As usual, this matrix is just the tip of the molehill—if you want to really get in deep with these colorful characters, here's where to look:

• NYT - David Pogue

• WSJ - Walt Mossberg

• USA Today - Ed Baig

• Wired - Steven Levy

• Cnet - Kent German

• Engadget - Josh Topolsky

• Ars Technica

• Laptop

• Crunchgear

• Gear Live

• Gizmodo - Jason Chen

And if we've missed your review, send it in: we'll add it to the list.

Bezos also noted, as we had kind of expected, that Amazon will never reveal specific sales numbers for the Kindle, which is kind of disappointing but also kind of nonchalant and cool. We knew that color e-ink isn't nearly ready for primetime, so it's no big surprise that Amazon knows it. Looks like we're stuck with black-and-white for a few more years at least. [AFP]

The device is tighter and more physically beautiful than the iPod Touch and it's got a better UI, the main menu's scrolling so natural through the swipe gestures. There's a little note on the side, under the volume toggle—"Hello from Seattle." The power button is up top. The home button is nice and prominent, a bar rather than a round button on the Touch. It's smaller. And the accelerometer is more swift in responding to repositioning; images rotate very fast.

Of course, this thing won't have hundreds of apps ready for download when it comes out, as the Touch does.

But I would take this in a heartbeat, provided they get around to making a Mac client.

Archive below:

3:24 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee are on stage. McNamee is known for making bold statements in regards to the competitive relationship between the iPhone and the Palm. He says its going to make everyone drop the iPhone and buy a Pre.

3:27 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Jon says that he was retired from Apple when Palm approached him. "It's so rare to be able to start from new products."

3:29 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Walt: What are you doing differently at Palm that you did not do at Apple?

3:29 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
They're doing a demo. It's stuff we've seen before. He's showing off cards, which are like processes or programs or windows. That can be switched between. This is how you manage multitasking on the Pre.

3:31 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:33 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The Amazon Store:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

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3:34 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Here is our Pre guide and the original liveblog.

3:35 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
iTunes Syncing!
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

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3:36 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The pre shows up as an ipod. Is Rubinstein using his previous knowledge from being an iPod engineering lead to connect this? "They're practically a monopolist."
Kara: Is Apple open to this? Jon: I can't see why they wouldn't be.

3:38 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The Pre mounts as mass storage, so you can presumably import songs from the USB mounted drive to iTunes, and obviously you can manage the songs from iTunes to the Pre.

3:40 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The Palm Pre App store. They're going to have a dozen apps in the store at launch. Roger says at 4:20, they'll get more apps. (Major stoner, I love this guy.)
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:41 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The Palm Pre App store. They're going to have a dozen apps in the store at launch. Roger says at 4:20, they'll get more apps. (Major stoner, I love this guy.)

3:41 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:41 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
apps stay on the device, iTunes won't manage (obviously) apps.

3:43 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
He's demoing fandango app. It integrates with location awareness and works with the calendar.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:43 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:45 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Twitter integration:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:48 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

3:50 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Roger: The Pre is for people who use the web a lot and care about data syncing in the cloud. There is a mirror on the back "Why wouldn't you want to make a phone for women." Kara, raises an eyebrow, "only women need mirrors?"

3:51 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Roger on exaggeration, that he's not the only one. "Nokia told you they had flash. They have flash light"
3:51 PM ON MAY 28 2009

B. Lam:
Jon: I think there's a variety of people who want a real keyboard. Surprisingly, the crowd applauds.

3:54 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Walt: Can a developer put a virtual keyboard on the Pre? Jon: I don't know why you'd want to, nothing's stopping them. Roger: Well, if you have four hands.
Mossberg pretends to put on his make up using the Pre's mirror back, as Kara chides Roger for his previous statement about women needing mirrors. Roger says the segment is under served. Tech is aimed at testosterone ladden men, he says. The iPhone has a feel, its a bit large in your pocket, he says. "The Palm Pre has a Different Feel"

4:00 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Walt asks why they're days away from the launch and they haven't released the SDK. Jon says they're moving forward in steps. Fair enough. The iPhone's true SDK didn't come out for quite some time. Walt asks: Why, if its so easy to program for, why isn't it out there? Roger: Because there are limitations to what you can do with a new venture. "We don't want to push it out there until its close to being right and then have people help us get it completely right."

