VentureBeat |
- iPad 2 shortages lead to 4-5 week online order delays
- The time has come to kill performance reviews
- Deals & More: BoostCTR raises $1.6M for crowdsourced ad copy
- Seagate aims to outmaneuver rivals with dual strategy for enterprise
- Rovi offers a way to capture game sessions and brag to the world
- Halo Reach Defiant Map Pack keep fans busy for hundreds of millions of hours
- Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 9, its prettiest browser yet
- HP’s new CEO was poised during speech and press Q&A (video)
- Twitter cofounder Biz Stone to advise AOL
- Chip shortages and price spikes likely in wake of Japan quake
- RewardVille will make you play even more Zynga games
- Guild creator Felicia Day: Web shows should aim carefully
- Japan earthquake stalls Nissan electric car production
- HP will install both Windows and WebOS on same desktops in future
- HP promises profitable growth and returns for decades to come
| iPad 2 shortages lead to 4-5 week online order delays Posted: 15 Mar 2011 08:34 AM PDT
Typically, Apple lets consumers preorder its new devices weeks in advance and has enough stock to deliver them on their release day. But this time around, Apple chose to make the iPad 2 available only a week after it was first announced. It was clear Apple was having issues meeting its iPad 2 demand since it launched on March 11. Apple didn’t open up online orders for the iPad 2 until early in its launch day morning, and shipment times for those orders quickly jumped from three to five days to between two and three weeks. During its launch weekend, shipment timing for online orders jumped again to three to four weeks. Another contributing factor to the delays is that Apple is making the iPad 2 available in many more stores than the original iPad. In addition to Apple retail locations, the iPad 2 also launched at AT&T, Verizon, Wal-Mart and Target stores. Altogether, more than 10,000 stores will offer the tablet, including 236 Apple stores. Last year, Apple had only 221 Apple stores and 1,100 other stores to push the original iPad at launch. It's unclear how this stock shortage will affect sales of the iPad 2. One analyst has already projected that Apple sold close to 1 million units during its launch weekend. Apple may still manage to keep sales up by having the iPad 2 available in so many retail locations — of course, that looks to be at the expense of online iPad 2 availability. Indeed, it appears that Apple is more concerned about getting iPad 2 stock into its stores than reducing online order delays. Some Apple stores reportedly opened early this morning specifically to sell more iPad 2s. The big takeaway from this news is that you should be calling around your local Apple Stores if you want an iPad 2 as soon as possible. At this rate, online order delays will only increase. Via 9to5 Mac Companies: Apple
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| The time has come to kill performance reviews Posted: 15 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PDT (Editor’s note: David Stein is co-CEO of Rypple. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.) The annual review is one of the most dreaded tasks on any employee's to-do list. Companies won't give raises and promotions without it. Human resource departments demand the forms, supposedly for legal reasons. And the process is fraught with anticipatory angst, defensiveness and dread. But the worst thing about annual employee performance reviews? They simply don’t work. The performance appraisal system's greatest shortcoming is that it's not really about improving performance. It's about sticking to a schedule and complying with human resources guidelines. By emphasizing process over results, the performance appraisal system has fatally lost credibility. Samuel Culbert, in his book, “Get Rid of the Performance Review: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing – and Focus on What Really Matters,” described the annual employee performance appraisal as a "pretentious, bogus practice . . . that produces absolutely nothing." Workers require "evaluations dictated by need, not a date on the calendar." A Psychology Today article cites a 2005 national survey by consulting firm, People IQ, which reported "87 percent of employees and managers felt performance reviews were neither useful nor effective." In short, performance reviews are dangerously archaic. When the economy was about how many widgets an assembly line worker could solder in a day, maybe they made more sense. But the assumptions underpinning annual reviews—standardized job descriptions, strict hierarchies and (above all) stable market conditions that allow for annual planning—are completely out of date. Companies must change this process now. Here's why: The current high unemployment figures belie the tight labor markets in certain sectors, particularly knowledge industries. These workers want more than good pay; they expect a level of coaching and professional development that traditional performance appraisal systems don't support. Also, the so-called "Generation Y"—as many as 80 million in the US alone—will soon dominate the workplace. And this generation expects constant feedback. Significantly fewer baby boomers feel the same way. Social software tools make it possible for supervisors to reclaim their role as employee coaches rather than strictly managers. They also make it possible for companies to accurately measure performance. The best feedback-oriented systems have the following characteristics in common:
Bottom line: human memory is fallible. Evaluations based on actual data recorded in real-time can take the anxiety out of reviews and provide a better picture of employee performance. By integrating feedback into everyday corporate culture, companies can change evaluation from a once-a-year chore to a valuable everyday tool for insight and learning. And the dreaded annual performance review can finally be laid to rest.
