Ahead of the dinner, Anderson stopped by my office to let me have a peek at his 10 predictions, and we talked them over a bit. All 10 are below, along with some comments from Anderson that emerged from our conversation.

Before diving into the predictions, Anderson tells me there is a grand theme that unifies them all: “Integrating everything.”

What does that mean? “It means a whole lot of stuff that needs to be integrated. We don’t need anything new at all. There’s so much work that needs to be done with the existing tool sets. Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything at all. But he was great at integrating things into a product. There’s a lot more of that work to do. We have to do it in the phone world and the TV world and the health care world. We have lots of devices and lots of chips and lots of operating systems and lots of content. The bigger question is, how do human beings use it all efficiently?”

As an example, he cites the collaboration between Nuance, the speech software company, and IBM, bringing the Watson computer of “Jeopardy” fame into the area of health care. “For the first time, the idea of evidence-based medicine won’t just be in a magazine article,” Anderson says. “A doctor will be able to pick up his phone and describe four symptoms, and find out what the likely diagnosis is, what the indications are. It’s fantastic.”

So here are those 10 predictions, with additional comments from Anderson:

1. TV becomes the new center of gravity in the tech universe. All the other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy. Microsoft’s attempt to integrate Kinect into TV is a strong if qualified success. Smart phone-TV integration software becomes a new category. Pad-TV integration becomes common.

“Apple will hustle to launch the next version of Apple TV, and it will be a roaring success and be seen as Tim Cook’s first great product success. But what it really will be is Steve’s last product.”

2. 2012 will see tectonic shifts in phone markets. “Nokia will fail to come back, which is pretty clear to everyone except the people in Finland.” Samsung, Anderson says, will retain its spot as the new global leader in mobile phones by volume, and will keep this crown despite the debut of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Anderson says, Google will lose control over the Android operating system, mainly because unlicensed versions of Android will multiply in type and in installed base, especially in Asian countries. “It’s already a balkanized environment. Now Google loses control of the technology entirely. China is already running an unlicensed version of Android, and I think there will be more of that.”

Finally, the smartphone will finally emerge as the dominant category of wireless phone. “Why would you have anything else? And why would sellers of content and services want you to?” he says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a rich country or a poor country. This stuff is cheap.”

3. Clouds are for consumers, and for start-ups. Even as a large number of big companies move pilot projects onto external clouds, it will become clear that the real trend is for enterprise to stay away from clouds in all key areas, for reasons of both security and reliability.

“The cloud guys hate this because they want to sell to enterprises,” Anderson says. “But the security issues are becoming really intense. If you’re a CIO, it’s a terrible environment, and you’re a target, for sure, especially if you’re a company with a lot of intellectual property. I’m not implying that things like SAAS (software as a service) aren’t a big trend. But no one is going to put their valuable IP on the cloud.”

4. Security splits the tech world in two, finally getting attention from CEOs. Companies with real IP start to realize they have to “go big or go home” with their security response, and their spending on protecting their “crown jewels” rises dramatically.

5. Siri stuns the world. Siri, on Apple’s iPhone 4S, has sounded the arrival of Internet personal assistants, and the world will spend this year marveling at what Siri and its rivals can and cannot do — and what they can learn to do.

“I think we’ll see a bunch of these things,” Anderson says. “Siri will get much better. It will learn how you learn. We’ve never seen people have long-term relationships with machines before, but it will be a long-term relationship, and she will remember everything, but make good use of it. She will know you learn better by seeing than hearing, or that it takes three times to tell you something. All those things that you have to program today should be learnable. None of that has been done yet. That creates a real friendship. And I think we’re going to start seeing personal assistants not just for everyday life, but for professions like medicine or car repair. Instead of just having Siri be everything, there will be many Siris for different contexts.”

6. We enter the amazing world of Dave and HAL, as voice recognition comes of age. From hospital to car, mobile to home, Kinect to Siri, exercise to play, work to entertainment, remote control to direct action, from Microsoft to Apple, from Tellme to Nuance — the time has come for computers and humans to talk to each other. With lots of funny stories, big bloopers and amazing breakthroughs, humanity at the end of 2012 will be talking to machines in a normal voice, and it will not seem unusual, nor be the cause of unending frustration.

