Last Thursday, both Facebook and Google seemed to suddenly have gaming announcements at the exact same time. Due to the scheduling snafu, much was made of the ongoing war between the pair of Silicon Valley giants.

Some had speculated that Facebook moved up its developers-only event in order to screw up the news that Google+ was adding games to the social network. Others surmised that Google had rushed its plans in order to steal Facebook’s thunder about its improvements.

Not so on either side, as it turns out, especially since these kinds of complex events — and with so many varied partners — are a little like herding cats. In other words, you need to do a lot of planning.

According to sources, Google had long planned to announce its offerings this week. And, as you can see from the email below, Facebook had its invites out a while back.

Thus, although it makes for a gripping narrative, we can put away the cutlasses at dawn.

For now.

Because the real substance of the competition — each trying to draw more users to its games, which has been big business on Facebook — remains in effect, as the pair continue to make moves into each others’ businesses going forward.

Also impacted by Google+ games: Apple.

As Tricia Duryee noted:

“Google’s move into videogames today should scare both Facebook and Apple, the two leading next-generation game platforms. In particular, what should be frightening is that Google is attempting to break today’s 30 percent cut that has become standard across both Facebook and Apple.”

That’s scary, for sure. But, at least when it comes to scheduling, sometimes an event is just an event.

Here’s the Facebook invite:

After he was appointed the new president of Microsoft’s important Server and Tools Division from his top engineering post at its come-from-behind Bing search unit, Satya Nadella now finds himself a leader of a business that also needs to keep catching up.

In a wide-ranging interview with BoomTown yesterday, Nadella talked about both his four-year stint at Bing and how he looked forward to the challenges of his new job.

Nadella got the nod, he said, after CEO Steve Ballmer went through a process of what was Microsoft’s “position in this business and a certain set [of ideas] about who should come in next.”

Interestingly, almost 20 years earlier, after working at Sun Microsystems, Nadella had started in the same area of Microsoft he will now lead.

Quoting the famous T.S. Eliot lines–”We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”–Nadella was an evangelist for Windows NT.

Eventually, his career brought him to the search arena, most recently to the most aggressive and expensive effort yet by Microsoft with Bing to try to eat into the massive and lucrative lead of Google.

“Those were fairly dark days for us,” noted Nadella, pointing out that any market share gains by Microsoft seemed impossible.

But, according to numerous surveys, it has been only uphill for Bing, especially after it started to really spend and also inked its search and online advertising deal with Yahoo, a partnership that Nadella was a key player in striking.

“We have, depending on which one you look at, grown five share points,” he said. “But behind that, I am most proud of launching a brand and a product that is delivering.”

Of the recent controversy in which Google accused Bing of lifting its results, Nadella borrows another quote, this time from Gandhi.

“‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,’” he said, noting Bing has always said it uses toolbar and other public user data. “The real debate is whether we are better.”

In any case, as Nadella sees it, the Bing experience has helped him prepare for his new job, noting he was in charge of building a 200,000-machine grid to serve the various online services at Microsoft.

“I have been CIO of a cloud platform where there are only two of that size,” he said. “So, I know what it is like to be a customer of those services.”

His hope for his next job, he said, is to make it the next-generation cloud platform, while also serving the needs of current customers with its current product.

‘We have a product and brand that are really foundational, but there is a threshold to it,” Nadella said. “We have to serve the needs of our existing customers, while also moving them to the cloud and building a next-generation offering.”

At Bing, he said, “every day is upside, since we came from so far behind, whereas in server and tools, we are the leader.”

Big competitors are different and the same too, when it comes to the cloud.

“Amazon has done a good job, but not in the same game as us,” said Nadella, ticking off Google, Oracle and VMware as rivals in different ways too. “It’s a nascent marketplace.”

Acquisitions, he said, will also be important. “We are always looking at what opportunities there are,” he said.

His overall view?

“I think that the challenge is how to operate in a space where we have a $15-plus-billion-dollar business and we know the paradigm is shifting and managing that shift where we are the disruptors and also the leaders at the same time.”

In other words, between a rock and a hard place, a place Nadella knows well from Bing.

“We can’t be stuck in current paradigm,” he said. “And we can’t shoot too far ahead of ourselves either.”

To get a good sense of his style as he moves from consumers to enterprise, here’s a video interview I did with Nadella back in mid-2009, just after the Microsoft search deal, and another I did this past summer at one of his regular search updates for the media.

In a blog post, Scott Guilfoyle, PayPal’s CTO, made the announcement and introduced the new head of the platform team, Matthew Mengerink.

But the departure of Bedier to Google is a big blow to PayPal, considering that both companies are racing to build next-generation payment platforms with a strong mobile component.

Bedier held the title of VP of platform and oversaw PayPal’s global payments platform, including mobile.

Mengerink is an internal replacement for the position, having worked at PayPal for 10 years. He previously led the PayPal architecture, infrastructure, payments development, core technologies, international development, customer quality and engineering services teams.

I will update when I hear more on what Bedier will be doing at Google.