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| Deals & More: BoostCTR raises $1.6M for crowdsourced ad copy Posted: 15 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PDT Today’s funding announcements include companies that provide advertising text, online ticketing and scientific hair products:
ShowClix brings in $1.7M for ticketing service: The Pittsburgh, Penn.-based startup has raised a second round of funding led by Swallow Point Ventures to increase sales and brand awareness of its online event ticketing business. The company, which says it had a 650 percent increase in ticket sales last year, works with more than 1,800 clients to offer online and telephone ticket sales, box office management and promotion of events. Living proof gets $16M for frizz-free hair: The developer of innovative beauty products has raised a second round of funding from Piper Jaffray and Polaris Venture Partners. Founded by Polaris and an MIT biomedical scientist, the company uses new scientific materials and technologies to develop its hair care products. BridgePoint Medical grabs $9.1M for interventional cardiology tech: The Minneapolis, Minn.-based biotech startup has raised a third round of funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Polaris Venture Partners and Foundation Medical Partners, peHUB reports. The company is developing a treatment for chronic total occlusion, which occurs in coronary arteries and other blood vessels when they become obstructed by plaques. Companies: 500 Startups, BoostCTR, BridgePoint Medical, Foundation Medical Partners, Founder Collective, Javelin Venture Partners, Living proof, New Enterprise Associates, Piper Jaffray, Polaris Venture Partners, ShowClix, Swallow Point Ventures
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| Seagate aims to outmaneuver rivals with dual strategy for enterprise Posted: 15 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT
The Scotts Valley, Calif.-based storage giant is launching new versions of its Puslar, Savvio and Constellation families of enterprise storage products. The releases show that Seagate is serious about executing on a dual technology strategy that pushes both flash memory and hard drives at the same time. That’s like riding two horses at the same time to see which one can run faster. It will be interesting to see if Seagate can fend off Western Digital and Hitachi, which together will be strong in enterprise storage as a result of their $4.3 billion merger. Seagate’s plan is to offer a family of enterprise storage devices that cover fast transactional database servers, bulk storage and archiving, or everything in between, said Kurt Richarz, a Seagate executive vice president. This new kind of storage demand in the enterprise is being driven by a cascading effect. As users buy tablets, smartphones and other devices that interact with the web, they create more and more demand for storage in the enterprises that provide the web content, said John Monroe, an analyst at market research firm Gartner. The Pulsar.2 (yes, it’s a funny spelling) product line (pictured right) is based on flash memory chips, or solid state drives. It is the latest generation of enterprise SSDs that Seagate first introduced in December, 2009. The Pulsar.2 has the ability to detect errors that come from normal drive operations and correct them on the fly. The product focuses on both lower cost flash memory and more endurance. Seagate is also offering a faster PulsarXT.2 SSD. Seagate says it spent more than 200 man-years (or woman years) of development on the product, which will ship at the beginning of the first quarter.
