Motorola Replaces Chief With an Insider

By LAURIE J. FLYNN

Published: December 1, 2007

Motorola said yesterday that its chief executive, Edward J. Zander, was stepping down, a development applauded by the dissident shareholder Carl C. Icahn, who said the company should use the opportunity to split into four parts.

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Edward J. Zander is resigning as chief executive of Motorola. He will keep ties to the company.

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Motorola Announcement on Executive Changes

Motorola, via Bloomberg News

Gregory Q. Brown

Wall Street had expected Mr. Zander to step down as the company struggled to revive its troubled mobile division. He is being succeeded by Gregory Q. Brown, the chief operating officer who has led four of the company’s business units since his arrival four years ago.

Mr. Icahn applauded the ouster of Mr. Zander, saying it was long past due, but said it was not nearly enough to turn the company around.

“I believe that the steps announced today do not even begin to address the major problems at Motorola,” Mr. Icahn said.

A split would allow the wireless products division to attract top-flight executives, he said.

After seeing its share of the cellphone market surge a few years ago on the runaway success of the fashionable Razr phone — the company sold a record 100 million of the devices — Motorola failed to refresh its product line. It began to cut prices, which hurt its profit margins. Motorola’s share of the mobile phone market has fallen to third place, behind Samsung and the market leader, Nokia.

“The greatest challenges are in mobile devices, returning it to profitability and extending its product portfolio,” Mr. Brown said in an interview yesterday. “It improved significantly in its move to profitability, but there’s a lot more work to do.”

The news of Mr. Zander’s departure had little effect on Motorola stock. Shares closed up 32 cents at $15.97 in regular trading.

Mr. Zander, 60, will continue to serve as chairman until the annual shareholders meeting in May. Mr. Zander will also serve as strategic adviser to the chief executive and as a nonofficer employee through Jan. 5, 2009, the company said.

It said Mr. Zander was entitled to a $5.3 million bonus and to all options and restricted stock units that vest before his retirement. But he will not receive a severance payment or any unvested equity because he is stepping down, the company said.

Mr. Brown, 47, joined Motorola in 2003 from Micromuse, a network software company, and became president and chief operating officer in March. Mr. Zander said that he told the board two years ago that Mr. Brown would be a good candidate to lead the company.

“I began throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him,” Mr. Zander said in an interview. “He is a known quantity and a great leader.”

Mr. Brown managed the $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies, the second-largest transaction in Motorola’s history, and is credited with returning the company’s automotive business to profitability. He also expanded the company’s government and public safety business. “Thank God Greg developed as fast as he did,” Mr. Zander said.

But some Wall Street investors analysts had thought Motorola might name a successor for Mr. Zander from outside the company, perhaps seeing an opportunity for a more significant change of direction.

“This says the board likes the plan and is focused on execution,” said Bill Choi, an analyst with Jefferies & Company. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Paul Sagawa, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, described Mr. Brown as a “blank slate.” The key will be whether, under his leadership, Motorola can produce the kinds of technologies that can help it turn itself around, Mr. Sagawa said. “The cavalry has been slow in coming when it comes to new products,“ he said.

Mr. Zander insisted Friday that the decision to leave now was his own, and that he was looking forward to time with his family. Mr. Zander came to Motorola in 2004 about a year after resigning as president of Sun Microsystems. At the time, he was serving as a managing director at Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm in Menlo Park, Calif.

Mr. Zander has felt considerable shareholder pressure this year, most notably from Mr. Icahn, the billionaire investor, who led a fight for a seat on Motorola’s board. But at Motorola’s annual shareholders meeting in May, Mr. Icahn lost a proxy fight for a board seat, and Mr. Zander promised investors a turnaround this year.

Some Essential Hardware (Even Away From the Street)

By PETER WAYNER

Published: November 30, 2007

For almost every lawyer, accountant, Wall Street executive or deal maker, the briefcase and the BlackBerry can be a lifeline to the office, particularly for those on the road for business or commuting from the suburbs. Executives these days can’t go anywhere without the cellphone or the BlackBerry, but there are other gadgets and high-tech devices that are also catching on — some for work, but many for relaxation.