Muglia is a 22-year Microsoft veteran who joined from Rolm in 1988 and was the first product manager for SQL Server. The news comes as Microsoft announced a preview of its next generation Enterprise Resource Planning, Dynamics AX 6. I’m told there’s no connection between the timing of the two.

Muglia would be the third division head to leave Microsoft in recent memory. The others are Stephen Elop who left to run Nokia last year, and Robbie Bach, who ran Microsoft’s entertainment division.

Muglia only been elevated to the job two years ago, nearly to the day. The Server and Tools Business is at $14.9 billion in annual revenue (fiscal 2010) Microsoft’s third largest division behind the Windows/Windows Live Division and and the Microsoft Business Division, both of which reported revenues north of $18 billion in 2010. On Muglia’s watch sales at STB grew more than 12 percent, and its operating margins went from 31 percent in 2008 to 37 percent in 2010. However, STB is nowhere near as profitable as the other two divisions: Business Division reported operating margins of 63 percent in 2010 while Windows saw 70 percent. Ballmer says in his memo that he’s eager to see stronger growth from STB.

Muglia is described by people I’ve talked to as a capable, well-respected manager who has over the years weathered the various corporate storms that have hit him, and usually come out on top. In 2002 for instance, he was replaced as the head of Microsoft’s .Net initiative. Reports at the time said he had requested the change out of frustration with the business model. By 2003 he was running the Windows Server Division and in 2005 was tapped to run STB as a senior vice president. He’s also been the key executive on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.

Ballmer’s memo to Microsoft employees is below.

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: STB – Building on Success, Moving Forward

There are very few $15B businesses in the software industry, and Microsoft is the only company that has built three of them. While Windows and Office are household words, our Server and Tools Business has quietly and steadily grown to be the unquestioned leader in server computing. We have driven the industry forward and established the foundation for an entire generation of business applications. We have overcome significant competitive challenges. Over the past twenty years, the outstanding leadership from everyone involved in STB has made it a $15B business today.

We are now ready to build on our success and move forward into the era of cloud computing. Once again, Microsoft and our STB team are defining the future of business computing. In October, we completed an incredibly successful PDC where we detailed the future of the cloud, outlining Platform as a Service and demonstrating the rapid advancement of Windows Azure.

The best time to think about change is when you are in a position of strength, and that’s where we are today with STB – leading the server business, successful with our developer tools, and poised to lead the rapidly emerging cloud future. Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB. This is simply recognition that all businesses go through cycles and need new and different talent to manage through those cycles. Bob has been a phenomenal partner throughout this process, and he and his leadership team have the right strategy in place.

In conjunction with this leadership change, Bob has decided to leave Microsoft this summer. He will continue to actively run STB as I conduct an internal and external search for the new leader. Bob will onboard the new leader and will also complete additional projects for me.

Bob has been a founder and leader of our server business from its earliest inception. He has led our Developer, Office, and Mobile Devices Divisions, and key parts of Windows NT and our Online Services business. I’ve worked with him in many capacities over the years and I’ve always appreciated his customer focus, technical depth, people leadership skills, and his positive energy. I want to thank Bob for his hard work, many accomplishments, and his focus on putting Microsoft first for 23 years.

We enter this new decade with STB providing the platform for today’s business solutions, and uniquely well-positioned to drive the future of cloud computing. I believe STB will continue to lead the industry with outstanding products and services for our customers and exceptional results for our business.

Thanks,
Steve

“The next generation of Windows is going to evolve on new hardware,” said Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky.

Before the demo though, Sinofsky traced the history of Windows, noting that from 1992 through Windows Vista the system requirements increased significantly from one version to the next. With Windows 7, though, Microsoft held most technical requirements steady and even lowered some of them.

As for the demo of the new stuff, Sinofsky began with a few caveats.

“We are calling this a technology demonstration,” he said, cautioning it wouldn’t show any new user face stuff or address pricing, timing, etc.

Sinofsky said it is too soon to talk about what requirements will be for the next version of Windows, but said the company is keenly aware of the need to have Windows running on ever-smaller devices.

Update 1:25 pm Microsoft has three demos and it is saving Windows on ARM for last. It’s starting by hoeing off some new PCs running on the current version of Windows–Windows 7.

The second demo will be an update of touch input on Microsoft’s tabletop Surface computer, and the final one will show Windows running on ARM.

1:33 pm The next-generation Surface is thinner and uses infrared cameras inside the screen’s pixels instead of a big projector, allowing for devices that can be either a tabletop or mounted vertically. It will be cheaper as well, though Microsoft doesn’t say how much the machines will cost. First-generation Surface machines had a price tag in the thousands of dollars.

On to the chip demos.

Microsoft starts by showing a development board using a next-generation Intel design running Quicken.

Okay, nod to Intel complete.

Next up is Office running on an ARM chip. This demo is on Microsoft Word and has it printing to an Epson printer. Microsoft shows demos of chips from Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments.

On the Nvidia machine, Microsoft shows hardware, accelerated browsing in IE9 running on a Tegra 2 processor, as well as running PowerPoint and an “Iron Man” movie preview.