And Seagate is launching its Constellation ES.2 hard disks for high-capacity purposes. The storage per drive runs as high as 3 terabytes of data. It is shipping to computer makers now and will be available to resellers in the second quarter. Companies: Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital People: John Monroe, Kurt Richarz
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| Rovi offers a way to capture game sessions and brag to the world Posted: 15 Mar 2011 05:30 AM PDT
There are other ways to do this now, especially with PC games. You can use WeGame to capture video of a game session and then share it with friends. But Santa Clara, Calif.-based Rovi actually considers WeGame a partner, as you can publish Rovi videos to the WeGame web site. The PC version uses an advanced video card that most gamers already have in their computers. But the console version comes with the adapter pictured above. You plug the adapter into the game console with one set of cables and into the TV with another. And the adapter allows you to intercept and capture video images of your game session and then transfer that video to a nearby laptop or desktop.
Gamers can use the products to post high scores or narrate their own tips and tricks for a game. they can post game reviews, or create a full-length movie (called machinima) based on game play footage. As an indication of how popular this is, machinima videos get more than 2.5 million views a day on YouTube. "While some gamers are already creating and posting game play videos, we believe there are many more waiting on the sidelines for solutions that deliver the right mix of ease-of-use and features at a good price point," Corey Ferengul, executive vice president for products at Rovi. The console version sell for $99 each. It works with the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, capturing game play videos in real time. Users can record the game play in standard definition 480p resolution and capture it in formats including AVI, WMV, DivX, and MP 4. Still image screen shots can be saved as JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP or GIF file types. The software-only PC version costs $49.99 and it allows game play video and still images to be captured in high-definition at full-screen resolution. It can capture DirectX 8 through DirectX 10 (but not the newest DirectX 11) games as well as OpenGL-based games. You can easily upload to sites such as Facebook, WeGame and YouTube. The PC version works with Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP. It requires a PC with two gigabytes of main memory, a DirectX 10 graphics card, and dual-core processors. To capture, you hit the “capture” button on the software, start up the game, and then hit the key F6 to start recording and then hit F6 again to stop. Roxio Game Capture for the consoles will be available on the company’s web site on March 24. The PC version will be available in the second quarter. Both products will be offered at North American online and retail outlets, including Amazon, BestBuy.com and GameStop.com. One rival PC capture products is Fraps, but the files captured are often much larger than the files captured by the Rovi product. You can also automatically capture your game sessions using the Brag Clips function in Onlive’s online gaming service. Companies: OnLive, Rovi, Wegame People: Corey Ferengul
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| Halo Reach Defiant Map Pack keep fans busy for hundreds of millions of hours Posted: 14 Mar 2011 10:12 PM PDT
That cycle is about to begin anew with the Halo: Reach Defiant Map Pack that Microsoft released today. But instead of trashing Bungie, those grudging fans will have to sling mud at Microsoft. Microsoft’s 343 Industries game studio and the Certain Affinity map pack team were responsible for getting this map pack out the door. It is the first official act of 343 Industries, as Bungie, the development studio that created the lucrative Halo series, moves on to making other game worlds.
And map packs are a nice defensive measure in the video game industry these days. If fans are playing your map pack, they’re not playing a new game from a rival or another map pack, like one from Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series. So the map pack has to be designed just right. It can’t be too easy for players to master, but it also has to be challenging. Frank O'Connor, head of 343 Industries, told us in a video interview that you often can’t trust gamers’ words when they describe what kind of map pack they would like you to create. That’s because the way they say they play often differs from the data collected from the game that shows how they play. The analytics are critical in making sure that map packs are balanced and fun.
