It lasts all of 60 seconds, and depicts a boy — made up of individual atoms himself — encountering a single atom that he befriends and throws like a ball. He then bounces up and down on a tiny trampoline made up of atoms, then throws the original atom into the sky, where it erupts into a tiny commercial for the company that produced it: IBM.

What’s going on here is this: Scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, Calif., have figured out a way to precisely move and manipulate individual atoms. To do it they’re using a big piece of equipment called a scanning tunneling microscope that weighs two tons and operates at a temperature of minus 268 degrees Celsius (or 450.5 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, according to the Unit Convert widget on my Mac). In the world of physics and nanotechnology, this thing is a big deal and led the two IBM inventors to share the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986. (Here’s a video history about it.)

Using a computer, researchers used a tiny needle that moved along a surface of a postage-stamp sized bit of copper. The needle would draw within one nanometer (a billionth of a meter) of the individual atoms and thus “feel” them so it could then move them into place and shift them around frame by frame in order to make the stop-motion action happen. The film you’re about to see is made up of 242 such frames using not one but two of those scanning tunneling microscopes. The atoms have been magnified about 100 million times from their original size.

Before they tried animation, and in the tradition of humorous art that sometimes appears on the surface of individual computer chips, the folks at IBM experimented with illustrations made of atoms. Among them was a rendering of the Starship Enterprise from “Star Trek” that’s not much more than a single nanometer tall. (Pictured at right; click the image to make it bigger.) Before that, way back in 1989, the big brains at Big Blue were able to spell out the company name using 35 individual atoms of xenon.

So why is IBM using atoms to make crude animations? As has long been the case, everything inside computers is getting smaller all the time. According to Moore’s law — named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore — individual transistors on chips tend to shrink every 18 to 24 months. So does the amount of space needed to store individual bits of data. Right now, IBM says, it takes about a million atoms to do that, but it can see a trajectory leading to a point in the future to where that number can be reduced to 12 atoms. At that scale, the media to store information will be so compact that every movie ever made, including “A Boy And His Atom,” could be stored on a device the size of your iPhone. That means the ability to move and manipulate individual atoms with great precision will eventually come in handy.

“Steamboat Willie” it’s not, but here for the first time on public display, is IBM’s “A Boy And His Atom.”

And here is the obligatory “Making Of …” video that explains how and why the movie was made, including an interesting detail: What moving individual atoms sounds like.

Sources familiar with the negotiations tell AllThingsD that HP CEO Meg Whitman wants out of the $47 million, 15-year naming rights deal, which is scheduled to end in 2016. The move is part of a global reevaluation by HP of its marketing efforts and sponsorships. The change could be announced as early as this summer, in time for the 2013-14 hockey season.

Software giant SAP is said to be interested in taking over the naming rights. Its founder, former co-CEO and chairman of its supervisory board, Hasso Plattner, is the majority owner of the Sharks. Plattner, who ranks at No. 122 on the Forbes magazine list of global billionaires, with a net worth of $8.9 billion, recently bought out two other co-owners, the longtime Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Kevin Compton, and former VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos. Following that deal, Plattner’s stake in the team is said to be in the neighborhood of 90 percent.

HP spokesman Michael Thacker declined to comment, as did SAP spokesman James Dever.

A change in the arena’s naming rights would have to be approved by the San Jose city council. Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, had no immediate comment. Update, 4:50 PM PDT: I just received a statement from McGurk. See it below.

Scott Emmert, a spokesman for the San Jose Sharks, didn’t immediately return messages seeking a comment.

According to people familiar with the discussions, Plattner raised the issue of HP’s naming rights with Whitman directly during a routine meeting. HP is a significant SAP customer. Asked if HP intended to hold on to its naming rights through 2016 as the current agreement states, Whitman said, “Frankly, I’d like to get out of it.”

HP inherited the naming rights from Compaq, the computer company it acquired in 2002 for $25 billion. At the time, San Jose’s arena was known as The Compaq Center at San Jose. It has been known as the HP Pavilion at San Jose since late 2002. The rights are said to cost HP about $3.1 million a year.

As annual expenditures go, $3.1 million is pocket change for HP. While it doesn’t disclose marketing expenditures directly, those expenses fall under the “selling, general and administrative” (SG&A) line item on HP’s income statement, which in fiscal 2012 was $13.5 billion.

Still, since Whitman took over as CEO in 2011, marketing functions that had previously been run by HP’s disparate business units — the PC unit, the printer unit and so on — have been centralized under Chief Marketing Officer Marty Homlish.

Over the years, HP has become involved with hundreds, if not thousands, of events and programs that it sponsors as a way of raising the visibility of the HP brand. Those programs and sponsorships are now in the process of being systematically reevaluated, and many are being canceled outright.

The HP Pavilion name was given to the arena to align with the company’s main PC brand, known as Pavilion. But with personal computer sales in rapid decline, attaching the brand name to a sporting facility is no longer seen as an effective use of marketing dollars, people familiar with HP’s thinking say. Money saved from canceled marketing efforts is being redirected into either new marketing efforts or into HP’s research and development budget.

HP will still have access to the arena and to San Jose Sharks games. Sources say the company intends to hold on to a single luxury box it owns to entertain customers. Oddly enough, the naming rights for the luxury suites belong to another tech company: They’re currently known as Citrix Suites.

Informally known as the Shark Tank, the arena seats 17,562 for hockey games, and more than 19,000 for concerts. It hosts as many as 190 events a year, including the SAP Open, a men’s tennis tournament. It was briefly the home court of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors during a period when the Oakland Coliseum was under reconstruction.

Update: Here’s the statement I just got from Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed:

“We’ve enjoyed a long and productive partnership with both the Sharks and HP, and we greatly appreciate their long-standing and valuable commitment to our community.

“The current agreement is scheduled to end in 2016, so we would be starting a process in the coming year or so to explore contract alternatives in the normal course of business.

“Because the Arena is an outstanding facility and Silicon Valley a unique location, we’re optimistic that we will be able to end up in position of mutual benefit for everyone, without speculating on any specific outcome.”

On Friday, San Jose officials will publicly review a plan, backed by airport management, for the construction of a private facility that would house jets belonging to Google Chief Executive Larry Page, his co-founder, Sergey Brin, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The city council is expected to vote on the project in the spring.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

While it is one of the largest consumer electronics and mobile companies in the world, Korea’s Samsung has a relatively quiet profile in Silicon Valley.

In fact, while it has had a longtime facility in San Jose for two decades, its execs are not well known to many except the top echelons of the tech sector here and Samsung’s interactions with the entrepreneurial culture have been decidedly low key.