1:48 pm Asked by Mobilized what work still needs to take place to make Windows on ARM a reality, Sinofsky says that it is the case that programs compiled for x86 processors won’t immediately run on ARM chips, but said the company isn’t ready to talk about the programming model. He does say it is unlikely Microsoft would use virtualization to make old programs, suggesting there will be some work for developers.

Sinfosky says that Microsoft has done the work to enable Windows to run and create a framework for third parties to build software and device drivers.

As for the timing, Sinofsky doesn’t give a date, but does reiterate that Microsoft these days aims to have a new release of Windows every 24 months to 36 months. “I don’t think it’s that long away,” he says. He notes some people want Windows releases faster while other large customers would rather have more time between releases. “Somewhere [around] 24 to 36 months between releases seems about right.”

The ARM compatibility will go into the next release of Windows, but Sinofsky takes time to point out to Mobilized that once again, he isn’t calling it Windows 8.

“This is the next generation of Windows,” he says.

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, AT&T executive Ralph de la Vega said that the company plans to release 20 4G devices this year both for the LTE network and for its current HSPA+ network.

De La Vega said just after that that the company will have devices on the Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 operating systems. (Update: 12:12 p.m.: While some in the audience, including Mobilized, heard an implication that there would be a 4G iPhone, an AT&T representative said De La Vega was only saying that the iPhone would be part of AT&T’s smartphone lineup and not suggesting a 4G version.)

Among the devices that will be on AT&T’s HSPA+ network is the Motorola Atrix 4G, a dual-core-powered Android phone from Motorola. The phone, which also packs 1GB of RAM, was launched by Sanjay Jha, CEO of newly split-off Motorola Mobility. one of the more interesting features is the phone’s optional “lap dock,” which allows the phone to power a small laptop capable of running a desktop version of the Firefox browser, among other programs.

AT&T will also have a new phone from HTC that will include a new version of the company’s Sense user interface and also connect to a new HTCSense.com Web portal.

“HTCSense.com makes your smartphone even smarter,” HTC CEO Peter Chou said, demonstrating a feature that lets you ring your phone when it is lost in the house or send a lost-and-found message to appear on a phone you left in a cab.

By building both HSPA+ and LTE networks, De la Vega said that the company will offer more speed and flexibility.

“More importantly, we will deliver an experience our competitors will not be able to match,” De la Vega said.

Palm: Stay the cool kid at Hewlett-Packard, so it’ll keep giving us lots of toys and not merge the smartphone acquisition into the PC unit. Release that tablet we’ve been working on and get our phones out of the clearance section of the stores. Remember to include “and printers” on all our slides when asking for more money.

Microsoft: We were going to copy and paste from last year’s resolutions, but it turns out we can’t copy and paste yet. So, that’s resolution No. 1. But since we’re going to solve that in January, we’ll move on to some other ambitions. Let’s see, open up to more developers, convince developers we’re worth their time, add features, support more networks.

Hmm. Last year’s “Try not to suck so much” is starting to seem easy by comparison.

Research in Motion: Learn some new ways of saying “Everything is great,” so it doesn’t get too repetitive in public speeches. Meanwhile, keep shaking things up behind the scenes. Buy a few more companies. Get some apps for that PlayBook. Find some more really big countries that the other people are ignoring and sell them a boatload of BlackBerrys.

Samsung: Keep going with this whole Galaxy thing–it worked to the tune of about 10 million phones this year. Try to convince Google phone king Andy Rubin to get a tattoo that reads “Galaxy S smartphone.” Remind the carriers that they really did agree to market all our phones that way.

HTC: Good thing we went Android a couple years back, but now we’re kind of glad we didn’t give up on Microsoft. Now, we have to figure out how to convince them to let us customize Windows Phone 7.

Motorola: Keep telling Verizon and Google that they’ve hurt our feelings and see what other perks we can get via guilt. Hey, it worked well with that tablet, didn’t it?

Apple: We are already perfect, so where do you go from there? Follow a magical 2010 with an even more magical 2011. How’s that?

What else? Let’s see. Okay, here’s one: Keep trashing smaller tablets until the day we come out with one.

Google: Release six or seven more versions of Android. Rename “Nexus Tablet You Should Have Made” to something less insulting to the hardware makers. Travel to foreign countries and discover more desserts, because we’re running out of code names for the next version of the tasty mobile operating system.

Nokia: Ship something to the U.S. so they’ll stop making fun of us and realize that we actually do make smartphones. Speaking of shipping, we really should ship some of these products we’ve been talking about for years. Most people are starting to think “Meego” is just a code word we use when we don’t know what to say.

Verizon: Stay on Steve Jobs’s good side. Print iPhone posters on the back of all those Droid billboards from last year. Release a whole bunch of LTE phones, so that the iPhone shelf isn’t lonely in the stores.

AT&T: Work on next-generation networks using that spectrum we picked up from Qualcomm. Talk about how we really love the other non-iPhone smartphones and actually mean it this year, because we have to.