The maps include Condemned, which takes place above a massive space station in orbit above the planet Reach. A lot of the fighting centers around a multi-level central ring (pictured at top) where you can jump high into the air and shoot your enemies either above or below you. It also includes Highlands, a military training space set in a wooded area on Reach. It's a big map where players can engage in massive 16-player battles. Lastly, there is Unearthed, a Titanium mine and refinery on the planet where you can ride around in vehicles such as the Warthog. Halo is now in its tenth year. If Microsoft plays this right, it will still be around in its 20th year. The map pack costs 800 Microsoft Points (yes, $10!) to download on Xbox Live. Companies: 343 Industries, Bungie, Microsoft People: Frank O’Connor
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| Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 9, its prettiest browser yet Posted: 14 Mar 2011 09:43 PM PDT
The official launch tonight marks the end to months of testing for IE9, which started with the beta release of the browser last September and continued with the launch of the first IE9 Release Candidate (the final step before a program’s final release) in February. Internet Explorer 9 proved very popular with testers — its beta version hit 2 million downloads in its first two days, and it was downloaded 25 million times when its beta period ended. That’s a surprising amount of interest for a Microsoft browser, which tells us that the company’s big gamble to revamp IE9 — stripping away the confusing toolbar clutter from IE8 towards a more minimal design — paid off. IE9 is a major departure for Microsoft. In addition to its minimal design, it packs in modern browser capabilities like a fast Javascript rendering engine and support for HTML5. IE9 also includes hardware acceleration for web-page rendering (it uses your graphics processor to do some of the work) — something that even geek-friendly browsers like Chrome and Firefox have yet to roll out (though it's coming soon to both). I’ve been using IE9 throughout its test phase and don’t really notice anything too different with the final release. For those heading into the browser for the first time, prepare to be wowed by its speed and design. Microsoft one-upped Google Chrome’s minimal design by moving the browser’s address bar right alongside its tabs, leaving even more room for web pages to shine. It’s also clear with this final release that IE9 is far faster than the latest version of Firefox (not including Firefox 4 beta releases). Rick Bergman, head of the graphics chip and microprocessor business at Advanced Micro Devices, said in an interview with VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi that IE9’s use of advanced graphics will lead to better web sites and more usage of graphics chips in everyday non-gaming computing tasks. That creates more demand for increased graphics processing power in future products and more demand for either powerful combo graphics-processor chips or stand-alone graphics chips. Microsoft has also pumped up the capabilities of IE9’s address bar. You can perform searches from within it, but unlike its competitors, you can also view search results from within it as well. The address bar defaults to Microsoft’s Bing search engine, but you’re free to switch it to Google, Amazon and others. The browser is fast enough to tempt power users who haven’t fully invested themselves in Chrome or Firefox. But the real value of IE9 is that it will bring the speed and features geeks are familiar with to general users. Those users will likely never get around to installing a third-party browser. At least with IE9, it’s less of a crime if they don’t. Companies: Google, Microsoft, Mozilla
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| HP’s new CEO was poised during speech and press Q&A (video) Posted: 14 Mar 2011 09:32 PM PDT
The talk was Apotheker’s first coming out with such a large audience since he joined HP as CEO in November. In his German-accented English, he showed more personality than the no-nonsense, completely-scripted Mark Hurd, who left HP amid a sex scandal in August.
“I thought he was very poised and actually anxious to answer all of the questions, even the difficult ones,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies. “I was impressed with his grasp of the industry, especially the prosumer (professional consumer) market they will target. When we used to ask (former CEO Mark) Hurd about their consumer strategy, he almost always turned that question over to someone else on his executive staff to handle.”
Bajarin said it seems sound. “Creating an infrastructure service and supplying all of the ecosystem products that can use this service is a smart move,” he said. “That and their emphasis on enterprise class security should help them get a lot of attention with enterprise customers and small businesses.”
Rob Enderle, analyst at the Enderle Group, said the strategy resembles a new mainframe computer strategy from IBM or an upscale Apple strategy. By building a whole platform and ecosystem, the strategy resembles IBM, he said. But HP isn’t as bent on owning the applications as IBM is in the enterprise arena. “Their biggest problem will be internal execution,” Enderle said. When asked about IBM, Apotheker replied that it was interesting that IBM offered a comment about HP’s as-yet-unannounced strategy before Apotheker even hit the stage. That seemed, he quipped, to indicate some “nervousness.” When pressed to explain HP’s relations with Microsoft in operating systems, he emphatically insisted that the “relationship was strong, is strong and will remain strong.” And when one reporter dismissed his “platitudes” about the cloud and how far behind HP was compared to its cloud rivals, Apotheker smiled at the challenge and said, “We will catch up and then we will talk again.” He also said, “We don’t intend to play in the junior league” in the tablet market.
