Facebooks iPad app finally coming?

Sep 27, 2011 | News

So I have read reports that are saying that the long awaited Facebook app for the iPad is finally going to be here. Apparently Facebook will be announcing this at the iPhone 5 launch on October 4th. There has been speculation even that this app has been completed since the month of May. Though the reason for this has been cited as the rocky relationship Facebook has with Apple and timing. Now for those who may not know the two companies haven’t been the best of friends, an example of this Facebook stopped Facebook Connect in Ping because Apple didn’t give Facebook any warning about this feature which would have taken a major deal of bandwidth on Facebooks side of things. Also there was the speculation of Facebook being integrated into the iOS well that fell apart and now Twitter is integrated. However from the signs of things, they been able to kiss and make up on this finally being able to announce this app on a big day shows that Apple is serious about all of this.

Netflix sets up streaming with Dreamworks

Sep 26, 2011 | News

A lot has been said about Netflix and the changes that have been made in the last couple of months. We have the original change of pricing and splitting up DVD rentals and streaming. From there we have the whole division of the company, making Netflix just a streaming company and having Qwikster be the company that deals with the mailing of DVD’s and have even opened the video game business up which is a nice addition. Then we have the whole dealings with Starz. A company that doesn’t want a full sum of money but yet a tier based system such like what you pay for in your cable bill. So people can subscribe to Netflix and add the Starz package and Starz wants to get a piece of that. Well a movie studio has signed a streaming deal with Netflix. One Dreamworks studios. The terms have not fully been released but it looks like the streaming deal will officially start in 2013. Finally something positive to come out of all of this is that some studios have been asking for too much on Netflix. Hopefully more companies will follow suit.

Let the streaming battle begin

Sep 25, 2011 | News

So it looks like Netflix is going to have what could possibly be a Blockbuster/Dish streaming service coming down the line here. Dish bought out Blockbuster for a mere $320 million and now it is all starting to become clear. The real question becomes how will Dish be able to leverage this with the problems Netflix has been having. Mainly the focus goes on the Starz deal that is still in the works. Startz wants there to be a tier for their movies and series, although once again as I stated in a post of mine what if you already have Starz? I mean let me put something into perspective for you, Torchwood Miracle Day was on Starz and just ended a week or so ago. Yet no episodes were on Netflix yet if you had Starz on cable/dish you could on demand them. I don’t think Starz would be losing subscribers to Netflix if they kept the same deal in place and let people watch the series for a limited time streaming. I do feel that putting Netflix in a position like this is just dirty pool by leveraging the fact Netflix is losing its customer base because it broke up its streaming and DVD service. So Netflix could be hungry to get more people streaming, but what will Netflix see if it has to charge $20 per month for Streaming? What added value would you have to give the customer, most people are already complaining about its poor selection at $7.99 and with companies like Showtime and HBO not on board who knows what they could really add. However Dish could have the advantage and might be able to make deals with these companies since they already sell the products through their dish services. This competition could be refreshing and could make Netflix make a positive move for its customers or it could just fail.

A look back on Apotheker’s reign as CEO of HP

Sep 24, 2011 | News

These last few blogs have been very HP focused and for good reason. When you have a player like HP who has been struggling as of late you really see a major change can happen to shake up a big company. I found a timeline about the reign of Apotheker and felt it would be interesting to share what has happened in less than a year of a Leo Apotheker’s reign of as CEO of HP. Thanks to Bloomberg for this breakdown.

Feb. 7, 2010: Apotheker resigns from SAP AG after 10 months as CEO. He presided over SAP?s first annual revenue decline since 2003 as customers, hit by the recession, delayed software purchases. During his time as CEO, SAP slashed more than 3,000 jobs, its first major cuts since the company was created.

Aug. 6, 2010: Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd resigns after an investigation found he had a personal relationship with a contractor who received numerous inappropriate payments from the company. Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak takes over as interim CEO.

Aug. 9, 2010: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says ?the HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs,? by forcing out Hurd, Ellison?s friend.

Sept. 6, 2010: Oracle Corp. hires Hurd as a president and board member, reporting to Ellison.

Sept. 7, 2010: Hewlett-Packard sues to block Hurd from working at Oracle, saying the appointment may cause Hewlett-Packard to lose customers, trade secrets and its competitive advantage.

Sept. 20, 2010: Hewlett-Packard and Oracle say they resolved litigation over Hurd?s job at Oracle.

Sept. 30, 2010: Hewlett-Packard names Apotheker president and CEO. It also appoints Ray Lane, a managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as chairman.

Oct. 1, 2010: Ellison tells the Wall Street Journal that ?HP had several good internal candidates…but instead they pick a guy who was recently fired because he did such a bad job of running SAP.? He adds, ?The HP board needs to resign en masse…right away. The madness must stop.?