No longer, it seems.

Besides a previously announced new 8.5-acre campus in Mountain View for its U.S. research and development center, slated for completion in 2014, sources said the company is close to signing a deal for a prominent venue in downtown Palo Alto that will house a start-up accelerator.

The location that the company is now negotiating is the second floor of the former Borders Books space on University Avenue. The historical property has a splashy movie marquee, since it used to house the Varsity Theatre.

It’s not quite Oppa Gangnam Style, it is a big move for Samsung.

While it is unclear if the new office will focus on making investments in start-ups or incubating its own innovation, sources said it will be aimed at linking Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other players more closely with Samsung.

Sources said the move is being spearheaded by a relatively new hire by Samsung: David Eun, who became its EVP to lead a new push to create more media offerings in December. Previous to Samsung, Eun has been an exec at both Google and AOL.

Eun is well known in the Valley already, but a new location that will focus Samsung’s digital efforts should raise the company’s profile with the digerati here.

Also on the docket to do that is Samsung’s other new major facility. In September, right in the middle of its high-profile patent trial with Apple, the company announced that Samsung Information Systems America, its U.S. R&D Center, would expand and relocate to a new campus.

“The R&D Center will provide a state-of-the-art campus that can support the current rapid growth in the organization, and also provide the infrastructure to support Samsung’s open innovation and university collaboration activities,” Samsung said in a press release at the time. “Construction is anticipated to start in the second half of 2013 on the company’s two new six-story class-A office buildings totaling approximately 385,000 sq. ft. and two 5-6 story parking structures, with occupancy expected in 2014.”

In other words, Apple: Samsung is now officially in the house in Silicon Valley.

If you’re looking for a surprise here, you won’t find it. As predicted, Apple delivered a smaller version of the tablet it first brought out in April 2010.

And, earlier this morning, Tim Cook announced that Apple had sold 100 million of the full-sized ones since then.

So why buy the new one? Apple’s messaging today comes down to two basic ideas:

• The iPad mini is just as good as the regular iPads.
• The iPad mini is much better than the smaller tablets you’ve seen from Amazon and Google.

Is that enough? Earlier in his presentation, Cook argued convincingly that consumers didn’t have much interest in rival tablets, boasting that 91 percent of all Web traffic on tablets comes from iPads. But, as we now know, Apple’s own executives think there’s value in a smaller tablet, even if Steve Jobs publicly disagreed.

Time to see what consumers think.

——————

We know that Apple is showing off a new iPad today. And we know it will be smaller and cheaper than its other models.

But while we obsess over the details that Tim Cook and company unveil at the California Theatre in San Jose this morning, it’s worth keeping the big picture in mind: How will Apple convince consumers to buy a smaller version of the thing they have already bought 84 million times?

There seems to be a pretty good business case for Apple here: Google and Amazon are making increasingly attractive mini tablets. And even if those gadgets don’t appear to be making much of a dent in iPad sales so far, there’s no reason to let them have the minipad market to themselves.

Plus, there’s the fact that Apple executives who aren’t Steve Jobs seem to think a small tablet is a good thing.

But that’s all behind-the-scenes stuff. For the past two years, Apple has been telling consumers that the tablet it makes is perfect for use at home, at work and on the road. So, what does a smaller version of the same thing have to offer?

We’ll get to hear Apple make its case very soon. Tune in below for live coverage. You can also watch the event stream in real time, as long as you have an Apple computer, Apple TV or iOS device.

Greetings! Typing at you live from San Jose. In theory, Apple event should kick off in 10 minutes.

9:53 am: Time to play “name that song.” Currently in rotation: Something that sounds like El DeBarge. Though pretty sure it isn’t.

9:54 am: Also have time to introduce my fellow ATD writers, who are also on hand to contribute live reports. Say hello to John “The Brow” Paczkowski, Bonnie “Boom Boom” Cha, and Adam Tow, who is so cool he doesn’t need a nickname.

(FYI, Adam is the guy who takes all the great photos you’re seeing. He’s also the guy who keeps the site running. Good guy to suck up to.)

9:56 am: Interesting. SoundHound works even with the din in here. So I can tell you we’re now listening to something called “It’s Time” by something called Imagine Dragons. (Sounds like Simple Minds, for you oldsters.)

10:00 am: And we’re on. Here’s Tim Cook. Loud applause.

10:01 am: Cook intro-ing. “Really exciting things to show you.”

Update time, beginning with iPhone.

Superlatives for iPhone 5 opening-weekend sales, which we’ve heard about.

Now a video of people buying phones at Apple stores.

Buying an iPhone 5 was very, very exciting. Even more so if you had a thumping, soaring soundtrack behind you as you made your purchase.

No ugly people bought iPhone 5s opening weekend.

10:04 am: Cook is back onstage.

Now recapping intro of iPod touch, nano. Shoutout to The Verge, which is apparently off the Apple shitlist.

Sold three million new iPod touches, nanos.

iOS 6 now on 200 million devices.

“Phenomenal!”

“Fastest upgrade rate” of any device “we’re aware of.”

More feature recaps.

125 million documents “in the Cloud.” Wonder if that includes music files.

300 billion iMessages in last year. [Applause] 28,000 per second.

160 million Game Center accounts. (I have one. Have never used it.)

70 million photos shared.

App store: Last month, 700,000 iOS apps. Now 275,000 iPad apps. Both numbers “growing,” Cook says.

New milestone: 35 billion apps downloaded.

“This is jaw-dropping.”

$6.5 billion paid out to developers. Someone back that math out, and you can figure out total app sales.

iBooks: 1.5 million titles available.

Cook is uptempo, selling hard this morning. Bezos-like.

New version of iBooks out today. “Really cool new reading option”: Continuous scrolling. A few “ahs” from the crowd.

New sharing feature with Facebook, Twitter.

Now supports Japanese, Chinese text.

“You’re going to love it.”

On to the Mac. Apple outgrew the PC market, 15 percent to 2 percent, in the last year. Been doing that for six years.

Because everyone everywhere says Mac is the best.

10:14 am: Going to continue innovating with Mac. So here’s Phil Schiller to talk about it. [Loud applause]

MacBook: 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display was perhaps the best we’ve made. Engadget, The Verge, Wired all praised us.

But No. 1-selling notebook, and Mac, is 13-inch MacBook Pro. “Just perfect for so many uses.”

So we’re going to “introduce something so much better.”

Here’s the 13-inch MacBook Pro. [Loud applause]

.75-inch thin. Look, it’s 20 percent thinner than the last model. At 3.5 pounds, it’s “almost a pound lighter” than the last one.

