Damian Dinning, the company’s longtime head of imaging and photography, is leaving after nearly a decade. An alumnus of Eastman Kodak and Minolta, Dinning came to Nokia in 2004 and oversaw development of the N8, the Lumia 920 and the 808 Pureview, a beast of a cameraphone with a 41-megapixel sensor. It’s not clear why he’s leaving the company — Nokia would say only that it is a “personal decision,” but according to a recent tweet, he’s got something exciting lined up for early December.

“Following the relocation of key strategic roles to Finland, and with great reluctance, Damian Dinning has made a personal decision to leave the company effective 30 November 2012,” Nokia said in a statement. “During the past nine years, [Damian] has made many innovative and valuable contributions to Nokia, most recently as a lead program manager in our Smart Devices business. We thank him for his service to the company and certainly wish him the best.”

[UPDATE: Dinning has posted a statement that he is going to Jaguar Land Rover.]

Way to slip that leadership shake-up into the pre-Fourth of July news dump, Real!

Real offered little in the way of explanation for Nielsen’s abrupt departure, which comes less than a year after he was tapped as CEO. “The board and Thomas mutually agreed that the CEO position wasn’t the right fit,” Glaser said. “We thank Thomas for the contributions he has made in moving RealNetworks forward and wish him well in his new endeavors.”

Nielsen is the second CEO Real has lost in as many years. His predecessor, Bob Kimball, lasted only a year in the job.

The company’s board of directors has already begun a search for a new CEO.

Below, the message Glaser broadcast to Real employees today apprising them of the changes:

Team-

I’m writing to tell you about a change in leadership at RealNetworks.

Thomas Nielsen has resigned as President & CEO, effective immediately. Thomas and RealNetworks’ board have mutually agreed that Thomas wasn’t a fit.

The board has asked me to step in as Interim CEO. I’m humbled and honored to take on this responsibility.

RealNetworks is a great company that has done amazing things in the past and that will do even more amazing things in the future.
We will have a company meeting next Monday (July 9th) in Seattle to discuss things in more detail. We also plan to send out a short video message for our employees located outside of Seattle.

In the interim, let me make 3 points.

1. We have a lot to do to bring RealNetworks into the future. I will come to work every day with a sense of urgency and a bias towards action. I want all of you to do the same. Our two highest priorities will be to lock in on a go-forward strategy for RealNetworks, and to get cashflow positive. You will hear more about this in the coming days and weeks.

2. I’m not a candidate for permanent CEO. Because of personal and other professional responsibilities, I can’t sign up to be permanent CEO. Having said that, while iCEO, I can promise you that I will give 100%.

3. We all recognize that RealNetworks has had too much change in the past 2 ½ years. Along with my colleagues on the senior team and on the board, I’m committed to setting the company on a stable, long-term path to success and to a smooth succession plan.

On behalf of the Board and the entire management team, I want to personally thank Thomas for his efforts. I look forward to seeing our Seattle employees next Monday and hearing from our global employees.

Rob

A 13-year Apple veteran, Mansfield oversaw the engineering of every major piece of hardware Apple has debuted in the past decade — iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air. He’ll leave the company later this year after transitioning his role to Dan Riccio, Apple’s vice president of iPad Hardware Engineering. Another Apple veteran, Riccio has been with the company since joining it in 1998 as vice president of product design.

“Bob has been an instrumental part of our executive team, leading the hardware engineering organization and overseeing the team that has delivered dozens of breakthrough products over the years,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement announcing Mansfield’s departure. “We are very sad to have him leave and hope he enjoys every day of his retirement.”

Manfield is one of two top Apple executives headed out of the company. Apple told investors that Betsy Rafael, its corporate controller and principal accounting officer, will leave the company on October 19. Rafael joined Apple in 2007.

Le Figaro reports that Cagni, who joined Apple in 2000, tendered his resignation Wednesday. Sources close to the company confirmed to AllThingsD that this is indeed the case, though they had no explanation for Cagni’s sudden departure.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Frank Weishaupt (pictured here), an 11-year Yahoo advertising veteran and one of its top sales execs, is leaving the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Unlike several other recent departures, where high-ranking execs left for jobs at hot start-ups such as Zynga (Taylor Barada), Groupon (Lee Brown) and LivingSocial (Mitch Spolan), Weishaupt has no immediate plans to join another company.

His job as VP of the North Americas Ad Marketplaces will be taken over by Joel Jones, who has been serving as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s chief of staff and previously worked in corporate strategy.

Jones will report to Yahoo ad sales head Wayne Powers.

Weishaupt’s last official day is June 1, said a Yahoo spokeswoman, who confirmed the departure to BoomTown.

According to an internal memo from Juniper Networks, which you can see below, one of its top tech execs, David Yen (pictured here), is departing immediately.

Sources said Yen is headed to Cisco to run its servers business, but the networking giant has not returned a request for comment.

