But there’s another interesting tidbit that Zynga is sharing for the first time ever: Nearly one quarter of the company’s monthly active users are playing Zynga’s games on mobile devices.

“With 298 million monthly average users, including 72 million on mobile alone (emphasis mine), Zynga already has the largest social gaming audience and remains the best positioned company to lead in building the future of social gaming,” CEO Mark Pincus said in the company’s earnings release.

Those numbers are likely bolstered by the four mobile titles Zynga launched in the quarter — two new ones and two mobile versions of Web products — though we can’t directly attribute it to that, considering it’s the first time Zynga has pushed out any mobile-only MAUs.

But either way, it’s a big moment for Zynga, a company that has risen to prominence on the backs of casual desktop gamers the world around. Just like Facebook, Zynga is facing an industry-wide shift as users migrate from desktop gaming to mobile devices. Problem is, most of Zynga’s blockbuster titles in the past either weren’t suitable for playing on mobile or just weren’t there in the first place.

Not to mention the rising mobile-centric app economy; it’s tough for Zynga to compete with literally thousands of developers producing games strictly for the phone, available on Apple’s App Store, Google Play and now Facebook’s App Center.

And now that Facebook has dampened its reliance on Zynga as the big gaming platform and begun to diversify across multiple gaming studios, Zynga can’t expect the traffic fire hose from Facebook that it once enjoyed.

It’s worth noting that total MAUs are down on a consecutive quarterly basis, from 311 million in the third quarter to 298 this most recent one. So not all is wine and roses in Zynga user land — despite a healthy number of mobile users, it wasn’t enough to offset a quarterly decline in overall users.

Also, I can’t tell you whether that number on mobile is a growing statistic or not, mostly because again, this is the first time the company is breaking these numbers out for us.

Still, it’s promising for a company which has largely been seen as bleeding out over the past year. And what we should really be watching for is Zynga’s “With Friends” network, which it announced at its “Unleashed” event last year. We haven’t heard a bunch more about it since mid last year, but it reads like a giant initiative: An attempt to connect the entire Zynga gaming network across multiple platforms. We’ll see how that goes when it finally arrives.

Oh, and the Street seemed to like today’s news, too; shares of Zynga were trading up five percent at $2.88 during after-hours.

Earlier today Yahoo reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates, on still-flattish revenue.

Still, up is up, even if it is not really that much up, so Wall Steet bid up shares of the Silicon Valley Internet giant in after-hours trading.

Now it’s onto the conference call with investors for CEO Marissa Mayer:

2:02 pm: Before the call, you can hear Mayer complaining about the goofy music played during the pre-conference call waiting time.

“We have to get better music,” she says to some minion. “This is not good music.”

Music to my ears! I say we get Beyoncé, lipsyncing or not.

The call starts quickly after that, with the ever-eager Mayer leaping right in with the fourth-quarter news, which is not all that bad.

It’s the first full year of growth in a while — though not the first quarter-to-quarter increase — even if it is only a very modest two percent increase.

That compares to industry-wide gains in revenue of many, many, many times that, but for Yahoo this is cause for a parade. A small parade, with good music, but a parade nonetheless.

“It’s hard to believe this is only my first full quarter here at Yahoo,” says Mayer in an upbeat tone.

She notes that her focus on product excellence and user experience was continuing, with some “early positive trends” in both products and people.

Mayer then list a series of moves, from the free food and better smartphones for employees to the addition of well-regarded entrepreneur Max Levchin to the board to the refreshes of Yahoo Mail and Flickr to the acquisition of some sassy new mobile startups.

Mayer also notes that the company under her purview had removed “385 of highest priority obstacles,” although she did not name any specifics.

I imagine what No. 332 is: Switching out the iceberg lettuce at the URL cafeteria on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif. HQ campus with some tasty organic mesclun as they have at Google, from whence Mayer came.

Better roughage means better returns!

2:14 pm: Mayer turns the call over to CFO Ken Goldman, also a newbie. As usual, he runs through the numbers that are already in all the releases already. But I am enjoying his New England accent, hoping he will say the slight increase in revenue was “wicked” good.

Goldman, in fact, calls the revenue increase “modest,” which is true, although it sounds like “mah-dist.”

What’s not mah-dist is how much stock Yahoo has bought back, using its windfall from the recent sale of assets in China. It’s $1.45 billion, with more that that left to use for more share buybacks. That should keep Yahoo’s stock up nicely.

Goldman also talks about increases in the company’s search business, although notes that the Microsoft relationship is still not the most fantastic.

He speaks more effusively of Yahoo’s Asian partners, including Yahoo! Japan and China’s Alibaba Group. It’s deserved, since they have been the company’s treasure trove against its meh core performance in recent years.

Not so tasty is the problem Yahoo has with a big-money contract dispute in Mexico, which Goldman reiterates is “without merit.”

2:28 pm: Goldman moves onto Yahoo’s cash position, which is strong and which he says is going to be used to make the company better.

Mayer is back on board, talking about key focuses over multiple years.

She says Yahoo needs a “chain reaction of growth,” which needs to be fueled by a dozen new products that become a daily habits for consumers to increase usage and other metrics.

A nuclear bomb explosion is not exactly the best metaphor for a company’s turnaround, but in Yahoo’s case it is probably a pretty good one, given how stubborn its decline has been.

Mayer then switches the metaphor to one she recently used about “returning to the roots” of Yahoo.

Actually, mixing the metaphors, Yahoo has to blast some significant roots that have gotten in the way of its innovation over the years.

“The best is yet to come,” promises Mayer, in what she says will be a multi-year effort.

Now onto questions from the analysts!

2:40 pm: The first question is about commercialization of its products. Mayer answers she is both pro-advertising and anti-ad — meaning they are good when they add to user experience and bad when they do not.

There will be slight margin declines due to this, which is the real point of the query, which Goldman says will not be too impacted.

The next question is on the weaker performance in display ads and whether mobile ads can ramp up quick enough or not.

Yahoo is not breaking out mobile revenue numbers as yet — it’s not impressive as yet, so that’s what’s going on there — although Mayer points to the number of mobile users increasing to 200 million now.

As to the declines in display, Mayer gives a non-answer, but it is likely due to big changes that new Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro has put into place in the way it sells ads and which AllThingsD.com previously reported on. Mayer earlier in the call had confirmed those changes.

The fact of the matter — which is just what the analyst was asking about — is that Mayer simply has to improve display revenue, which is Yahoo’s core business.