“The voice-recognition part is almost trivial,” Anderson says. “The important part is context-sensitive understanding. It used to be that all the researchers at Carnegie Mellon used to think that all you needed was more computing horsepower to do better at voice. It turned out that was wrong. It was right for a little while, but the real problem is context. And so, if you can build up that database where you can search it contextually for what to expect, that is where you get all the mileage.”

7. E-readers prosper, but pads continue to dominate what Anderson calls the “carry-along” market. Pads and tablets will come down in price and get closer to prices of e-readers. Meanwhile, Anderson says, Amazon’s Fire will move upmarket and evolve into a full-fledged tablet.

“If you look at the specs on the Fire, it’s a tablet, but it’s hobbled,” Anderson says. “So I think that this is part of the whole strategy: Come in and sell at a low price, and then later unveil a more complete tablet. Apple will stay ahead, though. A lot of people are asking me if Amazon will catch Apple, and the answer is no. The way it’s configured right now, there’s no way the Fire will catch up with the iPad.”

8. The consumption world explodes. Get ready for new devices, new content, new bundles, new connection techniques, new distribution channels, new aggregators, new tablets, new phones, new players, new self-published authors, new garage bands, new consumption models riding on social networks. There is nothing but high energy in the content consumer market. People are now ready to spend subscription money, and the publisher response will be huge. “It’s going to be a huge melee of stuff,” Anderson says. “We’ll invent more stuff to consume, and it will be very hard to figure out who the players are from week to week, and how they’re doing. They may not even know themselves.”

9. Governments and corporations focus on intellectual property as though it were their most prized asset. It is. This new global understanding leads to a reevaluation regarding giving critical IP away for nothing versus protecting it. The age of what Anderson calls “IP naïveté” is over, and the question of proper IP valuation is here.

What is IP naïveté? “When Jeff Immelt stood on the steps of the White House the day after he was named jobs czar, and handed the plans for GE’s most important jet-engine project to Hu Jintao in order to get the permission to be allowed to bid on maybe selling engines to China — that’s IP naïveté,” Anderson says. “Thinking that’s not going to come back and show up for sale in Houston from some Chinese company in about six months is IP naïveté.”

During 2012, he says, companies and countries will start valuing their intellectual property not for its replacement value, but for figures that are magnitudes larger. State-sponsored IP theft will shift from being considered a nuisance and more along the lines of an act of aggression.

10. Amazon gets it all. Between outdoing Wal-Mart online, to beating the booksellers and delivering groceries, and making new inroads in video streaming, Amazon will prove that one company can indeed have it all. Strong Kindle and Fire sales will only be icing on the cake.

When you think of it that way, you might wonder why GE doesn’t already have some kind of operation in Silicon Valley, where all the world’s best software engineers are. Today, the company is rectifying that with the announcement of a software development center in San Ramon, Calif. It will employ about 400 workers.

The reason, says Bill Ruh, GE’s VP and global technology director — he’s the guy who will run the place — is that the so-called “Internet of things” is becoming a reality. This, Ruh thinks, will morph into something of an industrial Internet, which is directly in GE’s wheelhouse. “We will make our devices more intelligent, which will be driven by software, collect that data, and do some high-end analytics on it, and then drive it to our own people and to our customers,” Ruh told me. He joined GE earlier this year, after almost seven years as a VP at Cisco Systems.

Smart devices, he says, are “table stakes,” but what’s more important is the data they generate, and what you do with it. “At the end of the day, the analytics is where the action will be,” Ruh says.

Here’s an example. GE makes a product called “My Engine,” which Ruh describes as a “Facebook for engines.” If you’re the person in charge of maintaining the engines on a particular plane, wouldn’t it be helpful if you could keep track of its status as easily as you might the drinking and dining habits of your friends on Facebook? Of course, the engine and all its parts would need to have some Internet smarts built in. But once that’s done, there’s a lot of data worth tracking and analyzing about where the planes go, the conditions they fly in, which parts tend to fail or need replacing more often, and so on. From there, it’s a short leap to reorganizing maintenance schedules to be more efficient and less costly.

That’s just one example, and GE has a lot of software that’s specifically geared toward its various lines of business. Out of that, Ruh says, come some “big themes” that will apply to outside customers. “If you look at remote monitoring and diagnostics, that kind of stuff is broadly the same, whether you’re monitoring a wind turbine or a CAT scan machine,” he says. “So we have some horizontal plays that we see coming out of this.”