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The Slingbox lets travelers catch local news, sports and programs while on the road.

Personal digital assistants like the Blackberry have changed the way executives do business.

The Scottevest Tactical System features extra pockets for gadgets and passageways for wires.

A special digital pedometer tracks a runner's data and sends it to an iPod.

The Suunto line of watches let business travelers monitor appointments and transmit their location via G.P.S.

The editors of DealBook, the New York Times blog that covers mergers and acquisitions, have come up with a list of tools and toys for that have caught the attention of businesspeople.

On the Road and Keeping Up With Hometown TV

Many executives have come to rely on the Slingbox to let them catch their local news, sports and programs while traveling on business. The Slingbox, which attaches to the television at home, captures a local TV signal, digitizes it and sends it via the Internet to your hotel room. Now that most hotels offer good Internet service, it’s simple for a traveler to tune into the local news or shows.

Boxes start at $110 and rise in price with more options for connecting to your video sources. The newest version runs on laptops, Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian OS devices, making it possible to watch your home television almost anywhere. This software may cost more depending upon your phone and the cost of delivering the data.

Joe Brancatelli, the editor of JoeSentMe.com, a Web site devoted to business travel, said that he thought the first generation of the product was cute, but the newest one seems irresistible.

“I’ve got to be in Rome for a month in January,” Mr. Brancatelli said. “The presidential race will be decided then. Yeah, they have CNN but not the same CNN we have here. I’ll be able to fire up the Slingbox and see all of the primaries.”

With Maps and Directions Added, Smartphones Indeed

For executives needing to be out of the office for long periods, few things have been more useful than the mobile access that hand-held devices with e-mail access have provided. Personal digital assistants like the BlackBerry have changed the way executives do business, while allowing time to hone their skills at playing BrickBreaker. The top-of-the-line smartphones are now adding G.P.S.-driven navigation, which is handy for executives in search of their next meeting. Some models from the BlackBerry 8800 series have added G.P.S. receivers that will show a location on a map and provide turn-by-turn directions to users.

While users praise the gadget’s ability to play music and video on the 2.5-inch, 320-by-240 pixel screen, some users wonder why there is no camera. Sprint sells the Blackberry 8830, the latest model, for $200 after rebate, with a two-year agreement. A word of caution if you have a company-provided phone. The BlackBerry Web site promises bosses “access to a wide range of other location-based services (L.B.S.) like employee and resource tracking.”

Not for Informants Only: A Way to Wear Wires

The disadvantage of making a gadget pocket-size is that it just takes up another pocket. The designers at Scottevest have made jackets and vests with additional pockets for gadgets and passageways for wires. An average person’s clothing might have pockets, but the Scottevest garments come with a so-called personal area network that lets you hide the wires.

The company has announced 19 products including the Tactical System 4.0, a combination of an outer shell and an inner fleece that promises 52 pockets, some with dual access.

The company said that the fabrics and designs that it uses allow the jacket to hold its shape while distributing the weight more evenly. Magnets hold some pockets shut, a feature that leads Scott to warn pacemaker owners not to wear the jacket. The Tactical System 4.0 lists for $300.

Hot New Hit on iPod: Every Step You Take

One truism from business school is that you can manage only what you can measure. So it should not be surprising that managers carry that thought into their training regimen.

Nike and Apple make a special digital pedometer that tracks a runner’s footfalls and sends the data to an iPod that stores it for uploading when the user returns home. A runner can keep track of pace and distance over the years. The kit costs $29 if you have the iPod. The transmitter in the shoe adds 0.23 ounce to one foot while the receiver adds 0.12 ounce to the iPod. It interacts with iTunes version 6.0.5 or later.

Lisa Hufnagel, an auditor who travels extensively around New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, says she uses her iPod to track her distance and time while away from home. When she returns, Ms. Hufnagel posts her progress on Runnerplus.com, a social networking site for runners.

Phones Know the Time. This Watch Knows Longitude and Latitude.

Some executives stopped wearing watches when they realized their hand-held devices told the time. The watch maker Suunto, a subsidiary of the Amer Sports Corporation in Helsinki, fought back by adding features and has made its way back onto the wrists of many executives.

