LAS VEGAS – Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer wants to be a media mogul as well as a tech maven.
The 38-year-old tech boss took the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show here Tuesday to unveil the Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s new media strategy — which will include digital magazines and a news app that’s already in Apple’s App Store.
Mayer, wearing a blue dress that played well with the similarly hued Yahoo! logo in the background, kicked off the high-energy presentation at the LVH Theater by bringing out former “Today” show host Katie Couric to talk about information overload in the digital world.
“News has changed so much it’s now ubiquitous,” Couric told the crowd. “It’s easy to feel you’re drowning in a virtual tsunami of information.”
Mayer’s solution: Yahoo News Digest, which promises to curate the top news of the day into bite-sized pieces, including maps of key events and Wikipedia facts.
The app also tells users how well they’ve done in keeping up with the top news of the day — a key selling point for folks who like to feel that everything’s a digital game.
Yahoo! also launched two digital magazines — Yahoo! Food and Yahoo! Tech. The latter will be overseen by former New York Times columnist David Pogue.
Mayer’s media plans have been the subject of curiosity in both the tech and media worlds since she hired both Pogue and Couric away from their high-profile jobs in 2013. Couric is serving as Yahoo!’s “Global Anchor.”
Her action-packed presentation at CES included a performance by singer-songwriter John Legend and a comedy skit by SNL’s Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson.
CES types were still buzzing Tuesday about T-Mobile CEO John Legere, who made lots of friends in the Las Vegas crowd after he got kicked out of a Monday night party hosted by rival AT&T.
The outspoken Legere crashed the soireé wearing a T-Mobile T-shirt. It didn’t take long before he was escorted out by AT&T security types.
“@JohnLegere you’re a great example of the future manager a “fire starter” and contrarian,” one person tweeted Tuesday.
“@JohnLegere totally impressed with you man! This is what corporate america needs and deserves!,” another said.
The incident also appeared to gain T-Mobile customers.
“Yes! already a customer of @tmobile and looking forward for my wife to get off of @ATT so she can join me @JohnLegere,” one tweeter wrote.
Legere fueled the flames on Tuesday, tweeting a picture of an AT&T sign that read, “What happens in Vegas will be on the internet in seconds.”
“Especially when you’re kicking out the competition from your party right @ATT ?!?,” Legere wrote.
Tech giant Sony is taking to the clouds with its famous Playstation gaming console. Just months after launching the poular PS 4, Sony execs announced plans to roll out this summer a cloud-based gaming service called Playstation Now.
The new subscriber-based service comes as the future of gaming consoles, including Microsoft’s Xbox One, has been questioned — despite record sales.
Playstation Now service will bring streaming games to those with consoles, including older PS 3 and PS 2 games to PS 4, a Sony exec said at the CES technology conference in Las Vegas.
PS Now will also offer streaming gaming options to consumers without consoles, said Andrew House, head of Sony’s computer entertainment division.
House also announced plans by Sony to launch a new cloud-based TV service for live and “a large library of on-demand content.” Sony plans to start testing the Netflix-like service later this year.
The award for coolest-looking headsets unveiled so far at CES goes to rapper 50 Cent, who unveiled on Tuesday a new series of headsets including a limited edition series with Star Wars themes emblazoned on them.
Sorry, but nothing beats the Force, even Intel’s Jarvis smart headset.