Yen had most recently been EVP and GM of Juniper’s fabric and switching technologies unit. He joined Juniper in 2008 as EVP of emerging technologies.

But Yen was better known for his previous 20-year stint at Sun Microsystems. His last job there was running its chip division.

The impetus for Yen’s departure might have been the formation of the Platform Systems Group, run by Stefan Dyckerhoff, which is prominently mentioned in the memo from Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson. Dyckerhoff was elevated to the job in late January.

Sources said Yen did not get that job and was unhappy with the move.

But read into it yourself:

Team Juniper:

In February, we announced the evolution of our business groups to better position us to focus on two core business models: Systems and Software.

A key element of that strategy was the formation of the Platform Systems Group (PSG) under the leadership of Stefan Dyckerhoff. The mission of PSG is to optimize systems and silicon development across the full range of Junos-based platforms to accelerate our growth.

As part of the next phase of PSG’s growth, R.K. Anand, who leads QFabric development and our Data Center Business Unit (DCBU) and Alex Gray, who leads our Campus and Branch Business Unit (CBBU), will join PSG and report directly to Stefan. This move positions us to drive a fully integrated approach to our end-to-end systems strategy, as we continue to leverage the synergies across our breakthrough innovations in the core, the edge, the data center, and the campus and branch environment. Under Stefan’s leadership, PSG is now positioned to drive the go-to-market focus we have around domain-focused solutions that incorporate systems products from across PSG.

As part of this transition, David Yen is leaving Juniper effective immediately. David has a desire to return to his roots in servers that he gained during his nearly 20-year career at Sun Microsystems. We appreciate David’s contributions.

We are successfully accelerating momentum and adoption of our systems offerings. The response to both our QFabric data center architecture and to the Converged Supercore–two disruptive innovations unveiled in the quarter–has been overwhelmingly positive. These two offerings represent the best of Juniper innovation in systems, software and silicon.

As demonstrated by our strong performance over the past year, we continue to execute on our multi-year growth agenda, driven by our innovation roadmap. The new network is here, and we are delivering on our vision to capture the opportunity before us. Together with our partners, we will transform the economics and experience of networking for our customers.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. I look forward sharing in Juniper’s continued success with you.

Regards,

Kevin Johnson

Yahoo is on a bit of a hiring spree, picking up longtime Internet exec Robertson Barrett (pictured here), to run its critical and powerful Yahoo News and Finance sites.

Barrett has held top positions at Tribune Interactive, Time Inc., ABC News, Primedia’s Channel One Interactive and The Feedroom.

Barrett worked most recently as chief strategy officer of Perfect Market, a Comcast-backed start-up.

Last week, Yahoo announced that Jai Singh will join the company as editor in chief. Before that Ken Fuchs was tapped as VP of Sports, Games and Entertainment.

For the huge Yahoo News job, Barrett replaces Mark Walker, who left for Disney a month ago. Steve Schultz left the top Yahoo Finance job last fall.

Here is Yahoo’s official press release, which confirms it and the particulars:

Yahoo! Names Robertson Barrett Vice President of News and Finance

Media Industry Vet to Oversee Company’s Category-Leading Properties

Yahoo! today announced that Robertson Barrett will join the company as Vice President of News and Finance. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., Barrett starts May 16, and will report to Mickie Rosen, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Media Network.

A media industry veteran, Barrett brings more than 20 years experience leading online ventures and as a reporter, including senior positions at Tribune Interactive, Time Inc., ABC News, Primedia’s Channel One Interactive, and The Feedroom. His appointment is the latest addition to the Yahoo! Media Network leadership team, which recently announced that Jai Singh will join the company as Editor-in-Chief, and Ken Fuchs as Vice President of Sports, Games and Entertainment.

Barrett will oversee Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance in the U.S., two of the company’s most renowned properties. In the U.S., the Yahoo! News Network is No. 1 in the general news category, attracting 86.6 million unique users in March 2011 and Yahoo! Finance has been the top finance destination for 39 straight months, attracting 42.6 million users in March 2011–more than twice as many unique visitors as the No. 2 destination Dow Jones & Company (comScore).

“Rob’s addition to our leadership team comes at a pivotal time for Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance, especially in light of the global and economic events driving massive consumer interest and engagement,’ said Rosen. “We have ambitious plans for these properties, and Rob will play a critical role in leading these businesses and deepening Yahoo!’s position as the premier digital media company.”

Barrett’s appointment comes on the heels of the largest traffic week in the history of Yahoo! News. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, Yahoo! News has experienced its heaviest-trafficked week, including 3 of its top 10 most visited days ever. Since the news broke, Yahoo! News has served more than 865 million pageviews, attracting more than 20.4 million unique users on Monday, May 2 and 17.6 million unique users on Tuesday, May 3 in the U.S. Yahoo! reaches more than 680 million users globally each month.