Today, the Suunto line includes features that let business travelers monitor their appointments and their location while working and their speed and heart rate when exercising. The data is logged and downloadable.

Jeff Conrad, a leadership trainer from Canton, Ga., collects Suunto watches and writes about them for Watchuseek, an online forum devoted to watches. The T3 (about $170), one of five Suuntos in his collection, comes with a G.P.S. pod that he has attached to his bike. This transmits the location data to his watch, which records it so he can study his path later. His pulse is recorded by a chest strap that tracks the heartbeat and sends data to the watch. The watch can also estimate what Suunto calls the training effect, a number from 1 to 5 calculated by monitoring the heartbeat.

The Suunto X9i (about $500) has a G.P.S. tool for tracking movements and comparing them against data gathered from National Geographic and Google Earth.

When Office Hours Are Over and It Comes Time to Play, Three Game Systems Can Offer a Variety of Video Escapes

Correction: This section has been updated to address several factual errors.

O.K., you have to do something to unwind after work.

There are three relatively new game consoles on the market, and they appeal to different audiences.

Businesspeople who love simpler games with more physical play are fond of the Nintendo Wii with its motion-sensing controller that lets you play games like tennis. Some call it the console for nongamers because of its simplicity. The Wii often sells for about $250.

Those who have spent the day trading carbon credits have another opportunity to save the planet, this time from aliens in Halo 3 for the Xbox 360. Gran Turismo 5, a hyper-realistic, high-speed racing game, is one of the most anticipated games for the PlayStation 3 console from Sony, which starts at $399. Microsoft’s Xbox starts at $280.

Dan Strack, a trader for a Wall Street bank, has three Xbox 360s and uses them for more than Halo 3, which he nonetheless calls the “latest and greatest game that people are walking on water over.”

His Xbox 360 will also log into his home computer and grab photos or movies, a feature he uses when “Grandma and Grandpa come over and are hanging around the living room.”

Microsoft Challenges the iPod (Again)

Stuart Goldenberg

By DAVID POGUE

Published: November 29, 2007

Don’t look now, but Microsoft might finally be getting the hang of hardware.

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Marcus R. Donner/Reuters

Microsoft's new line of Zune music players are intended to compete better with Apple's iPod than the original Zune has.

The company’s overall track record for designing gadgets is pretty awful. Remember the Smart Display? The Spot Watch? The Ultra-Mobile PC? The original Zune?

Me neither.

But Microsoft’s new second-generation Zune music/photo/video player is a pleasure to use. It fixes a long list of things that made the original Zune such a pathetic wannabe. Best of all, the new Zune is starting to develop its own identity. The echoes of Microsoft executives saying, “It’ll be just like the iPod, only ours” aren’t quite as loud on this one.

The family includes three new models. First, there’s an 80-gigabyte hard-drive Zune ($250) whose size, design, shape and price are intended to compete with the 80-gig iPod Classic. Then there are the flash-memory-based models, which resemble last year’s iPod Nano: thin, tall slabs that hold 4 or 8 gigabytes of music, photos and videos (for $150 and $200, like the Nano). The original, 30-gig Zune is still available, too, at $200. (There are no Zune equivalents to the tiny iPod Shuffle, the wireless-Internet iPod Touch or the capacious 160-gig iPod Classic.)

Confident design steps are evident in all the new models. The back is metal like the iPod’s, but textured and therefore far less likely to show scratches and dings.

Then there’s the new control pad. You can navigate the Zune’s bright, clear, animated software by clicking the dial at any of its four compass points; select something by clicking the center; and — here’s the twist — scroll through lists by rubbing the pad’s face. Music-player companies have struggled for years to come up with a controller as good as the iPod’s click wheel; Microsoft, in Zune 2.0, has finally done it.

The sound quality is very good, especially if you use the 80-gig Zune’s included earbuds. They’re not hard disks like the iPod’s and those of the smaller Zunes; they’re soft rubber bulbs that snuggle securely into your ear canals, sealing out the outside world.

On the 80-gig model, the screen is bigger than the iPod Classic’s — but it’s the same number of pixels. As a result, the pixel grid is far more visible, giving you a screen-door effect during videos with bright scenes.

