I interviewed Glenn Close for Palm Springs Life magazine about her just-released movie “Albert Nobbs.” Close received a best-actress Oscar nomination, while co-star Janet McTeer was nominated for best-supporting actress. Both gave strong performances in the movie.

Close, who won a Career Achievement Award at this year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival earlier this month, had been hoping to play the “Albert Nobbs” role since playing the part on stage at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1982.

Close was generous with her time for the interview, which I may post on this blog next month. A thank you to Palm Springs Life editor-in-chief Steven Biller for reaching out to me for this opportunity.

Click here to read the story.

In July 2000, I met Jobs at the Macworld Expo NY 2000 at the Javits Center in New York City.

He was on stage in front of an audience of hundreds, introducing a lineup of candy-colored iMacs. Colorful computers were a novel idea then, because before the iMac, computers were beige and boxy. The iMac G3 looked like a TV you’d see in an alien cartoon. In classic Jobs fashion, he talked up the iMac, told us why it was so great, using exorbitant language, revealed the new brightly-colored iMacs, waited for the “oohs” and “ahhs” to quiet down, told us more reasons why it was great, and ended with his “one more thing,” which was the G4 Cube.

After his presentation, Jobs went to a large room to do one-on-one interviews with reporters. I was reporting on Apple for Bloomberg News and one of the the last reporters in line. We were cued up outside of the room. Ahead of me in line was a reporter from the USA Today. He asked if it was my first time interviewing Jobs. I said yes. He then explained how it would go. “Be careful, he said. “If he doesn’t like a question you ask, he’ll get up and leave. If he doesn’t like your tone of voice, he may leave the room. He might lie and say he’s going to the bathroom, and then not come back. Or he may just leave without a word.”

Soon it was my turn to interview Jobs. As we shook hands I noticed his short-facial hair and John Lennon-like glasses. He was still, quiet and aloof as we began to talk. I explained how I first used a Macintosh in college, which prompted me to later borrow money from my folks to buy a PowerBook. He relaxed once he knew I was familiar with his products. He stood up and walked me over to a table lined with the new iMacs and the soon-to-flop G4 Cube.

He began gushing about these products like a man showing off his new babies. His eyes lit up as he walked and talked excitedly about the new iMac colors: Indigo, Ruby, Sage, Graphite and Snow. I asked what would become of the colors introduced in 1999: Strawberry, Blueberry, Lime, Grape and Tangerine? He paused, raised his right hand to his chin, and stared at me for what seemed like a long time, Then, with a bemused look on his face, he finally said, “You know, you’re the first person to ask, and because you asked, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to mention this today. Those colors will be retired.”

The idea of computer exterior colors being retired was odd, but I knew it was news. He said he had not mentioned it because he wanted the spotlight to be on the new iMac lineup, not the outgoing line. He then spoke about the G4 Cube and the other Apple products introduced that day. I was itching to get out of there so I could call the Bloomberg headlines desk to tell them about the colors being retired. I didn’t want to get scooped by our competition. At Bloomberg, because so many traders watch the headlines, if you were first with a headline, it was often better than being first with a story. The editor who answered the breaking news phone was convinced it wasn’t news and almost hung up. Quickly, I talked him into sending the headline about the iMac colors being discontinued.

I collected more information about when the retiring iMacs would officially be pulled from stores and whether Apple was worried about customers being upset about no longer being able to buy a Blueberry iMac. I was sitting outside of the room where folks were carrying out the iMacs that had been on display, and then out Jobs came, still talking excitedly about the new products.

He looked at me and a wide-smile came across his face.

“Nice job on the colorful story,” he said.

I was impressed that he knew about the headline, but not surprised.
Jobs never missed a detail.

He’ll be missed at Apple for that, and by the rest of us, for his genius, vision and thoughtfulness. Those qualities will continue to be felt for years.

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley’s plan is to do for places and experiences, what Amazon has done for books, and Netflix has done for movies. Crowley calls Foursquare a “recommendation engine.” I called it an “anticipation engine” when I caught up with Crowley at the at this month’s 140 Characters Conference in New York City. I asked him what changes are coming that users don’t expect? Will Foursquare evolve in ways that we’re not yet imagining? Watch the 140-second interview to hear what he said.

“You want to make sure everything you tweet is accurate, honest and useful,” Curry said in an interview. “I’m held to a very high standard, and you need to meet that.”

Curry sets a high-standard each day as host of as NBC’s “Today” show, and when the cameras are off, she maintains her journalism standards when she sends updates on Twitter.