Jan. 5, 2011: Hewlett-Packard Chief Marketing Officer Michael Mendenhall resigns, replaced by Bill Wohl, a vice president for communications at SAP.

Jan. 20, 2011: Hewlett-Packard announces a board shakeup in the wake of criticism over the way it handled Hurd?s departure. Four directors leave, and Whitman is among five new members named. Whitman joins the board after a failed bid to become California?s governor.

Feb. 9, 2011: Hewlett-Packard unveils the TouchPad tablet computer, which runs the WebOS software it acquired in its purchase of Palm Inc. in 2010 for $1.2 billion.

Feb. 22, 2011: Hewlett-Packard lowers its 2011 revenue forecast to $130 billion to $131.5 billion, the first of three reductions under Apotheker. The company also misses analysts? estimates with its second-quarter sales and profit projections. Shares plunge the most in more than six years when markets open the next day.

March 9, 2011: Apotheker says he will put WebOS software in every PC shipped by Hewlett-Packard. He also plans to use acquisitions to expand in software and will reverse Hurd?s emphasis on cost-cutting. ?HP has lost its soul,? he says.

March 14, 2011: Apotheker raises Hewlett-Packard?s dividend for the first time since 1998, increasing it 50 percent to 12 cents a share. The company also announces plans to introduce a cloud- computing service.

March 22, 2011: Oracle says it will stop all software development on Intel Corp.?s Itanium chip, a product Hewlett- Packard uses in its servers. Oracle gained a rival chip called Sparc through its 2010 purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc.

March 23, 2011: Hewlett-Packard, the biggest producer of servers that use Itanium, says Oracle?s plan to drop support for the chip is a ?shameless gambit? that jeopardizes customers and will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

April 18, 2011: Hewlett-Packard says Thomas Hogan, executive vice president for enterprise business sales and marketing, has decided to leave. Jan Zadak will assume that role on May 1, the company says.

May 17, 2011: Hewlett-Packard cuts its fiscal 2011 sales forecast for the second time on Apotheker?s watch, to a range of $129 billion to $130 billion. The company also forecasts full- year earnings excluding some items that missed analysts? estimates as consumers shun PCs and services margins narrow.

May 20, 2011: Hewlett-Packard Senior Vice President Marius Haas is departing for private-equity firm KKR & Co., two people familiar with the matter say.

June 1, 2011: Leo Apotheker says Hewlett-Packard will consider licensing the WebOS software to other device manufacturers.

June 8, 2011: Hewlett-Packard sends a letter to Oracle demanding that the software maker keep supporting Intel?s Itanium chip.

June 15, 2011: Hewlett-Packard sues Oracle, claiming that Oracle has moved from partner to ?bitter antagonist.? The suit cites Oracle?s hiring of Hurd last year, and the announcement that it would no longer support its database software on Hewlett-Packard servers that use the Itanium chip.

June 29, 2011: Oracle asks a California judge to reject an effort by Hewlett-Packard to seal court filings in the lawsuit over Hurd and the Itanium chip.

July 11, 2011: Apotheker reorganizes the PC unit as part of a push to broaden use of the WebOS software gained in its Palm acquisition. Jon Rubinstein, Palm?s former CEO, is put in charge of product development for PCs, tablets and smartphones. Senior Vice President Stephen DeWitt is tapped to lead a new unit devoted to expanding use of WebOS.

July 21, 2011: Hewlett-Packard says it will buy back $10 billion of its stock to buoy its languishing shares. Before the announcement, the shares had dropped 14 percent in 2011.

Aug. 18, 2011: In a sweeping overhaul, Hewlett-Packard agrees to buy software maker Autonomy Corp. for $10.3 billion and says it is considering a spinoff of its PC unit. The company also discontinues products running WebOS. Apotheker trims the fiscal 2011 sales forecast for the third time, to a range of $127.2 billion to $127.6 billion.

Aug. 30, 2011: Oracle accuses Hewlett-Packard of fraud and libel, saying a settlement agreement between the two companies over Oracle?s hiring of Hurd was unfair. Oracle also claims Hewlett-Packard defamed the company by saying it bullies customers.

Sept. 9, 2011: Dominique Senequier, a director with ties to Apotheker, will leave the board in March, Hewlett-Packard says in a regulatory filing.

Sept. 22, 2011: Hewlett-Packard names Whitman as CEO, and Chairman Ray Lane becomes executive chairman. During her decade as CEO at EBay, she took the company public and pioneered e- commerce for small businesses. Yet in the final years of her tenure, she couldn?t halt a slowdown in sales growth.