Mayer then addresses the issue of not providing usage metrics anymore. Yahoo has withheld a lot of them since she has taken over, and she says it is because they are not indicative of metrics that, well, she thinks you need to know.

Instead, Mayer points to other metrics that she feels are better, such as number of ads sold and price per click on search.

Speaking of search, the next question is about that. What can Mayer say — and she does — but that Yahoo must also improve in that area. Indeed, it is lucrative low-hanging fruit for the company.

Here comes an interesting observation she makes based on a question of mobile versus desktop, which Mayer says should not be separated as two areas as consumers don’t think that way.

Yahoo is tuning up a dozen products, she says, having started with Yahoo Mail and its Flickr photo-sharing app.

2:54 pm: Mayer is not saying which of this dirty dozen is next to get a makeover.

“We’re investing in small, nimble, excellent teams,” says Mayer, who then tries to reference a famous Margaret Mead quote, but ends up mangling it a bit.

It is, for the record: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

This is true, which might make some Yahoo staffers nervous, since Mayer’s recent stack ranking of them means she can start on employee layoffs anytime she likes to separate the wheat from the chaff.

3:01 pm: Whoo-whee, this is going long and I am getting weary. Mayer has to be some kind of digital Energizer Bunny — she just flew in from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and moved right into the prep for the Q4 earnings.

Tomorrow, she is presumably off to Las Vegas, where Yahoo’s global sales conference will start and she will doubtlessly be making an appearance.

I am exhausted simply by walking up and down the stairs at my house.

The next question is about third-party publishers and ad tech on mobile.

“Mobile monetization is new for everyone,” she says correctly, making the point that no one knows what is going to shake out.

She uses — as she has used — the example of when people thought search was not a moneymaker until Google proved otherwise.

The problem is, of course, that Google is Yahoo’s biggest rival in this new mobile ad arena, along with Facebook and many others. And Google, as its recent results showed, does know how to make money compared to Yahoo.

The next question is about mobile monetization eating into desktop revenue.

Mayer notes that Yahoo has hired 120 people with computer science degrees in the quarter to work on that area.

In other words, get ready for a symphony of geeks to return Yahoo to relevance.

Would they can pull it off, as that would be a tune worth listening to.

Speaking of something worth listening to, here is a video of Diana Ross’ song, “Chain Reaction,” to enjoy:

After announcing in October its plans to create a yet-unnamed app store where Leap users can purchase and download apps, the company said today that it is shipping out 10,000 Leap units to verified developers, to aid in the creation of more software applications that will broaden the device’s appeal.

Some of the fruits of Leap Motion’s developer relations efforts are already apparent: I’ve seen early versions of a few Leap apps — which range from 3-D molding to music apps to the just-announced game shown in the video below — and the demos are impressive.

If you haven’t seen the Leap in action yet, here’s how it works: All that motion-sensor tech is compressed into a tiny, two-inch device that you place in front of your desktop or laptop keyboard. (Right now, the sensor works with Macs, Windows 7 and Windows 8, with a focus on the latter operating system.) Acting as a kind of mini-Kinect, Microsoft’s popular motion-sensor device, the Leap lets you use your fingers as controls, waving them just a few inches in front of the screen to input, create, shape or play.

The Leap Motion sensor, positioned in front of a MacBook

Leap Motion says it has taken in more than $10 million in preorders across 140 countries since the device was first announced this past spring.

After bringing former Apple execs Andy Miller and Michael Zagorsek onboard to act as president and head of marketing, respectively, it’s no surprise that the start-up, co-founded by Michael Buckwald and David Holz, is placing emphasis on building solid relations with the software development community.

While Leap Motion has declined to give an exact date for when it will ship its $70 motion-sensor device, the company said that Leap should be hitting retailers in the first quarter of 2013. It’s also unclear exactly how many apps will be ready for launch.

Check out the video below for a glimpse of how Leap works with one of the new apps, a Jenga-like game called Block 54:

Evernote Business for Mac

The company just announced that it will launch a premium, business-oriented version of its popular personal-productivity app, which claims more than 45 million worldwide users to date.

The new business app offers users the ability to create notes, spreadsheets, task lists, presentations and mock-ups, all of which can be shared with colleagues. Users can share Business Notebooks with colleagues, and can still maintain Personal Notebooks, which are private.

The service costs $10 per user per month, and includes two gigabytes per month of content storage in Personal Notebooks, while co-workers get the same amount of content storage in Business Notebooks.

Evernote Business apps for Android and Windows desktop went live this morning. The Mac desktop app is coming “shortly,” and Evernote is still waiting on approval from Apple for the iOS app. A representative for the company says a Windows 8-compatible app is also forthcoming, but declined to say exactly when. (The original Evernote app for Metro launched with a pared-down features list, and for some users, syncing it with Windows 8 has proved challenging.)

Evernote Business for Windows

Given Evernote’s focus on organization and productivity, an official business app seems to be a natural offshoot of the free consumer app — one that competes more and more with Microsoft’s OneNote app for Office users.

During the announcement made today at the LeWeb tech conference in Paris, Evernote CEO Phil Libin said that two-thirds of the app’s users already rely on Evernote for business. Fifteen percent of those users get it issued to them from work, while 85 percent bring it into a professional environment without it being official work software.

He also noted that a large number of users come from Japan, where 40 books have been written about the application.

Now, as the lion’s share of the social giant’s user base accesses the site via mobile devices, Facebook has undergone a major internal organizational shift, retooling product workflows to better focus on the phone.

Engineering teams are morphing. Software cycles are being rejiggered. It’s a materialization of the company’s newest mantra: “Mobile first.“

The Old Days

Facebook has taken flak for its mobile strategy for some time. Its smartphone apps, for example, were sluggish and underperforming compared to others like Twitter.

Some of the blame for these deficiencies is placed on a technology bet Facebook made years ago, making HTML5 a key component of its mobile strategy. Put simply, HTML5 is a coding language that can handle some of today’s more taxing Web features. And Facebook’s apps were built with heavy use of HTML5.

Using a language like HTML5 has its benefits. For one, it let Facebook spread much faster. Any phone with a Web browser can access Facebook’s mobile site, which the company spent much of its effort refining early on.

Not to mention that many of today’s engineers grew up using Web-based languages back in the early dot-com days. That makes it much easier to recruit talent for Facebook’s ever-growing engineering team.