Barrett most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer of Perfect Market, a Comcast-backed venture, where he was responsible for building relationships with major news brands for the organization. Previously, he was EVP of Tribune Interactive, where he managed the operations and strategic development of online properties in 40 U.S. markets, including latimes.com, chicagotribute.com, baltimoresun.com, and all Tribune news, entertainment and TV sites. He also was previously VP and GM of The FeedRoom Inc., an Internet news venture backed by NBC, where he oversaw the development of video-on-demand for NBC, Tribune Company, CBS and local station groups. He was also co-founder and operating lead at online ventures for Time Inc., ABC News and Primedia’s Channel One Interactive. He holds a BA from Duke University and a Masters from Harvard University.

While there has been a report on a boxing news site that Yahoo Americas head Ross Levinsohn was leaving the Internet giant to run HBO’s sports unit, it’s not so.

Trust BoomTown on this one–I have all top Yahoo execs embedded with Apple iOS and Google Android location tracking devices.

Apparently, calling to ask about such a big move is tough one-two for BoxingScene.com, but Yahoo confirmed the non-departure and Levinsohn did too in a brief phone conversation.

“I’m not leaving,” he said.

Jeff Jordan, the president and CEO of OpenTable who unexpectedly stepped down from his job today at the online restaurant reservation leader, is set to take a job at a major venture firm in Silicon Valley.

Sources said Jordan has spoken to several major VCs about moving to their firms recently.

While Benchmark Capital was a big funder of OpenTable before it went public in 2009, sources said the likeliest home for the well-known Internet player–Jordan has also been a major exec at eBay–is Andreessen Horowitz.

The move would be a coup for the firm, which has been busy adding partners since its founding only a few years ago by Web icon Marc Andreessen and his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz.

Jordan’s announcement that he was leaving OpenTable today during its first-quarter earnings call caused the stock to decline precipitously today, even though he said he would remain active as executive chairman.

CFO Matthew Roberts was named as his replacement.

Explaining the move, Jordan said:

“I’ve been managing Internet businesses since 1999. That’s 12 years of being in the tornado, and it’s pretty exhausting. I’ll be looking at the next challenge, but in terms of operating an Internet business, I’ve scratched that itch very well.”

It’s an itch that he will be scratching as a VC apparently and likely at one of tech’s hottest firms, which has investments in everything from gaming phenom Zynga to social buying service Groupon to microblogging start-up Twitter.

A spokeswoman for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment and Jordan has not responded to an email query.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has grabbed one of Huffington Post’s top editors, Jai Singh, to become its editor-in chief.

The move is a big one in the online editorial arena. Before moving to the HuffPo as managing editor in 2009, which is now the key content unit of AOL, Singh ran CNET Networks.

UPDATE: Yahoo confirmed the hiring in a press release below.

A Huffington Post spokesman said:

“This is about geography–Jai made clear his desire to move back to California, where his family is located. He moved from California to work with us and, unfortunately, this job requires his being in the newsroom in New York. We loved working with him, wish him well with his new job, and look forward to staying in touch.”

Sources said Yahoo sent out an internal memo earlier tonight outlining the move, which is a whole new role at Yahoo. It’s below–natch!–from Yahoo Media head Mickie Rosen.

Hi Americas!

As we discussed at last week’s All Hands, we will continue to strengthen and grow Yahoo!’s position as the premier digital media company by expanding our original content, bringing unique voice to each property, turning Yahoo! into the place for big events, and helping to drive best-in-class tools and practices in social, SEO and publishing tools and operations.

In just the past few days since we were together, we set new records with our coverage of the Royal Wedding. And with last night’s news of Osama bin Laden’s death, we will likely create new ones. This proves the point that consumers turn to Yahoo! to be entertained and informed. We are the place consumers turn to when news happens.

With this context, I am thrilled to announce that Jai Singh will be joining Yahoo! as the Editor-in-Chief of the Yahoo! Media Network. Jai joins from AOL, where he was managing editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, responsible for the day-to-day editorial operations of all AOL content.

Prior to AOL, Jai was the Managing Editor of the Huffington Post where he developed its voice, doubled its number of vertical sections, and helped grow unique users by six-fold. Prior to the Huffington Post, Jai created CNET News.com in 1996, which quickly became a leading authority in technology news. As the editor-in-chief and senior vice president, he was in charge of all editorial and built a news staff that won scores of national journalism awards.

Jai will start May 31st. Below is the press release announcing his appointment.

Go Yahoo!

Best,

Mickie

And here’s the official press release about Singh, which is oddly buried in news of Yahoo’s performance in its Royal Wedding coverage:

Yahoo! Sets Records With The Royal Wedding;
Drives Largest Traffic Day for Single Event

Names Jai Singh Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo! Media Network

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 2, 2011–Yahoo! Inc. drove its largest traffic numbers for a single event last week when the world turned to the company for coverage of the Royal Wedding. Over a 24-hour period on Friday, April 29, 2011, Yahoo! drove more traffic and video to its coverage of the wedding than any previous event.

Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday, slightly higher than the traffic levels experienced following the Japan earthquake. Yahoo! delivered Royal Wedding content at a record-breaking 50,000 requests per second on Friday, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21% higher than the previous record. In comparison, there were approximately 33,000 requests-per-second following the Japan earthquake and today, at press time, peak requests-per-second was 40,000 for content related to the death of Osama bin Laden. Yahoo! also drove approximately 30 million unique users, 27 million video streams and 2.6 million live video streams over the 24-hour period on Friday.

In the last three months, coverage of the Royal Wedding and the Academy Awards has demonstrated that Yahoo! is where global consumers come to be entertained with rich content no other online company offers. Similarly, when news breaks, Yahoo! is the world’s trusted source for in-depth coverage, from the ongoing crisis in Japan to the death of Osama bin Laden. Yahoo! is the number one online site, reaching 180 million unique users and maintains a portfolio of 10 number one sites in the U.S., including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, omg!, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! TV (data: comScore March 2011). Yahoo! attracts more than 680 million users globally.

In effort to extend and accelerate the company’s leadership positions and further develop a unique and distinct voice across its brands, Yahoo! today announced that it has appointed Jai Singh, editor-in-chief for the Yahoo! Media Network.

As editor-in-chief, Singh will help transform the company as it increases its original content creation, build the unique voice and programming of Yahoo!’s leading properties, and help drive best-in-class tools and practices–such as publishing platforms, aggressive social and SEO distribution–and programming across all platforms. Singh will be a key member of the Yahoo! Media Network leadership team led by Mickie Rosen, senior vice president of Yahoo! Media Network. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Singh starts May 31 and will be spending significant time with editorial teams based in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York City.

“Jai’s appointment comes on the heels of one of the most event-filled news weeks in Yahoo! history, which underscores the importance of our editorial operations,” said Rosen. “Jai is one of the most advanced and respected editorial thinkers in digital media today, and a great addition to our editorial bench strength. It’s clear that when news breaks, the world turns to Yahoo!. Shaping our unique voice, and establishing industry best practices for the next generation of publishing will further Yahoo!’s success as the premier digital media company.”

Singh was most recently managing editor of the Huffington Post Media Group where he was in charge of all day-to-day news management and editorial operations. His responsibilities spanned across both Huffington Post editorial as well as AOL, including AOL content sites. In the two years Singh was at the Huffington Post, the site saw unprecedented growth–the number of sections more than doubled to 24, as did the number of editorial staff, and unique visitors grew nearly six fold, according to Comscore. Besides running the editorial operations, Singh helped drive product development in close partnership with the technology team. Singh was also the main point-of-contact and worked closely with Sales, Sales Development and Business Development.

Prior to the Huffington Post, Singh created CNET News.com in 1996, which quickly became a leading authority in technology news at the height of the Internet boom. At CNET.com, as the editor-in-chief and senior vice president, Singh was in charge of all editorial, including news and product reviews, as well as product development. Singh built a news staff that won scores of national journalism awards at atime when mainstream media were still skeptical of the Internet as a source of credible information.

Margo Georgiadis (pictured here), VP of Global Sales Operations at Google, will be COO of Groupon, Google confirmed.

She is currently located in Chicago, where the social buying site is headquartered.

A Google spokesman confirmed the move by Georgiadis, while Groupon–which specifically denied a query about her appointment that BoomTown made Tuesday–dithered.

In a statement, her boss, SVP and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora said:

“I’m grateful for all that Margo has done for our team over the past two years. We will miss her, but we’re also very excited that she’s joining a terrific company and a great partner for Google.”

Besides COO, I will officially bestow the title of “Chief Cat Wrangler” on Georgiadis, for the massive organizational job ahead for her at the notoriously chaotic start-up. (As evidenced by Google being the company confirming a major Groupon hire.)

Still, Groupon’s growth had been stunning. It now has thousands of employees and has already washed out one COO, former Yahoo exec Rob Solomon, whose departure was reported here.

It has also turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, raised a badillion dollars in venture funding from tech’s top investors and also is prepping an IPO valuing the company at upwards of $15 billion.

Phew!

Georgiadis must bring calm to this perfect storm.

Because of her solid resume (see below) and quiet demeanor, I had included her in a list of candidates several weeks ago and had queried the social buying company about her specifically this week.

In fact, when I asked for a comment if Georgiadis was hired on Tuesday, a Groupon spokeswoman said: “This would be news to me. Nothing to announce yet.”

At the time, Google had the class to simply say “no comment.”

(Lesson learned!)

Crain’s Chicago Business’ John Pletz first posted on Georgiadis’ hiring earlier today.

In any case, Georgiadis is just the kind of candidate that Groupon has been looking for–a competent and experienced sales and operations exec who would not overshadow its quirky CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason.

As I wrote two weeks ago:

Lastly, and perhaps most important, the Groupon COO candidate is going to have to accept that the role will not be a CEO-in-waiting, either before or after its inevitable IPO in the next year.