4:01 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Walt is asking him about supply problems and rebate issues. Basically, he's asking, where can we get these phones? Jon agrees there will be shortages, but provides no real answers to the question.

4:03 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
"Maybe it's awkward." Roger on the Pre working with iTunes.

4:03 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
Walt jokes, is there a special line for iPhone converts? Roger: Of course, the line wraps around uranus.
Question from the crowd: Will the GSM version be coming soon? In a few months, says Jon.
Walt: Is Verizon getting it? Jon: We love Sprint, I can't comment on unannounced comments. THAT SOUNDS LIKE A YES TO ME.

4:12 PM ON MAY 28 2009
B. Lam:
I think we're wrapping up in the liveblog, but check the front page for more.

• Regarding Bing's name and Steve Jobs: "We should have named it ‘BOOM'!"
• "The Web is designed for the PC … most of these mobile apps are substituting for the fact that the original app wasn't designed for the PC,"
• I just think netbook is a funny brand … what is a netbook? Is it defined by its operating system, its memory, its screen size? They're really just PCs. I bet if you asked people if they planned to buy a portable computer you'd get a much better response. … It's a little hard to know what the heck the difference is between the netbook and the PC."
• "Vista is faster than XP"

A pretty mild talk, otherwise.

[All Things D]

From the AllThingsD interview, a peek into Ballmer's brain:

I'm not the creative guy, here …. short mattered … people like to ‘verb up' … works globally, doesn't have negative connotations.

Early word is it's got a simple, minimalist, colorful interface, and boasts some Wolfram Alpha-like features though a function called "Instant Answer." More as we get it. (Image courtesy of Ars Technica.)

UPDATE: Bing will go public on June 3rd. Ars has a hands-on, and Microsoft has posted an info page. Their strategy, it seems, is to provide direct answers to questions, sort of like Wolfram Alpha does, but with a focus on everyday queries like consumer product info, weather, local interests and even health questions. Ars's conclusion:

Bing is a very good product, especially in the areas where Live Search differentiated itself. While bringing some new flavor to search, it's not compelling enough to get me to leave Google behind. I will probably use it exactly like I use Live Search, as my fallback option when Google doesn't turn up what I want. Give Bing a spin, but don't expect anything revolutionary, just evolutionary.

Oh. Well, we'll all get to try it soon enough.

Press release below. [AllThingsD]

Microsoft's New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions
Decision Engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload.

REDMOND, Wash. - May 28, 2009 - Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today's search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today's search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

"Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don't do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. "When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they've found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions."

A New Approach to Internet Search

Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today's search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.
•

Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site's relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.
•

Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.
•

Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft's research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn't optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.

The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:
•

Microsoft's mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.
•

Technology from Microsoft's April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. More information coming soon.
•

Microsoft's popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Microsoft is committed to building better tools to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. Bing is an important first step toward this long-term vision and a strong indicator of Microsoft's commitment to move search technology forward for customers.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

* Ipsos 2009; 1,156 participants

The new soft keyboard improvement, called TouchSense, is designed to mimic both the feel and sound of a real, mechanical keyboard, to enable easier transitioning between keys. Immersive Messaging, on the other hand, is a cornball idea that's essentially text messaging gussied up with haptic feedback: You can send a heart design to your significant other, and he or she can feel it "beating," which kind of sounds more scary than romantic to me. They dub such icons "Hapticons." Even further, they announced "Twiddling," which is essentially a separate app in which two people can "feel" each other through haptic feedback on their iPhones. Now you see what I mean about that corny romantic nonsense.

Both TouchSense and Immersive Messaging were demonstrated on the iPhone, and the Immersion rep dodged questions about possible other platforms (*cough* WebOS *cough*) and even Immersion's immediate plans for their creations. We could see Immersive Messaging showing up as an irritating app, a theory the Immersion rep wouldn't deny. [All Things D]

That's not so new in concept, but the trick is, they use math to filter out the background noise—in this case, motion from walking, jumping, etc—so it doesn't hang up on you when you move around while doing it.