“Look how thin it is.”

Bye-bye, optical drive.

Retina display, like all of you said it would have.

2,560 by 1,660 pixels.

“Second-highest-resolution notebook display.” 15-inch Macbook is highest.

Schiller is trying to tell us that you’ll get a better image on your notebook than on your HDTV.

“Surfing the Web could be like a fine print magazine.”

Great for photographers. Lots of Retina-optimized apps.

“But there’s a lot more”: Better speakers, HD camera, etc.

On to the innards: “Everything about the new MacBook Pro has been reengineered from scratch.”

Chips: Intel Ivy Bridge, Intel HD Graphics.

“It is a fantastic computer.”

10:22 am: Meanwhile! Eagle-eyed John Paczkowski points out that on the right side of the stage, there appears to be something draped in black cloth on a black stand. If you squint and hope, you could imagine something like a big monitor under there …

10:23 am: Now an ad.

Starting pricing: MacBook Air, $999; MacBook Pro, $1,199; MacBook Pro w/Retina, $1,699.

“It is the best lineup of portables we have ever offered.”

10:25 am: New: Mac mini. “You knew there’d be something called ‘mini’ in this presentation.” [Applause]

Haven’t heard anyone talk about Mac mini in a very long time. New innards. Better chips, more storage, RAM. Entry-level is $599.

10:27 am: iMac. It’s “the best all-in-one computer in the industry.”

Remember the original iMac from 1998?

Schiller shows off something that looks like those “evolution of man” posters, showing iMacs over the years.

Ooohs and ahs for new super-thin iMac. Followed by loudest applause of morning.

Sustained applause.

Still clapping.

Schiller: “Stunning from every side.”

10:29 am: So there’s that mystery solved. It was a monitor under wraps over there. It just happens to have a computer built into it.

5mm-thin edge. Extends down to “the chin” of the device.

They used something called “friction stir welding” to put the device together.

It brings back the image of the old iMac, which now looks like a sad fatty hanging out with Louis C.K. at the Cinnabon.

10:32 am: Many more specs, explanations of how they made it so thin. For instance: “Plasma deposition process.”

Eight pounds lighter than old tubby iMac.

“There is a serious computer inside this thin design.”

New iMac cannot fly, nor can it turn water into wine.

New “Apple Fusion Drive” is available for both mini and iMac. 128GB flash. 1 terabyte or 3TB HDD. “Fused into a single volume.”

Basic idea: Fusion Drive figures out, on the fly, what stuff should go over to flash drive, which should be relegated to HDD. “You just use it, it works.”

Fusion Drive gets round of applause.

Entry level for new iMac: $1,299. More applause.

Shipping next month.

Next level up: $1,799. Those won’t ship till December.

Uses 50 percent less energy. “Perhaps the boldest new iMac designs we’ve ever created.”

10:38 am: Schiller off, Cook back.

“These products are really cool.”

Next up: iPad.

New stat: Two weeks ago, sold our 100-millionth iPad. Applause.

That’s in 2.5 years, remember. “Unprecedented for a new product in a new category.”

“This has attracted a fair amount of attention.” But no one is using rival tablets, Cook says: iPads account for 91 percent of tablet Web traffic.

Why are iPads killing it? “Turns out there is a simple reason for it. People love their iPads.”

Cook sings praises of existing iPad line.

So …

Wait for it …

Not there yet: Some education talk.

Students, teachers love the iPad. Here’s a testimonial from a school superintendent in Texas.

Refers to iBooks Author, introduced earlier this year. (Haven’t heard much about this since.)

New iPad textbooks so great they make you want to be a kid again. Now in 2,500 classrooms in the U.S.

Not just Big Three publishers, but little ones, too.

New version of iBooks Author. (Note that yesterday McGraw-Hill was offering executive for interview, post-event.)

Easier to update books, etc. Available today.

10:45 am: Time to talk up iPad in the office.

94 percent of Fortune 500 “testing or deploying iPad.”

“Just getting started …”

Still winding up: Newest iPad is awesome. “But we’re not taking our foot off the gas.”

10:47 am: Cook off, Schiller back.

Schiller: Fourth-generation iPad. “Amazing … it is a powerhouse.”

New A6X chip.

2x faster than last chip for CPU, for graphics. New “image signal processor,” etc.

Ten-hour battery life. Upgraded camera. LTE with “greatly expanded coverage.” Working with many new carriers, including Sprint.

New cables, connectors.

Retina display, of course. Comes in “both black and white.”

Starts at $499 for 16GB. $629 with cellular.

“So, what else can we do to help customers find even more uses for iPad …”

10:50 am: And here we go: iPad mini (or whatever they’re calling it). Loudest applause yet.

Yup, “iPad mini.”

“What can you do with iPad mini that you can’t do” with regular iPad? “This” — you can hold it in one hand.

Again, crucial here for Schiller, et al, to explain why you want one of these, not just to talk specs.

Then again, crowd already pumped.

Thin as a pencil, light as a pad of paper.

Screen size: It had to be smaller, but not too small, etc. iPad 2: 9.7-inch diagnoal, iPad mini, 7.9-inch. Both have same pixel count. So all software created for iPad already works on mini.

“Great for reading your email, responding to your email, surfing the Web.”

Great for magazines, books, HD phone calls. Great for all of your iWork apps. “It is so much fun” to play GarageBand on this.

Facebook shout-out.

Games: Real Racing 2.

No one else can say their apps work great on shrunken tablets.

Compares iPad mini side by side with Google’s Nexus 7, without calling it out by name.

Apple’s display is bigger — 7.9-inch to 7-inch. That’s 29.6 square inches, compared to 21.9. 35 percent larger. “That’s a huge difference.”

Shows off Web page for Guggenheim site, argues that, in practicality, it’s 49 percent bigger, once you strip out the Android “noise” around it. Flip it over, and it’s 67 percent.

Two messages so far: iPad mini is like iPad, but smaller. iPad mini is like Google’s Nexus, but better.

Shout-out to TripAdvisor. Did I also hear him name-check Pandora?

iPad mini’s innards better than iPad 2’s.

Better chip, 5MP iSight camera, LTE wireless, faster Wi-Fi.

Ten-hour battery life.

“Every inch an iPad.”

11:00 am: Here’s a video.

Jony Ive, of course.

This sounds like The Jam in the background. Wonder if that’s right.

This isn’t just a shrunken iPad, says Jony Ive. If we just shrunk it, you’d notice “loss.” This is not just a “reduction of the original.”

More spec talk.