T-Mobile: Keep talking about how we can just keep making the current network faster, while trying to convince the feds to let us have some more spectrum. Make more of those commercials making fun of AT&T. They are funny and it’s so much easier than having to deal with Catherine Zeta-Jones. And lots of Android, along with some tablets too.

Sprint: Find a way to remind people that, while we still don’t have an iPhone, we do have a next-generation network up and running, complete with phones and data devices. Add a 4G tablet or two to the mix. (Hey, Jon Rubinstein, is that PalmPad ready yet?)

Industry sources are telling the occasionally reliable DigiTimes that Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, will begin shipping the next-generation tablet within the next 100 days in preparation for a spring debut that will follow the launch of the original iPad by about a year. The iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.

At the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg says young people say email is too slow. They prefer Facebook or SMS.

Zuck: IM or SMS are much simpler, and people want lighter-weight things that they can use all over the place. So we need…a modern messaging system.

350 million people actively use messaging on Facebook, in part because it’s really simple. Four billion messages are sent per day. This is “private, private sharing.”

Next-generation messaging would be: seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short. (Those are a lot of synonyms, no?)

“This is not email. Email is one way that people will use this system, but it’s not even the primary way we think they will use it.”

Now a three-panel slide is up showing the key topics of the announcement–”seamless messaging,” “conversation history” and “social inbox.” Zuckerberg promises, “We can do some really good filtering for you to make sure you only see messages you really care about.”

Zuck brings on Andrew Bosworth to demo the product.

So this is actually a relaunch of the “Messages” tool. Not email-specific. Takes all correspondence between two friends and puts them in one place.

Everyone gets an @facebook.com email address with their username. “As much as we’re providing an email address, the system’s not email,” says Boz–more like instant messaging.

Boz uses convo about dinner plans as an example, with messaging across different platforms, including IM on Facebook, email, iPhone notifications, etc. The example restaurant is Piccino in San Francisco, where, fun fact, I was for a short time the Foursquare mayor. No longer though.

Integrates with Jabber, IMAP and one more I missed. (Sorry, first time liveblogging with this tool!)

Boz shows the history of Facebook messages with his girlfriend of the last four years. But doesn’t include their instant messages and other communication. Individual messages may not be profound, but collectively they provide a narrative about someone I care about, says Boz.

Facebook rebuilt infrastructure for this project, because it’s especially important that messages don’t get lost.

Instead of Cassandra (which FB created for email search and then open sourced), the company chose something new: HBase. They also used Haystack, Thrift, ZooKeeper and memcache.

This is the biggest engineering team Facebook has ever put together for a launch–15 people, Boz says.

Users have three categories: 1) Messages: Conversations with actual people. 2) Other: Email lists and the like. And 3) Junk.

The big idea is “picking up where you left off” no matter what device or medium.

This project has been in the works for the last 15 months.

Zuck: “This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as a part of it. We don’t expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say, I’m going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account and switch to Facebook.”

(Read: You silly press, we’re not competing with Gmail, we’re bigger than Gmail!)

Rolling out slowly over the next few months, starting with an invite system (ha! how Gmail!).

Oh, about IMAP: No support yet, so users can’t synch with other email systems. But Facebook wants to add later.

Interesting: Facebook messages won’t have subject lines. You just have a single messaging history with each person.

If you have been interacting with someone through email, then we’ll send replies back to email. You can indicate that you want a message to go directly to their phone. If you’re online, you get a message as an IM.

Boz: This is the end of “BRB” or “GTG.” Follows you wherever you go. (Sounds ominous when you say it like that.)

Question from audience: Will you add voice or video?

Zuck: For now only SMS, IM, email and FB messages–all are text. “We think this is a pretty big step by itself, and one we just wanted to take before we get started on the next set of things.”

Question from audience: Will you have contextual ads?

Zuck: Yes, ads work the same as on the rest of Facebook, but not targeted specific to content in a message.

Zuck on Gmail competition: “They have a great product. Email is still really important to a lot of people. If we build a great product that people want to use, then people will use it.”

Question from audience: Can users go off the record like in Gmail?

Boz: Users can delete any message.

Zuck: Off the record like in IM doesn’t make sense because users may be receiving messages in a different way than you send them. If someone gets something in email instead of IM it would be unnatural to have it off the record.

Question: How will this treat communication with people who are not on Facebook?

Boz: You can communicate with whoever you want to, and will have access to all that history of the conversation.

Zuck: If you’re not a part of the FB system and outside the social graph, your emails to FB users will go into “Other” folder to start off with, rather than the main. Once the recipient says you’re an important person, you’ll go into the main folder.

Question: What about silly joke emails from your mom? Can you filter those?

Zuck: There’s only one thread with every person.

Question: What about Facebook employee email addresses?

Zuck: “After a long discussion, the Farm Bureau has agreed to give us fb.com. And in the terms of that we have agreed not to sell farm subsidies.”

Facebook hasn’t mentioned this, but Microsoft just emailed to make sure people know they’re involved.

