| Saturday, September 04, 2010 |
| 01:55 PM |
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The Best Brokers For Mobile Investors
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DailyFinance
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| Friday, September 03, 2010 |
| 12:05 PM |
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Does anyone care about webOS 2.0?
Palm has breathlessly announced "webOS 2.0, the next generation of Palm's amazing mobile operating system!" This wonder, currently in beta for registered developers, will include Stacks, the "next-generation of multi-tasking"; Just Type, a renamed and enhanced version of Universal Search; Exhibition, a way to write applications that only run when the webOS phone is docked in the Palm Touchstone; Synergy, a former system integration feature now available
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Latest from Infoworl...
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| Wednesday, September 01, 2010 |
| 10:13 AM |
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Palm products exec moves to BSquare
Former Palm Inc. vice president of product management John Traynor will oversee planning and development of all products at BSquare Corp., the company announced Wednesday. (BSQR) (PALM) 
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National Business Ne...
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| Tuesday, August 31, 2010 |
| 06:04 PM |
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AOL Buys Rally Up As Part Of New Mobile Strategy
AOL (NYSE: AOL) is buying Rally Up, a startup behind a mobile social networking app for the iPhone and iPad that lets users share their locations. The app pitches itself as a social network for “people that actually should know your location”—like family members and close friends. Users can direct message each other and “check-in” to locations. So, why is AOL buying the startup? The company says the deal is part of its new approach to the mobile market.
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paidContent
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| 06:04 PM |
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AOL Buys Rally Up As Part Of New Mobile Strategy
AOL (NYSE: AOL) is buying Rally Up, a startup behind a mobile social networking app for the iPhone and iPad that lets users share their locations. The app pitches itself as a social network for “people that actually should know your location”—like family members and close friends. Users can direct message each other and “check-in” to locations. So, why is AOL buying the startup? The company says the deal is part of its new approach to the mobile market.
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paidContent
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| 06:04 PM |
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AOL Buys Rally Up As Part Of New Mobile Strategy
AOL (NYSE: AOL) is buying Rally Up, a startup behind a mobile social networking app for the iPhone and iPad that lets users share their locations. The app pitches itself as a social network for “people that actually should know your location”—like family members and close friends. Users can direct message each other and “check-in” to locations. So, why is AOL buying the startup? The company says the deal is part of its new approach to the mobile market.
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mocoNews
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| 05:00 PM |
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5 New Features In the Cards for Palm WebOS 2.0
Ever since HP bought Palm in April, many have wondered where the company would take webOS, the innovative mobile platform used on the Palm Pre and Pixi handsets. Today Palm offers a glimpse, sharing several new features you can expect to see in webOS 2.0 devices. 
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GigaOM
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| 11:49 AM |
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Texting While Driving: New Apps Answer Messages So You Don't Have To
It's against the law -- and extremely risky -- to answer a text message while driving. Fortunately, your smartphone is smart enough to answer for you. Are you smart enough to let it?
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CBS MoneyWatch.com
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| 11:49 AM |
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Texting While Driving: New Apps Answer Messages So You Don't Have To
It's against the law -- and extremely risky -- to answer a text message while driving. Fortunately, your smartphone is smart enough to answer for you. Are you smart enough to let it?
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BNET
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| 11:49 AM |
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Texting While Driving: New Apps Answer Messages So You Don't Have To
It's against the law -- and extremely risky -- to answer a text message while driving. Fortunately, your smartphone is smart enough to answer for you. Are you smart enough to let it?
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Resources | BNET
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| 11:49 AM |
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Texting While Driving: New Apps Answer Messages So You Don't Have To
It's against the law -- and extremely risky -- to answer a text message while driving. Fortunately, your smartphone is smart enough to answer for you. Are you smart enough to let it?
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Resources | BNET
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| 11:49 AM |
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Texting While Driving: New Apps Answer Messages So You Don't Have To
It's against the law -- and extremely risky -- to answer a text message while driving. Fortunately, your smartphone is smart enough to answer for you. Are you smart enough to let it?