(Apple isn’t arguing that there’s anything you can do with this — short of holding it one-handed — that you can’t already do with the devices it is already selling. And that alone may be enough for some people. But I assume that the price will be the real kicker here.)

11:05 am: Schiller back.

Comes with its own line of covers (optional).

Starts at 16GB. $329 for Wi-Fi only.

Still selling iPad 2 at $399.

Preorder starts Friday. W-Fi ships next week. Two weeks later, shipping Wi-Fi + cellular.

And here comes a TV ad.

Not a word. Very smart.

11:09 am: Schiller off, Cook on.

2012 wrap-up. “We told you earlier this year you would see some incredible innovation this year … we think we kept our promise.”

Sparing you recap of things we’re already heard about today. My hunch: No one more thing today. Hope I’m wrong!

“Yes, it has been an incredible year.”

“A truly prolific year of innovation for Apple.”

Shout-outs to Apple employees. “They dedicate a huge part of their lives to making the best products on Earth.”

Applause. Cook beams.

“These are the most talented and innovative people I know, and it is a privilege to work with them”

11:12 am: And that’s a wrap.
Closing music from Jack Black, via his new “Blunderbuss” album, which is excellent. [Correction: That's Jack White, of course. Thanks to reader RichardL for noting.]

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The verdict from the San Jose, Calif., federal jury came early Saturday morning South Korea time, a day after a Seoul court, ruling on the same case, came out with a judgment that gave Samsung its biggest victory since the two companies began their global legal battle 16 months ago.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

If anyone had any question what irony is exactly, consider this: Today is the one-year anniversary of the day Steve Jobs stepped down from his job as the charismatic and legendary leader of Apple, as well as the very moment that the company he co-founded has largely won an epic legal battle with Samsung over patent infringement.

The late Apple co-founder was particularly vocal at various times on the issue of copying innovations that he felt his company had pioneered.

That’s been especially true related to Google Android operating system that Samsung and many other device makers are using.

In a quote by Jobs from Walter Isaacson’s biography of him, he famously said:

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

And that has certainly been at the center of the landmark trial over who stole what in the aggressive race to dominate the market for popular smartphones and tablet devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Right now, the verdict from a California jury — who deliberated for less than 24 hours — is being read in a San Jose courtroom.

And, so far, it is largely favoring the Silicon Valley-based Apple over the South Korean consumer electronics giant on the wide-ranging patent infringement case.

As The Verge’s liveblog of the verdict noted: “Apple didn’t win everything — not by a long shot — but it won enough to make this a very important day.”

Indeed.

Those wins include patents related to touchscreen features, such as zooming, as well as on designs.

In addition, so far, Samsung has been ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

The jurors determined that Samsung violated six of seven patents and found that it willfully infringed in five instances. Also: The jury said that all seven of Apple’s patents were valid, which Samsung had contested.

The findings in the complex case are still being read in court, because it involves many patent infringement allegations on both sides related to dozens of devices.

Legions of lawyers for Apple and Samsung went back and forth on who invented what and whether it was a matter of copying or simple inspiration.

Samsung, naturally, said the various devices might be similar, but not the same. Apple begged to differ.

Jobs would have been in agreement, too, had he lived to see the verdict — he died of pancreatic cancer in October of last year, only months after stepping down.

But, in his resignation letter a year ago, he wrote about the importance of innovation:

“I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

Perhaps that’s hyperbolic. But let’s look at the facts: San Jose, the third-largest city in California, could use more efficient ways to communicate official messages with its constituents. And Nextdoor, a social network that bills itself as the private alternative to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, needs more ways of spreading to new users.

Which is why the marriage of the two makes sense. As of Tuesday, the city of San Jose can use Nextdoor to distribute information to the network. With the new hookup, local government can send out messages to all those San Jose residents on Nextdoor, regardless of the neighborhood in which they reside. Ideally, it will mostly contain information on things like utility shutdowns, volunteering opportunities, emergency preparedness — all typical messages that you’d expect from local governmental bodies.

It’s different from the way the network usually functions. Nextdoor members are limited to communication within their neighborhoods, or cordoned-off areas within each district of a city. The idea there is to foster localized discussion within a community, without expanding beyond a critical mass. Unlike the typical user, the city of San Jose will be able to send out messages to everyone at once.

Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia

It looks to be a smart pairing between private enterprise and city government. But it is also a broader strategy move for Nextdoor, a network whose virality is self-limited by its very nature. To keep in line with its message of extreme privacy, users can only sign up if they’ve verified their physical address, and even after that, they can’t cross over into interacting with people outside of their neighborhood. Existing users evangelizing the network to newcomers by word of mouth is effective, the company tells me, but it is also slow. So cozying up to local governments, then, is another method of distribution — have San Jose blanket-pitch the service to its residents, and Nextdoor gets a better chance at citywide adoption. And if it takes off in a handful of major cities, it’s easy to think it will spread to others quickly.

The network is still private by design; the city (and other constituents) can only see you if you decide to respond to one of its messages. And even if you do respond, your only viewable information is your first name, last initial and the neighborhood in which you live. The idea is to maintain a level of accountability to fight against spam and abuse, while keeping residents comfortable with the amount of information they’re sharing about themselves.

This is the direction CEO Nirav Tolia thinks we’re trending toward: Localized discussion facilitated through the Internet, and made easier through the mutual trust gained in accountability. “It’s conceivable that in the next 10 years, all of this discourse will move online,” Tolia told me in an interview. “I would like to think that Nextdoor will play a critical role in doing that with cities and local governments.” As of now, more than 60 different cities — most of them in California — are using the network for top-down communications to their residents.

To be sure, Nextdoor isn’t a panacea for governmental communications issues. For one, city government can’t rely solely on Nextdoor for issuing communitywide alerts and notifications, mostly because not everyone in the city is signed up to use the network. And the city is limited on how many messages it can send out per week — and that may be restricting in terms of getting all of its communications sent out.

But the fiscally enfeebled San Jose will take what it can get. Along with the rest of California, San Jose’s budget is in tatters. “We’re broke,” councilwoman Rose Herrera told me in an interview. “Any free tools like these are more than welcome.”

In spite of intense criticism against its patent infringement lawsuit in March, Yahoo filed additional claims against Facebook today.

“Today Yahoo! filed additional claims against Facebook in U.S. District Court in San Jose related to two additional patents on which Facebook infringes. Today’s filing underscores the breadth of Facebook’s violation of Yahoo!’s intellectual property,” said a Yahoo spokesperson in a statement. “As we have stated previously, Yahoo!’s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.”