“As part of Facebook’s new messaging system: http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive/ –Microsoft is integrating the Office experience. Over the coming months, customers will be able to access and share Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents as attachments to their Facebook messages. Sharing new ideas, key points of inspiration and important information just got easier–even when the need to access or share that content strikes in the middle of your latest status update.”

Question: Can you fill in the blanks of associating email addresses with Facebook friends?

Boz: Not yet, but it’s imaginable.

(Uh-oh–how is this going to work when people have multiple contacts for themselves?)

Question: Storage?

“If you’re a good user, you have no concern. For people who try to find limits, they will find them.” Another ominous comment from Boz.

Okay, they’re cutting us off.

Here’s the Facebook blog post on the announcement.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Apple’s second-generation iPad will likely have a front-facing camera and a rear-facing camera as well, both to be supplied by digital-imaging outfit OmniVision. That’s the word from Detwiler Fenton, which claims the former will be VGA and the latter a 5MP camera based on OmniVision’s CMOS sensor.

Seems a reasonable prediction–after all, the next iteration of the iPad is expected to support the company’s FaceTime video chat technology, and OmniVision is responsible for the camera in the iPhone 4.

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

Turns out “personal reasons” was actually a euphemism for “I’m joining Palm.”

Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division. He’s to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he’ll lead Palm’s webOS engineering team.

Jaaksi is already a big fan, as evidenced by this observation on his blog back in May: “I used to use a Palm Pre a lot. What a great device. What an astounding software. I was so disappointed to see it not getting the traction it deserves. I really hope that now that it has found a new home @ HP it will rise again! And by the way, I have an extra sweet spot for Pre. It shares a lot of stuff with Maemo and N900.”

And Jaaksi isn’t Palm’s only new high-profile hire. Victoria Coleman, who recently headed up Samsung’s R&D Center in San Jose, is joining the company as well. Her task: To oversee platform and application development for next-generation versions of webOS.

Palm has also managed to pull some talent from within HP. Steven McArthur, the SVP of the company’s consumer applications business, is now heading up product marketing for Palm. Joining him are Enrique Lores, SVP of PSG worldwide sales, who is leading the Palm sales organization. Steve Manser, SVP of product development, oversees product management.

Quite the lineup, and one that bodes well for Palm’s webOS devices and its future at HP.

Jaaksi, who says he’s stepping down for personal reasons, will leave Nokia (NOK) in a couple of weeks. His departure follows those of Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia Mobile Solutions, and former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

How will this affect the launch of the first Nokia devices powered by MeeGo, the next-generation mobile OS the company is developing in partnership with Intel (INTC)? Not at all, says Nokia, which tells Engadget that an “update on MeeGo” will be announced before next year. Of course, as the gadget site aptly notes, there’s a hell of a lot of wiggle room in that phrase, and there are rumors circulating that the latest MeeGo build leaves a lot to be desired.

What an astonishing coincidence.

Motorola and Verizon Wireless have set a date for the debut of their next-generation Droid device: Wednesday, June 23, one day prior to the street date for release of Apple’s iPhone 4. Presiding over the launch: Verizon Wireless marketing chief John Stratton, Google (GOOG) VP of engineering Andy Rubin, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha, and–more interestingly–Adobe (ADBE) CEO Shantanu “Thoughts on Flash” Narayen (see invitation above; click to enlarge).

A bold move. But a potentially foolish one as well. If this year’s iPhone launch week is anything like those of years past, Apple (AAPL) will be sucking so much air out of the news cycle there may be little left for Verizon (VZ) and Motorola (MOT), even if this latest Droid is as promising as it sounds.

So says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who doesn’t expect the WWDC to have much in the way of big “Oh, One More Thing” moments. According to Munster, Apple will probably announce a fourth-generation iPhone at the conference, and the device will probably look a lot like the prototypes we saw earlier this spring.

“Consistent with recent media reports, we expect the new iPhone to feature a front-facing camera for video conferencing, along with a new, thinner design, an improved rear camera, and better battery life, with higher capacity (32GB/64GB) at the current $199/$299 price points,” Munster writes. “We expect the new version to be popular among current iPhone 3G owners (a 2 year-old device) with a significantly different design and feature set (unlike the 3GS).”

The company is also likely to offer an update on iPad sales. Since that device’s launch in April, Apple (AAPL) has announced iPad sales figures three times. WWDC would be a perfect time to do so again.

And Apple may offer a peek at the next version of Mac OS. “Apple may choose to provide a limited demo of the next version of Mac OS X (10.7) at WWDC,” Munster says.

“Software is a key differentiator for Apple but the Mac OS has not seen the same level of innovation as iPhone software in recent years,” the analyst adds. “With the next version of Mac OS X, we expect Apple to bring some of the same innovation to the Mac platform. Multi-touch technology, for example could be a key feature of Mac OS 10.7.”

But beyond these offerings, don’t expect much. As for rumors that WWDC will see the announcement of a Verizon (VZ) iPhone: Don’t pay them much heed.