But as we’ve moved toward a “native” world of smartphone app development, the classic Web-centric engineering emphasis is harder to maintain. “Pushing” a piece of new code live to the desktop and mobile Web is a much faster process than making changes to a native iOS or Android application. For native apps, there is a mandatory review of app changes from Apple’s App Store. And with every change made to an app, that means users need to download a new update to the app.

Previously, Facebook split dealing with these problems in two. Desktop coders were part of one group, while the mobile apps teams were separate. In fact, as product manager Dirk Stoop told me, the native iOS and Android apps were so small in the early days, only a handful of people were responsible for maintaining the iOS and Android applications — two of the most-downloaded apps in the entire world.

This wasn’t enough. Facebook’s Web-centric culture didn’t translate over to native app development the same way. Something had to change.

A Different Framework

The Facebook product structure of today looks very different than it did before. Teams are separated across the company by product rather than platform.

So, for example, the Facebook Messenger group, led by Facebook veteran Peter Deng, is one team composed of desktop, mobile and native engineers who create features for every place that this product appears. This is the same for Photos, the team which Stoop leads.

Both of those teams, you may recall, produce standalone apps outside of the proper “Facebook” native application. This, Deng tells me, is part of a strategy focusing on improving these products faster, essentially making each app a “testing ground” for the main Facebook app. If the team sees increased use in a specific feature in the standalone app, for example, that feature could be integrated into the main app.

Timing is also a focus. To shift the “push-whenever” mentality of a Web-focused coder, Facebook has put all new code updates into staggered release cycles.

Deng’s team, for instance, updates the iOS Messenger app every six weeks, like clockwork. This gives the team a better sense of deadlines and timing, while minimizing the amount of updates users need to download. Desktop coders still push more frequently, but are now relegated to doing so twice a day.

Perhaps the most drastic change is philosophical. Product managers want teams to “own their code,” to put more intention and responsibility behind any changes they make.

“This is about understanding that there is some level of permanence in the code you ship,” product manager Michael Sharon told me. “This is educating our people about quality.”

End Game

Facebook talks a big game. But is this shift actually going to benefit users?

Deng and his fellow product managers believe so. In a recent update, two of the most popular features from Messenger and Camera were integrated into the Facebook main iOS app. The idea is, Facebook’s app will get better, faster and stronger with the modular approach.

Not every timed release will be groundbreaking. Most have included bug fixes and optimizations, while others include better feature additions. It’s less about revamping the application and more about getting into a timing groove.

Ultimately, Facebook hopes the shift will pay off in the masses being happier with their mobile experience, unlike the old days when the native apps were built heavily with HTML5. Ideally, that makes for a more engaged, more active Facebook user.

That’ll let the engineering team rest a bit easier. At least until the next product cycle begins.

Big management shifts at Apple are now taking place.

Scott Forstall, the man in charge of its iOS mobile software efforts and a major and longtime executive at the tech giant, is leaving next year and will remain an adviser to CEO Tim Cook until then.

In addition, new retail head John Browett is headed out the door.

As part of the move, Apple noted that four key execs — Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi — would “add responsibilities to their roles.”

Ive gets “Human Interface”; Cue will take over Maps and Siri voice recognition responsibilities; Mansfield will run a new unit called Technologies, “which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization”; and Federighi gets the big job of iOS and OS X.

More to come on what happened, but Forstall’s departure is very big news and a drastic move for such an important player in the tech space.

He had big fans and also many detractors for his sharp-edged personality, as well as what some described as exhibiting “growing open challenges” to Cook himself. Forstall had previously been called “CEO-in-waiting” in one media account in Fortune.

In addition, numerous sources noted persistent tension between Forstall and several other key execs, especially the powerful design chief Ive.

Veiled internal politics at Apple aside, Forstall has been a key part of Apple’s success over the last decade, especially in the development iPad and the iPhone.

Recently, there has been some level of ire at Apple over the troubled rollout of its own mapping software and the replacement of Google’s popular service, which was Forstall’s responsibility. (No, this move does not mean everyone gets Google mapping back, as one person asked me.)

Browett’s leaving is a little less of a surprise. Since he got the job, he has alienated many within the highly successful retail organization at Apple, many sources said.

His departure comes less than one year after the former Dixons CEO was hired by Apple to succeed Ron Johnson, who left for J.C. Penney in November 2011. Recently he’s been criticized by some Apple Store employees for unfriendly policy changes aimed at increasing Apple’s retail profit margins.

More to come, obvi, but here is the official press release from Apple, which it put out with the most understated title of all time:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services

Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles

CUPERTINO, California — October 29, 2012 — Apple® today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.

“We are in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The amazing products that we’ve introduced in September and October, iPhone 5, iOS 6, iPad mini, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPod nano and many of our applications, could only have been created at Apple and are the direct result of our relentless focus on tightly integrating world-class hardware, software and services.”

Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design. His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.

Eddy Cue will take on the additional responsibility of Siri® and Maps, placing all of our online services in one group. This organization has overseen major successes such as the iTunes Store®, the App Store℠, the iBookstore℠ and iCloud®. This group has an excellent track record of building and strengthening Apple’s online services to meet and exceed the high expectations of our customers.

Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X®. Apple has the most advanced mobile and desktop operating systems, and this move brings together the OS teams to make it even easier to deliver the best technology and user experience innovations to both platforms.

Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook. Apple’s Retail organization has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level who will continue the excellent work that has been done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services for customers.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

Here’s a press release I just got sent by OnLive, about its sale to its mysterious new investor.

Which is actually an old one — Lauder Partners, which invested in the innovative cloud-gaming service in 2009. Under the new arrangement, the start-up will still be called OnLive, operate in the same manner, but with only about half its old staff hired back to work for the Lauder “affiliate.”

Whatever that is!

In other words: OnLive is dead! Long live OnLive!

Such confusion is par for the course in this most bizarre of Silicon Valley restructurings.

On Friday, the Palo Alto, Calif., company abruptly laid off its staff and went dark about what was going on, making a series of ever more opaque statements.

Along with the new press release, designed to clear up the mess, OnLive included an FAQ about the transaction. But it still leaves many questions unanswered.

Such as the price paid by Lauder for the assets, as well as whether founder and CEO Steve Perlman was still running the joint.

Here’s one thing that was made clear: The employee’s equity in OnLive the First, as well as that of investors, has gone poof in the new configuration of OnLive the Second.

That would be at least $56 million from investors, as well as tens of millions more in funding from earlier.