Roger Kay, analyst of Endpoint Technologies, had mixed feelings. He said, “I feel like Leo is poised and in control, but that he’s short on proof points, how he’s going to get where he says he wants to go. He’s using all the right buzz words, but it’s hard to see the substance behind the phrases. I’m still puzzling out how apps stores work in enterprise, but some other analysts say it’s a way to sandbox and control app distribution. I’d like to see more on how that is supposed to work.” Kay added, “It’s clear he’s going to invest in software, but he said precious little about PCs and WebOS. So, even though he’s promising end-to-end, he’s not saying much about how.” Check out Apotheker’s speech below and the Q&A with reporters below that. Companies: Hewlett Packard, HP People: Léo Apotheker
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| Twitter cofounder Biz Stone to advise AOL Posted: 14 Mar 2011 06:39 PM PDT
The move, which comes a week after AOL closed its deal to acquire popular blog and news aggregator The Huffington Post for $315 million, is just one of many AOL has made to revamp its image. Stone (pictured) is currently creative director at Twitter, where he oversees new product development, vets and proposes fresh ideas for the five-year-old start-up, and just generally functions as “the voice of the company and brand.” He wrote today in a blog post that he would not allow his new appointment at AOL to interfere with his duties at Twitter but did not respond to requests for comment on how he plans to juggle the two. (It must surely help that Stone’s responsibilities are so loosely defined.) MediaMemo reported Stone would receive equity in AOL as part of his new hire, but Twitter representatives did not confirm that. Stone also currently advises Japanese business contexts company Digital Garage and DonorsChoose, an education nonprofit. Stone formerly worked with the Blogger team, at Google, and before that helped launch social blogging network Xanga. Asking Stone for help in integrating its new property seems like a smart move for AOL, which has struggled to stay hip and relevant in a field crowded with rapid-fire startups and increasingly innovative ideas. The company made 11 new editorial hires Monday. Those included promoting Howard Fineman, an analyst for NBC and MSNBC, from political editor to editorial director of the group; and adding John Montorio, a former editor at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, as its new culture and entertainment editor. Arianna Huffington, cofounder of the Huffington Post, has taken charge of what is now called AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group as president and editor-in-chief. The new additions come scant days after AOL said it would cut 20 percent of its staff, or around 950 jobs, in a bid to slim down its business and get back into the social media game. Said Stone about his new role in a blog post today:
Companies: aol, Blogger, Digital Garage, donors choose, Google, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Twitter, xanga People: Arianna Huffington, Biz Stone, joe montorio
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| Chip shortages and price spikes likely in wake of Japan quake Posted: 14 Mar 2011 06:23 PM PDT
That dour assessment comes despite the fact that there little damage at chip production facilities has been reported. But iSuppli is now taking into account the disruptions in transportation and power infrastructure, which will hobble the factories for an unknown length of time. The current nuclear radiation scare isn’t helping. Components that will be impacted include NAND flash memory, which is used in everything from iPad 2s to smartphones; dynamic random access memory, used in most computers and consumer electronics gear; microcontrollers for toys and industrial gadgets; standard logic for a wide variety of components; liquid crystal display panels used in TVs and laptops, and LCD display parts and materials. Japan is also the world’s largest supplier of the raw silicon ingots that are used to make semiconductor chips. It supplies about 60 percent of the total. If this supply is disrupted due to logistical and electrical problems, the disruption will spread to many other electronic components, including the plankton of electronic devices such as MOSFETs, bipolar transistors and small signal transistors. Infrastructure challenges will halt or slow shipments from Japan for about two weeks. The global supply chain has about two weeks of excess component inventory in the pipeline now. So shortages may not appear until the end of March or the start of April. The shortages and price impacts could linger until the third quarter. Based on fears about this unfolding scenario, prices have already risen. Pricing for high-density NAND flash chips has already climbed as much as 10 percent on the spot market, where buyers and sellers sell small amounts of excess parts. Spot-market DRAM pricing is also up as much as 7 percent since Friday. Big computer makers, on the other hand, are not likely to buy goods in this way. Rather, they usually get their supplies under long-term contracts that are not