Some of the biggest Zune-iPod differences involve the Zune’s wireless feature. As on the previous Zune, you can beam songs to your friends’ Zunes, to demonstrate your superior musical taste. But beamed songs no longer self-destruct after “three days or three plays”; the time limit is gone. You have all the time you like to listen to them three times.

Unfortunately, that beaming feature will remain irrelevant as long as there’s nobody to beam songs to. You could go a year without spotting another Zune (and, in fact, you probably just have). But at least the antipiracy limitations on beamed songs is now infinitely more sensible.

Microsoft. meanwhile, has finally begun to exploit its wireless transmitter in more useful ways. The Zune can’t surf the Internet, as the iPod Touch can. But it can now synchronize its music and photos (although not videos) with those on your Windows PC over your wireless home network.

Now the value of wireless synching may not be immediately apparent. Hooking up a U.S.B. cable, the usual way to sync a music player, has never been a particularly harrowing task.

But what’s great is that you can make it automatic. You come home, you set the player in its charging dock ($50) or a speaker dock, and presto: the thing syncs as it recharges. The next time you grab your Zune, it’s charged, synched and filled with your latest tunes or your favorite podcasts.

Microsoft has also written a new Windows-only loading-dock program for the Zune. You no longer use Windows Media Player for that purpose.

That’s good, because it allowed Microsoft’s programmers to start fresh and create a streamlined, simple, spartan program dedicated to its task. Really spartan. There aren’t even any menus. (How unlike Microsoft.)

But it’s also bad, because the new program pointlessly duplicates Media Player’s functions. Now you have to learn two different programs and maintain two different libraries. (How Microsoft.)

The online Zune store is better now, too. It now lets you swap song suggestions and 30-second clips with your friends, and it finally offers podcast subscriptions. (Microsoft must absolutely hate saying the word “pod” every time it touts this feature.) And unlike Apple’s store, the Zune store offers an optional $15-a-month all-you-can download plan, although you lose your entire music library when you stop paying.

If you’re tempted to align yourself with Planet Zune rather than Planet iPod, you should ask two important questions.

First: How do I know Microsoft won’t dump me the way it dumped people the last time around?

After all, the Zune is not Microsoft’s first effort at an iPod-like universe of player, software and music store; that honor goes to the PlaysForSure format. And everybody who bought into it must be feeling just a tad rejected at this point. When it introduced the Zune, Microsoft shut down its PlaysForSure store and further development efforts. Whatever songs you bought in the PlaysForSure format won’t play on the Zune.

The second question is, How much will I miss the richness of the iPod economy?

Microsoft hasn’t had nearly as much time as Apple has had to cultivate a culture of add-ons and flourishes. So its player, its software or its store can’t rival the abilities of Apple’s.

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E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Microsoft Challenges the iPod (Again)

Published: November 29, 2007

(Page 2 of 2)

Here are some of the iPod features that the Zune lacks: Games, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, password-protected volume limiter, graphic equalizer, notepad, auto-synched copy of your computer’s calendar and address book, and Disk Mode, which lets an iPod serve as an external drive for carrying around computer files.

If you use the Zune’s wireless features, you’ll also get much worse battery life: 19 hours of music playback on the 80-gig Zune versus 30 on the equivalent iPod. The 80-gig Zune is still thicker and chunkier than its iPod rival, too.

Above all, you may miss that thriving virtual bazaar of iPod accessories: more than 3,000 stereo docks, cases, car adapters, and so on, compared with only a handful for the Zune.

Here are some of the iTunes software features missing in the Zune’s software: Smart Playlists, which assemble groups of songs based on criteria that you specify (“80’s up-tempo songs I haven’t heard in three months”), choice of visualizers (screen-saver effects that dance to the music), closed captioning for videos and TV, Cover Flow view, and a graphic equalizer.

The Zune store is missing a lot of iPod features, too: TV shows, movies, audio books, monthly allowances and comprehensible pricing.

At the iTunes store, you pay $1 a song. But on the Zune store, you pay using Microsoft Points, which are sold in blocks of 400 ($5). Songs cost 79 to 129 points, which means 99 cents to $1.61. Suddenly, you’re a currency trader.