This is the third new software center for GE in recent years. The other two are near Detroit and near Richmond, Va. Design work on the San Ramon site is under way, and employees will start moving in near the middle of next year.

That legacy — and his influence on the lives of people around the world — is inestimable, and we will be talking about him and his amazing, interesting life a great deal in the coming days and weeks.

But as the sun comes up here in New York this morning, still mourning the departed, we are forced to confront more immediate and material concerns. Insensitive though it may seem to consider at this moment, Apple is not simply a great company — it has also proven over the last decade to be a great investment, and as such is one of the most widely held stocks in the world. Its largest shareholders are the big mutual fund companies like Fidelity, the Vanguard Group, State Street Corp. and T. Rowe Price, who among them own more than 15 percent of Apple’s shares.

And as Apple’s value, as measured by market capitalization, has ballooned from less than $10 billion a decade ago to north of $350 billion as of yesterday, the anxiety about the mortality of its founder has regularly caused its value to swoon. Over the seven-year course of Jobs’s illness, Apple shareholders have had to come to terms with the so-called “Jobs premium,” the extra value attached to the company’s shares that existed as long as he was directly involved in mapping company strategy and applying his unique touch to its products.

The conventional wisdom among Apple analysts now is that Apple investors, once known for their hair-trigger reflex to sell on any whiff of rumor, have gained a more complex and reasonable understanding of the situation. Apple, without Jobs, will still be Apple, and for the immediate and medium-term future, there is no reason to believe that its strategy and execution will falter in his absence.

But as I wrote in August, when Jobs resigned his position as CEO, it’s important to understand that Apple’s long-term vision has been deposited deeply within the DNA of the company. There is a script for the next several years. Products are mapped out, schedules are set, components have been purchased, manufacturing deals have been inked. In short, everyone at Apple knows what their job is and will continue to do it without missing a beat. The path ahead is no less clear today than it was yesterday.

No doubt the shares will be volatile as the markets open today. But that volatility will be much less than might have been expected years ago. It wasn’t so long ago that analysts predicted that, upon the death or departure of Steve Jobs, the company would lose as much as a third of its value. That’s no longer likely.

Today, investors seem to understand intuitively that the fundamental reasons to invest in Apple remain unchanged. The growth trajectory and profitability in the sales of its products remain the envy of the industry. There are predictions that Apple will sell more than 100 million iPhones next year, and nearly 30 million iPads in the second half of this year. Mac sales continue to set records quarter after quarter.

For all its strength in North America and Europe, Apple still has significant room to grow overseas. There are already signs of progress. In its most recent quarter, Apple reported revenue in the Asia-Pacific region of $6.3 billion, amounting to 22 percent of sales, and more than triple the sales seen in that region a year ago. One key market — China — remains a strategic priority for CEO Tim Cook and his team. Apple is still something new to the people of China, and introducing them to the brand on an ever-widening scale will be an interesting journey.

If history is any judge, it will be a fruitful introduction. Wherever it goes, Apple’s brand seems to succeed. Ask anyone familiar with it — it is easily one of the best-loved and most recognized brands. And yet when branding experts measure its brand equity, it ranks high but surprisingly also shows room to improve.

Just this week, Interbrand, a consultancy that focuses on corporate brands, released its annual survey of the world’s Top 100 brands. Apple is ranked No. 8, one notch above the Walt Disney Company (of which, ironically, Jobs was the largest shareholder), and two notches above Hewlett-Packard; the company had seen the largest year-over-year improvement in the value of its brand. It’s informative to consider some other names that appeared in the Top 10: Stalwart consumer brands like Coca-Cola (No. 1), General Electric (No. 5) and McDonald’s (No. 6).

Yet it’s also interesting to note that among the technology names that appeared in the Top 10 of the Interbrand survey, Apple wasn’t at the top: That distinction goes to IBM (No. 2), Microsoft (No. 3), Google (No. 4) and Intel (No. 7). Rather than a weakness, I think this fact speaks to Apple’s potential.