subject to price spikes. Contract pricing is holding steady for the time being. Most of the actual electronic component production takes place south of the epicenter. Damage was negligible, but companies are facing problems shipping components, receiving raw materials and getting workers to their facilities. Sony, for instance, shut a number of factories so workers could help with recovery efforts; it also had to deal with damage. Toshiba, the second-largest worldwide producer of NAND flash, said that output from its Japan plant could drop 20 percent. Hitachi, which supplies displays for the Nintendo DS handheld game system and for LG cell phones, said it had to halt production on Monday as it assessed the impact of the quake. Electric power availability could also curtail production at factories such as Panasonic’s LCD factories in Japan. Companies: Hitachi, IHS iSuppli, Sony, Toshiba
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| RewardVille will make you play even more Zynga games Posted: 14 Mar 2011 05:49 PM PDT
RewardVille has been in testing for the past few months, it creates a new virtual currency for Zynga games called zCoins. This helps Zynga establish a little independence from Facebook. Zynga and Facebook have a complicated relationship, with Zynga becoming the major success story on the Facebook platform while also trying to build a presence on other platforms, so that its destiny isn’t entirely in Mark Zuckerberg’s hands. Zynga and Facebook came close to a major falling out last year before Zynga finally agreed to use Facebook's virtual currency, Facebook Credits. The new program should encourage players to try out multiple Zynga games, not just its massive hits, CityVille and FarmVille, since they can only earn the maximum number of points if they play more than one game. And that, in turn, should make players more aware of Zynga as a company and a brand. The idea is pretty straightforward. Users sign up at the RewardVille site, earning zPoints and zCoins for playing games across the Zynga network. In one day, users can earn 80 zPoints in a single game and 300 zPoints total, which they can redeem for virtual goods that aren’t available anywhere else. Players can also use zPoints and zCoins to send gifts to their friends in other Zynga games. Companies: Zynga
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| Guild creator Felicia Day: Web shows should aim carefully Posted: 14 Mar 2011 04:38 PM PDT
Day was one of the keynote speakers at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin this week. She presented a number of contrasts between traditional and online media, but one that she returned to repeatedly was the idea of creating content for a niche audience, rather than trying to make something to suit everyone. "You aim with a sniper rifle versus a shotgun," she said. For example, The Guild is a show about players addicted to an unnamed online roleplaying game, and it was clearly written for an audience of gamers. Knowing that there was a natural fan base for the show, one that would feel passionate about The Guild and promote it online, was key to early growth, Day said. If you create an online show, you need to be able to answer the question, "Who am I talking to?" "Trying to please everybody, it's never going to work," she said. Day predicted this approach will also pay off with a new project, Dragon Age: Redemption, a Web video series based on the Dragon Age video games from BioWare. Movies based on video games are notoriously bad, even if they're big-budget productions. Day argued that's because they suffer from trying to appeal to everyone, rather than just the fans of the game. In the case of Day’s new show, she acknowledged that it's a challenge to portray a rich fantasy world on a Web TV budget, but she's a fan of games and did months of research to get the details right. The Guild's business model has been pretty unusual too. The first season was paid for by viewer donations, and the subsequent four seasons were funded by Microsoft and Sprint. Day argued that sponsoring Web shows is a better use of advertisers' money than normal TV advertising. She said that for the $3 million it costs to place a single 30-second ad on television, advertisers could fund an entire season of a Web show, and then their brand name (and no competing brands) would be featured prominently wherever the show is distributed. Besides Web business models, Day also made time to talk about the value of anonymity on the Web. People: Felicia Day
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| Japan earthquake stalls Nissan electric car production Posted: 14 Mar 2011 03:50 PM PDT