Certainly, Munster doesn’t put much faith in them. “We believe it is unlikely that the next generation iPhone will be available at Verizon (or Sprint) at launch,” he says. “Rather, it is more likely that it remains exclusively available at AT&T in the US at launch.”

Sprint is leading this race. Its 4G network already is available in 32 cities, and the company plans to add at least 14 more by year end.

Now, Sprint (S) is preparing to release the first 4G-capable phone in the U.S. on June 4. I’ve been testing it for about a week in two cities: Baltimore, where Sprint has fully rolled out 4G, and Washington, D.C., where it is in the process of doing so.

This new phone, which also works on Sprint’s 3G network, is called the EVO 4G. It runs Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system and is built by HTC, based in Taiwan. It will cost $200 after a $100 mail-in rebate, with a two-year contract. Monthly fees will start at $80 for unlimited data and text messages, 450 talk minutes, and free calls to any mobile phone on any network. That’s a $10 hike from Sprint’s comparable plan for 3G phones.

My verdict: The HTC EVO 4G, when used on Sprint’s 4G network, offers the highest consistent downstream data speeds I have ever seen on a cellular network. It also has a number of other strong features: a front-facing camera for video chatting, and the ability to serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot (for an extra fee of $30 a month) that can simultaneously connect up to eight laptops or other devices to the Internet.

However, the data speeds I got in my tests weren’t spectacular, or anywhere close to the typical maximum Sprint claims, even in Baltimore, where the company’s 4G network is mature. And, when using 4G, the EVO’s battery runs down alarmingly fast. In my tests, it didn’t last through a full day with 4G turned on. The carrier, in fact, is thinking of advising users to turn off the 4G network access when they don’t think they need it, to save battery life. This undercuts the whole idea of faster cellular speeds.

Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G cellphone

In addition, the 4G advantage isn’t yet available in most cities. And the phone is heavy. Also, like other Android phones, it has limited storage for third-party apps—just 358 megabytes of total memory capacity of 9 gigabytes.

The phone itself is physically similar to T-Mobile’s HD2, a 3G phone also built by HTC. Like the HD2, it has a larger screen than on other smart phones—4.3 inches measured diagonally versus the more typical 3.5 or 3.7 inches. That makes the EVO, like the HD2, bulkier and heavier than most competitors.

However, in addition to its greater speed due to 4G, the EVO has several other features the HD2 lacks. Notably, it has that front-facing camera, the ability to connect to a big-screen TV using a modern connector port called HDMI, and a built-in kickstand to keep it upright for video viewing. In addition, because it runs Android and not the creaky Windows Mobile software used by the HD2, the EVO offers a much cleaner interface and many more available apps.

But the big deal about the EVO is that it can handle 4G, and I focused my tests on this.

Sprint claims that average users will see downstream data speeds of between 3 and 6 megabits per second on the EVO when 4G is in use. In my tests, in the heart of Baltimore’s popular Inner Harbor district, I averaged 3.4 mbps downstream over 4G, and just under 1 mbps upstream (the upstream speed is capped by Sprint at 1 mbps.) That downstream speed was double the EVO’s speed when using 3G, and the upstream speed was about triple.

In D.C., where the Sprint 4G network is still being completed and tuned, downstream streams varied widely, from under 1 mbps to a high of around 4 mbps.

The EVO was much faster than an iPhone using AT&T’s (T) network, which in Baltimore never got to even 1 mbps downstream and in D.C. averaged about 1.8 mbps. Verizon’s (VZ) new Droid Incredible, another HTC Android phone, did well in both cities, averaging about 2 mbps downstream, but that was still slower than the EVO.

Sprint explains I never saw anything close to its top claimed speed by pointing out that both cellular reception and test methods can vary greatly, and that my sample was small.

I tested other features successfully. I used the EVO to provide Internet connectivity to a Lenovo ThinkPad and an Apple (AAPL) MacBook laptop simultaneously, and both performed speedily. I also could view photos and videos on my TV by connecting the EVO with a special cable. But I couldn’t test the video-chatting feature because the necessary software wasn’t ready yet.

If you are hungry for more cellular data speed, and live in a current 4G Sprint city, the EVO may be just what you need, as long as you’re prepared for short battery life.

See a video with Walt Mossberg on Sprint’s new 4G phone at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Find all of Walt’s columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100519/sprint-4g-phone-hits-new-speeds-but-battery-lags/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100517/verizon-4g/ http://allthingsd.com/20100517/verizon-4g/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 21:24:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40805 The transition to next-generation long-term-evolution 4G data networks is moving along nicely, according to comments from Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam. During remarks made at the Reuters Global Technology Summit, McAdam said the company hopes to have as many as five 4G phones on its network by this time next year.

McAdam didn’t name the devices, but said they would most likely be manufactured by HTC, LG, Motorola (MOT), Samsung and Research in Motion (RIMM)–the usual suspects. Said McAdam: “I’d say all the major manufacturers we’re talking to today are making the transition to LTE.”

