At the Samsung press conference, the electronics giant showed off the S pen stylus that works with the Galaxy Note. Look, kids! It works just like pen and paper, Samsung says.

AT&T also announced earlier today the Samsung Exhilarate, a $50 eco-friendly LTE phone.

But let’s get to tablets: Samsung is now bringing the Galaxy 7.7-inch tab to Verizon Wireless. Samsung’s 7.7-inch tablet had already been announced for T-Mobile, but now it’s gone all LTE on Verizon’s network.

It’s got a 1280×800 AMOLED display, 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 16 gigabytes of onboard memory and both rear- and front-facing cameras, as well as HD video-capturing capabilities. It runs Android’s 3.2 Honeycomb operating system and has an HTML5 Web browser.

The company did not offer any more information on when the 7.7-inch tab would be available through Verizon (or how much it would cost), except to say that it would be “in the coming weeks.”

It’s worth noting that Samsung’s first tablet was a 7-inch device, followed by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 inch tablet.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

Samsung said today that it has shipped more than one million units of the Note, its stylus-bearing … phablet hybrid. This just two months after its U.K. launch.

Caveat: These are shipments into the channel we’re talking about here, not end sales to consumers. That said, Samsung says there is strong demand for the Note in France, Germany and Taiwan, and sources tell AllThingsD that the device actually sold out in Hong Kong during its first month at market. So, clearly, the device is resonating with a certain portion of the mobile market. In fact, Samsung has taken to calling the Note “a market creator.”

Question is, is that market large enough to sustain the Note? It certainly wasn’t big enough to sustain Dell’s Streak 5, a similar smartphone-tablet hybrid that was scrapped about a year after its debut.

Yahoo’s interim CEO Tim Morse penned another weekly email to staff at the Silicon Valley Internet giant today; the only one from the company’s leadership, which sent out two internal memos last week.

It’s below, and again addresses the swirl of news around Yahoo’s plans as part of its ongoing strategery over the company’s future.

“I know there was some more swirl out there this week,” wrote Morse. “You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.”

Well, not so much, which I will be weighing in on soon via an old-fangled thing called reporting, Tim!

Until then, here is the latest missive:

Short note from me today. Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to give a shout out to the Flickr team for their great work on their new mobile features. What they rolled out this week got rave reviews and tons of great buzz. We also had a nice Demos and Drinks event here in Sunnyvale that I was able to check out, so thanks to all the Yahoos involved in that.

Last but certainly not least, I want to say thank you to the teams that are working hard on Advertising Week. It kicks off on Monday, and we’ve got some big stuff in store, so stay tuned on that front.

I know there was some more swirl out there this week. You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.

Rest assured, when we have something to share, we will. In the meantime, please know how much the entire executive team appreciates your great work — and please keep it up!

Have a good weekend.

Tim

As these companies are wont to do in the middle of the night, Yahoo, SoftBank and the Alibaba Group have reached an agreement in their nasty dispute around the Alipay payments unit, and they are ready to talk about it.

Well, not Alibaba’s CEO Jack Ma (pictured here), Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz or SoftBank’s Masa Son, but their functionaries are all set to discuss the deal.

The issue has revolved around the spinning out of Alipay by the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, without the approval of large stakeholders Yahoo and Japan’s SoftBank, which the pair felt was a big no-no.

Much mishegas followed, but the trio has been hard at work on a settlement, which is here now.

Of course, had the three companies cooperated in the first place as joint owners and board members of Alibaba, this all would have been unnecessary.

5:48 am PT: The call starts without all kinds of regulatory info about what can and cannot be said, before being thrown to Yahoo CFO Tim Morse.

One interesting wrinkle is that SoftBank’s Ron Fisher cannot speak at all, due to some Japanese laws, which are unexplained. But, said Morse, he’s there to show his support.

Go, Ron!

Alibaba’s CFO Joe Tsai is up first to talk about the deal over Alipay, which he stresses does not really make much money now. As he says, it is “marginally profitable.”

Tsai walks through the facts that they have already outlined earlier today, including a variety of payments from Alipay to Alibaba, since — let’s be clear — it used to be part of Alibaba.

But Alibaba said it had to spin it out in order to get critical regulatory approvals from the Chinese government, which caused this mess.

Morse now comes on, noting the whole squabble really had “no direct impact” from a financial point of view on Yahoo or SoftBank at this time related to its Alibaba assets.

Well, shareholders of Yahoo might beg to differ, considering the huge hit the stock has taken due to the fight. Wall Street has long considered Yahoo’s Asian assets its most valuable part.

But Morse is pleased the complex agreement has finally been reached — I am guessing it was not easy to negotiate among three different countries with so much pressure.

5:59 am: Time for Q&A!

The first question is about more deets and also about the possibility of a liquidity event for Alibaba or its various units.

Tsai underscores that there might not be one or there might be one. In other words, the Chinese assets of Yahoo may or may not ever pay off.

The next question is about why Yahoo and SoftBank should have a cap on an asset they used to own 100 percent of. Good point!