This absurd system serves nobody except Microsoft. First, it’s a ham-handed effort to make you lose track of how many dollars you’re actually spending. Second, you can’t just buy one song; the least you can spend is $5. And finally, you’ll inevitably waste money, since it’s unlikely that Microsoft’s various song prices will divide evenly into 400.

The bottom line: the iPod is still a more versatile, compact and beautiful machine. But the Zune has come a long way in very little time. Already, its potential audience is no longer limited to a sect of irrational Apple haters. It’s now a candidate for anyone who values its unique powers — excellent built-in FM radio, scratchproof case and wireless auto-synching — more than they value the richness and choice of the iPod universe.

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E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Vivendi to Acquire Control of Activision

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: December 3, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 2 — In a deal that creates the biggest independent video game publisher in the world, Vivendi announced Sunday it plans to acquire a controlling stake in Activision.

Under the arrangement, the companies said Vivendi would pay $1.7 billion in cash and fold its games operations into Activision’s. The deal will leave Vivendi with a 68 percent share of the combined company, to be called Activision Blizzard.

The companies said the new entity would continue to trade publicly on Nasdaq. Blizzard Entertainment is the name of the most successful game studio in Vivendi’s game operations.

Under the deal, Vivendi, based in Paris, will pay $27.50 a share for Activision, a 24 percent premium over Friday’s close of $22.15.

The deal combines companies with different areas of strength in the booming video game business. Activision’s emphasis is on making games for consoles, like the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. Its game franchises include the Tony Hawk skateboarding games, the Call of Duty war game series and one of the industry’s current best sellers, Guitar Hero, which allows players to strum along on a plastic guitar to tunes played on the television.

Vivendi’s strength is in online multiplayer games, such as World of Warcraft, which has more than nine million players worldwide.

The two companies said that their combined revenue for the 2007 calendar year would be $3.8 billion. The new entity will surpass Electronic Arts, with annual revenue of about $3 billion, as the largest video game publisher in the world that is not affiliated with a console maker, like Microsoft or Nintendo. The two companies said they expected operating income for the new company of $1.1 billion, or $1.20 a share, in the 2009 calendar year and also said it would have the highest profit margins in the industry.

In the merger, expected to be completed in the first half of 2008, shares of Vivendi Games will be converted into 295.3 million new shares of Activision common stock, a transaction that values Vivendi Games at $8.1 billion. Vivendi will also buy 62.9 million newly issued shares of Activision for $1.7 billion in cash.

The two companies also said that within five business days after closing the transaction, Activision Blizzard would begin a $4 billion all-cash tender offer to purchase up to 146.5 million Activision Blizzard common shares at $27.50 a share. If the tender offer is fully subscribed, Vivendi said it would own 68 percent of Activision Blizzard on a fully diluted basis.

Despite Vivendi’s taking the larger stake in the new company, Robert A. Kotick, chief executive of Activision, will remain as chief executive of the combined companies. Bruce Hack, the chief executive of Vivendi Games, will become vice chairman and chief corporate officer and lead the merger integration as well as head finance, human resources and legal functions, the two companies said.

Even as the deal puts Activision Blizzard in the top spot in terms of revenue, the question that will face investors is whether Activision can duplicate the business model of Electronic Arts.

Electronic Arts has built its business on creating numerous game franchises that deliver reliable streams of annual revenue. For instance, in its 2007 fiscal year, the company had 24 titles that sold more than a million copies each, and four games — Madden NFL 07, Need for Speed Carbon, FIFA 07, and The Sims 2 Pets — that sold more than five million copies.

It has done that, in part, by buying studios with popular games. Compared with its competitors, Electronic Arts has invested relatively heavily in the new platforms of casual and mobile games, and popular multiplayer games, industry analysts said. The investments have yet to pay off, but if they do, they could be a big boost to Electronic Arts, analysts said.

In recent years, there have been many examples of major publishers’ buying video game development studios. But the Activision Blizzard merger represents a substantially more significant deal, and one with immense stakes. The video game software industry is poised for a record year, driven by the recent introduction of the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 game consoles.