Said the company: “OnLive, Inc.’s board of directors, faced with difficult financial decisions for OnLive, Inc., determined that the best course of action was a restructuring under an ‘Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.’ The assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual property, etc.) to the new company.”

Incredibly, in its statement, OnLive had the audacity to say that it was a “heartbreaking transition for everyone involved with OnLive.”

For the other half of the staff — inexplicably called “non-hired” in the press release — laid off in such a manner, it certainly was.

Apparently, they might be able to consult “in return for options in the new company,” and could perhaps even be hired later.

Gee, thanks!

Oh, go read it for yourself:

OnLive Assets Acquired by New Company

All OnLive Services, Devices, Apps and Partnerships Continue Uninterrupted
Lauder Partners Backs New Company as First Investor

Palo Alto, Calif. August 19, 2012 – OnLive, the pioneer of instant-action cloud computing, announced today that on August 17th all of its assets were acquired by a newly formed company that will continue to operate under the OnLive name. The OnLive® Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption and all customer purchases will remain intact; users are not expected to notice any change whatsoever. OnLive’s current initiatives will
continue as well, with major announcements of new products and services planned in the coming weeks and months. An affiliate of
Lauder Partners was the first investor in the newly-structured company, holding the view that OnLive is the future of computing and
entertainment, and a passion to see OnLive’s breakthrough technology continue to grow and evolve. The new company structure enables OnLive to do so.

OnLive, Inc.’s board of directors, faced with difficult financial decisions for OnLive, Inc., determined that the best course of action
was a restructuring under an “Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.” The assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual
property, etc.) to the new company.

Unfortunately, neither OnLive, Inc. shares nor OnLive staff could transfer under this type of transaction, but almost half of OnLive’s staff were given employment offers by the new company at their current salaries immediately upon the transfer, and the non-hired staff will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company. Upon closing additional funding, the company plans to hire more staff, both former OnLive employees as well as new employees.

The OnLive Service has been in operation 24/7 without interruption since its launch over two years ago, and is expected to continue to
operate smoothly under the new company. All games, products and services remain available, and the company has new product and partnership announcements on the way.

OnLive’s breakthrough instant-action cloud computing technology has been in development for over a decade and, despite immense skepticism, OnLive successfully deployed this highly disruptive technology as a polished consumer offering with commercial-grade reliability across a vast range of devices, including TVs, tablets, phones, PCs and Macs,
connected over almost any Internet connection, including wireless and cellular. Only a few major corporations have ever developed and deployed products and services across such a broad spectrum. OnLive is rare among startups in both the depth and scope of its offerings.

The asset acquisition, although a heartbreaking transition for everyone involved with OnLive, allows the company’s core innovation and ongoing offerings — the product of over a decade of hard work transforming the OnLive vision into reality — to survive and continue to
evolve.

Given the widespread speculation about OnLive and the new company, a FAQ is below that addresses a number of questions both for the public and former employees.

FAQs

Q. Will users see any change in the OnLive Game or Desktop Services? What about their purchases?

A. Users should see no change in the OnLive Game or Desktop Services. All of their purchases remain intact and available. OnLive has been up 24/7 since launch over two years ago and expects to remain so. OnLive has over 2.5 million subscribers, with an active base of over 1.5 million subscribers, connecting from a vast range of devices and networks, with many sessions running for hours. The user base is
growing rapidly with OnLive’s addition into recently announced devices and TVs from major manufacturers. We expect this growth to continue under the new company.

Q. Is there any cash or stock in the new company provided for any OnLive, Inc. shares?

A. Unfortunately not. The nature of the transaction is such that only assets, not shares, were purchased. This is true for all shares of
OnLive, Inc., whether held by investors, employees or executives.

Q. Did Steve Perlman receive stock or compensation in this transaction?

A. Like all shareholders, neither Steve nor any of his companies received any stock in the new company or compensation in this transaction at all. Steve is receiving no compensation whatsoever and most execs are receiving reduced compensation to allow the company to
hire as many employees as possible within the current budget.

Q. Did all OnLive, Inc. assets transfer into the new company? Are any assets held by any other party?

A. All of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (e.g. technology, patents, trademarks, etc.) were transferred to an assignee, which then sold the assets to
the new company. There was no transfer to any other party.

Q. Have OnLive, Inc. employees been offered positions in the new company?

A. Almost half of OnLive’s staff were offered employment at their current salaries in the new company immediately upon the transfer, and
the non-hired staff will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company. Upon closing additional funding, the
company plans to hire more staff, both former OnLive employees as well as new employees.

According to multiple reports I have received, some employees of OnLive have been walking out of their Palo Alto, Calif. offices over the last few hours laden with boxes.

And some, no surprise, are headed to a nearby bar — The Patio — presumably to drown their sorrows.

The departures from the online cloud-gaming service came after a meeting this morning in which its top execs told staff that it would be letting almost the entire staff go, but without a lot of explanation of what that meant.

While founder and CEO Steve Perlman runs a number of other digital efforts — via his own Rearden Labs — at its Silicon Valley HQ, sources said only fraction of staffers will be left to keep the servers running until a resolution for the assets is found. Kotaku reported that OnLive would be filing an “alternative to bankruptcy called an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, or ABC, in the state of California.”

It is not clear who actually owns the pricey technology and patents for OnLive, which has raised $56 million in funding from investors such as Maverick Capital, Time Warner and HTC. HTC, the Taiwanese telecom giant, invested $40 million of the total in early 2011.

That’s a lot of dough, so it is not clear what has happened or if Perlman is poised to sell off the entity.

Sony recently bought one of OnLive’s rivals in the space — Gaikai — for $380 million to turbocharge its cloud-gaming service efforts.

One thing is entirely clear: While egregiously denying it was doing so, the gaming and virtual desktop software start-up is effectively shutting down OnLive as it has been previously run.

Earlier today, an OnLive spokesperson denied the obvious situation.

“We don’t respond to rumors, but the service is not shutting down,” OnLive said, while also bizarrely flacking their games.

Last week, I heard a rumor of just this thing happening and asked a spokesperson last Friday via email: “I hear via very good sources it is closing down or cutting back.”

This was the disingenuous response: “The latest rumors have been around acquisitions — this is a new one! Not the case, but officially we never comment on rumors.”

No need for comment, as you can see from the photo above and also here that was just sent to me.

OnLive launched in 2010 as a Web portal for streaming games, which it demoed here, from the D: All Things Digital conference in 2010.

