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Kara travelled to New York City this week to help moderate an interview at an event for our friends* at CNBC, who threw a snazzy 25th anniversary party. When she wasn’t interviewing Martha Stewart and Barry Diller, she was basically chained to a CNBC desk at the New York Stock Exchange talking about this and that.
Kara talked with the “Squawk Alley” team about Microsoft’s decision to finally cave and let Apple users have a free mobile version of Office on their iPads and iPhones.
What’s inspiring about Elon Musk? “He’s talking big ideas,” Kara says. Other male techies have man-crushes on him because “he’s going for the big things, not the little things, and that’s what’s exciting.”
No one seems to have a crush on Qualcomm lately, and Kara thinks one of the issues they’re facing now is how to expand in China, which is “a critical market for them.”
Meanwhile, Zynga founder Mark Pincus unveiled his new incubator — or, as Kara has dubbed it, the “Pincubator” — for startups.
We now turn to the Martha Stewart/Barry Diller interview, which had a few gems worth noting.
Martha Stewart owns drones because — of course — she uses them to check out her lawn. Kara gets to the bottom of that during a joint interview with Barry Diller, who talks about how an old-media guy like himself first got interested in technology.
The drones are working for Martha, but Match.com didn’t, apparently.
Barry Diller sounded resigned to seeing his investment in TV-killer Aereo flushed away after the Supreme Court shot the company down. “Of course I think the Supreme Court was wrong, but it’s our only monarchy and when they decide, it’s not like you can protest and say, ‘Isn’t there some workaround?'” Diller said.
Why use Apple Pay? It’s not that bad, and CVS shouldn’t have pulled the plug, Walt Mossberg says. Consumers should have the ultimate choice about which payment systems they want to use.
Tuesday didn’t just bring a political upheaval for Democrats, who lost control of the Senate. It also showed that Silicon Valley’s tech donors may not be getting the immigration reform they hoped for anytime soon.
Finally, Eric Johnson went on ye olde wireless this week to talk with our friends at “Here & Now” about how the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare game is expected to rake in more than a billion dollars in sales before all is said and done. The latest one features Academy Award-winner Kevin Spacey (as well as Tim Riggins — well, actor Taylor Kitsch — in the most recent trailer) because actors have to pay their mortgages somehow.
Hear Eric’s thoughts about the game here.
* NBCUniversal is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Recode’s parent company.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