While I have received several tips that co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason might not stay its principal exec, extensive checking with sources inside and outside the company indicate that such a move is highly unlikely.

“Andrew is beloved to the board, by investors and, most of all, by employees,” said one source. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Indeed, Mason has a close working relationship with co-founder Brad Keywell, as well as Groupon co-founder and Chairman Eric Lefkofsky.

In fact, despite other business interests, Lefkofsky has been very involved in all key decisions with Mason.

That job, presumably, would fall to the new COO, which Groupon should be hiring sooner rather than later.

“Groupon needs a world-class COO, who can manage hyper-growth, but also who knows that a No. 2 stays in the background while doing it,” said another source. “That’s a tall order.”

Groupon has looked at a number of top execs, most specificially at former DoubleClick and Google exec David Rosenblatt. Sources said the high-profile exec did not want to play second fiddle to Mason or move to Chicago.

That’s moot now. Here is Georgiadis’ bio at the Silicon Valley search giant, which shows why Groupon picked her:

Georgiadis is responsible for driving Google’s sales operations and strategies across regions, channels and products as well as leading the sales technology teams which enable the successful commercialization of Google’s products (e.g., AdWords, AdSense, display and mobile ads) with advertisers and publishers.

She also leads the company’s local and commerce businesses, working to extend services like Checkout, Google Places and commerce search to small and large businesses alike.

Before joining Google, Margo was a principal in Synetro Capital LLC, a private investment firm based in Chicago. She also spent five years as the executive vice president of card products and chief marketing officer of Discover Financial Services where she led a radical turnaround of business performance and revitalized its rewards leadership with award-winning new products, customer experience and marketing. Prior to Discover, Margo was a partner at McKinsey and Company for 15 years in London and Chicago. She was a leader in the firm’s marketing and retail practices, and also co-founded and led the customer acquisition and management and retail marketing practices.

She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In fact, Bartz practically sounded like a gushy “Entertainment Tonight” flunky when talking to Wall Street analysts about Yahoo’s Oscar news, games and other offerings. She proudly noted the site’s efforts generated more than a billion pages views.

There will be more of that, it seems, with the elevation of Yahoo exec Sam Silverstein (pictured here) as head of its special events coverage. Sources said it will be a major area of emphasis, given obvious advertiser interest.

It’s all part of a lot of dramatic changes being made in the media unit at Yahoo, which is run by its newish Audience head Mickie Rosen.

Previous to his new duties, Silverstein has been mostly focused on major sports events for Yahoo, but has also been managing content on its front page and in tech and green arenas.

The move to taking over more comes after Lawrence Yee–who led Yahoo entertainment efforts and was once the managing editor of its omg! celebrity site–headed to TMZ.com, the competing and much sassier celebrity site, owned by AOL. His new job is as managing editor of its TooFab site, TMZ overlord Harvey Levin confirmed to me.

Also gone recently is Annette Cardwell, who was managing editor of Yahoo’s Shine women’s site, who is now working as director of digital content and games at Future US, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Now it will be up to Silverstein, who is well-regarded at Yahoo, to run the upcoming Royal Wedding coverage by himself.

William and Kate, as well as Bartz, will be watching.

Hogan will be the second high-level exec to exit in as many months, following word last month that chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices had poached Michael Wolf, HP’s former VP for information technology as its new CIO, and it’s the latest departure from HP’s senior ranks amid the unfolding management shakeup that started when the company named Léo Apotheker as its CEO.

HP named Jan Zadak (pictured), managing director for HP Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as Hogan’s replacement, starting May 1. Zadak came to HP by way of its acquisition of Compaq, having joined that company in 1997. He held several senior management roles in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, including stints in Central and Eastern Europe. Zadak, who appears in a video below shot in 2008 at an HP event in Barcelona, is a native of the Czech Republic. Before Compaq he spent five years working for Olivetti.

PREVIOUSLY:

• AMD Hires Its New CIO Away From Hewlett-Packard
• Apotheker Sets Hewlett-Packard on a Cloud-Centric Path
• Léo Apotheker: Hewlett-Packard Will Build a Cloud
• HP’s New CEO Has a Big Day Planned, and a Bigger Job Ahead
• Another Advisory Firm Singles Out HP Director Babbio
• Shareholder Group Contends HP’s New Board Is Too Chummy
• “Peripatetic Polyglot” Léo Apotheker Wants to Save HP’s Soul by Buying Software Companies
• HP Earnings Today: Will Léo Apotheker Speak?
• Michael Dell Thinks HP Paid “Way Too Much” for 3Par
• Judge: HP Can Re-Investigate Hurd Departure
• Is This the HP Board That Will Allow Us to Stop Thinking About HP’s Board?
• Meg Whitman, Patricia Russo Among Five Joining HP Board
• HP Plans Another Probe Into Hurd Departure
• Léo Makes It Official: SAP’s Bill Wohl Joins Hewlett-Packard
• Want Enterprise Growth, HP? Think Services
• Mark Hurd Really Wants to Keep the Jodie Fisher Letter Private
• Mark Hurd Doesn’t Want You to Read the Letter That Cost Him His Job
• HP Networking Head: “People Are Tired of Paying for Cisco”
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

At Apple.