The company’s electric vehicle, the Leaf, is the first full-scale electric production car from a major automaker sold in the United States. But Nissan has typically failed to meet deadlines to get the car to market and into the hands of hungry consumers. That was supposed to change when Nissan announced that its Japanese factory responsible for making the five-seat family hatchback was set to double production over the next month. One in every six cars coming off Nissan's Oppama production line was a Leaf. Nissan promised every third car would be a Leaf by the end of March. Nissan is no stranger to setbacks when it comes to the Leaf. The company was slow to begin production, using existing factories to manufacture it. The 2011 Leaf is produced alongside non-electric cars such as the 2011 Juke and the 2011 Cube. This method of production enables new cars to be gradually phased in, without disrupting the plant production schedule. But while there are over 20,000 reservations in the U.S. for the Leaf, only 10 cars were delivered in December. There were 173 Leaf orders filled in January and 67 Leaf vehicles delivered in February. The delays have been caused in part by the success of the Leaf in its native Japan, where generous government subsidies and nationwide charging infrastructure have driven an estimated 95 percent of Oppama's Leaf output to domestic customers. Nissan was on track to ship an estimated 10,000 units by the end of March this year. Nissan also reported that 2,300 completed vehicles were damaged in the wake of the tsunami following the earthquake, but wouldn’t indicate how many of them were electric vehicles. Japan was hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake. The earthquake rocked the northeastern portion of the coast and generated a tsunami warning across the country. The quake was the strongest to hit Japan in at least a century and generated a tsunami as high as 33 feet that flooded northern towns. Companies: Nissan
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| HP will install both Windows and WebOS on same desktops in future Posted: 14 Mar 2011 02:41 PM PDT
Apotheker said that HP plans to install a version of WebOS on its computers that are shipping after the end of the year. But that operating system will not replace Microsoft Windows, as some have speculated. Rather, Apotheker said the two operating systems will work seamlessly and you will be able to switch from one to the other in the future. “Our relationship with Microsoft was strong, is strong, and will remain strong,” Apotheker said. But Apotheker said that only one operating system will ship on tablet computers in the future. As HP said on Feb. 9, it’s planning to ship its HP Touch Pad tablet computers with WebOS. HP will also ship a Microsoft Windows-based tablet in the future, once Microsoft makes that software available. He said that HP’s WebOS will offer a “user experience that is world class” and that it is intuitive, easy to learn, does multitasking perfectly well, and devices will have a seamless experience.” Companies: Hewlett Packard, HP, Microsoft People: Léo Apotheker
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| HP promises profitable growth and returns for decades to come Posted: 14 Mar 2011 02:07 PM PDT
In a press and analyst session in San Francisco, HP’s leaders said they plan on profitable growth, margin expansion, and increased capital spending in the future. HP plans to cash in on the growing opportunities around cloud services, or providing web-connected services for everyone from small businesses to consumers to big enterprises. “Who but HP is positioned to do this?” Lesjak asked. “We are skating to where the puck is going,” referring to hockey star Wayne Gretzky’s motto that you skate to where the hockey puck is going, not where it has been. Apotheker said HP is planning to expand its sales force and grow its share of wallet, meaning it will grab more of the money spent by consumers and enterprises in the future. The company will acquire companies when needed and improve its efficiency with operational excellence, Apotheker said. Lesjak said HP will grow its profits and expand its capital spending at the same time. The company will also return cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. It is announcing a 50 percent rise in the company’s regular quarterly dividend to 12 cents a share. The company expects double-digit cents-per-share increases in the dividend on an annual basis. HP believes it can deliver $7 in non-GAAP earnings per share by 2014. Apotheker said his heart goes out to the people in Japan and HP’s employees and customers there. He said the company does a lot of business there and he was there a week ago. He said his people are safe and HP’s infrastructure there was not touched. “We are trying to assess the situation there now,” he said. Companies: Hewlett Packard, HP People: Cathie Lesjak, Léo Apotheker
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Apple’s rush to get the iPad 2 to customers quickly after it was announced continues to be a problem. Now online orders for the iPad 2 are
BoostCTR lands $1.6M for copywriter community: The ad service has raised a round of seed funding from investors including 
With rivals 
Seagate is also introducing two next-generation Savvio 15K and 10K hard disk drives (pictured right) that balance high performance and large capacity. The Savvio products are aimed at improving overall storage efficiency. The products have capacities of 146 gigabytes and 300 gigabytes. The devices are current shipping to computer makers and will be available to resellers in the first quarter for the 10K and in the second quarter for the 15K.