But the industry also needs companies to create hits and be able to sustain them. Mr. Kotick has said he is eager for Activision to catch Electronic Arts and become the largest video game company. “By joining forces with Vivendi Games, we will become the immediate leader in the highly profitable online games business and gain a large footprint in the rapidly growing Asian markets, including China and Korea, while maintaining our leading operating performance across North America and Europe,” Mr. Kotick said in a statement Sunday morning.

Activision, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has been an industry darling of late, in large part because of the popularity of Guitar Hero III, the latest iteration of the franchise. It was introduced on Oct. 28, and sold 1.3 million copies within seven days. Through October, Activision had three of the eight best-selling games in the United States this year, according to NPD Group, which compiles sales data.

Activision’s sales and stock have risen with the momentum. The company’s revenue for the 2007 fiscal year was $1.5 billion, a 74 percent increase from 2003. During that same period, Electronic Arts’ revenue rose 25 percent to $3.1 billion. This year, Activision’s stock is up about 28 percent to $22, while E.A.’s is up 13 percent. And since March 2003, Activision’s shares are up nearly sixfold from $3.68 (on a split-adjusted basis).

But even as Activision has been on a roll, industry analysts have questioned whether it can build the kind of library of franchises to compete with Electronic Arts. The addition of Vivendi Games gives Activision access to Vivendi’s portfolio of multiplayer games.

Mr. Kotick also said that because Vivendi owns the Universal Music Group, the transaction “will benefit Guitar Hero and further extend our sizable leadership position in music-based games.”

For the 2008 Race, Google Is a Crucial Constituency

Kimberly White/Getty Images

Senator Barack Obama, left, speaking to Google employees. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, asked questions of Senator Obama.

By RANDALL STROSS

Published: December 2, 2007

LAST century, General Motors assembly plants were a regular stop on the itineraries of presidential candidates. This election cycle, Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., has become a favorite destination.

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Video Links: Candidates at Google

• Hillary Rodham Clinton
• John McCain
• Bill Richardson
• John Edwards
• Ron Paul
• Mike Gravel
• Barack Obama

Hillary Rodham Clinton made the pilgrimage in February. Then came John McCain, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and most recently, Barack Obama.

In terms of theatrical symbolism, the trip to Google is similar to the G.M. plant visit. In both cases, the visits gave the candidate the chance for a photo opportunity at the most technologically advanced edge of the economy, “signaling identification with the future,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

On a more mundane level, candidates in the pre-mass-media era were concerned with reaching as many prospective voters as possible in one place, and any large factory would do. At Google, the number of employees who can see the candidates in person is limited: the largest space at the Googleplex holds only a few hundred people.

Everyone in the 16,000-employee company can watch the event in real time over the company’s internal network in their offices scattered around the globe. But Google employees, like almost everyone else, prefer the live version. At Senator Obama’s talk last month, the atrium and overhanging balcony filled well in advance, and streams of employees poured into the building and then had to be turned away.

The politicians visiting auto plants could control what was said during the event. Today, candidates must place themselves at the tender mercies of the audience. Those who go to Google sit exposed on the stage, without the protective lectern provided in a debate, answering questions for 45 to 60 minutes. But without the escape hatch of a timekeeper’s buzzer, and as the only speaker, the candidate cannot evade uncomfortable questions. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chairman and chief executive, for example, asked Senator Obama for his views on Iran, Pakistan, and Guantánamo — and that was a single question.

The proceedings at Google are not unremittingly serious affairs. Mr. Schmidt asked Senator McCain, “How do you determine good ways of sorting one million 32-bit integers in two megabytes of RAM?” Immediately signaling that the question was asked in jest, Mr. Schmidt moved on. Six months later, Senator Obama faced the same question, but his staff had prepared him. When he replied in fluent tech-speak (“A bubble sort is the wrong way to go”), the quip brought down the house.

Among the seven visiting candidates, only Senator Obama used his Google visit to announce details of policy proposals related to technology. Until his visit, he and Senator Edwards were widely viewed among technology bloggers as the two candidates who had the strongest positions on Internet neutrality, expanded broadband access and other technology issues. With his Google visit, however, Senator Obama succeeded in drawing attention to his plans for using technology to make government more accessible and transparent with, for example, live Internet feeds of all executive branch department and agency meetings. This was old-school campaigning, organized around a company visit, done well.