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Resources | BNET
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| Monday, August 30, 2010 |
| 08:31 PM |
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HP Hires Former HTC Executive To Help With Palm Acquisition
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mocoNews
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| Thursday, August 26, 2010 |
| 04:59 AM |
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A Note to Consumer Tech Companies
Dell (DELL) threw its hat into the ring of hopeful iPhone killers with the Aero, and all I can say is, good luck. Well, actually I have a lot more to say. Complete Story »
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Seeking Alpha
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| Sunday, August 15, 2010 |
| 08:16 AM |
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Handicapping HP CEO Candidates
Jeffrey M. Kaplan submits: Mark Hurd’s sudden resignation as HP’s (HPQ) CEO has opened a floodgate of speculation regarding who the company will select to succeed him. Because his departure wasn’t anticipated, there are no clear-cut internal candidates. And, because Hurd himself was a surprise selection for the post in 2006, it is possible that another little-known industry executive may be tapped again for the position this time around. Complete Story »
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Seeking Alpha
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| Wednesday, August 11, 2010 |
| 02:13 PM |
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Steer Clear of HP Until Next CEO
With Mark Hurd out as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard(HPQ), many are trying to argue that the stock is a great long play here trading at $42. I think you're better off steering clear of it for now until there's greater certainty about what's going to happen with the next CEO.
In the aftermath of the surprising departure of Hurd on Friday, and the 8% drop in the stock on Monday, some HP bulls have been stating that now's the time to get a position in the stock. Their argument goes as follows:- HP is a great franchise with many solid businesses. It's bigger than Mark Hurd.
- It's cheap. It trades at 8 times current year's earnings and 9 times next year's.
- Since the stock has really performed well in the last few years, you can continue to rely on it being a steady performer in the years to come.
I agree that HP has a good set of businesses that are market-leading. There are several scenarios I could envision in which it will hire a great new CEO who is able to ramp up this company and its stock price in the coming years. We could well look back on this moment in time and say it was a great time to enter the stock. However, there are way too many question marks and risks hanging over the company at the moment to jump into a long position. The risk/reward -- as of today -- still strikes me as unattractive to get long the stock. If they make a bad hire as CEO, the stock could be an attractive short opportunity. So, here are the reasons for not touching HP at the moment: - HP has solid positions in its markets today, but many of those markets (like PCs, printers, and technology services) could well see a drop in business in the next few years if they're managed poorly.
Now that Hurd is out of HP, the HP bulls are saying the company is bigger than Hurd. Yet, when Hurd was around, they only wanted to talk about HP as if he was the only employee at the company. Hurd is all about execution, we used to hear them say. So, if Hurd is now gone, how will HP execute? Companies are more than their leaders but they model themselves to their leaders and they drift with no leaders. We're in a drift-zone until a new CEO is announced and that took seven weeks after Carly was sacked. - The stock may be cheap relative to others but what is most important for any new investor in the stock is that question about whether it is cheap today relative to where the stock will be a year or two from now. If HP bungles this transition and squanders its lead in several of its businesses, the stock could easily drop another 20%.
- HP's stock actually hasn't performed well recently. Investors only think it's performed well because of the Mark Hurd "halo effect" that's gone on -- think of it like a "Vulcan mind trick."
As I said in my article on Saturday, HP's stock went up 137% in the first 2.5 years of Hurd's tenure but dropped 20% in the last 2.5 years. Over the same most recent 2.5 years, IBM's (IBM) stock went up 20%. If you think you can always rely on HP to deliver stock growth, you're wrong.
But let me emphasize the top three reasons for not owning HP at the moment: - We have no clue who the next CEO will be. I'm pretty sure Todd Bradley will be the top internal candidate, although Ann Livermore will get consideration. I'm sure they'll also look at some outside candidates, too. My guess is that they'll pick Bradley as a safe choice but I'm not convinced he'll be a savior for the stock. They could hire another Carly -- heaven forbid. Do you want to put your wealth (in the form of HP stock) in the hands of this board to do the right thing?