The story of Apple has never been one of narrow horizons. It has always been about looking ahead. Not just to the next quarter or to the next year, but of seeing how the march of technological progress can be harnessed to make life better in ways we can hardly grasp now. And yet when things like the iPhone materialize, they become part of us and quickly embed themselves into the very fabric of day-to-day existence. They’re not tools so much as extensions of our minds and identities. And that vision, so carefully articulated by Steve Jobs yet revealed only one product at a time, is still incomplete.

And so I find myself writing something that at once seems absurd and yet completely obvious: It may very well be, on this deeply sad day following the death of its founder, that Apple’s best days are still ahead.

Image via Jonathan Mak’s Tumblr.

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Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

Ms. Kelly quizzed the product developers on how they planned to use the data collected by the device and advised them on what to write in the appliance’s “energy data privacy policy” for consumers.

Welcome to the new world of corporate privacy.

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We heard the tip from a source familiar with the situation, and an HP spokeswoman just confirmed it: “HP’s current vice president of investor relations, Steve Fieler, has decided to leave HP to pursue other opportunities. Steve will stay on with HP through the Q4 earnings cycle to facilitate an orderly transition.”

We haven’t yet heard where he’s going, nor anything about a replacement being named.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Fieler was named VP for investor relations by CFO Cathie Lesjak in July of 2010. He first joined HP in 2004 as senior director for strategy & corporate development after stints at AirPrism and General Electric, among others.

The move is the latest in a string of executive shifts at HP during the last several months. In June, chief administrative officer Peter Bocian left for a job with J.P. Morgan.

Then in July, Stephen DiFranco was named senior vice president and general manager for the Americas region in the Personal Systems Group (the unit now expected to be spun off in the coming months), reporting to Todd Bradley.

On Aug. 18, HP announced a torrent of news, including plans to spin off its personal computer unit, shut down the webOS hardware business and spend $10 billion to acquire the British software firm Autonomy in a move to shift its emphasis away from consumer-oriented businesses in favor of more enterprise-centric businesses. HP shares still haven’t recovered from that combination and have fallen about 24 percent since that day.

As HP announced the news on a conference call with analysts that day, it fell to Fieler to begin the proceedings with the opening statement confirming all that had been reported earlier in the day.

Soon after that, Bill Wohl, chief communications officer, was put on what’s been described as a “special assignment,” and HP’s corporate communications department was placed under the authority of chief marketing officer Marty Homlish.

HP shares fell along with the rest of the market today, down $1.21, or more than 5 percent, to $22.66.

Remember how IBM recently said at its analyst meeting that projects related to its Smarter Planet initiative will drive $10 billion in revenue by 2015? It also promised to spend $20 billion on software acquisitions over the next five years. This is one of the deals that Big Blue says will help get it there. IDC has pegged the worldwide market for smart buildings at $3.9 billion this year.

Tririga specializes in software that helps its clients get the most out of their real estate portfolio, run capital projects efficiently and manage energy usage inside buildings. Its customers include Nokia, General Electric, NASA and The U.S. Department of Defense.

When you consider that, for large companies, real estate and facilities costs are usually the second-highest line item after salaries and benefits and can account for 30 percent of annual expenses, it makes sense to get into a business that aims to help them keep those costs under control. IBM shares rose 22 cents to 157.90 on the news.

The other three at Shumeet Banerji, CEO of Booz and Co, Shumeet Banerji former CIO at General Electric and Dominique Senequier CEO of AXA Private Equity.

Four sitting directors Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Robert Ryan and Lucille Salhany will not stand for re-election, at the next company shareholder meeting in March, the company said.

The move is by far the most sweeping change to hit HP since Léo Apotheker, took over the reins as CEO last year following the departure of Mark Hurd following a allegations of sexual harassment against Hurd by Jodie Fisher, a onetime HP contractor.

Once the latest shake-up is complete, HP’s board will have undergone a nearly complete makeover in recent years. None of the continuing board members will pre-date the Compaq acquisition, with Lawrence Babbio, Jr. the former Verizon President as the longest standing board member having joined at the completion of the HP-Compaq deal. Babbio was a member of Compaq’s board before the merger. All of the others have joined since 2005.