“I don’t want to let people down,” she said. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

Two years ago at the 140 Characters Conference in New York City, Curry emerged as a social media star because she explained how seriously she approaches each tweet. That won the respect of the crowd and her Twitter following quickly grew from 40,000 to over one million. Curry’s interview with HiAnthony.com took place at last year’s #140conf, as it’s known on Twitter. She will speak again at this year’s 140 Characters Conference, which kicks off June 15 at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

Twitter is changing, Curry said, comparing it to the evolution of transportation. “When have generations been able to expereince something, knowing that they’re at the ground stage of something? It’s a rare experience.”

NEW YORK — Jeff Pulver took a few minutes to discuss what to expect at this year’s 140 Characters Conference: New York City. It’s the second annual conference, referred to as #140conf on Twitter. The #140conf tag has been used every day on Twitter since the conference a year ago, Pulver said. Last year’s conference helped propel NBC News journalist Ann Curry (@AnnCurry) from 40,000 followers to over 1 jmillion and also featured Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee). Both Curry and Vaynerchuk are speaking again at this year’s conference. Also speaking at the conference, on April 20 and 21 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump), Donny Deutsch (@Donny_Deutsch) and MC Hammer (@MCHammer).

“What we’re really looking at is the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and we the people ,” Pulver said during a recent interview at the Roger Smith Hotel (@RSHotel).

“We will be looking at the Haiti disaster,” and topics including media, fashion, music and sports. “The people define the moment,” said Pulver, who runs the conference and is also Vonage’s original founder. “It’s about serendipity. It’s about life.”

I attended last year’s 140 Characters Conference: New York City and connected with many folks there. The interaction at the conference helped me to become more active on Twitter. By the way, Pulver said, March 5 is the last day to get into the conference for $100 for both days. As of March 6, it goes up to $140 for both days. I’ll put the conference registration link here and the schedule link here, because I believe it’s well worth the investment.

NEW YORK — Al Rivera has been hawking goods on the streets of New York City for the past 30 years. He loves meeting people as they check out his hats, belts, socks and other items, which he sells for about five dollars. Rivera, 56, has been living in a hotel for the past 15 years. “It’s the only way to survive,” Rivera said in an interview this month. He’s a resident of the hotel, which is in the city, and feels fortunate to make a living on the streets of Manhattan.

Many days during the past 18 months, Rivera makes about $30, he said. “It’s about survival.” When consumers spent more and the U.S. economy was in better shape a couple of years ago, it was common for Rivera to make $100 a day, he said.

What’s next for the economy? Commercial real estate is hurting and will likely get worse, Rivera said. Many retail tenants are not able to pay the rent, he observed from behind his table of goods on the corner of 30th Street and Seventh Avenue on a cold January afternoon.

Rivera sells wholesale goods that he buys from suppliers from countries including China. As the U.S. dollar has grown weaker, his product choices have also dwindled, he said. Rivera shared more insights on retail, the U.S. economy and China in our video interview.

It’s curious that both items were announced on the same day: Jon gets demoted in TV-land, and he says he may want to be invited back into the house that has all those cameras rolling, in the name of love and family. The plan to turn the show into single-mom-raises-eight-kids may get kiboshed by Jon, who supposedly wants to reapply for full-time dad and high-income TV-star status.

What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Nothing. It’s about extending paydays for Jon — and Kate, too. As long as they’re married, Jon and Kate are still Jon & Kate. He saves face by being the dad who couldn’t bear to live without his wife and kids, and he saves himself a jobhunt. Kate sells more books and makes more speeches as supermom and misunderstood (yet forgiving) wife. If she forgives and takes Jon back, she can say their kids are her top priority.

Kate’s fame will continue at least in the short term, with or without Jon. She will star in a TV show co-hosted by the Food Network’s Paula Deen, aimed at current and future mothers, RadarOnline.com reports. You think Jon wants a cut of that deal? If he stays married to Kate, he’ll get it. Her payoff, if they stay married, is to keep her wife-and-mom image intact. Plus, it’d be less likely Jon would cash in by writing a tell-all memoir.

This flurry of Jon & Kate news came on the day TLC announced that Kate Plus 8 will debut November 2. Jon, whom TLC said will appear on the show less frequently, is booked for Thursday on Larry King Live on CNN, which has reported that the family receives as much as $75,000 per episode. Jon filed papers to stall his divorce from Kate for 90 days “to regain control over the future of our family.” And the future of his, and their, payday? This 21st-century Brady Bunch won’t go on much longer without mom, the kids, and dad living life under one roof.

The other night, my wife and I were flipping channels between Jon & Kate Plus 8 and ESPN’s Monday Night Football. She didn’t mind missing some of Jon & Kate for the game because, as she said, “It’s become boring with just Kate and the kids.” And therein lies the crux. Whether it was a ratings ploy or real-life drama played out in before the masses, Jon and Kate have raised the bar. The audience wants to see if the lion will eat the peasant; without that tension, the coliseum empties out, and ad dollars slip away.