Incidentally, a few of those manufacturers will also build tablets for the carrier. And while they’ll run Google’s (GOOG) Android OS, Verizon (VZ) is still obviously hoping to ink an iPad deal with Apple (AAPL). “There’s no reason we couldn’t have an iPad,” said McAdam. Well, I can think of one.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100517/verizon-4g/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100517/digitimes-iphone-hd/ http://allthingsd.com/20100517/digitimes-iphone-hd/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 15:15:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40769
Market source reports from Taiwanese trade publications are usually best taken with a grain of salt, if not a salt lick, particularly when they’re about Apple. That said, Digitimes reports today that the company’s next-generation iPhone is interesting in its detail.

Industry sources tell the magazine that the device will feature a 960×640 pixel double-resolution display, enhanced with the same in-plane switching and fringe-field switching technology Apple used to improve viewing angle and readability in the iPad. The display panel itself is said to be 33 percent thinner than the one in its predecessors, presumably to allow for a larger battery.

Finally, the new iPhone is believed to run an A4 processor with 512MB of system RAM. In other words, it’s built with the same processor found in the iPad, but double the RAM. That would obviously make for an impressive smartphone, though it seems unlikely that Apple (AAPL) would outspec the iPad on that front so quickly after the latter’s debut.

Noticeably absent from the Digitimes report: Any mention of a front-facing camera for video chat. Odd, given what we’ve seen in the two prototype next-gen iPhones that have leaked to the wild.

In any event, Digitimes claims this iPhone will be announced on June 7 during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and that Apple, in preparation for the launch, has placed an astonishingly large order for them with its manufacturing partner, Foxconn. The company has requested 4.5 million units for June and another 19.5 million for the rest of 2010, for a total of 24 million units.

[Image credit: Taoviet.nv]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100517/digitimes-iphone-hd/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100512/another-iphone-4-prototype-spotted-in-vietnam/ http://allthingsd.com/20100512/another-iphone-4-prototype-spotted-in-vietnam/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 13:01:17 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=40342

If it’s true that Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally monitors the list of employees who have permission to take pre-release versions of the company’s products off campus, he might want to raise his standards for inclusion a bit. Because the company seems to have lost yet another next-generation iPhone prototype.

Photos of the intact device and a teardown were posted to the Vietnamese forum, Taoviet, yesterday, and they look genuine, though obviously, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

The prototype is nearly identical to the one lost in a German ale house and subsequently purchased by Gizmodo, though it’s a bit more polished. It features the same iPad-esque glass and aluminum design and a chip with an “APL0398″ designation–the same one found on the iPad’s A4 system-on-chip. It lacks the two screws so prominent on the Gizmodo device, which suggests it may be a near-final production model.

Again, there’s no way to be certain. But I imagine we’ll find out for sure during Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address, the traditional venue for introducing new iPhones.

Below, photos and video of the device.

[Image/video credit: Taoviet.nv]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100512/another-iphone-4-prototype-spotted-in-vietnam/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100420/qotd-278/ http://allthingsd.com/20100420/qotd-278/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:00:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=38680

“For the sake of the person who dropped it, I hope this is a devious marketing scheme. But I think it is unlikely. There is no one else on the planet whose shoes I would less like to be in it at the moment.”

– Technology forecaster Paul Saffo on Apple’s lost next-generation iPhone

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100420/qotd-278/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100408/ipad-so-far-by-the-numbers/ http://allthingsd.com/20100408/ipad-so-far-by-the-numbers/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:22:10 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=38408 At Apple’s (AAPL) event this morning to announce “the next generation of the most advanced mobile operating system in the world,” Steve Jobs took the stage promptly and fired off some impressive iPad numbers. As of today, the company has sold 450,000 iPads–300,000 on the first day. There have been 600,000 iBooks and 3.5 million iPad apps downloaded so far.

The App Store itself contains 185,000 apps, and to date, four billion have been downloaded.

There’ll be more on iPhone OS 4 and the App Store overall, but this isn’t a bad start.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100408/ipad-so-far-by-the-numbers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100309/cisco-unveils-next-generation-routing-system-to-speed-up-video-on-the-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20100309/cisco-unveils-next-generation-routing-system-to-speed-up-video-on-the-web/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:04:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25210

Cisco today announced a new version of its key routing system, which the networking giant said has a dozen times the traffic capacity of competitors and three times as much as the company’s previous version.

Cisco’s CEO John Chambers said the CRS-3 Carrier Routing System is aimed at the huge growth in video on the Internet, a trend that has also caused slowdowns.

Pankaj Patel, SVP and GM for the service provider business, claimed the system could in just a few minutes deliver all the movies ever made or allow everyone in China to make a video phone call at once.

It had better. The consumption of video online is growing like crazy and a constant bottleneck is likely without some relief.

“Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform.”

Along with Chambers and Patel, AT&T (T) Labs CEO and President Keith Cambron was on the call discussing deployment trials the telecom giant has been doing with the CRS-3.

CRS-3 (pictured here) will be available within the calendar year, said the Cisco execs on a press and analyst call this morning.

Cisco had said weeks ago that it was making “a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments.”