During the last decade HP’s board has been rocked by more than a few scandals, one involving a scheme to spy on journalists in an effort to ferret out the source of a persistent leak. More recently the board has been facing questions about its judgment, first for seeking Hurd’s resignation following the revelation of the sexual harassment complaint, and then for allowing him to leave with more some $53 million in compensation as he went on to become a president HP rival Oracle. HP is facing lawsuits in Delaware and California from shareholders over the incident, and was reported yesterday to be planning a new independent investigation into the circumstances leading up to Hurd’s departure.

Shares of HP shot upward when word of the shakeup first began to leak. The shares rose during the last 20 minutes of trading, closing up 46 cents or nearly 1 percent $46.78 a share.

HP’s statement is below.

HP Announces Changes to Board of Directors

Five highly accomplished business leaders to be added to board
PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 20, 2011

HP today announced that its board of directors has appointed five new members, effective Jan. 21. The appointments bring the total number of board members to 17 until HP’s next Annual Meeting of Stockholders in March, at which time the size of the board is expected to be reduced to 13 members.

The new directors are Shumeet Banerji, chief executive officer of Booz & Company; Gary Reiner, former chief information officer of General Electric Company and a current special advisor to private equity firm General Atlantic; Patricia Russo, former chief executive officer of Alcatel-Lucent; Dominique Senequier, chief executive officer of AXA Private Equity; and Meg Whitman, former president and chief executive officer of eBay Inc. The five new directors also will stand for re-election at HP’s next Annual Meeting of Stockholders in March.

In addition, HP announced that incumbent directors Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Robert Ryan and Lucille Salhany are not standing for re-election at the company’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

“The addition of these new directors will further diversify the outstanding talents and wide-ranging experience that our directors already bring to HP,” said Raymond J. Lane, non-executive chairman of the board of directors, HP. “Each is a widely respected and deeply experienced business leader, and together they will provide our board and management team with new insight and perspectives relating to HP’s business and the rapidly changing technology industry.”

Lane discussed the new directors’ backgrounds: “Shumeet Banerji is a respected strategic adviser and will bring to the HP board international, financial, operational and management experience and a true understanding of the issues facing companies and governments in both mature and emerging markets around the world. Gary Reiner will be an important voice of the customer on our board, thanks to his deep insight into how IT can help global companies succeed and his decades of experience driving corporate strategy, information technology and best practices across complex organizations.

“Pat Russo is an experienced executive with extensive global business experience, a broad understanding of the tech industry, and strong management, operations and governance skills. Dominique Senequier is a highly regarded and influential financier who brings broad international perspective, strong financial acumen and a keen focus on long-term performance. Meg Whitman is a true visionary and thought leader who brings to the HP board unique experience in developing transformative business models, building global brands and driving sustained growth and expansion.”

“I am confident that HP’s stockholders, customers and employees will benefit from all of their talents and ideas, and I look forward to working closely with the entire board and management team as we pursue the exciting opportunities in front of us,” Lane concluded.

About Shumeet Banerji

Shumeet Banerji, 51, is chief executive officer of Booz & Company, a global management consulting firm. Most recently, he has focused on counseling government ministries and financial services institutions on the impact of changing demographics around the globe. Banerji joined Booz Allen Hamilton in 1993 and has served clients in both the public and private sector. Earlier in his career, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Banerji, who is based in London, earned a Ph.D. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. and MBA from Delhi University.

About Gary Reiner

Gary Reiner, 56, serves as a special advisor to private equity firm General Atlantic, providing strategic counsel to the firm and the companies it partners with worldwide. During his career at GE, he served as senior vice president and chief information officer, head of GE Information Services, and as vice president, Corporate Business Development. Reiner’s responsibilities included overseeing IT, operations, sourcing, mergers and acquisitions and quality for the company’s global operations, including GE’s renowned Six Sigma quality initiative. Earlier in his career, Reiner was a partner at Boston Consulting Group, where he focused on strategic and process issues for high-technology businesses.

Reiner earned a B.A. in economics from Harvard and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About Patricia Russo

Patricia Russo, 58, is the former chief executive officer of Alcatel-Lucent, a global communication solutions provider. She also previously served as chairman and CEO of Lucent Technologies, president of Eastman Kodak and chairman of Avaya, which was spun off from Lucent. Earlier in her career, she held management positions at AT&T and IBM. Currently, Russo serves on the board of directors of General Motors, Merck & Co. and ALCOA, Inc.