As Lauren Goode wrote earlier: “In addition to its cloud-based gaming platform, which runs on PCs, tablets and now Google TV products, OnLive also offers [Microsoft] Office-based, virtual desktop software for [Apple] iPads and [Google] Android tablets, which got the Palo-Alto-based start up in some hot water with Microsoft earlier this year.”

Mashable first reported on the possible layoffs earlier. Let’s upgrade that to actual.

Facebook’s high-profile CTO Bret Taylor is leaving the Silicon Valley social networking giant later this summer, with future plans to work on an as-yet-to-be-determined start-up.

The move is likely to be of concern to some over the newly public company’s ability to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, especially in the wake of continued intense media and investor scrutiny over its rocky IPO last month.

That’s especially true since Taylor has been in charge of both platform and mobile efforts at Facebook, a critical arena for it.

A pair of Facebook execs under Taylor — Mike Vernal and Cory Ondrejka — will be taking over platform and mobile, respectively.

Vernal joined Facebook in 2008 from Microsoft, leading the original Facebook Connect project and also working on platform efforts and the development of Open Graph. Ondrejka arrived at the company in 2010 through the acquisition of Walletin; he previously worked at Linden Labs on Second Life virtual worlds.

While well qualified, they have big shoes to fill. Named to CTO two years ago, Taylor has also been a strong public figure at Facebook events, including its recent developers conference. And he was front and center at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this week at the announcement of Facebook integration into its newest iOS.

In an interview today, Taylor said he understands that his departure will be perceived as a disruption, although he noted that Facebook had a deep bench of talented technical staff under CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“I had always been upfront with Mark that I eventually wanted to do another start-up,” he said. “And we felt now is the best time after the IPO and the launch of some recent things for me to do that.”

That includes the Apple deal, Facebook Camera and also its App Center, which helps users find mobile and desktop apps their friends like.

Facebook is also reportedly working on a major effort to create its own smartphone, a project known as “Buffy.”

Taylor, who had previously worked at Google, has a strong start-up background. He left the search giant to found FriendFeed, a once-popular social aggregator. FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook in 2009.

Noting that his time at Facebook “has been the among the most fulfilling times of my career,” Taylor said that his departure was only part of life as usual in Silicon Valley.

“Cross-pollination among companies is what drives so much of innovation, so I would not project a lot onto this event,” he said. “I am really confident that the mobile and platform leaders at Facebook can deliver what needs to be done.”

When asked about the worries he had for the company, Taylor said the challenge of becoming public was top of mind internally.

“We are dealing with the cultural change of increasing attention, from going from a private company with a lot of scrutiny to a public company with a lot more scrutiny,” he said.

But he maintained that Facebook’s ability to remain nimble as it grew was strong, noting that the tech side continues to work in small teams. “These details really matter,” he said.

As for his own future, Taylor said he had not decided the area that he was going to focus on, but that he would be starting something with another former Googler, Kevin Gibbs.

Taylor said that he would probably focus on an industry he does not understand well as a consumer, as he did when he was working on Google’s mapping efforts.

“People said we had no sense of direction, so making maps better made sense,” he joked. “That turned out pretty well.”

Here is Taylor’s post on Facebook about the pending departure:

I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be leaving Facebook later this summer. I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m excited to be starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs.

While a transition like this is never easy, I’m extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place. I’m very proud of our recent accomplishments in our platform and mobile products, from Open Graph and App Center to Facebook Camera and our iOS integration. I’m even more excited for the world to see all the amazing things these teams have coming.

I’ve learned more than I ever imagined in my time at Facebook. I’m also extremely grateful for my relationship with all of the amazing people I’ve worked with here.

I want to give a special thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve not only been my boss for the past three years, but my mentor and one of my closest friends.

Thanks to all of you at Facebook for the most incredible three years of my life.

But precise animation technology is usually reserved for Hollywood movie making. Think of movie stars standing against a green screen, wearing special suits with buttons on them while their movements are recorded and translated to an animated character. Now, add that to your PC games, with a little help from a Web camera.

At the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles this week, Sony Online Entertainment has been showing off technology that makes an animated character on screen mimic a gamer’s facial expressions.

In a demo, SOE showed how an animated frog on a PC screen talks, yawns, nods its head and raises its eyebrows exactly as the gamer is doing so. Voice-altering technology also changes your voice to suit your character’s.

“SOEmote” is targeted at the thousands of MMO, or massive multi-player online, gamers who are looking to convey emotion and add personal expression — and in some cases, mask their voices — to the other players they’re communicating with through the games.

Sony licensed the technology from a California-based company called Image Metrics. The voice-altering tech comes from Vivox.

This feature is in its earliest stages and is expected to be available this month. To start, SOEmote only works with one title, the eight-year-old EverQuest II, though Sony says it plans to add SOEmote to all of its online games. And the SOEmote tech suffers from the same problem we’ve seen with other motion sensor and gesture recognition tech: When someone else walks by your screen, the sensors sometimes pick up on that movement, interrupting the intended effect.

For an idea of how it works, check out this video below:

RELATED POSTS:

• Nintendo Holds Back the Goods on Wii U Launch Date
• Nintendo Reveals a Wii Bit More About the Wii U
• From Sony, More Games and More Cross-Platform Play
• Ubisoft Prepping Eight Wii U Titles, Including Exclusives Like Zombi U
• EA Building Up Its Facebook Empire — This Time With SimCity Social
• Ear-Splitting, Eyeball-Peeling Demos From EA
• Microsoft Calls Dibs on New Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for Xbox
• Microsoft Doubling Down on Video and Music for the Xbox
• Microsoft Unloads the Latest for Xbox: Shooters, Sports and Songs
• Nintendo’s Wii U Embraces Social Networking (Video)
• E3 Interview: EA’s Riccitiello Promises to Make “Eyeballs Peel”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120606/hollywood-facial-animation-tech-comes-to-sony-pc-based-games/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 03:14:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=211847

Yahoo introduced its new Axis browser tonight, with versions for the Apple iPad and iPhone, as well as plugins for the top desktop browsers.

The company briefed a media army on the product and the consensus is that it’s very good. My favorite headline from Gizmodo: “Yahoo Came Out With Its Own Web Browser and It Actually Doesn’t Suck.”

No, it’s even — dare I say it — innovative!

That it was done while Yahoo has been in such crisis is a minor miracle, I would add.