In the old days, before Jon decided he wanted to party, an enticing aspect of the show was watching Kate verbally berate Jon. The perverse fun of watching how much Jon could tolerate, and the possibility that he might stand up for himself, kept us tuned in. At least with the two of them on the screen at the same time, there was tension in the air. Any good story needs such electricity. But now, with Jon playing in New York City and Kate taking the kids to the Carolinas on vacation, it’s like watching rival teams playing on separate fields. Lucy needed Ricky, Sonny needed Cher, Heidi needs Spencer, and Jon and Kate need each other to keep their gravy train on track.

“I despise [her], because she’s not speaking from the heart,” Jon said this month on ABC’s Good Morning America. “Please — the stuff you tell me in private should be the stuff you tell me on TV.” Even if he really does despise her now, what he must despise even more is the thought of life minus $75,000 an episode.

So how about owning up to what’s really going on here, Jon? Speak from your heart. Tell us what you and Kate think what’s best for your kids and their, and your, financial future is the income generated by the show. Tell us you want to stick around for the money. That’s reality.

Now, there is another way. Last week, the National Football League made live games available online for the first time. For now, the service is only available for Manhattan residents who don’t have satellite access, but it may be offered as early as next year to others in the U.S. who don’t have satellite access, an NFL source told DailyFinance.

This seems like great news. Being a New York City apartment dweller for most of the past decade, DirecTV’s package of NFL games has not been an option because the buildings I’ve lived in couldn’t accommodate satellite installation. Now I can get DirecTV’s ‘Sunday Ticket’ package of all NFL games. DirecTV plans to expand the offer across the U.S. to those who can’t access satellite TV, “no later than 2011,” NFL spokesman Dan Masonson said in a telephone interview.

“We suspect there are a large number of consumers living in Manhattan who have always wanted to watch their home team play on Sunday afternoon,” Richard Greenfield, analyst at Pali Research, wrote in a note to clients last month.

Greenfield may be right. Some NFL fans will go to great lengths to see their team on Sunday. I’m one of them. Two years ago, with the Miami Dolphins likely heading to their 10th loss in 10 tries, I drove to Philadelphia — without a ticket — to see the team I’ve rooted for since I was a boy. I arrived at Lincoln Financial Field 10 minutes prior to the game and, by chance, met the sister of the Dolphins linebacker coach. She had an extra ticket, sold it to me at face-value and I couldn’t have been more excited to see my team lose.

That experience cost me just under $100, so paying $350 for a season’s worth of online games from DirecTV seems like a fair price.

Pali Research’s Greenfield estimates that less than one percent of Manhattan residents would sign up for DirecTV’s online offer, given the state of the economy. My math calculates that would bring in about $18 million. Not a giant sum, but creating incremental revenue streams that should grow in coming years will help the NFL. It also reflects the league’s willingness to adapt as technology changes the way fans watch games. NFL.com is also selling a season’s worth of games online, minus commercials that are available after midnight each Sunday. These are big steps for a league that is viewed by many as slow to change.

“We’ve changed as the technology has allowed us to change,” said Masonson, who explained that faster internet speeds have made video more appealing, “and we’ve heard from more fans that they’d like to see the games online.”

NBC’s Bob Costas asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on the NFL’s first regular-season Sunday if he’d be willing to suspend a rule that prohibits broadcasting local games in a 75-mile radius of the team’s stadium if the game isn’t sold out 72-hours prior to kickoff. It’s an old policy that seems oddly inflexible, given the surprising news that the NFL is making its product available on computers and mobile phones. But it didn’t sound as if the NFL would budge. “This has been a policy that has been in place for several decades,” Goodell told Costas.

Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store has proven that for all the folks who refuse to pay for anything online, plenty of others are willing to pay for the convenience of getting content they really want. Still, even though I can now get games online, it won’t stop me from driving to Philly the next time the Dolphins battle the Eagles.

Debates will rage and if Stern stays true to form, he will leave it a mystery until the end. But his decision will be critical: Hanging in the balance is the future of the satellite radio business. Remember, Stern helped breathe life into satellite radio and helped Sirius defeat XM, which it then bought. If Stern leaves satellite radio, will it wither and die?

While satellite radio’s future may be dependent on Stern staying, you can be sure Sirius won’t be able to pay him the king’s ransom, $500 million over five years, that it paid the self-proclaimed “king of all media” to leave his New York radio home at K-Rock (WXRK-FM) and the stations that paid to carry his show around the U.S. While it’s not likely he’d leave satellite to go back to so-called free radio, I believe he will have to syndicate some part of his show to free radio to create more revenue for himself and for Sirius.