Russo earned a B.A. in history from Georgetown University and completed Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

About Dominique Senequier

Dominique Senequier, 57, is chief executive officer of AXA Private Equity. She joined AXA Investment Managers in 1996 and founded the subsidiary AXA Private Equity that same year. Senequier is a member of the Institut des Actuaries Français (French Actuarial Institute) and a non-voting member of the supervisory board of Schneider Electric SA. Prior to joining AXA Investment Managers, she created and developed the subsidiary “GAN Participations” at GAN, an insurance firm.

Senequier is a graduate of École Polytechnique and holds a DEA (post-graduate degree) in banking and monetary economics from the University of Sorbonne, Paris.

About Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman, 54, is best known for her 10-year tenure as president and CEO of eBay Inc., a global ecommerce and payments company. She ran the company from 1998 to 2008. Prior to working for eBay, she held management positions at Bain & Company, the Stride Rite Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, Procter & Gamble Co., FTD and Hasbro. She also is a former board member of the eBay Foundation, Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks SKG, having resigned in 2009 in preparation for her California gubernatorial bid. Whitman became the third woman in a 20-year period to run for the office and won the Republican primary in 2010.

Whitman was born on Long Island, N.Y. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University in 1977. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979.

Four directors are not standing for re-election

“Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Bob Ryan and Lucille Salhany have offered invaluable service to HP over many years, and we are deeply grateful for their insights, counsel and commitment to HP’s business,” said Lane. “These directors worked tirelessly and effectively to navigate HP through a difficult leadership change in the last six months.

“As a recent addition to HP’s board, I have been incredibly impressed by Joel, John, Bob and Lucille’s experience and talents. I know the entire board of directors joins me in thanking each of these directors for their many contributions towards the long-term success of HP.”

Ryan, the former lead independent director of the board, said, “It has been a great privilege to serve on the HP board and see this outstanding company build on its legacy as a technology leader and innovator. HP is well-positioned to drive – and profit from – the changes under way across the technology industry, and I am confident that, with Léo as CEO and Ray as chairman, HP has a strong leadership team in place to continue moving the company forward.”

The board plans to nominate the following current directors to stand for re-election at the Annual Meeting of Stockholders:

Raymond J. Lane

Non-executive Chairman of the HP board and Managing Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Marc L. Andreessen

Co-founder and a general partner of Andreessen Horowitz

Léo Apotheker

HP President and Chief Executive Officer

Lawrence T. Babbio, Jr.

Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus and former Vice Chairman and President of Verizon Communications

Sari M. Baldauf

Former Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Networks business group of Nokia Corporation

Rajiv L. Gupta

Senior Advisor to New Mountain Capital, LLC, and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rohm and Haas

John H. Hammergren

President, Chairman and CEO of McKesson Corporation

G. Kennedy Thompson

Executive Advisor to Aquiline Capital Partners LLC and former President and Chief Executive Officer of Wachovia Corporation

Word of a new probe comes in response to a shareholder lawsuit in federal court in California claiming that HP paid Hurd too much in severance when he left. In the meantime, both HP and the shareholders suing have asked the judge to put the case on hold until the investigation is complete.

Hurd says he wants to see a copy of the shareholder demand that led to the lawsuit, and will oppose the delay in the case until that happens. HP says that as a subject of the inquiry, Hurd isn’t entitled to see any of the documents in question.

In the Delaware case, Hurd’s lawyers argued that the original letters from Jodie Fisher, a onetime actress and a former HP contractor who accused Hurd of sexual harassment, shouldn’t be made public.

Hurd, you’ll recall, went on to become co-president of Oracle, after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison raked HP’s board over the coals for its handling of the incident. Ellison wasn’t alone, as former General Electric CEO Jack Welch later piled on.

The Dallas-based telecommunications company said Thursday it would now recognize gains and losses in the year in which they are incurred, using a practice called mark-to-market accounting, rather than spread them out over several years.

The accounting change clarifies one of the more volatile aspects of a large employer’s financial results, better tying performance to the current economic state. It would eliminate the “smoothing out” of gains and losses over several years. Under the old system, some of the pension-plan losses recorded during the stock market decline in 2008 would still be on the books for 2010.

AT&T joins a number of large U.S. corporations including Honeywell International, General Electric Co. and International Business Machines Corp. in revamping pension-accounting practices.