The headset, a modified also knows when you place it on a table and powers down. All by using math and a regular accelerometer.

You've seen games and GPS apps from Fullpower but those are just apps demoing the company's tech. Fullpower's motion detection engine tech is described as doing for motion what voice recognition does for voice. It interprets the raw data and figures out what a person is doing, eliminating confusing data, which I think is interesting because up to now, most developers have just had to deal with raw accelerometer XYZ information. Hard to parse in itself, but up to now, really hard to take that info and decipher what exactly the person holding the device is doing.

Next up is an AMAZING demo of a camera app that filters out motion using the accelerometer. Typically, software that have done this has done it by using gyroscopes, or mechanical parts, or by digitally scanning the image as you move it. The accelerometer here helped the camera, mounted on a wildly shaking platform. The images are taken on a crappy smartphone sensor (a slow sensor), came out very sharp when stabilization is applied. I'm unsure if its timing it properly to snap when the motion is at its slowest, but that would make sense, since there's no way to increase shutter speed. The tech can scale to all sorts of high end cameras, using just cheap accelerometer parts, not the typically high end stuff you see in DSLRs now. I look forward to getting this stuff in smartphones.


The demos were just concepts, but I'm sure we'll see more of this tech in products, soon. [Fullpower]

[Disclosure: these guys are my friends.]

Maybe it's a little silly, but it's definitely catchy. Say it: Bing. Bing. Bing. [PC World via PocketLint]

The best post on the subject is from John Paslkdjclkjdcski (just kidding, dude—P-A-C-Z-K-O-W-S-K-I) at AllThingsD, who quotes Apple-whore analyst Gene Munster who says it's an absolute "nope," then updates the story with a quote from another equally non-Apple-employed person saying it's likely.

The reasons are both valid: No, because Apple will wait for the return of Jobs to unveil sweet goodies; and yes, because if new iPhone has new programming requirements, they'll want to spring them on developers at a developers conference. Pacz himself seems to lean towards "yes," since WWDC is Apple's biggest scheduled attraction of the year. I'm leaning toward "hrmmaybeletsjustseecantsayforsurewhateveryeahsoundsgood." What's your call? [AllThingsD]

In the second part Kamen talks about how the arm's control systems were developed, simplifying an 18-degrees of freedom movement space so that it could be controlled almost subconsciously by the user.
Part three is where Kamen talks about his not-for profit scheme to get young people interested in science through robots: "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" (FIRST); "like sports, nobody ever walks around saying 'I wanna be second'."

Interesting stuff, as I said, and the Luke arm seems to have a pretty astounding future ahead of it. I can't help thinking I'd've asked a few more direct questions though. Is the arm dexterous enough for it to let a wearer/user use the toilet? When the Luke arm gets to that level of sophistication—and, more importantly, when its developer/users trust it enough to do intimate tasks like that with it—that's the point at which I reckon the arm will stop being a science-technology showpiece and really make a difference in people's lives. Over to you in the comments. [Kara.AllthingsD]

Kevin basically responds that there isn't enough subsidation in the US.

Mossberg moves onto openness of the networks.

Kevin Martin is saying that both consumers and entrepreneurs want it. So in the last auction, they put a condition in that the spectrum needs to be open to any handset or application. And our willingness to embrace that is important. We're not completely there yet, so that every major carrier is embracing openness.

Kara: Would you have done this openness thing before Google spoke up?
Verizon: You see in Japan and Korea that what networks can do when open. But in the past, customers wanted to do things like downloading apps to their phones. And that increased as the broadband speeds picked up.

If someone builds a device that isn't efficient, or uses too much bandwidth, we have to be careful. The shared resource [of the wireless network] is not like a DSL line. (Funny, isn't that what the Net neutrality enemies are saying is a shared resource, too? B.L.)

Mossberg: Will rates be the same for plans using phones that we didn't buy from you?
Lowell: They will be the same, but the functionalities might be different, because of your handset. (Obviously —B.L.)

Mossberg: So you're purely a provider of network services then?
Lowell: Yes.