- When you cheat on the small stuff, you tend to cheat on the big stuff. Although some Hurd apologists and friends say that HP is making up the whole expense-gate issue to avoid the bad press associated with a sexual harassment, the fact is that he reported charging $243,000 in personal meals to HP shareholders in 2008 and then had the temerity to demand that he be grossed up another $75,000 so that he wouldn't owe any taxes to the IRS on that benefit.
The current expenses allegations that the board used to unanimously ask him to resign are entirely consistent with those reported facts. What it tells me is that this is a guy who has entitlement issues: $43 million in total comp in 2008 wasn't enough for him. He also needed every last penny of expenses covered for him -- even when they were for personal expenses. I've tended to find that people who fib about the small stuff tend to fib about the big stuff -- like all the micro (and legal) decisions that go into managing the numbers every quarter. We might have a few more dead bodies which will soon wash ashore from the EDS, 3Com and Palm acquisitions. I smell one-time charges coming from excessive earnings management that might have gone on over the past three years. Usually, when a new CEO comes in, once they get a sense of the books and how the past regime has run those books, they like to put everything into the kitchen sink so they can free themselves from the burdens of how they've done things in the past. - Who's going to finish the job integrating the EDS, 3Com, and Palm acquisitions? The master integration-and-execution guy is gone. We're going to see if the rest of the team is up to the task. These are all big and complex companies. It will take real work to integrate them successfully and the Palm group might never be able to deliver new products to captivate the market's tastes.
Is this the new stream-lined HP or the old bureaucratic HP that's never really changed since Carly? I think it's likely there will be more charges ahead.
The HP bulls like to point out that the company raised full-year guidance when it announced Hurd was leaving on Friday. I'm surprised it also didn't announce that it was doing a stock buyback. This upped guidance doesn't do anything to change my view at all. HP's been sandbagging - precisely so it could up the guidance when it needed to (as it did in reaction to this scandal). In my view, this stock won't trade on rest-of-the-year guidance but as for what its earnings will be in 2011 and 2012, the jury's still out on that. Do you trust this HP board to be on the ball and hire a great new CEO? Take a wait and see approach.
........
[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]



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Breakout Performance
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| 10:40 AM |
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HP's Management Crisis: Where Rivals Have Openings
Although HP's competitors have been quiet so far, the Mark Hurd fiasco has to smell like blood in the water around Silicon Valley. Where exactly might HP be most vulnerable? And where might it still hold an edge? Here's a business-by-business rundown.
Continue reading HP's Management Crisis: Where Rivals Have Openings
HP's Management Crisis: Where Rivals Have Openings originally appeared on DailyFinance on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:40:00.
Filed Under: Company News, Technology, Investing, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM, Google , Microsoft, Research In Motion, Apple, Stocks in the News
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DailyFinance
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| Tuesday, August 10, 2010 |
| 06:56 AM |
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Cramer's Mad Money - 6 Stocks That Should Split (8/9/10)
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Seeking Alpha
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| 01:27 AM |
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Who Is Left At Palm? Hint: Not Execs Katie Mitic Or Jeff Zwerner
 Back in June, we heard from a couple of good sources that an executive exodus was about to take place at Palm, as everyone waited for the HP deal to go through. We can now confirm that the exodus did in fact take place, and we have some names to prove it.
We first reported earlier today that Peter Skillman, the Vice President of Design at Palm had left the company. But while he was very important to the company (he was the designer of the Palm Pre) he wasn't technically an executive. Following the completion of the HP deal, Palm has taken down their executive page. But here's who was on the Management Team: 
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TechCrunch
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| Monday, August 09, 2010 |
| 08:59 PM |
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The Man Who Designed The Pre Is The Latest To Leave Palm/HP
 The hits just keep on coming for HP. Hot on the heels of the massive story of HP CEO Mark Hurd's resignation amid scandal, another high-level person has left the company. Peter Skillman, the Vice President of Design at Palm (which HP officially purchased in July) has left the company, we've confirmed.
It's not clear where Skillman is going next, but he had been with Palm for 11 years. And that's a big blow for HP as Skillman takes with him nearly 20 years of product design experience. At Palm, he was the man in charge of the design of the ill-fated, but loved Pre. 
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TechCrunch
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More All For PALM
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