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Investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures.

Shopify has more than 10,000 stores actively selling products on its platform, which provides features such as custom themes to create a storefront, an iPhone app that helps track orders and easy integration with PayPal or credit cards. Competitors in the space include BigCommerce and Yahoo Merchant Solutions.

Tobias Lutke, Shopify’s CEO and co-founder, said the funding will help the company expand the team from 30 employees and add mobile capabilities to its products. Lutke says mobile phones are playing a huge role in this year’s holiday shopping season, and that they can do a lot more “cool stuff” going forward.

The Ottawa-based company was founded five years ago originally as an online storefront selling snowboards and other winter gear. Lutke said that’s when he realized how difficult it was to start an online store. Shopify has now shut down the storefront to focus on reselling the software it has built for itself. He hasn’t raised any money before because the company has been profitable to date.

Shopify is now processing more than $100 million in revenues, and beyond Angry Birds developer Rovio and DodoCase, it counts General Electric, Tesla Motors, Amnesty International and the Foo Fighters as customers. Lutke: “People are becoming extremely savvy about selling online. The time it takes to get up and running is always decreasing. It’s an amaizing thing.”

Aydin Senkut, founder and managing director of Felicis Ventures, said: “We have conviction that e-commerce is a key area, and some areas of e-commerce have not seen a lot of innovation…and I was blown away at how beautiful and practical Shopify is. They’ve been bootstrapping and have had a lot of traction. I was very impressed with the company.”

But there’s a catch: At the prices currently being discussed by Prima Cinema Inc., the start-up that is touting the service, those movies will reach only world’s the best-appointed living rooms.

Prima plans to charge customers a one-time fee of about $20,000 for a digital-delivery system and an additional $500 per film. The Los Angeles-based company has around $5 million in backing from the venture arm of Best Buy Co. and General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures, and hopes to start delivering movies to customers as soon as a year from now.

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Andrew Siegel–Yahoo’s head of corporate development, who is in charge of its mergers and acquisitions strategy–is leaving the company, according to sources.

The former General Electric exec, who came to the Internet giant just over a year ago, is well liked at Yahoo and also has been active in making the rounds in the tech scene in Silicon Valley.

Siegel’s exit is part of a long line of departures of top talent under the leadership of CEO Carol Bartz.

Siegel has made some very prescient moves on game-changing companies for Yahoo to purchase–including Yelp, Foursquare and Groupon–but Yahoo has not been able to land them for a variety of reasons.

In Foursquare’s case, the geolocation hot spot decided to remain independent and take more funding, after also talking to Facebook, and moneybags Google has hip checked Yahoo out of the running for social buying phenom Groupon.

Yelp, the reviews site that had unsuccessful talks with Google too, simply did not want to sell to Yahoo.

Both also were worried about Yahoo’s future prospects and its top management’s ability to turn the situation around, multiple sources confirm, as have other top start-ups that Siegel has been interested in.

And while he has bought some smaller companies for Yahoo–such as Citizen Sports and Associated Content–that’s been frustrating to Siegel, said sources.

Sources also noted that Siegel has also been commuting to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ from New York, where his family lives–also a factor in his decision to leave.

He apparently told his Yahoo bosses he was leaving just last week and the company has no replacement as yet.

Yahoo declined to comment about Siegel’s status.

The company, in a blog post, promised “a new world of apps available for TV,” including NBC’s CNBC Real-Time, an application that will allow Google TV users to track stocks and access news alongside business-news channel CNBC’s live broadcasts. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. (GE).

Google also said Amazon Video on Demand will give Google TV viewers instant access to more than 75,000 movies and TV shows for a fee, and video-streaming service Netflix Inc. (NFLX) also will be available.

Google TV, announced in May but not yet available, includes software that allows people to access the Internet and search for Web videos on their television screens, as well as search live TV listings. It is styled as platform for content companies and other partners to develop TV apps, just as Google’s Android and Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone have spawned marketplaces for cellphone apps.

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The Seattle retailer has in recent weeks and months proposed a Web-based subscription service to several major media companies, including General Electric Co.’s (GE) NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc. (TWX) and Viacom Inc. (VIA), among others, according to people with knowledge of the proposal.