Facebook had filed its own counterclaims against the Internet portal over various social networking patents and also has recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars for patents and licenses from both IBM and Microsoft to bolster its portfolio.

In its filing, Yahoo’s legal aces got all hot and bothered that Facebook did this, especially the part about handing over piles of dough to others (and not Yahoo).

“However, on information and belief, Facebook lacks a good faith basis for most, if not all, of its counterclaims, particularly those patents that it purchased from others,” read the filing. “All eight of these patents were purchased by Facebook in the past five months, and several of these patents were purchased (independent of any separate technology acquisition or merger) after Yahoo! filed its complaint in this action. On information and belief, many, if not all, of these patents were acquired by Facebook for purposes of retaliation against Yahoo! in this case.”

Uh, duh! (Also, not to be picky, but Yahoo also bought a lot of the patents they are asserting way back when from its acquisition of Overture and did not invent all these innovations, either.)

I am awaiting a response from Facebook, which will probably be along the lines of: Byte me.

[UPDATE: I was right -- here's the comment:

"We remain puzzled by Yahoo's erratic actions. We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously."

(Erratic, by the way, means desperate and pathetic in Facebook-speak.)]

Here is the latest filing:

Yahoo Reply to Counterclaims 4-27

In what is either the boldest gamble of its history or the most boneheaded, Yahoo has filed a massive patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook.

The attack by the Silicon Valley Internet icon against perhaps the most powerful consumer social networking site today — also based in tech’s heartland and also an important partner of Yahoo — is sure to be a controversial one, pitting Yahoo against a company that has surpassed it handily in recent years in regards to popularity among consumers.

“Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” Yahoo’s lawsuit reads, in part.

That includes, Yahoo alleges, Facebook’s popular News Feed, advertising methods, privacy settings and more. The company adds that Facebook has been “free riding” on Yahoo’s intellectual property and that royalty payments alone will not suffice.

So what does Yahoo want for this alleged free ride? Triple damages and to enjoin Facebook from operating by using said patents.

The 19-page lawsuit over 10 patents — related to advertising, privacy, customization, messaging and social networking — comes as Yahoo is seeking to right itself under new CEO Scott Thompson.

Multiple sources said he is primarily driving this new aggressiveness from Yahoo.

Since Yahoo told the New York Times that it was considering such a move last week, the issue has been widely debated within the company, with many top techies there opposed to it, due to the company’s longstanding ethos of using patents for defense rather than offense.

Thus, the decision to move was closely held, sources said, with only Thompson and legal chief Michael Callahan largely working on it.

Still, patent lawsuits have become ever more prevalent among tech companies, as they seek to battle for advantage in a rapidly changing competitive landscape. Apple, Google, Microsoft and others are involved in several legal actions, although they are largely related to mobile technology.

Yahoo’s lawsuit is the most prominent in the social networking arena, a sector that has seen a huge explosion of late. Its timing could not be worse for Facebook, since it is in a quiet period for its upcoming IPO, which is expected to value the company at close to $100 billion.

Yahoo has done this kind of thing before, of course, having wrangled with Google until right before it went public in 2004 over search patents from its Overture acquisition. The pair settled 10 days before the Google IPO, with Yahoo getting several million more shares of that stock.

Yahoo is shaking Facebook down for much more here and with much higher stakes for both companies. If successful, Yahoo could seriously damage Facebook’s initial public offering; if not, Yahoo will cement its growing reputation as a company with nothing to lose, whose value is built not on its current business, but on non-operating assets.

More importantly, at least initially, the move did nothing to boost Yahoo’s moribund shares — the stock was down about one percent to $14.49 in after-hours trading.

More to come, but here is the entire document below. The lawsuit has been filed in San Jose, Calif., federal court.

Lastly, the official PR back-and-forth:

Said Yahoo, in its statement:

“Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed. These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.”

Facebook, obviously, disagrees, and also threw in a jab about the lack of discussions over the issue between the pair:

“We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo’s decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”

I’ll admit to also being puzzled about the strategery here, but I am sure there will be much more to come.

Until then, read on:

Complaint

And here is what I wrote last week on the subject:

Apparently, Yahoo’s new motto: If you can’t beat ‘em — and it can’t — sue ‘em.

That would be Yahoo — the perpetual 98-pound weakling of the Internet these days — threatening powerful Facebook, which had cleanly bested it by attracting hordes of users with a plethora of popular products and services.

Yahoo has already lost its audience to Facebook, which was most recently followed by its frittering away a commanding lead in display advertising, too.

That would also be the Yahoo whose most recent success in improving its increasingly tenuous connections with customers was, in fact, by deeply integrating Facebook’s social hooks into its Web properties.

That would be the Yahoo which has failed time and again to innovate its own offerings so drastically over the years that it has now apparently decided that its first and best strategic move under Thompson’s rule is a shakedown.

Such a cynical move on rights Yahoo has long held seems more a play for the cheap seats of Wall Street, given that the company needs to look like it is doing everything it can to turn things around right now as it faces a proxy challenge.

First, it ended difficult talks with its Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, over selling back lucrative stakes there.

Now, according to sources, Yahoo’s Thompson has actually been trying to make very nice with activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — on-the-down-low chitchats that might have played a part of this latest unusual move.

At least Kodak had a good excuse. The once iconic camera company had recently been trying to take advantage of its trove of patents as a way to stave off declaring bankruptcy.

That didn’t work for Kodak, and it will also not work for Yahoo, whose only real option is to try to innovate its way out of the mess it has landed itself in.

You know, with good ideas.

Instead, the company’s leadership has opted for a road that could rain down trouble and paint Yahoo as a company bereft of talent to win any other way.

And while a range of intellectual property lawsuits have broken out all over the digital sector, involving Apple, Microsoft, Google and many others, such a strategy for Yahoo could be dangerous if it fails in its legal effort to take advantage of its 1,000-plus patents, including those related to search and advertising.

Others — including such tech luminaries as LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, who co-owns the seminal Six Degrees patent for constructing a networking database and system — hold a number of critical social networking patents, too, so who knows where this thing will go.

Nonetheless, Yahoo has decided to emulate those companies with one of the few valuable assets it might have, waging its little war, right as Facebook is in the midst of its initial public offering period.

Yahoo has done this before, of course, having wrangled with Google until right before it went public in 2004 over search patents from its Overture acquisition. The pair settled 10 days before the Google IPO, with Yahoo getting several million more shares of that stock (which it then, of course, sold too soon).

That certainly could happen here, with Yahoo managing to grab a chunk of Facebook’s pre-IPO stock.
That would mean that Yahoo’s most valuable asset would be those shares, as well as its stake in Asian companies it bought a while back for a bargain and now makes up a bulk of the company’s valuation.