Timmons left Microsoft this week and the company has confirmed his departure, though it declined to say why he left or where he was headed. But sources in position to know confirm he’s hired on with Apple.

Details on Timmons’s responsibilities there are slim, though I’m told his role may extend beyond his datacenter expertise. Which is interesting to hear in light of recent chatter about Apple’s rumored cloud initiatives.

In any event, Timmons’s hiring is quite a coup for Apple. He’s widely regarded in the industry and comes to the company with an impressive CV that includes a stint at Yahoo–where he led the company’s datacenter build-out.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple’s Area 51: The Truth Is Out There
• Apple’s N.C. Data Center Intended for iTunes, MobileMe
• Apple Owns Another 70 Acres Near NC Data Center
• Was Apple Planning on Doubling Its North Carolina Data Center All Along?
• Apple Reaching for the Cloud With MacBook Air and N.C. Data Center
• That’s Apple’s New Data Center? Where’s the Giant Glass Cube?

Taylor Barada (pictured here), Yahoo’s recently appointed head of M&A, is joining Zynga in an unspecified role.

Barada replaced Andrew Siegel, who left Yahoo in December to join Condé Nast.

Yahoo staff was told of the move yesterday.

According to his bio at the Silicon Valley Internet giant:

“Taylor works with the Americas and Global Product orgs at Yahoo! leading strategic analysis/execution of acquisitions, divestitures, investments and other strategic relationships. Recent transactions include the sale of Zimbra to VMware and the acquisition of Citizen Sports. Prior to Yahoo! he worked as an investor, consultant, and operator at Rosewood Capital, Bain & Company, and Peregrine Systems. Taylor started his career as a professional soccer player and was a three time National Champion at the University of Virginia while completing his B.A. in History and Foreign Affairs.”

Barada’s departure to the San Francisco online gaming phenom–which was apparently able to extend him a more lucrative offer–will will put a crimp in Yahoo’s already slow-moving merger and acquisition strategies.

Yahoo declined to comment and I have emailed Zynga and have not yet heard back.

Greg Coleman, the online advertising sales exec who keeps making bank after bouncing from top Web jobs, has a new one.

The former Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post sales leader has just taken over as president of Criteo, a “personalized retargeting” company–essentially, it delivers highly targeted ads to consumers.

Coleman said in an interview with BoomTown last night that he will be focused on expanding Criteo’s U.S. business.

“Performance advertising is a huge opportunity in a high-growth arena,” he said. “I couldn’t pass it up.”

While the 300-person company has offices in Silicon Valley and New York, its HQ is in Paris.

So, Coleman (pictured here)–who has grabbed huge sums of exit cash, first when AOL management changed and then when AOL bought the HuffPo–now gets to visit the City of Lights all the time.

Zut alors! As I have previously written, I’ll have what Coleman’s having.

Toby Coppel, an investor in Criteo who is also on its board, worked with Coleman at Yahoo.

Criteo has raised almost $24 million from Coppel and other investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners and Index Ventures.

Its competitors are other start-ups, such as MyThings.

Here’s the official press release on Coleman’s new job:

CRITEO TAPS GREG COLEMAN AS PRESIDENT

Former Huffington Post president and Yahoo! sales chief will take retargeting leader to the “next phase of phenomenal expansion”

PALO ALTO, CA – (April 7, 2011)–Criteo, the global leader in personalized retargeting, today announced that Greg Coleman, former president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post and EVP global sales for Yahoo!, will join the company as president. Coleman will oversee global operations and lead the U.S. expansion of the company, whose platform for delivering personally relevant ads to Internet users has enabled the largest e-commerce marketers to post significant incremental sales for the past three years.

“Greg is a visionary who raises the bar,” said JB Rudelle, CEO of Criteo. “With his experience and relationships, we will extend our e-commerce solutions to new clients, deepen our engagement with existing customers, and bring industry appreciation of retargeting to new levels.”

Coleman has caused explosive sales growth for several of the world’s most influential media and technology companies. As the president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post, he built a $30 million ad business in one year. As EVP global sales at Yahoo!, he assembled a pre-eminent sales team that grew ad revenues from $600 million to more than $6 billion. As president of U.S. Magazine publishing for Reader’s Digest Association, he turned advertising from an afterthought to more than 25% of corporate profit. Coleman’s experience has translated to the top-ranked class for three years running at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

“Performance advertising is marketing’s new frontier, and it’s still wide open,” said Coleman. “Technology and sales will determine leadership. Criteo has the premier technology for personalizing the advertising experience. The company originated the worldwide market, is the leader in Europe, and has a secure foothold in the U.S., because the technology is the most reliable and scalable. I’m here to spur the next phase of phenomenal expansion.”