Significant? We’ll see, of course. For sure, it was a highly hyped announcement by Chambers.

But due to the speculation about what Cisco was unveiling, its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday. It dropped slightly this morning after the call.

Many others are getting into the high-speed act on the Web.

Google (GOOG) said recently that it is planning on building a superfast broadband service. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil its own ambitious plan to improve high-speed Internet access across the United States.

Cisco has gotten deep into the video business of late, both in pushing its networking gear and in acquiring a video device maker like Pure Digital, the company behind my beloved Flip digital camera.

It is also working on innovative holographic and television-based home telepresence technologies.

Here is a pair of Cisco videos about the CRS-3 and the official press release below them, with all the deets:

Cisco Introduces Foundation for Next-Generation Internet: The Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System

Advanced Platform Designed to Deliver New Wave of Video, Mobile and Data Center/Cloud Services

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 9, 2010–Cisco today announced a major advancement in Internet networking–the Cisco® CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS)–designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet and set the pace for the astonishing growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services through this decade and beyond.

With more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system, the Cisco CRS-3 is designed to transform the broadband communication and entertainment industry by accelerating the delivery of compelling new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace.

Overview:

The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, with up to 322 Terabits per second, which enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

The Cisco CRS-3 enables unified service delivery of Internet and cloud services with service intelligence spanning service provider Internet Protocol Next-Generation Networks (IP NGNs) and data center. The Cisco CRS-3 also provides unprecedented savings with investment protection for the nearly 5,000 Cisco CRS-1 deployed worldwide. Cisco’s cumulative investment in the Cisco CRS family is $1.6 billion, further underscoring the company’s commitment.

AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 in a successful completion of the world’s first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology, which took place in AT&T’s live network between New Orleans and Miami. The trial advances AT&T’s development of the next generation of backbone network technology that will support the network requirements for the growing number of advanced services offered by AT&T to consumer and business customers, both fixed and mobile.

The Cisco CRS-3 is currently in field trials, and its pricing starts at $90,000 U.S.

Highlights and Capabilities for the Next-Generation Internet:

Unmatched Scale: With a proven multi-chassis architecture, the Cisco CRS-3 can deliver up to 322 tbps of capacity, more than tripling the 92 tbps capacity of the Cisco CRS-1 and representing more than 12 times the capacity of any other core router in the industry.

Unique Core and Data Center/Cloud Services Intelligence: In addition to capacity requirements, the growths of mobile and video applications are creating new multidirectional traffic patterns with the increasing emergence of the data center cloud. The new Cisco Data Center Services System provides tight linkages between the Cisco CRS-3, Cisco Nexus family and Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) to enable unified service delivery of cloud services. This intelligence also includes carrier-grade IPv6 (CGv6) and core IP/MPLS technologies that permit new IP NGN architectural efficiencies required to keep pace with the rapidly growing cloud services market. Unique capabilities include:

Network Positioning System (NPS)–provides Layers 3 to 7 application information for best path to content, improving consumer and business experiences while reducing costs.

Cloud virtual private network (VPN) for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)-enables ‘pay-as-you-go’ for compute, storage and network resources by automating Cisco CRS-3 and Cisco Nexus Inter-Data center connections for Cisco UCS.

Unprecedented Savings: The Cisco CRS-3 offers dramatic operational expense savings and up to 60 percent savings on power consumption compared to competitive platforms. The Cisco CRS-3 also delivers significant capital expenditures savings and investment protection for existing Cisco CRS-1 customers. The new capabilities in the platform can be achieved by reusing the existing chassis, route processors, fans and power systems with the addition of new line cards and fabric. These upgrades can be performed in-service and be provided by Cisco Services to ensure a smooth transition.

Silicon Innovation: The Cisco CRS-3 is powered by the new Cisco QuantumFlow Array Processor, which unifies the combined power of six chips to work as one, enabling unprecedented levels of service capabilities and processing power. Making this implementation even more unique is its ability to deliver capabilities with a fraction of the power required by lesser performing chipsets. The Cisco QuantumFlow Array chipset was designed to provide the new system the ability to scale with the ever increasing demands being placed on the IP NGN by the many different applications and billions of devices being used by both businesses and consumers in the Zettabyte era.

Supporting Quotes:

Keith Cambron, president and CEO, AT&T Labs

“We are entering the next stage of global communication and entertainment services and applications, which requires a new set of advanced Internet networking technologies. AT&T’s network handled 40 percent more traffic in 2009 than it did in the previous year, and we continue to see this growth in 2010. Having leading edge experience in managing the largest global data network, we are pleased to continue our close working relationship with Cisco and its groundbreaking Cisco CRS-3 platform.”

Pankaj Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco

“The next generation Internet is upon us and we are confident that the Cisco CRS-3 will play a crucial role as service providers like AT&T deliver an exciting, new array of video, mobile, data center and cloud services. The Cisco CRS-3 is well positioned to carry on the tradition of the Cisco CRS-1, become the flagship router of the future and serves as the foundation for the world’s most intelligent and advanced broadband networks.”

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