As to Yahoo’s core business — investors consider it almost entirely worthless.

And let’s not forget: Facebook could also sue right back, which it very well might do. Or, perhaps, cut off agreeable ties that have aided Yahoo in recent years.

In other words, in poking Facebook, Yahoo might now learn what it is really like to be de-friended.

Last night, I did the unthinkable, and actually drove myself through rush hour traffic in Silicon Valley to go to an event in San Jose.

I did this for three good reasons.

First, it was to see Bill Maher’s “CrazyStupidPolitics: Live From Silicon Valley” show, which was being being broadcast live and exclusively on Yahoo Screen, the Internet giant’s video destination. The event launched the Yahoo Comedy Channel, which will offer premium original video from some top talent for free, underwritten by advertisers.

Second, Maher is really, really funny, and even better in stand-up than on his HBO cable show.

Third, some Yahoos always think I am too mean to the company and don’t focus on what it’s doing right.

To be fair, that’s because it has not been doing much right when it comes to stabilizing leadership, handling its longtime moribund board, and giving non-cat-wrangling direction to its talented pool of much-beleaguered employees.

Thus — with some sort of usually self-inflicted fire drill going on all the time — there is a lot for me to report on, from persistent attrition to declining metrics to the latest bickering with its Asian partners.

Which is why it was a pleasure to see the Maher event and then also watch it online, because it was done by Yahoo with the kind of beautiful ease that it used to roll out all the time from its media properties.

When I say pleasure, it is a major compliment, since making and presenting content on the Web has usually ended in pain. Google-owned YouTube, as successful as it is, still hurts my eyes when I watch it, and has not yet become the kind of environment that big brands would want to live in for a long time.

But, from its very first day, without a lot of fuss and noise, Yahoo has created and distributed some of the very best online content experiences from its undersung media units, whether it was Yahoo Finance or Yahoo Sports or Yahoo News.

While there were some notable misses — there was a strange original news show produced in Web 1.0 that was so bad it was good — Yahoo has always had a strong talent for media distribution, and has the huge audience to aim it at.

What has been a shame is the lessening focus the media side has gotten, despite its success over the many years, and even though many of its channels have long been No. 1 across the Web.

The often short shrift has been largely due to the faux struggle between whether Yahoo was a media company or a technology one. It has been an exhausting and toxic debate within Yahoo over the years, with no clear conclusion.

But here’s the truth: The Maher event showed that what Yahoo can do well is be a high-level, high-quality, highly selective distributor of media of all kinds to millions upon millions of users.

This has been and can still be — if properly organized, staffed and sold — a very good business for Yahoo, which has always treated it like some sideshow, rather than the main one.

I get that, of course — why be in a media business, when the pickings are so good in search, commerce, social … whatever?

Why? Well, because a terrific guide of all sorts of media experiences online is what Yahoo was from its very start, and what it has since tried not to be as definitively.

Having covered Yahoo from its very beginnings, it has been a lot like watching someone you think looks good in one outfit change into one ill-fitting and inappropriate get-up after the next in search of the right image.

But if the company only cared to take a look at how well and seemingly effortlessly it pulled off the Maher event, it would know immediately what it has always done well is what it should always be doing.

The Maher live offering was not fancy and it was not flashy and it did not have all kinds of the latest trends hanging all over it.

It was just good, well done and well worth a watch, whether in person or at home. And it was very, very funny.

It would be nice, then, if Yahoo learned to laugh like this much more often.

Here are some of the clips from Maher’s patter to enjoy:

The e-commerce giant (a term typically reserved for Amazon in these woods) is one of the larger examples companies from the Bay Area that are setting up shop here and looking to soak up some of the Northwest’s rich engineering talent.

Other companies with satellite offices in the Seattle area include Google, Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.

“I’m surprised I ended up at eBay, but the story is compelling,” said Ken Moss, who was hired in November to be eBay’s VP of managed marketplaces technology; Moss is GM of the Redmond office.

A long-time Microsoft employee whose claim to fame includes inventing the Pivot table in Excel, Moss more recently co-founded CrowdEye, a start-up focused on search technology and later on stock market prediction.

He said eBay’s dedication to the region is one of the biggest selling points for recruitment.

Most of the 75 employees that currently work there were hired over the past few months, and a small team has been here for seven years. Among the newbies I met were a number of Microsoft veterans who had been there for 12 to 15 years.

Moss says he will report directly to eBay’s CTO Mark Carges, which is “a signal to the whole company that diversified development is for real.”

“We are first-class citizens,” Moss said, referring to sometimes strained relationship between remote workers and a company’s headquarters.

Eric Brill, VP of eBay’s research labs, is also based in the Redmond office, and has been working part-time there since joining the company in 2009.

Moss said eBay will be looking to hire a range of technologists, from college graduates to senior leaders, including developers, testers, researchers, data miners and other positions.

While I was at the office on Tuesday, the mountains were peeking out from the clouds and were easy to spot from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the fourth floor. It was easy enough for everyone to have a window seat in the open-floor plan.

Although the employees just moved in on Monday, a sign outside the building already announced eBay’s presence. Inside, workers were busy putting the final touches on the space to make it feel like eBay. Primary colors of red, blue, yellow and green highlighted the office walls; with a bit of Seattle flair, conference rooms were named after Northwest tribes such as Puyallup and Quinault (and other names that might be difficult for San Jose-based employees to pronounce).

But missing were some of the perks that some recruits expect these day — no shuttles to and from work or fancy cafeterias, for instance. 

In fact, eBay has a long way to go to compare with what Google has done here. Since entering the market seven years ago, Google has hired more than 900 employees, spread across two locations, a spokesperson confirmed.

One office is in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood; the other is on the Eastside.

The two offices are geographically divided by Lake Washington, which can be crossed by one of two floating bridges — or by boat, if you are crafty enough. The traffic bottlenecks make for a horrendously notorious commute, so having two locations that straddle both sides is a huge perk — like having offices in both San Francisco and San Jose.

Because of Google’s size here, many of its perks are similar to its Mountain View headquarters, including free meals prepared by chefs, frozen-yogurt bars and other, mostly food-based, luxuries.

In eBay’s case, the new digs are located deep on the Eastside, a couple of miles past Microsoft in Redmond, and roughly 15 miles from Jeff Bezos’s empire in downtown Seattle. Recently, Amazon relocated its headquarters to a brand-new campus in South Lake Union, a neighborhood being revitalized by former Microsoft executive Paul Allen.