When a gamer brags about beating an opponent, there’s nothing like hard evidence. The “confirmed kill” mentality among gamers is one reason why 
The products make it easy to make video recordings of your game sessions, personalize them with messages, and then share them on social media. They offer proof that a gamer isn’t just making up a story about being the best shot in Bulletstorm or Call of Duty Black Ops.
Video capture isn’t for the faint of heart, considering it’s easy to get all of the cables confused. But Rovi has included in-product tutorials in the web software to make sure everyone can get set up quickly and begin capturing and sharing without any hassles. As you can see on the right, there are just a couple of menu buttons to hit on the user interface.
Every now and then, Halo game fans grouse that they have to pay $10 to get three additional maps with every new multiplayer map pack that Bungie comes out for the Halo: Reach game for 
As we noted in our past stories on map packs
The Halo Reach Defiant Map Pack is the second for Halo Reach, the Xbox 360 game that launched last September as the last Bungie-created installment of the Halo universe. The map pack has the first-ever Firefight mode for Halo Reach as well. That's where you fight cooperatively with fellow human players against masses of computer-controlled enemies who keep coming at you until you all die. That's an appropriate addition, considering the storyline of the losing battle from the Halo Reach game.
Microsoft’s long journey to revitalize Internet Explorer, and make it a competitive web browser against speedy upstarts like Google Chrome, finally reached its end tonight. A few hours ago, Microsoft made the final version of Internet Explorer 9 available on its 
Leo Apotheker was poised on stage in his first formal stage presentation to press and analysts in San Francisco today. He was also comfortable and humorous during a Q&A session with the press afterward.
How Apotheker delivered his speech was important, considering some CEOs (Facebook’s young chief Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind) become a little unglued when under the pressure of live speaking and intense questioning from reporters. Whether you agree with 
But a nice speech is not going to turn around HP’s stock, which is down about 25 percent in the past year. As for the strategy, Apotheker said HP would focus on cloud computing, connectivity, and software. HP would create its own public cloud, its own app store, and a plethora of connected gadgets running HP’s own WebOS operating system. Software would glue all of this together.
Bajarin also says it’s a grand vision that will need many people working in lock step and in great harmony to pull it off. Unlike Hurd, Apotheker talked a lot more about what kind of innovations HP could bring about in the future rather than cost-cutting. He said HP stands at an inflection point where a shift to cloud computing will dominate the discussion. He noted how consumer innovation cycles in social media are pushing enterprises to react.
As a couple of more examples of poise, Apotheker paused before answering a question about the Japan quake on HP’s business and expressed his sympathy for the Japanese people and the hardships that HP’s own Japanese employees may be having. He said that HP had made a donation for relief efforts in Japan and would match employee donations dollar for dollar. When a reporter sneezed, Apotheker smiled and said, “Bless you.” And he joked that he would only answer questions from reporters who had HP laptops.
Internet behemoth 
Shortages and price spikes are likely to occur for certain kinds of electronic components in the aftermath of Japan’s earthquake, according to market researcher
Social gaming giant 
If you want to launch a successful Web TV show, thinking small may be better than thinking big, said Felicia Day, writer and star of the popular online series 
Nissan 
Hewlett-Packard
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