Mossberg: Let's talk about cancellation fees. How to you justify charging people $175-$200 to cancel plans that have already worked through their subsidation.
Lowell: We don't do that anymore, as of a year ago. In Italy, they don't allow subsidization for these reasons. We tier our termination fees so that over time they get lower. And we sell all our phones without any subsidies as an option but 98% of the people choose the contract. If subsidies were outlawed, we'd have no problem and no other carriers would, too.

Kevin: It should be declined over time if its a recovering fixed cost. There should be a reasonable amount of time to take your phone/service home and try it out. There's a 14-day allowance for this. Some people are wondering what restocking fees should be, too.

Kevin on Net netrality: We have to allow carriers to manage their networks without limiting consumers access to info, but not only info but innovation.

Verizon on Wireless EVDO and 3G vs HSDPA (ATT claimed that EVDO's roadmap is limited): We study a lot of competitor claims. I've got an engineering background and there aren't a lot of miracles out there. We're reliable and fast, and we're not going to relinquish that. (Fluff, didn't address the competitive question.—B.L.)

Martin: For the first time in 10 years, we enforced the rule that the cable companies needed to open up and that probably contributed to Sony's news this week in collaboration with the cable companies.

Lowell on Coverage maps: What DB level constitutes coverage? There's no standard, and I'd be fine if some rules were made. Same with dropped call data. We need those rules before we can get fair comparisons between companies.

D is Done!
[All Things D]

Dean says that fatalities are down because of battlefield tech and triage methods. But that many soldiers are coming back missing limbs. He wanted to make an arm to replace their missing ones. He wants it sensitive enough to pick up a grape or allow soldiers to use a razor to shave, but be self-contained in terms of power. And a two- year deadline.

He say that a year later, they built an 8.9-pound arm using titanium, custom motors, and so on. There's 18 degrees of freedom, and they're now seeing a demo of a man who is scratching his nose. Dean says he did this in one year.

The control techniques are revolutionary. He's playing a video of a guy who didn't have both his arms for 18 years, and learned how to use the arms effectively in less than two dozen hours of training. He's showing a video that shows a guy who knows how to punch, pass a Ping Pong ball to his friend and pour a drink for another man who is holding a cup with the same type of arm. Then the video shows Chuck, the man with no arms, for the first time in 13 years, feeding himself cereal.

Holy shit, now he's showing a video of a guy using the arm using only his MIND. He learned this technique in two days, but Dean says it was more like the system learned how to interface with the human.

Looking at what he's doing, the guy drinks and people applaud. It's been two days. But the amazing thing is that he's put the cup down so it's become a lower brain stem function in two hours of doing cup functions.

Attaching the arm directly to nerves required a lot of surgery.

But there are limited arm functions, even if it's very complicated. Learning how to control a back hoe, with four controls, takes years. And the arm has 18 degrees of freedom. But people don't learn how by using each degree. In fact, it's more efficient, Dean says. There are three degrees of freedom, so they did macros. With this, a man learned how to pick up bottles, nails and other items.

Attaching the arm was a challenge, day to day. Nine pounds on an arm is heavy over a few minutes, let alone a day. So they knew that no one would wear them because of that. So Dean designed air bladders that shift the weight on the body when passive (like fidgeting in a chair) and inflate to be hard when the servos in the arm detect load.

When they did a demo for the secretary of the Army, they showed a man picking up 12 grapes and eating them without breaking or dropping any.

You can literally use infrared light, reading signals going through the skull without any invasive insertion. That's what we're working on next as a controller.

Dean is taking five minutes to explain the plight of the modern world and the responsibility of the smart, rich people in the world to help change that. I'm not sure I have the words to express his thoughts, so I'll wait for the official D video and embed it here later.

Vid from All Things D:

[All Things D]

Kara: Why not TiVo tech in TVs, powering everything?
Rogers: Biggest reason is that TVs already have tiny margins. Building them into TVs makes it hard to drive the same pricing. What we are finding is that the TV world is extremely commoditized so they need to do things to differentiate with things like ease of use, and those things are bringing us back front and center.

Kara: How do you move away from the rep of a content thief?

Roger: We got around it by saying that no matter what TiVo does, fast forwarding through commercials is here to stay. They have to deal with it. No way to turn the clock back on this. They need to figure out an ad model that works. Passive watching isn't going to work against the measurability of the web medium. So that's what we're working on. Ads in menus, ads at the end of the show or doing pause. Somehow you have to get them to click into and measure an ad.