Neither Morse or Tsai really answers the question, except for Tsai talking about how certain rules over foreign ownership of payment companies in China means it had to be like this.

“If you own 100 percent of the business that cannot operate, you own 100 percent of zero,” said Tsai.

Translation: That’s China, folks, so suck it up!

The next question is a promissory note, which Tsai says has value, even though it actually does not have value right now. China!

The analysts still are stuck on this fact that, under terms of the agreement, Yahoo will only get 37.5 percent of an IPO or other liquidity event, when it used to be owner of 100 percent of Alipay.

Good point: Will this happen to other Alibaba units, such as its Taobao commerce unit?

China is a good place to be, assures Tsai, which is cold comfort right now.

A lot of swirl around preferential terms in the deal for Alipay with Alibaba’s units, which seem to be the same as before. In other words, nothing has changed, except a lot of stock loss for Yahoo and less technical ownership of Alipay.

The Wall Street analysts on the line continue to be riveted to the idea of a liquidity event for Alipay and other Alibaba units, especially Taobao, and keep asking different versions of this question.

The last question is about more deets of the deal and new business ideas for Alibaba.

Tsai talks about a cloud-based system rolling out, for example.

The questioner moves to, you guessed it, a liquidity event.

“I don’t think we want to get into it at this point,” says Tsai.

Well, we do, but apparently Yahoo shareholders are not going to.

That said, the deal is finally settled, which has already given Yahoo shares a small bump today. And that’s not nothing.

Thus spake Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz:

“There sure are a lot of folks writing about us. There are some pretty incredible stories out there. I’m not letting it distract me, and you shouldn’t either.”

That’s from her Friday note to Yahoo employees ast week, sent to me many times, in the wake of more rumors of a variety of takeover plots emerged and more folks writing–including the all-the-late-news-that’s-fit-to-print New York Times, who seems to have just realized the Internet giant might be “adrift.”

Wrote the Times:

“The board of Yahoo, the ailing Web portal, hired Carol A. Bartz as chief executive to apply a little shock therapy.

Now, nearly two years later, the patient is still suffering from many of the same symptoms: a stagnant business, shrinking market share and a shortage of innovation.”

BoomTown had no idea whatsoever until the Times declared it so!

In any case, I much preferred Bartz’s sassy note to employees, in which she called herself “your fearless leader,” rather than from another recent note in which she described herself as writing from a foxhole.

Plus, this one had some news nuggets, such as:

That “Microsoft should be powering paid search in the U.S. and Canada by the end of this month, right on schedule.”

And that, “on Monday, we’re going Alpha in four countries on a totally new platform for global News,” dumping nine different News code bases “with ‘new’ News we can bring a new site up in a month.”

Of course, Bartz had to do a significant pretzel to manage her sunny assessment of the Yahoo homepage outage last week as a good thing.

“Several outlets indicated their surprise at such a major issue with one of the world’s largest Websites, noting the importance of Yahoo! to the daily lives of users and the fact that Yahoo! is never down,” she wrote.

Except it, um, was down.

Water under the bridge, it seems, as multiple sources tell me Bartz has been spending a lot of time reaching out to many outside Yahoo in a much friendlier manner, perhaps to tamp down the negative chatter about her salty demeanor.

She’ll likely be doing more of that quite publicly tomorrow, after the markets close, when she presumably will lead the call with investors after the company’s third-quarter earnings are announced.

Wall Street consensus is that Yahoo’s net income will rise to 15 cents a share from 13 cents a year ago and and revenues will be a flattish $1.13 billion.

Investors are likely to react badly to any lesser results, especially after Google’s stellar performance last week and the likely terrific one by Apple today.

Most of all, analysts will be especially attuned to how Bartz positions the recent spate of top exec departures and her vision for growth at the Silicon Valley icon.

There might be a clue in her note to Yahoos, which she ended with a well-used metaphor: “Let’s all look out the windshield, not the back window. That’s how we move forward.”

Personally, when driving, I always look at both, since I find it safer to always be able to see exactly what’s coming and what’s going.

.

Well, such a service exists. And it’s free. It’s called Evernote. I’ve been testing it for about a week on a multiplicity of computers and phones, and found that it works very well. Evernote is an excellent example of hybrid computing—using the “cloud” online to store data and perform tasks, while still taking advantage of the power and offline ability of local devices.

The idea behind Evernote is to be a sort of digital file cabinet. It allows you to create “notebooks” containing items called notes. These notes can range from text to photos to many kinds of attached files. You can locate, group and peruse them quickly, without having to dig through a computer’s file system. When I first reviewed the product, back in 2005, Evernote was a Windows-only, purely local information organizer. Now it’s a multi-platform, Internet-savvy, synchronized place for your ideas.

You can sign up for Evernote free at evernote.com, and use it entirely as a Web-based application, through any of the major Web browsers. But Evernote also comes in customized versions for a staggering array of devices: Windows and Macintosh computers, and for all the major smart phones, including the iPhone; the BlackBerry; phones running Google’s Android operating system; the latest Palm (PALM) phones; and Windows Mobile phones.