Criteo tripled operations in 2010, grew to 300 employees and served more than 50 billion personalized ads on behalf of more than 1,000 e-commerce companies across 20 countries globally–driving an 11x increase in incremental post-click revenues for clients. Criteo technology enables merchants to win back the consumers who leave their websites before completing purchases, and gives advertisers a single source for complete retargeting campaigns–design, buying, serving, optimization and reporting.

By colleagues’ accounts, Coleman has the assets to increase Criteo’s momentum. Former Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau calls him “a true innovator” and says he “created the model for selling social marketing.” And former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel calls him “the most wired, successful and liked sales executive in Internet marketing.”

“Greg creates unique partnerships with advertisers and merchants,” added investor and Criteo board member Toby Coppel. “He can make Criteo the industry standard.”

Earlier this week, he hired away eight staffers from AOL’s Engadget in order to create a competing tech news and gadget reviews site.

And now, according to sources close to the situation, the former AOL content head is close to hiring another former top AOL media exec, Marty Moe (pictured here), to manage it and also more niche sites the blog network is contemplating launching.

Sources said the hiring of Moe is not yet complete, but is close to being struck.

Tyler Bleszinski, SB Nation’s founder and sports editorial director, will continue to manage the start-up’s sports blog network, while Moe will focus on the company’s tech vertical and any other future categories.

Moe left AOL less than a year ago, after nine years working at the New York-based portal, including with Bankoff.

Both had been involved in the purchase of Weblogs Inc., which included the flagship Engadget site.

Now, it seems they will be trying to remake the concept of a content network, although in a more entrepreneurial and innovative setting.

The new tech site–which is still unnamed and will be helmed editorially by outgoing Engadget Editor in Chief Josh Topolsky–will debut some time in the fall. It is the first content expansion at the Washington, D.C., SB Nation, which has heretofore been exclusively focused on sports.

Topolsky will be joined by former Engadget managing editor Nilay Patel and also former staffers Paul Miller, Joanna Stern, Ross Miller, Chris Ziegler, Justin Glow and Dan Chilton.

All of the above had left Engadget in a series of departures of late, all due to increasing unhappiness with AOL’s management and content strategy.

Paul Miller and Ross Miller, who are not related, both stated publicly that they did not like the editorial direction AOL was going in, especially a controversial content strategy document titled “The AOL Way.”

New AOL content head Arianna Huffington has shifted toward a more journalistic path, but the talent bleed began before AOL’s $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post.

Many new upstart content sites such as SB Nation have begun to try to eat away at the big portal’s content strategy–pushed by its CEO Tim Armstrong–with perhaps more nimble efforts of their own.

And those smaller companies are also well funded.

SB Nation completed a $10.5 million Series C venture round, led by Khosla Ventures, in the fall.

It had already raised about $13 million in total funding from Accel Partners, Allen & Company and Comcast Interactive Capital, as well as from angel investors such as Ted Leonsis and others in Silicon Valley.

A shocking departure. Curiously timed one, too. Why leave now?

Evidently Page has been asking Google’s executive committee to make long term, multiyear commitments to remain at the company and Rosenberg didn’t feel he could oblige. His plan had always been to leave Google when his kids neared college age. And he’s decided not to deviate from it. Given Page’s plan to revitalize Google and return it to its start-up roots, Rosenberg felt he owed it to him to move on now. Better to get the transition out of the way as Page works to recast the company than embark on it when the process is well under way.

“I think I’ve done the things that I set out to do,” Rosenberg told The Mercury News. “My focus has been on building a great team, and hiring the best people in the world. I think I’ve also been very focused in studying the manner in which we manage at Google, and working very hard on developing the next set of Google management talent. We’re obviously going through a transition here; Larry is stepping into the role of CEO. And I think it was important to him that he establish and build around an executive team that intended to be here for many, many years.”

Page praised Rosenberg’s legacy, one highlight of which was his 2009 companywide email titled “The Meaning of Open.” “We tried to hire Jonathan multiple times because he was the only person we could imagine doing the job,” he said. “It’s lucky we were so persistent because he’s built an amazing team–hiring great people who’ve created amazing products that have benefited over a billion users around the world.”

And freshly departed CEO Eric Schmidt, with whom Rosenberg plans to write a book, joined in: “Jonathan is phenomenal–hugely energetic, strategic, a man of real principle who always puts the user first. He’s been crucial to our success over the last nine years and I cannot thank him enough for everything he’s done. It’s been wonderful working with him–and great fun.”

Rosenberg plans to stay at Google through the summer, then do some consulting for the company after that.

Joe Hayashi, VP of product management for webOS, left the company in March for the VP of marketing gig at Numenta, a machine learning start-up led by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins and former Palm CEO Donna Dubinsky.