It’s a slick offering, which essentially eliminates the texty link-filled search page for one of pretty visual tiles and pull-downs and more. Think Pinterest of search and you have the general idea.

But let’s hear from the dudes who pulled it off (though please allow me to customize or hide the giant klutzy search bar at the bottom).

Here’s an interview I did with Ethan Batraski, who runs product for Yahoo’s Search Innovation Group, as well as Shashi Seth, who heads its Connections unit, about Axis (which I might note was the name of the group that lost World War II).

But better luck at winning the browser war here, since — in this case, at least — Yahoo deserves it.

And here’s the Yahoo press release on Axis:

Navigating a New Course In Search — Introducing Yahoo! Axis

Seamless Across Multiple Devices, Axis Re-defines Searching and Browsing

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 23, 2012 – Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced the availability of Yahoo! Axis, a new experience that re-imagines how people search and browse on the web. Axis offers the only search experience that allows you to enter your search, see and interact with visual results, all without ever leaving the page you are on. Axis seamlessly integrates with your favorite desktop browser and automatically connects your online experiences across multiple devices. Axis is available today for download across iOS devices and as a desktop plug-in for HTML5-enabled browsers.

“Our search strategy is predicated on two core belief — one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Connections, Yahoo! Inc. “With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”

Visually rich, Axis provides an easy and efficient cross-device experience that today’s connected consumers want:

· Smarter, Faster Search with Rich Design: Axis gives people instant answers and visual previews so they can continuously discover and explore content without interruption. Encased in a sleek design, Axis keeps people moving forward rather than constantly returning to a page of endless blue links. Once on a search results site, Axis also lets people simply swipe or click to the next result.

· Connected Experience: Axis allows people to move seamlessly across devices. Upon downloading Axis, people can start a search on their computer, flip through the results while out on their iPhone, and finish the search at home on their iPad. Content can be easily shared by email, Pinterest and Twitter.

· Personalized Home Page: After signing in with Yahoo!, Google or Facebook credentials, Axis centralizes online lives with a customizable Home Page that provides direct access to their favorite sites, saved articles and bookmarks across all devices where Axis has been downloaded.

· Standalone Mobile Browser, DesktopPlug-In: On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Axis serves as a standalone mobile browser app. On the desktop,Axis is a browser plug-in that works with Firefox 7+, Safari v5+, Internet Explorer 9 and all versions of Chrome.

· Innovative Technology Backbone: Axis is built upon the Yahoo! Cocktails mobile development platform, which is designed for creating deeply personalized products that are built for connected devices first. Comprised of Mojito, an open source JavaScript MVC framework and Manhattan, a cloud-based hosted environment, Cocktails is a blend of open, standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Node.JS.

To learn more about Yahoo! Axis and download the desktop plug-in, visit the Axis microsite and our company blog, Yodel Anecdotal. The new Yahoo! Axis App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.iTunes.com/appstore/.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120508/average-facebook-mobile-use-beats-desktop-access/ http://allthingsd.com/20120508/average-facebook-mobile-use-beats-desktop-access/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 15:02:24 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=205219 Facebook users spent an average of nearly 7.5 hours accessing the site from mobile phones in March, according to a recent comScore report, surpassing the average time spent accessing the site via desktop by nearly an hour. The trend is consistent with the shift of users relying more heavily on mobile devices to access the site, as the company itself has noted; more than half-a-billion people accessed Facebook via mobile device in March.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120508/average-facebook-mobile-use-beats-desktop-access/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120411/did-pc-sales-just-bounce-off-the-bottom-not-quite/ http://allthingsd.com/20120411/did-pc-sales-just-bounce-off-the-bottom-not-quite/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:37:43 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=195557 It wasn’t so long ago that if you had asked the folks at the tech research house Gartner about their predictions for PC sales in the first quarter, they would have hit you with a pretty gloomy scenario: Sales, Gartner said, would fall by 1.2 percent.

It turns out they did nothing of the kind. In fact, PC sales grew by almost 2 percent in the first quarter of 2012. Perhaps that’s not saying much. Last year, you’ll remember, was nothing less than the second-worst year for sales in the history of the PC industry after 2001 — except at Apple, which, no surprise, turned in its best year for Mac sales ever. Perhaps it might have been more realistic to predict a bounce-off-the-bottom moment.

Anyhow, here’s what Gartner saw and what its analysts think about it:

Europe and the Middle East did better than expected and grew by almost 7 percent. Asia was below expectations and emerging markets slowed down generally.

Also, the hard drive supply problem brought on by the floods in Thailand didn’t cause nearly as many problems as some had expected. As Gartner’s Mikako Kitagawa put it: “In general, the hard-disk drive supply shortage had a limited impact on PC supply during 1Q12. There was a moderate impact on selected markets, such as low-end consumer notebooks and the white-box market in selected regions. Still, low PC demand was able to mask the tight hard drive supply overall.”

So who led the market? Look at the tables. Worldwide market is first:

Lenovo grew the most, boosting its shipments by more than 28 percent, and was strong in the EMEA market, where growth was higher than expected generally. Dell underperformed, Gartner says, and saw declines in Asia year over year.

And now the U.S. market:

Overall, as you can see, the market declined by 3.5 percent. Dell’s share fell by nearly 4 percent, while HP and Apple grew. Acer’s share fell by an eye-popping 25 percent and change.

Not a bounce, at least not as far as the U.S. is concerned.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120411/did-pc-sales-just-bounce-off-the-bottom-not-quite/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120222/still-waiting-on-office-for-ipad-onlives-new-subscription-service-has-office-flash-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20120222/still-waiting-on-office-for-ipad-onlives-new-subscription-service-has-office-flash-and-more/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:55:48 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=177078 For those of you still holding your breath while you wait for an official Microsoft Office app to come to iPad, here’s something that might help in the interim: OnLive Desktop Plus, a premium, $4.99-a-month version of the OnLive Desktop app for iPad and other tablet devices. The newest version of the app offers a cloud-based Internet Explorer 9, Adobe Flash, and PDF capabilities, in addition to the full Office suite and the “accelerated browsing experience” that OnLive created for fast pushing and pulling of data on a remote-access desktop.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120222/still-waiting-on-office-for-ipad-onlives-new-subscription-service-has-office-flash-and-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120201/avid-brings-its-pro-sumer-video-editing-app-to-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20120201/avid-brings-its-pro-sumer-video-editing-app-to-ipad/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:17 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=170580 Avid, maker of high-end digital video and audio production tools, is bringing its “pro-sumer” video editing software to the iPad.