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Competitors have complained that the combined powerhouse could stunt the Internet video industry’s growth.
During its eight-month review of the roughly $13.75 billion deal, the agency’s antitrust division has become interested in finding out whether Comcast and other cable and satellite giants are trying to lock up distribution rights to television programming on the Internet, which would block potential competition, according to people familiar with the matter.

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GE estimates China will spend $60 billion over the next decade to upgrade outdated infrastructure, using digital technology and other advanced equipment to make a “smart grid” that can distribute power more efficiently and flexibly. Other estimates put the spending as high as $100 billion over 10 years. The sums are comparable to estimates of what the U.S. will spend on similar improvements.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao elevated smart-grid construction to a national priority in March, when, for the first time, he mentioned it in his closely watched annual work report to China’s legislature. Officials say they want to finish the renovations by 2020.

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The Mountain View, Calif., company said in a Monday blog post that it invested in wind farms built by NextEra Energy Resources, a unit of FPL Group Inc. The wind turbines, made by General Electric Co. (GE), generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to serve more than 55,000 homes.

The investment marks a departure from Google’s initial approach to renewable energy, which focused on investing in early-stage renewable energy companies such as BrightSource Energy, eSolar and AltaRock, which are developing new solar, wind and geothermal power technologies.

Google said it is investing directly in energy projects to accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology, while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.

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GE, which owns 80 percent of NBC Universal, reached an agreement after its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, held face-to-face negotiations in Paris with Vivendi Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Lévy last week, the people said.

Spokeswomen from GE (GE) and Vivendi declined to comment.

If finalized, the Vivendi-GE agreement will clear the final major obstacle to a deal GE worked out weeks ago to give U.S. cable company Comcast (CMCSA) control over NBC Universal. The Comcast transaction would create one of the world’s largest media companies, but it always hinged on Vivendi selling its 20 percent stake to GE.

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Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions–former General Electric (GE) M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo (YHOO) CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with exactly no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings.

Another question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva–who has had the title Siegel has now posted on his LinkedIn profile–as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

In other words: Where the heck is Greg?

BoomTown was considering a search party–get it?–if Yahoo hadn’t outsourced that to Microsoft (MSFT). Thus, Plan B: Mrva milk cartons!

On Facebook, Mrva is still listed as being in the Yahoo network, although there was a report floated recently by Silicon Alley Insider that he was asked by Morse to leave his M&A job at Yahoo and find a new one at the company.

Whatever the situation–either Mrva running it with Siegel or being hipchecked out by him–helming M&A at Yahoo can’t be a fun job right now, given that the company has been looking to sell quite a few of its assets, including its Zimbra open-source email business, its personals unit, its HotJobs online classified business and many more to come, said sources.

In fact, in a recent post, BoomTown wrote: “Mrva’s new job title should be: VP of un-mergers and de-acquisitions.”

The effort to unload big swathes of Yahoo is part of an aim by new management to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position the company primarily as a consumer offering.

Mrva has been the main exec shopping Yahoo properties around, according to many sources, a job that will now apparently be Siegel’s.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said the company is also looking for acquisitions, mostly small, so perhaps there will be more to do for the company’s dealmakers than running an Internet garage sale.

I contacted Yahoo to find out what’s up with Siegel and Mrva, a well-liked exec in Silicon Valley, and also have reached out to him. When either responds with anything of note, I will update here.

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In the deal under consideration, Comcast would contribute assets and cash and receive 51 percent ownership of NBC Universal in a joint venture with GE, which would own the remainder, the person says. The deal would value the assets contributed by Comcast at about $6 billion. Comcast would also contribute between $4 billion and $6 billion in cash, the person said.

The deal is still far from finalized and could still fall apart, the person said.

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As I noted in a post last night, the Web site TheWrap.com yesterday asserted that Comcast had inked a deal to buy NBC Universal for $35 billion; Comcast said that was wrong, but didn’t deny being in talks.

This morning, the AP is reporting that two people familiar with the negotiations confirm talks for Comcast to acquire up to half of NBCU, including Vivendi’s stake.

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One company developing them is Enthiosys, a product consulting firm based in Mountain View, Calif. Its founder and chief executive, Luke Hohmann, recently led a workshop in Chicago for intellectual-property strategists from Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), AT&T (T), Accenture (ACN) and other companies.

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