Hayashi’s exit comes at an inopportune time for Palm, which is gearing up to launch its new tablet, the TouchPad, and extend its webOS platform to other devices and form factors, including the PC. He’s been with Palm since 2009 and has been one of its public faces recently. In fact, he was onstage in Barcelona last month talking up webOS at HP’s App Developer Conference at Mobile World Congress (see video below).

Hayashi’s departure is clearly a loss for Palm, though the company has already replaced him with Lee Ott, formerly senior director of local at Yahoo. Still, coming as it does after some other notable exits, it has sparked renewed concerns that the Palm unit is having trouble holding on to its talent. “I worry about brain drain over there,” a source close to the company told me. “I hope they can keep it together long enough for their tablets to potentially gain some traction in the market.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Palm Developer Program Leaders Wave Goodbye to HP
• Exclusive: Palm Loses Mobile Design Guru Matias Duarte to Google
• Apple Poaches Palm UI Designer Rich Dellinger

While Facebook should not be expecting big bouquets of love from its partner and investor Microsoft, at least it’s not going to be getting legal brickbats either.

According to sources close to the situation, the pair have settled a dispute over the Silicon Valley social networking site’s talent raid of Microsoft’s head of global ad sales, Carolyn Everson, for a similar job at Facebook.

In fact, Everson has already been at work for a week, sources said, after she agreed not to solicit a small group of advertising clients for a short period of time.

She is also barred from using any strategic information in her new Facebook job that she obtained while at Microsoft, sources said.

This kind of agreement is not uncommon in disputed job shifts and is also a far cry from a more stringent legal outcome, which might have benched her completely for some time.

But Everson is a veteran ad exec, having previously worked at Viacom’s MTV Networks. Thus, Microsoft could not have barred her from calling on advertisers she had known previous to her short employment there.

Still, the February hiring by Facebook came as a surprise to many at Microsoft, especially since Everson (pictured here) had been hired only last June, after a long search. In that time, she had become a high-profile presence at internal and external Microsoft events.

So, it’s clear the Everson hiring infuriated Microsoft execs, especially since the company regards Facebook as a close partner. Microsoft is a longtime investor too.

“We’re no longer angry,” said one source at Microsoft, about the cooling of tensions, “as much as disappointed.”

But key in the weighing of options at Microsoft is the obvious importance of keeping up good relations with Facebook. It is an important partnership, especially for its Bing search business, especially as an advantage over Google.

Thus: Bygones!

As BoomTown reported earlier, AOL has confirmed that Tim Stevens (pictured here in a classic Speed Racer pose, but see his real face below) will replace Josh Topolsky as editor in chief of Engadget.

Stevens has been working at the large tech gadget news and reviews site since 2007, most recently as its automotive editor.

Unusually, he was a part-timer at Engadget until a few months ago and lives several hours north of New York City, where AOL has its HQ. The company said Stevens will commute as necessary.

In his bio on the Engadget site, Stevens noted, in part, that he’s “an avid gamer, amateur motorsports enthusiast, lover of most outdoor activities, and proud creator of the first (and possibly only) two-player game for the Sega VMU.”

Geek credentials–check!

The appointment comes amid a fair bit of hubbub, with the announcement last night of a new competing tech site with eight new staff members, all of whom have recently left Engadget.

An Apple-obsessed, gadget-loving, nerdy-McNerd Gang of Eight!

That includes Topolsky, who is joining Jim Bankoff at his well-funded SB Nation sports and news start-up to launch the still-unnamed site.

Bankoff–in even more only-in-tech interconnectedness–was key to the purchase of Engadget many years ago when he was AOL’s top content exec.

An AOL spokesperson said in an email that “Engadget stays the same, with an obsessive focus on news.”

He correctly pointed out that “there’s a long tradition of handing down the editor in chief baton to someone from within: Pete Rojas to Ryan Block to Josh Topolsky to Tim Stevens.”

The site’s editorial director since 2009 has been Josh Fruhlinger. Recently promoted managing editor, Darren Murph, will also remain in the job at AOL.

In a statement to me, Fruhlinger said:

“As a member of Engadget since 2004, I know that we built our success on a commitment to what matters most to readers: staying focused on the latest technology news. Tim has a reputation for sharp news coverage and is a natural leader–our staffers are deeply loyal to him and stand behind him as we move on to the next generation of Engadget. Darren has an intuitive sense for discerning news and trends that matter. And we’re thrilled to be working with Arianna Huffington as part of The Huffington Post Media Group, as Arianna has a history of die-hard support for the work of journalists.”

Earlier Fruhlinger also tweeted: “In case anyone wondered, Engadget will be hitting tech news when we all wake up. Just like today. Just like 2004.”

Thus, everyone back to work as before!

Until more Engadget news is committed, here’s Stevens–who thinks he looks more like Racer X in the photo above–with an actual face on display (“I AM THE STIG” is yet another car-racing reference):