This week, Evernote, which is made by a small Silicon Valley company of the same name, is introducing a totally revamped Windows version that brings the platform into parity with the company’s previously more advanced Macintosh version.

I tested Evernote on two Macs and two Windows PCs, as well as an iPhone, a Palm Pre phone and the new Nexus One phone from Google (GOOG). I also tried free plug-ins the company offers that make it easy to insert all or part of a Web page or email into an Evernote note. These are available for the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome Web browsers, and for the Outlook email program. There are also system-wide Evernote buttons, which make capturing notes quicker, for Windows and the Mac.

I found Evernote works well for gathering ideas for business or personal projects, hobbies, or events you’re planning. When you see something or think of something you want to add, you can do it from whatever computer or phone is handy, and it will shortly appear on all of them.

Here are a few examples of how I used Evernote. I typed notes to myself on my desktops and laptops. I dictated a reminder to myself using the Evernote app on my iPhone. I used the Nexus One’s camera to take a picture of a person’s business card. I also copied text from Web pages, emails, and Word documents, and pasted them as notes. I even attached whole files to notes.

Within a few minutes, all of these notes were available on my personal Evernote Web site and from within all the Evernote apps on my computers and phones. I could search through them, email them, print them, group them with related items, or edit and annotate them.

Every Evernote user also gets a unique Evernote email address, and anything you email to that address goes into your repository as a new note. You also can use Twitter to get a note into Evernote.

The program has a few extra-cool features. If you create a note from a photo that includes printing, Evernote’s servers will try to figure out the words and make them searchable. This worked well in my tests with photos of business cards. And some smart-phone apps can save items directly into Evernote notes. One example I tested successfully was the Associated Press news app on the iPhone.

There are a few minor downsides to Evernote. While there’s no overall limit to the amount of data you can store, you can only upload 40 megabytes a month with the free version, attach certain types of files to notes, and you are forced to view ads. A premium version, which costs $5 a month, or $45 a year, increases the quota to 500 megabytes monthly, removes the ads, allows attaching any file type, and adds more features.

Also, I found the Evernote programs and apps, while similar, differ slightly depending on the capabilities of the platform they run on. Among the phone versions, for instance, the iPhone app is by far the most full-featured, and is currently the only one that can store whole notebooks offline, though the Android version is due to get that feature soon. Finally, the Evernote plug-in crashed Outlook on one of my Windows computers.

But, all in all, I found Evernote to be a valuable, easy-to-use tool that simplified my work and made good use of both the Internet and all my devices.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100120/evernote-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090529/bartzs-smash-note-to-ballmer-the-photographic-proof/ http://allthingsd.com/20090529/bartzs-smash-note-to-ballmer-the-photographic-proof/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 22:07:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14003

If a search and advertising partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft is ever struck, perhaps a little CEO-to-CEO note-passing should get some credit.

Yesterday, we wrote about the purple Post-It that Bartz passed to Ballmer via the makeup person in the D: All Things Digital Green Room.

Both Bartz and Ballmer were interviewed onstage at D7 this past week, and were asked about the talks, which ended yesterday in Carlsbad, Calif.

BoomTown also reported that Ballmer and Bartz, as well as key deal execs at both Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), had met in person once again about such a partnership at the conference.

Onstage, Ballmer dodged the question about meeting, joking about the sticky note Bartz had left for him.

That Post-It was stuck in a D7 program book that is kept by Dawn Griffith, our most excellent makeup person for all seven of the conferences.

Over the years, Griffith has asked all D7 speakers to sign programs next to their bios and Wall Street Journal-style dot drawings.

This year, Bartz and Ballmer shared a page in the book.

Bartz spoke on Wednesday morning and put the note below Ballmer’s picture, knowing he’d sign the program when getting his makeup done for his Thursday morning appearance.

And, not surprisingly for Bartz, it was a tough-love poem–although, thankfully, there is no cursing.

Here’s the image of the note (click on it once to make it larger), which reads:

“Steve,
Forget it
Won’t help
Ha
Carol”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090529/bartzs-smash-note-to-ballmer-the-photographic-proof/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090528/bartz-and-ballmer-meet-one-on-one-at-d7/ http://allthingsd.com/20090528/bartz-and-ballmer-meet-one-on-one-at-d7/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 19:00:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13957

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured here) had yet another one-on-one meeting yesterday evening at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., said several sources, in ongoing discussions about a search and advertising partnership.

In addition, top deal execs from both Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) continued their talks, including Yahoo U.S. head Hilary Schneider and top Microsoft digital exec Yusuf Mehdi.

BoomTown originally broke the news recently that the pair had met in person several months ago to jump-start talks that had waned under Yahoo’s previous management.

Both Bartz and Ballmer were interviewed onstage at D7, and were asked about the talks.

Ballmer dodged the question about meeting, joking about a Post-It note Bartz had left him in the D7 Green Room.

Bartz acknowledged that they had been talking, but was not specific.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090528/bartz-and-ballmer-meet-one-on-one-at-d7/feed/ 2