Other outside companies that have also established sizable tech centers here include Facebook and Zynga. A couple others have gained offices through acquisitions. Electronic Arts, for instance, now has a large office here, after acquiring PopCap; EMC now has big expansion plans here, after purchasing Isilon.

And Geekwire, a Seattle-based technology blog, is good at keeping an ongoing tally, including recent moves into the area by Jawbone and SweetLabs, a San Diego-based start-up, based by Intel Capital and Google Ventures.

Two years ago, Facebook opened an office in the heart of downtown Seattle. It plans to move soon to a 27,000-square-foot space that will have room for about 135 employees. The 70 or so engineers in the office today have worked on projects such as video calling, the Facebook iPad app and other big issues, such as security.

Last April, social game maker Zynga opened an office in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, hoping to absorb some of the game talent here, spawned from Xbox and Nintendo, and cloud-computing knowledge from Amazon. It has 50 employees today, but declined to say how many it planned to hire in the near future.

As with most of these companies, eBay believes it can find a diversity of talent here that can’t always be easy to hire in the Bay Area.

As a Seattle native, and having covered tech here for the past 12 years, including an eight-year stint at the Seattle Times, I might not be the most unbiased on the subject. But I’ve seen first-hand the breadth of talent here, from Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, T-Mobile and many others, including a strong start-up pool.

Despite that, the local tech community often suffers from an inferiority complex when it compares itself with the Bay Area, which is much larger. Still, it seems that Silicon Valley companies are finding a number of excuses to travel north to drink from the area’s plentiful tech waters.

The execs at Yahoo were huddled yesterday and also today, getting ready for its investor day tomorrow morning.

It’s probably a good idea, especially since the Silicon Valley Internet giant has to come up with a good answer to how it is settling the recent kerfuffle with Chinese partner Alibaba Group.

A settlement announcement over the spinoff of Alibaba’s Alipay payments unit would be the best thing Yahoo could deliver by tomorrow, of course.

All parties–Alibaba, Yahoo and Japan’s SoftBank–I spoke to said a resolution was still being worked on, but one assumes reaching one sooner than later would be a big coup for Yahoo.

Barring that, China will surely be Question No. 1–and likely Nos. 2 through 23–from about 200 Wall Street analysts and big shareholders gathered from 8 am to 2 pm at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose to hear about how Yahoo is doing in 2011.

Given that the China problem has kept Yahoo stock stuck in the $16 doldrums for weeks now, after it had seen some progress before that, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and the passel of top execs presenting–Ross Levinsohn, Blake Irving and Tim Morse, among others–will have to scratch that itchy itch first before moving on to other questions.

In the interests of making the day interesting–and because press is not invited–I am here to help those investors without a clue of what to ask.

Thus, my list, in no particular order:

* Now that a newish management structure is in place, what is the big vision for Yahoo going forward?

* Please explain in detail the issues raised in the recent earnings call with the search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft, and should the deal be re-negotiated?

* Do you need to make more cuts in staff–which seems to have creeped back up in size?

* Why is Yahoo still in search in such a significant and expensive way, especially since market share is declining?

* How is the display market faring and how does Yahoo plan to innovate its flagship advertising business?

* Engagement is a key metric these days, so how is Yahoo going to improve its customer relationships, besides saying it will?

* What new and innovative products are in the pipeline–and you may not trot out Livestand for the umpteenth time as an example, unless you want me to start calling it Not-Flipboard–and when will they launch?

* Has Yahoo considered other ownership options that would better reward long-suffering shareholders?

* And, oh yes, China. Let’s not forget about China.

(Although media is not invited to the investor confab, I will be covering it via a live stream Yahoo is offering–you didn’t think I would miss it?)

“We’ve probably exited 90 percent of our businesses,” says Mark Thompson, Fairchild’s chief executive, who recently shifted the company’s headquarters to San Jose, CA.

Not that the remaining products are exactly household words, except in households of electrical engineers. They still have esoteric names like MOSFETs, flip flops, latches, solid-state relays and interleaved PFC controllers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

It’s the latest development in a shareholder lawsuit against HP in which the plaintiffs have alleged that HP’s board of directors let Hurd walk out the door with too much money when he resigned following accusations of sexual harassment by a onetime contractor. They’re seeking an order that would require Hurd to disgorge the payments he received as his severance deal.

The judge, James Ware, ignored Hurd’s argument that he deserves to see documents relating to the matter that so far HP has refused to share, though the ruling doesn’t address whether he’ll ultimately get to see them or not. Hurd had objected to a new investigation, saying he would agree to it only if he were to get copies of the initial demand letter from shareholders that led to the lawsuit, as well as related documents that are under seal in a separate shareholder case on the same issue that’s before the Delaware Court of Chancery. Ware scheduled a hearing on March 20 to hear an update on the investigation.

Hurd resigned from HP in August after accusations about sexual harassment arose from Jodie Fisher, a onetime actress and former HP contractor. He was found not to have violated HP’s sexual harassment policy, but was found to have violated HP’s expense-reporting policy. After leaving HP, he went on to become co-president of Oracle, after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison criticized HP’s board of directors for its handling of the incident.

Sprint on Tuesday is officially announcing that its WiMax-based 4G service is available in San Francisco and San Jose, while AT&T said it is creating a Wi-Fi “hot zone” along San Francisco’s Embarcadero that spans the city’s waterfront. Subscribers to AT&T wireless or high-speed home Internet service can access the Wi-Fi areas for free.

AT&T is also creating more hot zones in New York, bringing improved data service to at least a small part of two major cities where the carrier is often criticized for poor service. The move offers an additional data option, but covers only a small area and won’t really help with dropped calls–a chief complaint among iPhone users in both places.

In New York, the company is expanding the Times Square hot zone launched earlier this year and adding additional ones near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It also has pilot Wi-Fi zones in Charlotte, N.C., and near Wrigley Field in Chicago. AT&T says more than 350,000 wireless connections have been made in the three trial areas so far.

“Our initial AT&T Wi-Fi hotzones have received great customer response and supported high data traffic,” AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan said in a statement. “The pilot demonstrated the clear benefits of having fast and readily-available Wi-Fi options for our customers and our network, and so we have decided to deploy hotzones in more locations.”

As for Sprint, it said WiMax service is now available in San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto and Oakland, joining 70 other markets across the country.

“The Bay Area is responsible for creating so much new technology and today we are bringing the power of 4G to our customers in that region who are hungry for fast mobile broadband,” Sprint 4G chief Matt Carter said in a statement.

Clearwire, which sells Wi-Max under the Clear brand and shares technology with Sprint, is also officially launching 4G service in the Bay Area on Tuesday.