The app is available starting Thursday as part of the Avid Studio suite. The app will run on iPad only, though Avid says it’s exploring other mobile operating systems.

Avid Studio for iPad costs $4.99 to start; after 30 days, the price will jump to $7.99.

That’s still much less than what other current desktop editing applications cost, including Avid’s own Avid Studio ($129.99), Adobe Premiere Elements ($99.99), Apple’s Final Cut Pro X ($299.99), and Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum ($59.95).

The iPad app marks the Burlington, Mass.-based company’s first video editing application for tablets. Video editing software generally requires a substantial desktop system or a bulky laptop; using video editing apps on relatively small smartphone screens can be cumbersome. Avid is hoping its app hits somewhere in the middle.

“We’ve seen a shift in how creation is happening, and it’s really happening on almost any device,” said Tanguy Leborgne, vice president of consumer and mobile technology strategy at Avid. “We think the tablet is more than just a consumer device; more and more people are creating on it.”

While Avid says the app captures most of the editing capabilities available on its desktop system, there are some obvious areas in which an iPad editing app would be lacking.

For starters, pro-level editors accustomed to using a large screen for edits will likely feel a tablet doesn’t provide enough screen real estate for real edits.

Also, with Avid Studio on a PC, video editors can export a Flash video file, and burn video files to a CD or DVD. On the iPad, neither of those functions is an option.

Users also likely won’t want to export lots of large, high-definition video files to the iPad and take up storage space on the tablet.

Fortunately, full projects and video files can be transferred to and from the Avid Studio app via iCloud and iTunes. Finished movie files can also be shared directly from the Avid app to Facebook and YouTube.

The idea is that the iPad app and the desktop software are complementary, Leborgne said, so that users who want to create and edit projects on the go can do so, but ultimately preserve them by taking them to the PC.

The Avid iPad app does have some nice features, including an interface that includes a storyboard area and an editing timeline. And while some video editors rely heavily on customized keyboards or a mouse, others might appreciate the ability to pinch and squeeze videos and images to scale them on the touchscreen of the iPad, or the ability to move text and titles around with their fingers.

Avid’s new product comes just a couple days after Apple released an update for its Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) video editing software, which addressed video editors’ complaints about the software’s lack of professional-level bells and whistles. Now FCPX includes multicam editing, advanced chroma-key features and the ability to open up old FCP projects in the new software.

While Adobe Premiere is considered the first popular digital video editing application, it was Apple’s Final Cut Pro, which launched in 1999, that eventually chipped away at the market of video editors using Avid’s high-end system.

Apple’s FCPX also comes at a significantly reduced price from previous iterations of Final Cut Pro, which used to cost around $1,000. Both Avid and Adobe responded to Apple’s new software by offering discounts to users who switched over to their software.

“Both Apple’s product and the pricing strategy were the same thing we’re trying to address here,” Leborgne said. “But for professionals, it relayed to them that Apple was not really focused on the higher end of the market.”

As evidence that some professionals were disappointed with the new FCPX, Leborgne pointed to Hollywood production company Bunim/Murray — the reality TV pioneers dropped Final Cut Pro in favor of Avid.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120201/avid-brings-its-pro-sumer-video-editing-app-to-ipad/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20120107/vizio-jumps-into-pc-fray/ http://allthingsd.com/20120107/vizio-jumps-into-pc-fray/#comments Sat, 07 Jan 2012 17:57:53 +0000 Ian Sherr http://allthingsd.com/?p=161241 Vizio Inc., which shook up the market with inexpensive high-definition televisions, now wants to become a computer manufacturer.

The Irvine, Calif., company, which ranks as one of the top sellers of televisions in the U.S., plans to show a line of thin laptop computers and all-in-one desktop PCs running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120107/vizio-jumps-into-pc-fray/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111207/loading-photos-into-the-kindle-fire/ http://allthingsd.com/20111207/loading-photos-into-the-kindle-fire/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:38:34 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=151656 Q:

How do I load family pictures into the Kindle Fire that I just bought for my 94-year-old mother?

A:

One of the weaknesses of the Fire is that it is heavily tied into Amazon’s cloud services, and, unlike Google or Apple, Amazon doesn’t have a cloud-based photo service. There are a number of work-arounds for getting photos into the Fire. Here are two. In my tests of the Kindle Fire, I found that the simplest method was to plug it into a laptop using a special USB cable (not included) and drag photos onto the Fire from the laptop. You also can save photos to the Fire that are attached to emails received on the device, but I found this didn’t always work.

Q:

Do you have any guidance about all-in-one touch-screen desktop PCs for the holiday buying season?

A:

I haven’t reviewed these in a long time, but take a look at Hewlett-Packard’s latest TouchSmart models, which seem well-equipped and start at $600, after various discounts. Note: I don’t know how well the touch screens on these PCs, or any others currently on the market, will work with the upcoming Windows 8, due out next year.

Q:

I have an Asus Transformer tablet and want to get Swype on it. How can I get it?

A:

Swype, which is an alternate keyboard for Android devices that works by letting you swipe your fingers across letters, typically comes preloaded on devices, rather than being installed by users like a typical app. The product’s site, at swype.com, shows how you can tell if your device came with it. If not, you can try installing a beta version by going to beta.swype.com.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111207/loading-photos-into-the-kindle-fire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:10:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=140838

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Andy Lees, president of the Microsoft’s Windows Phone division.

As such — and coming from way behind, compared to smartphone leaders Google with Android, and Apple with iOS, iPhone and iPad — Lees is working to extend Microsoft’s longtime desktop hegemony to mobile.

It’s a great time to watch the full onstage conversation between Lees and AllThingsD’s Ina Fried, since Microsoft is holding a big event in New York on Monday to celebrate the U.S. launch of devices running the new Mango version of Windows Phone 7.

The update, which features Twitter integration, multitasking and other features, has already been available for older devices; new models, with the operating system preloaded, are just hitting the market.

Here’s the Lees interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/ http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:45:16 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=138253 Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad is back for sale at Best Buy.

Unceremoniously killed under HP’s prior CEO on Aug. 18 after disappointing sales, the device quickly found a market after retailers and HP itself slashed the prices on remaining stock.

This time, according to a Best Buy press release, a 32 gigabyte TouchPad is going for $149, with the purchase of an HP- or Compaq-branded notebook or desktop PC. Sold separately, the price jumps to $599.99.