Though all of the candidate sessions at Google are available on YouTube, they are not YouTube-like: they require an investment of time that, by YouTube viewer standards, is inconceivable. A 43-minute video of Senator Clinton’s Google session has been available since February and has drawn only about 54,000 “views,” which count as soon as the video is begun but leave unknown the more interesting number: completed views.

Senator Edwards’s and Senator Obama’s videos, both of which run longer than an hour, have not been up as long and have still fewer viewers. The biggest draw has turned out to be Representative Ron Paul, whose July visit has been viewed, or at least started, more than 350,000 times.

For perspective, consider the numbers that short-form videos of a less serious nature draw. Search for “Barack Obama” on YouTube and you will find that the most-viewed video is titled “I Got a Crush ... on Obama.” It lacks narrative, content and anything other than a young woman with large breasts lip-synching, but it has tallied more than four million views. The most-viewed video that turns up for a “Hillary Clinton” search is “Vote Different,” a dark parody of Apple’s “1984” commercial that portrays the senator most unflatteringly, as a giant TV image that is shattered. It is also approaching four million views.

YouTube has a separate section, “YouChoose ’08,” that gives each candidate a protected space for more serious discourse, similar to the way the broadcast networks give Sunday mornings over to civic uplift. YouChoose also provides access to last Wednesday’s CNN/YouTube debate with the Republican candidates, and the earlier one in July with the Democrats.

Professor Jamieson credits YouTube with broadening the range of questions in the debates, making them more memorable by having users submit the questions in the form of personal videos, and making everything searchable afterward. In the past, she said, “if you missed a debate, you missed it.”

The ability to select for playback any question in the debate and the candidates’ responses provides easy, precise access to the contents, sliced and diced, that was never possible before. But it also contributes to a shortening of our collective attention span.

THIS is hardly new — we’ve already come a long way from the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 for a Senate seat, which held the audience rapt, on one occasion, for three hours — then everyone dispersed for dinner and came back for the four-hour rebuttal. The contrast with the public’s attenuated attention in the age of television, which Neil Postman pointed out in his 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” was great. The contrast is all the greater today, with the advent of the short, nonlinear clips of YouTube.

It is easy to forget that this is YouTube’s first presidential campaign: the company was founded in only 2005 and acquired by Google in 2006. By the time the next campaign cycle rolls around in 2011, YouTube’s influence on the culture may be so complete that a 45-minute linear video of a question-answer session will seem to most people to be about 43 minutes too long.

A midcampaign trek to Google headquarters in Silicon Valley may soon seem no less quaint than one to a G.M. plant in Flint, Mich. The candidates need not seek out the cameras — from now on, the cameras will always find them.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

If the Shoe Fits, Wear It. If Not, Design One That Does.

Kirk Condyles for The New York Times

Robert Klemm, who has 60 pairs of shoes in his own collection, went to the Steve Madden Web site to design the gingham pumps that his girlfriend, Kate Feehan, is wearing.

By ELIZABETH OLSON

Published: December 2, 2007

EVEN for the most dedicated shopper, finding just the right pair of shoes can be elusive. A store-to-store search — whether on the Web or at the mall — can take hours. Shoppers may think they’ve found the perfect pair, only to be stymied by a problem with fit, style or color.

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If you don’t like the shoes you find in the stores, you can go to a Web site like Stevemadden.com and choose your own color, pattern, style and size.

It’s not that retailers don’t try, as the huge shoe sections in department stores like Saks and Nordstrom, and Web sites like Zappos and Shoes.com, attest. But for those with very individual or exacting tastes — and with money to spare — some Internet retailers offer design-it-yourself options in footwear. Customization is more common with athletic shoes, but fashion footwear is beginning to catch up.

Makers like Vans and Nike are among the companies that offer customized shoes, allowing both women and men to create their own look from existing styles, colors and materials.