HP names new CEO

Sep 23, 2011 | News

Just yesterday I wrote about how HP was going to remove Apotherker as CEO. So now that has come to be. They have announced that Meg Whitman as president and CEO of HP. Also Ray Lane has been promoted from non-executive chairman to executive chairman or the board of directors. All of these moves have been announced by HP and are effective now. Whitman has this to say about her appointment as CEO of HP, ?I am honored and excited to lead HP. I believe HP matters ? it matters to Silicon Valley, California, the country and the world.? Now the question becomes where is the focus going to be? HP just started making moves to become more of a software solution than a hardware solution. Does Meg pull back from that stance or try to leverage it the best she can to make it work. HP has made some big moves as of late, most notably giving away all of their HP touchpads for almost nothing compared to the tablets that are on the market now. Meg has a true uphill battle to make HP a better company.

HP maybe looking for a new CEO but don’t feel bad for him

Sep 22, 2011 | News

So HP has done awful this pass year, with the fail of the touchpad and them calling for a new direction in stopping major PC production and going software solutions. As of right now the current CEO Leo Apotheker has been in the seat of power for less than a year. November 1st of last year being the day he took power. Well I will tell you something that I have learned. If the board decides that Mr. Apotheker has done a poor job and looks to get rid of him, he will still have made a pretty penny. To start he will get $2.4 million dollars plus his average bonus received over the period of his employment which will equal installments over 18 months. Now that is great for someone who did such a poor job but also he will get 76,000 HP shares to go along with all of that. Plus get this he got $4.6 million in relocation benefits and from what I have read since he has been there for more than 60 days he gets to keep it! The only thing that makes sense is if he is fired within 16 months he will be paying back part of his signing bonus of $4 million which would breakdown to about $2.4 million dollars. Pretty good deal if he can make it a year and a half.

Apple’s next Media event October 4th

Sep 21, 2011 | News

Apple is holding their next media event on Oct. 4th. This most certainly will be the announcement of the release of the iPhone 5. It has been said by sources that not only will the iPhone 5 be featured in this event but also that it will be released shortly after the event. Most are speculating in a week or 2 after the event which will put the release right in the middle of October which most sources have speculated since the summer. Plus this event also holds a bit more value to it since it is the first event with the new CEO of Apple Tim Cook. So overall October 4th is going to be a huge day for Apple, not only are you going to see the iPhone 5 but you will see the new CEO in action and every has to wonder how he will do.

Google Wallet is here

Sep 20, 2011 | News

Google has finally released their Wallet as an app on the Sprint network. Basically what it does is lets you pay for items using your cell phone instead of your credit card. All of the Sprint Nexus S 4G phones will get an update for this app to be added into the phone. Google Wallet enables you to pay with your Citi MasterCard credit card and the Google Prepaid Card, which can be funded with any of your existing plastic credit cards. As a thanks to early adopters, Google is adding a $10 free bonus to the Google Prepaid Card if you set it up in Google Wallet before the end of the year. The end game will be to launch this on every network and use every major credit card. This is a good start for this technology and we will see where it takes us.

Netflix splitting up it’s services

Sep 19, 2011 | News

Netflix has decided to split up the mailing of DVD’s and the streaming services. They are even rebranding the DVD mail service as Qwikster. The big change however is that Qwikster will also offer video games as well. Also they will be separate so the new Qwikster site will be a separate set up. The CEO had this to sayCommen

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn?t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something ? like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores ? do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. Eventually these companies realize their error of not focusing enough on the new thing, and then the company fights desperately and hopelessly to recover. Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.

Interesting move making Netflix a brand of just streaming and creating a service that does both movies and video games. It will be interesting to see if they undercut Gamefly or if they will put a pricing structure in place that matches them.

Phone intergration in Windows 8?

Sep 18, 2011 | News

Could Windows 8 let you call and text your relatives directly from your a tablet? That?s what some new evidence suggests, as istartedsomething discovered that two videos from Microsoft?s Build developer conference have a variety of references to calling. You can see a ?Missed calls? tile on the home screen in the picture above, and in a second video, there?s a contact info screen with options to ?Text and Chat? (including SMS) as well as the telling ?Call mobile.?

Although, all of this evidence could be explained in a variety of other ways. For example, SMS is explicitly called out as a ?fallback? option in a video describing Windows 8?s integrated messaging app, which could mean that Microsoft is just simply extending the current SMS for Windows Live functionality there. Perhaps, like the sync functionality in HP?s Pre 3 and TouchPad, you?d need to have a Windows Phone 7 device paired and physically next to your Windows 8 PC to make or receive calls and text messages. In fact, with Windows 8?s focus on cloud sync, notifications might not be any more than that ? your Windows Phone 7 device could simply pass a note to Windows 8, via the internet, that there are some telephone duties you should get to. Still, the inclusion of ?Call mobile? leads us to think there?s something more here ? assuming these aren?t all mockups, anyway. Also let us not forget the Microsoft has also purchased Skype. So the integration could be their using that platform.