HP, for its part, has sold out of its internal stock of the device, according to a statement on the company’s Web site. TouchPads can, however, still be found on Amazon and on eBay.

By bundling the TouchPad with PCs at its biggest retail partner, HP is giving itself an arguable edge against Acer, Dell and Toshiba in what is sure to be a cutthroat holiday season for PC and tablet sales. After about a month on the market, and before the product wound up on the chopping block, Best Buy sold less than 10 percent of the 270,000 TouchPads it had in inventory.

It’s hard to know how long the deal can last. Sources familiar with HP’s build plans say the initial TouchPad order was for between 1.8 million and two million units, though a third source disputed that number without elaborating. Regardless of the number ordered, sources familiar with the deal say that HP’s decision to kill the product had no immediate effect on the build plans, as components had already been purchased and manufacturing was under way. A source familiar with the matter says the manufacturer is Taiwan-based Inventec, not Compal, as has been previously reported. HP was contractually obligated to take delivery on the remaining units in the pipeline.

That means the TouchPad is now officially a loss leader. As an IHS iSuppli teardown analysis in August showed, HP’s cost to build a 32GB TouchPad is $328.65. At $149.99, HP takes a paper loss of more than $178 per unit.

HP isn’t exactly crying over the lost money. Remember that as part of the hot mess of news it announced on Aug. 18, the company included plans for a $1 billion charge to account for costs related to shutting down the TouchPad and webOS hardware business.

Whatever happens, this is probably the last hurrah for the TouchPad — for real this time. That is, unless no one takes advantage of the offer to buy one along with a PC. Any stock left over after the holiday season rush will probably wind up in Best Buy’s equivalent of the bargain bin.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110810/a-simple-pc-for-seniors-is-complicated-by-its-flaws/ http://allthingsd.com/20110810/a-simple-pc-for-seniors-is-complicated-by-its-flaws/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:03:48 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=108461 If you’re confused and frustrated by computers, or you serve as the tech-support person for somebody who is, you might be interested in a PC that’s designed to be much simpler than a typical Windows or Mac machine, yet can still perform popular tasks like Web surfing, emailing, photo viewing and video chatting.

I’ve been testing just such a computer, called the Telikin. It’s an all-in-one desktop, with a touch screen, that starts at $699 and comes from a small Philadelphia-area start-up called Venture 3 Systems. To create the Telikin, the company converts standard PCs from the Taiwanese manufacturer MSI by replacing Windows with the Linux operating system and then overlaying that with a greatly simplified user interface and apps of its own design. As simple as it is to use, the Telikin I tested had some flaws and glitches to frustrate most tech novices.

The interface is dominated by a row of big, blue buttons down the left side of the screen, with labels like Email, Photos, Calendar, Web and so forth. Large windows display content, and emails use a big, bold font for easy reading. The home page prominently displays news headlines and weather, and even a quote of the day. There is a built-in feature called Tech Buddy that allows a friend or relative to remotely take over the computer, with permission, to provide help.

After several days of testing the Telikin, I found the interface logical and the built-in apps worked pretty well, albeit sometimes on a very basic level. However, I can only give the Telikin a qualified thumbs up, because I kept running into bugs and limitations. Company officials acknowledged these problems and said they are fixing them. But if you buy a Telikin, you are betting that they will do so.

Telikin is an all-in-one desktop, with a touch screen, that lets users send and receive email, view photos, and conduct video chats via Skype, above, among other things.

The company says it originally designed the Telikin for seniors, but is finding that older boomers are interested as well. Personally, because I know seniors who are computer masters and middle-age people whose PCs befuddle them, I’d say such a machine might appeal to anyone of any age who needs or craves greater simplicity in a PC. It’s available directly from telikin.com, or from Fry’s, an electronics retailer whose stores are mainly in the West.

There are two models. The base unit, at $699, is white, has an 18.6-inch screen and a 320-gigabyte hard disk. The second model, at $999, is black, has a 20-inch screen and a 500-GB hard disk. Both have touch screens that can be operated by finger or with an included stylus. Both also can be controlled with a traditional wired mouse, which is included along with a wired keyboard. Each model has 2 GB of memory, multiple USB ports, a DVD drive and a memory-card reader.

The company offers an optional service that gives hand-holding support on basic questions, such as, “How do I set up a Facebook account?” and includes the ability to back up the computer to a remote server for $10 a month.

In my tests, I was able to send and receive email on one of my own accounts; conduct video chats via Skype; view shared photos on Facebook; surf the Web; make calendar appointments; and play simple built-in games, like solitaire and mahjong.

I could create and read word-processing documents in Microsoft Word format; and view, but not create or edit PDF files and PowerPoint presentations.

I found the company’s tech support people to be helpful and patient, and the machine comes with some useful, if very basic, instructional videos, although there’s no real manual provided. The Web browser is pre-loaded with a series of visual bookmarks for common sites, and you can save your own favorites.

But bugs and limitations seriously detract from the Telikin.

For instance, at first, my test unit frequently froze, requiring a reboot each time. The company remotely upgraded its software, and the freezing was almost, but not entirely, eliminated.

I was also unable to attach photos to outgoing emails. The company said this was a known, but intermittent, bug that will be fixed by the end of the month.

Another example: My Telikin test unit couldn’t complete an online backup because, according to a scary error message, a Web file had “vanished.” Again, the company said it knew of the problem and was fixing it.

My test unit also came with an odd little add-on microphone poking out from the bottom, even though it had a built-in mic at the top. The company said it added the extra microphone because it wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the internal one.

And then there are the limitations. The built-in email program lacks the common Reply All and Forward functions, and the browser has no Refresh function.

The company said it left these out because it feared they might confuse some seniors. Now, it is thinking of adding them. Also, the Telikin can’t view spreadsheets, though again, the company says it is working on adding that ability.

On some emails I sent from a Mac, but not from my Windows PCs, attachments or text didn’t come through. And the remote-control Tech Buddy feature is harder to set up on a Mac. The company conceded it did very little testing of the Telikin’s compatibility with Macs, so if you are a Mac user planning on buying a Telikin for a relative, you might have problems.

Bottom line: The Telikin is a good idea with a decent design that suffers from flawed execution. If you have a friend or relative who could benefit from such a computer, you might consider the Telikin, but you should think about waiting until the company fixes the flaws.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110810/a-simple-pc-for-seniors-is-complicated-by-its-flaws/feed/ 0