Cale Valdez, a college student in Huntington, Calif., went to vans.com to find a memorable look for his wedding last month. He designed some red and black canvas slip-ons for the wedding party, including matching lace-ups for his father-in-law.

“My groomsmen had black tuxes and red vests, so we thought it would look great to have red shoes,” he said of the slip-ons, which cost $40 a pair.

Nikeid.com, which attracts almost as many women as men, has customers who order hundreds of pairs. The hip-hop disc jockey known as Clark Kent, of Brooklyn, has designed 350 pairs of shoes on the site, including his favorite, a pair of purple, black and teal Air Force 1’s, which cost him about $275.

“The biggest attraction is the ability to shock,” he said. “You want a pair that people notice so they ask you: ‘Where did you get those?’”

While customized sneakers are available on many athletic shoe Web sites, fashion shoes are harder, although not impossible, to find.

For women who are willing to spend a hefty sum, there is Tupli, started three years ago by two women who were leaving careers in banking.

“This is ideal for the woman who can imagine the perfect shoe but can’t find it,” said Kathy Myczowski, 34. She went into the individual shoe design business with Tamara Chubinidze, 26, who is from the Republic of Georgia, where such shoemaking is more prevalent and where Tupli’s shoes are made.

Clients can browse tupli.com for ideas and then send in their measurements, or be measured personally in New York. Tupli had a by-appointment shop in Manhattan for a couple of years, but switched to online last year because its customers were far flung, Ms. Myczowski said.

Amolyn Peart, a banking manager who has purchased three pairs of shoes from the company, became intrigued with the idea after spotting a woman wearing Tupli footwear (a name derived from the Russian word for shoe) at a business gathering.

“The shoes were so gorgeous and unusual, so I immediately asked her where she got them,” said Ms. Peart, of West Orange, N.J. Like many people, she is hard to fit: her shoe size is between 8 1/2 and 9, and ready-made shoes are often too tight in the toe.

Tupli’s clients — who include the actress Susan Sarandon — have a choice of leather and suede, as well as embellishments like rhinestones and personal logos, and initials on the upper or even on the sole, said Ms. Myczowski.

The first made-to-measure Tupli shoe that Ms. Peart designed for herself was a black and red pump for an event at work. “Everyone noticed it, especially because they were all wearing black shoes,” she recalled.

Since then, she has ordered another pair of shoes and a pair of boots.

Prices for Tupli shoes start at a hefty $750 for shoes and $1,450 for boots, and customers must wait six to eight weeks for them.

Those who want a less expensive made-to-order shoe that won’t take as long to arrive can turn to Stevemadden.com. Steven Madden, founder of the company, says more than 100,000 pairs of design-your-own shoes have been sold through the site, where the prices range from $90 to $170.

That’s what Robert Klemm, 27, a loan officer in Bethpage, N.Y., did last summer after he learned about Steve Madden Ltd.’s “Design Your Own Collection.” A shoe aficionado — he owns 60 pairs — he wanted to create some shoes to surprise his girlfriend, Kate Feehan, for her birthday.

Starting with her size, 9, he clicked through the site to select a style, heel and color, putting together a navy gingham open-toe pump with a cork heel and sole that Mr. Klemm thought “would look good with everything from jeans to dresses.”

He spent $150 plus shipping and tax. The site charges a 20 percent premium for made-to-order shoes, which are assembled in China and are not returnable. The turnaround time is three weeks, according to the site.

RIGHT now, Stevemadden.com has almost no online competition. But Jeffrey Van Sinderen, apparel analyst for B. Riley & Company in Los Angeles, predicted that other makers would not be far behind, despite the large investment needed to set up a factory to make the shoes and a system to distribute them.

Made-to-order shoes are profitable, he said, and “it answers the question of how you make the product more compelling to the consumer, and that’s to give them the power to design it.”

In shoes, passion often trumps the practical. To Mary A. Johnson, 22, online design is about owning something unique.

Ms. Johnson, a student at West Los Angeles College, owns 200 pairs of shoes, but that didn’t stop her from going to Stevemadden.com recently to design some ballet flats in a purple shade and trimming them in red.

“This is something you make yourself,” she said, “instead of settling for what’s out there.”