Here’s how it would work: Stern would do his usual show, typically five hours, and that could be diced down to three hours for distribution among stations around the U.S. Cursing and offensive chunks that would lead to fines would be edited out. Stations would get the disc jockey, publicity and listeners they crave. Sirius would get needed income and Stern would get the increased exposure he desires.

“Howard is not enhancing growth of satellite subscriptions anymore,” says Fred Moran, media and internet analyst at Benchmark Company, in an interview. “His being partially available on terrestrial radio would not likely cause any significant turnover in subscriptions or churn in customer subscriptions.”

In fact, it could serve to promote Sirius and add subscribers — something Sirius needs. With 18.4 million subscribers, Sirius lost about 186,000 listeners in its most recent quarter. Sirius could require free-radio stations carrying Stern’s edited show to runs advertisements offering the unedited version on Sirius.

Such a move would not be unprecedented. Opie and Anthony, who host their own talk radio program, did their show live for three hours on FM radio and then continued, uncensored, on XM. Moran argues Stern has brought the bulk of the audience he’s going to bring to Sirius already. Stern would surely jump at the chance to again rule FM and AM airwaves as long as he doesn’t have to give up the freedom he enjoys to speak without a censor button. Plus, it would feed his insatiable ego.

The million-dollar question is, what’s next for Stern? “It’s a topic I think about all the time,” Stern said this week on his Sirius show. “I don’t really know. I don’t.”

In a recent New York Daily News story, David Hinckley wrote that Stern has the ability to get folks to pay to hear him on the internet or through a paid podcast. Kurt Hanson, editor of the Radio And Internet Newsletter, told Hinckley that a Stern internet show could work and could potentially draw a big audience.

But asking an online audience to pay for more Howard is greedy and would anger his fans. They’re already paying to hear him on Sirius and can pay to see a video feed of his show, known as Howard TV, with extra video bits that radio listeners don’t get. Sure, some would be willing to pay for that online, but not enough to give a serious boost to Sirius’s profits. Those who can afford to pay up for Stern are the desperate radio stations seeing their audience defect to online radio or Apple (AAPL) iPods. Stern could plug that leak.

Michael Harrison, editor of the trade magazine Talkers, told Hinckley that Stern’s talent will still be in demand. “He has nothing to prove,” Harrison said. “He has total freedom. The only question is what he does with it.” Tom Taylor, editor of the trade sheet Radio-Info.com, told Hinckley, “Howard likes cliffhangers.”

Stern said this week, “It’s a cliffhanger for me too. I can’t wait to find out what I’m going to do. My life is a cliffhanger.”

I’ve interviewed Howard Stern twice since he left free radio while I worked at Bloomberg News. I was not able to get Stern on the phone this time to discuss his career, although I made calls and sent e-mails to his agent. That said, I’ll take him at his word that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. The fun part for Stern’s audience will be tuning in to discover his next move. While he, his agent, and surely his audience, debate what’s next and best for Stern, I believe a syndicated PG-version of his show on free radio is the best way for him to grow his audience and for Sirius to increase its revenue and subscribers.

Stay tuned.

The Nintendo Wii, the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s XBox are getting old. What boosts sales of aging consoles are hit games. Nintendo (NTDOY), Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are hungry, maybe desperate, for hits.

Nintendo is especially feeling the pain. What would have been unthinkable less than a year ago is reality now: There are Wii’s in stock at stores including Best Buy (BBY), Game Stop (GME) and Wal-Mart (WMT). There have been few hit games in 2009 and that’s hurting Wii sales, which fell for the first time since the product started selling in 2006.

Nintendo hasn’t announced any game or console news of late to get its customers excited. That can be dangerous for the game and console maker, especially because its retail customers will soon be placing their orders for the holiday shopping season. Industry analyst Satoru Kikuchi says that gamers are “getting bored,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Nintendo needs to keep their attention with new software, but that hasn’t happened.”

From April through June, sales of Nintendo’s Wii and DS handheld game unit fell, while sales of Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld device and PlayStation 3 console also declined. Last week, Microsoft said revenue is down in its unit that includes the Xbox video-game machines. For the Wii, 2008 included hits such as the hot-selling “Wii Fit” and also “Mario Kart.” This year, Wii sales will be dependent on sales of “Wii Sports Resort” and “New Super Mario Bros.”

The Wii will soon lose the advantage of its motion-sensing controllers, which will also be sold in the next year by Sony and Microsoft. Without new consoles to create hype and sales, all three game console makers are left waiting for the hits. And with more gamers downloading games online, they need blockbusters more than ever.