Rogers: Do something to catch someone's eye. Maybe at the end of the show, which is effective because there's no interruption. Not everyone will watch your ad, but no one really did before. People changed their channels, went to the kitchen, and it was a lie. We track it by seconds, and it's astounding the difference between what people thought watchers were doing with ads.

The broadcast industry has to say that once everyone has a DVR, they have to figure out a way to advertise, otherwise they don't have a business model.

Rogers: The cable companies are interested in getting our software. The box still has a role, though, because we can talk to a customer without an intermediary. It helps us gain leverage on cable companies, because we don't have to pitch it to them. We're here as a customer option they can see and compare the boxes to.

Kara: How about the internet content?
Rogers says they do this.

Kara: And people want one box to do this all. But who can do that? You're not in a power position to do this.

Rogers: That's why the box is important to us.

Rogers also says that cable will be the ones he thinks will do the box, because they're already in the position of delivering so much. (Over both broadcast and IP, these days—B.L.)

Rogers also thinks that TV networks have to avoid the same pitfalls that the newspaper guys are dealing with now versus the web. They need to rethink their models now to avoid dark times.

Rogers on CableCard: There's no reason in the world why a cable company can't just mail it to you. The cable industry sends a guy out and goes into your house, and has a chance to sell you his box, but this hasn't been worked out in a regulatory rules yet.

Rogers on the TiVo/Comcast deal's delay so far: The actual development time was 18 months, plus 10 months of prep before that. It's not the box or software, it's the infrastructure that cable has that has not proven it can support advanced operations. (What's that mean? Cable has TV and IP, what else do you need?)

Rogers on more video sources: There isn't a video producing company that isn't talking to TiVo today. Amazon Unbox isn't exclusive.

Rogers on getting content around the house: Right now you need additional TiVo boxes, but we're looking at addressing this need.

[All Things D]

Mossberg asks what's the difference between your work here and at Microsoft?
Melinda says that there's a lot of crossover because of advances in tech that aren't available to the developing worlds. The skill set is very transferable.
Mossberg: What's the difference between your Foundation and others like it? More money?
Melinda Gates: We can take risks. There's a market failure for malaria vaccines, so no one's done anything on this in a while. (There's a traveler's market only.) But we can take on some of that risk and work with the pharmaceutical companies and then distribute through government. We can show them that there is a market.

Melinda says they could tap their entire budget by attempting to fix the problems in the education system alone. Their mission is more to help take on that risk that governments can't in fixing problems.

Mossberg: How do you work with countries with governments that are more part of the problem (corrupt, poor) than part of the solution?

Mossberg: Are you applying business principles? More organized than others?
Melinda Gates: We take a very economic and business approach, which doesn't mean we don't pay attention to the social issues.

(Bill and Melinda go through a list of diseases and evaluate where they can be most effective.)

Mossberg: Do people tell you how to spend the money?
Bill carried around a letter in his briefcase for a month about a kid who needed a new liver. It's hard, but we try to treat all lives with equal value. And the world does not do that. So with that in mind, it's easier to focus on that.

Melinda: Why does it take 25 years to put a vaccine's technology in Bangladesh compared to here, today?
There's no world fund for getting doses to the developing world. There's a lot of infrastructure problems. And we've been adding new vaccines like tetanus and hepatitis. Several million kids die from measles a year, and now it's less than 300k. (From the vaccines they've helped get out there.)

Bill and Melinda don't want to do the day-to-day stuff, but they've had a lot of help from people like Bill Gates Senior. She spends a lot of time setting strategy with Bill Junior.

Mossberg: Will having Bill around in 30 days full-time be annoying? (Jokingly.)
Melinda: I knew that Bill wouldn't wear a tool belt around the house when he retired. He'll take a sabbatical this summer, he'll spend a day on special projects at Microsoft that Ballmer wants him to work on and 2-3 days at the foundation a week. And some time being curious and learning about science, education, etc. We love working on the foundation together and not many days go by at home that we don't talk about this. Vacations are huge for talking about the foundation, too.

