleff, CEO of  Wealthfront, an Internet-era investment advice service. Andy's a venture capitalist at Benchmark Capital. He also teaches entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He wrote about Facebook's IPO … Read more

How Facebook fights child porn

It's hard not to be affected by an article titled "Kids Raped, Sodomized on Facebook Pages," the first of a four-part WND series about child porn and Facebook.

The article alleges that the blog "located dozens of child porn images after 'friending' many likely pedophiles and predators who trade thousands of pornographic photos on the social network."

Unlike legal "adult pornography," child porn depicts sexual exploitation of children, in some cases very young children. Child porn is illegal in the United States and many other countries. Anyone who knowingly produces, transmits, stores, or … Read more

Evernote CEO Phil Libin talks valuations and bubbles

I'll disclose this off the top: I'm a big fan of Evernote. I like the app and use it all the time. I even pay for it. I also enjoy talking with Evernote CEO Phil Libin, who I have found to be uncommonly deliberate and transparent for a startup CEO.

With the news around Evernote lately -- the company's recent $70 million funding round and its acquisition of Penultimate -- I thought it'd be good to bring Libin back to the Reporters' Roundtable to discuss the current state of the software economy, and what Silicon Valley looks like from the startup's perspective today.

In this discussion we also talk a little about Libin's "100-year startup" talking point. We don't get too much into the company's global ambitions, though, and I do want to point out that as popular as Evernote is here in the U.S., it's also apparently very big in Japan, and, Libin hopes, will also soon be big in China (subscription to The Wall Street Journal required).

Libin is probably going to become CEO of a public company within a few years. Do you think he'll be able to keep Evernote innovating, figure out how to turn its revenue stream into a flood, and keep investors happy? Watch the video below.

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Wrapp: Giving you free stuff to 'gift' to your Facebook friends

Wrapp rolled out in the U.S. today. It's a mobile/Facebook gifting platform, kind of like Karma, which I covered recently and liked quite a lot. I don't think Wrapp is as slick or as fun as Karma, but it's got a devilishly clever business model, and I'm having a hard time seeing how it can go wrong.

See my Reporters' Roundtable interview with Wrapp CEO Hjalmar Winbladh, below, for more. His perspective on the business of gift-giving is interesting, and it might help you come up with ways you can think around the edges of your business.

What Wrapp does that's so clever: It combines gift-giving with targeted marketing with social metrics. The idea is that if you want to gift someone (I guess that's a verb now), Wrapp will look at the person you're thinking of, figure out where they are and how valuable they are to the Wrapp partners, and display for you a number of potential gift card option. For example, if you're looking at getting something for your fashionable girlfriend, you might see a $10 gift card from H&M you can give her -- at no cost to you.

You can add on to the gift card value (and you'd better, you lout), to give her $100 (at a $90 cost). Or you can just cheap out and go for the freebie.

Either way, H&M gets a good potential customer into the store, and for a very reasonable (to H&M) expense of only $10.

Wrapp, of course, takes a fee when the "card," which resides on the recipient's smartphone, is redeemed. The company also helps brands collect data on who's connecting with whom. If the companies working with Wrapp are smart, they're also correlating big data about who's buying what based on their social profiles.

Personally, I'd rather pay for a box of chocolates with cash and give that as a gift; I don't like the thought of an honest gesture being exploited as a datapoint on some product marketing wonk's Powerpoint. But that's because I'm a romantic. Wrapp is a smart business and it really could help more people connect through gifts and gift-like gestures.

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