Re: education, the US loses a million or so as drop-outs. The foundation worked on data measurement. For example, that million only counts senior-year drop-outs, while it should be measured from freshman year. The other problem is that many graduates aren't ready for college.

Walt sends his kids to public school. It's fine, but maybe that's because of the affluent area.

Melinda: The top 10% of the kids do well in whatever school. The schools track them into their own curriculum. Those parents fight the change and ignore the remainder of the kids. There are parents who demand a better system, but they get no traction because the money is going in the wrong direction. One of the things they learned is that you can't just get a good urban school started without working with the city, district and state because the system will just pull it back down. (You can see how these successful people in tech have started applying similarly huge scale system thinking to the education and healthcare system problems —B.L.)

They are focusing in NY with Bloomberg and Joe Klein (who formerly led the case against Microsoft as a monopoly, I believe). Because they're willing to be bold and think of things in a business-minded way and shut down schools that don't work and rethink labor incentives. The best teachers are currently not treated well in the current school system.

They can't change the minds here and make it change long term. They focus on changing the system, so the negotiation can't happen at the labor level, but has to be at the district level.

Question from the crowd: What's the time frame?
Melinda: We take this lesson from Microsoft: a long-term approach. We're saving lives today, but we have a long horizon. Once we get an HIV vaccine, we'll try to distribute. Why not a 200-year perspective on helping the world? They believe that the wealth Bill and Melinda have will be gone in 50 years or so. And Warren Buffet stipulates in his will that 10 years after his death his money needs to be spent out. That's so that they can give back to people now.

We're working on banking for people who live on less than $2 a day. As tech goes cheaper, this stuff will make a huge difference in the world.

Question from the crowd: How do you deal with violence in schools going from students to teachers?
Melinda says that comes from facelessness in big schools. She's seen schools with three cop cars in front and two metal detectors. You can see the gangs going through schools and once the teachers recognize the kids, the kids act a lot better. Once the teachers know the kids' names, these things fall into place. She's seen schools that have fixed this in NY be able to lose their metal detectors, and graduation rates go up profoundly (up to 78%).

Done!
[All Things D]

Nathan is talking about some of his patents, like a mini nuclear reactor. It's safe because most accidents in power plants are caused by human error, so automating this and using different fuels (like spent uranium and depleted rods from big plants) to make things less dangerous. I wish he'd talk more about their inventions but Walt and Nathan don't think it's appropriate to talk physics on stage.

Nathan and co. brainstorm ideas and license patents. Do they troll patent? They haven't.

They took the entire company to Iron Man to hear the line from the bad guy: "Just because you had an idea doesn't mean you own it." He hates that guy!

Walt is asking him about patent problems in tech, where terrible patents are being approved. Nathan says that originally, the patent office wouldn't approve software. Patents were ignored at first by software people, because speed was more important than "owning".

Nathan: "It was a good decision; many companies went huge and fair or foul said, hey, we're going to grow fast and copy everything we can whether it's patented or not. Big boys play rough." (Interesting perspective from an Ex Msft guy-B.L.)

By the way, Nathan has very entertaining voices, low and high. He'd be a great audiobook voice actor.

"You have to think that there's some technology that will take us from today to tomorrow, but there haven't been. We thought it was 3D, but it was not. No one has done that graphical treatment for office or research. Maybe that's a failure of imagination but no one has figured that out and I wish we would."

Mossberg asks about Apple's Multitouch on the iPhone, where Jobs claimed 200 patents in the device. Nathan suspects that the multitouch in the iPhone was done before, outside of both Apple and Microsoft, by someone who couldn't pull it off.

Calacanis had an interesting question: Is IV making an unethical land grab for patents? His answer was that he didn't know how to answer that question, except that people might complain if he has a lot of success, but no one was going to give him back his money. (Fair enough—B.L.)

Guy from Intel asks if an unintended consequence of IV's patent action and speculation is that big companies would keep extending patents to protect them. Nathan says it's BS. Most companies are doing R&D with a little R and a BIG D. They need to put more into the research. If people know they can spin out inventions, like they do divisions, they'll be more likely to do more research.

"If you're not doing something that is somewhat threatening to the apple cart, you're not doing something interesting."

[All Things D]