“We grew in a tough time and added people in a really challenging environment,” said Mike Klayko, Chief Executive of Brocade, which increased revenue seven percent to $2.1 billion in its fiscal year ended in late October. He added that Brocade currently has another 325 open jobs in Silicon Valley. “We’re interviewing all the time,” he said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

One big surprise: The job market with the strongest growth in tech jobs–with a net gain of 900–was Oklahoma City. Don’t pack up the U-Haul just yet. Yes, it added the most technology jobs of the 60 cities in the survey, but it also had one of the smallest overall tech job pools, accounting for only 18,000 jobs, ranking 57th of the 60.

The New York statistical area, which includes New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had the largest pool of tech jobs at 317,000. It lost 8,700 jobs during the survey period, which as we all know was during the worst throes of the recession and the catastrophe that struck the data-driven financial industry. Fifty-three out of 60 cities saw job losses. Nationally, the group found that the tech industry lost about a quarter million jobs in 2009.

Statistically, the TechAmerica report considers San Francisco, Oakland and the San Jose areas as separate. But if you added them all together, tech jobs would outnumber New York at 394,000. San Jose led the nation in tech pay, at an average of $132,100 per year, and not surprisingly had the highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of the workforce: One job in three is tech-related.

The only markets to see job growth aside from Oklahoma City were places like Huntsville, Ala., and San Diego. You can take a look and see how different cities fared here.

And Arik Hesseldahl (pictured here) makes it four.

New reporters and bloggers for All Things Digital, that is.

The well-known tech writer–based in New York–will be covering the enterprise arena, as well as chips, for us.

As most regular readers know, this site has been expanding its staff, adding even more top-notch editorial might to our already terrific work.

That includes Ina Fried on mobile, Liz Gannes on social and Tricia Duryee on e-commerce.

All are key areas of tech coverage for ATD, obviously. But, as we thought about it, it was clear that there was not nearly enough cutting-edge tech journalism going on in the enterprise space.

It’s an important topic, involving a range of companies, such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and a spate of interesting start-ups. And, did you hear Google’s moving into enterprise?

While all the attention in the tech press is usually focused on the latest minor innovation from Facebook or some other Silicon Valley phenom, enterprise is also a hotbed of change and disruption, as businesses seek to understand and adapt to what digital technologies mean to them.

Thus, we turned to Arik, who has a long history covering a wide range of beats in tech.

He’s most recently been working for Bloomberg Businessweek, where for five years he covered it all: PCs, consumer electronics and semiconductors.

He was also the third person to write Businessweek.com’s popular “Byte of the Apple” column, and contributed to a companion blog of the same name.

Before joining Businessweek, Arik spent five years at Forbes.com, covering pretty much every aspect of tech, writing a daily column called “Ten O’Clock Tech,” a daily survey of a single new tech product that predated properties like Engadget and Gizmodo.

Before that, he cut his tech teeth learning all there was to know about the chip industry as a reporter for a now-defunct trade newspaper called Electronic News, which is notable for being the place where the phrase “Silicon Valley” was first used in print.

One Friday in March, 2000, in fact, he actually got to say “Stop the presses” to editors in San Jose, Calif., as the paper was being put to bed, with the dramatic news that AMD would the following Monday announce its first chip to run at the then-blistering speed of 1GHz.

The story was flashed to subscribers of a daily fax newsletter–quaint, no?–that night before tearing out that issue’s front page. Previously, chip speeds were measured in Megahertz.

Arik attended the University of Oregon, and is originally from that state. After a two-year stint reporting for a daily newspaper in Idaho, he moved to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia University.

He has been a New Yorker ever since. When not working, he can often be found catching a jazz show at the Village Vanguard.

And Arik Hesseldahl (pictured here) makes it four.

New reporters and bloggers for All Things Digital, that is.

The well-known tech writer–based in New York–will be covering the enterprise arena, as well as chips, for us.

As most regular readers know, this site has been expanding its staff, adding even more top-notch editorial might to our already terrific work.

That includes Ina Fried on mobile, Liz Gannes on social and Tricia Duryee on e-commerce.

All are key areas of tech coverage for ATD, obviously. But, as we thought about it, it was clear that there was not nearly enough cutting-edge tech journalism going on in the enterprise space.

It’s an important topic, involving a range of companies, such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and a spate of interesting start-ups. And, did you hear Google’s moving into enterprise?

While all the attention in the tech press is usually focused on the latest minor innovation from Facebook or some other Silicon Valley phenom, enterprise is also a hotbed of change and disruption, as businesses seek to understand and adapt to what digital technologies mean to them.

Thus, we turned to Arik, who has a long history covering a wide range of beats in tech.

He’s most recently been working for Bloomberg Businessweek, where for five years he covered it all: PCs, consumer electronics and semiconductors.

He was also the third person to write Businessweek.com’s popular “Byte of the Apple” column, and contributed to a companion blog of the same name.

Before joining Businessweek, Arik spent five years at Forbes.com, covering pretty much every aspect of tech, writing a daily column called “Ten O’Clock Tech,” a daily survey of a single new tech product that predated properties like Engadget and Gizmodo.

Before that, he cut his tech teeth learning all there was to know about the chip industry as a reporter for a now-defunct trade newspaper called Electronic News, which is notable for being the place where the phrase “Silicon Valley” was first used in print.

One Friday in March, 2000, in fact, he actually got to say “Stop the presses” to editors in San Jose, Calif., as the paper was being put to bed, with the dramatic news that AMD would the following Monday announce its first chip to run at the then-blistering speed of 1GHz.

The story was flashed to subscribers of a daily fax newsletter–quaint, no?–that night before tearing out that issue’s front page. Previously, chip speeds were measured in Megahertz.

Arik attended the University of Oregon, and is originally from that state. After a two-year stint reporting for a daily newspaper in Idaho, he moved to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia University.

He has been a New Yorker ever since. When not working, he can often be found catching a jazz show at the Village Vanguard.

Yesterday, BoomTown made a brief stop at what felt like an underground bunker in a hotel in San Francisco to see the Doobie Brothers.

Yes, the legendary band of indelible hit songs such as “Black Water” and “China Grove” and misspent youth way, way back in the day.

Except the group, which was founded in San Jose, Calif., in 1970, was performing at a Cisco (CSCO) television studio down south in Silicon Valley to launch its first album in a decade, called “World Gone Crazy.”

Cisco–founded in San Jose too, but in 1984–put on a 90-minute concert by the Doobie Brothers that was broadcast to 11 U.S. cities, helped by AT&T (T) and Marriott (MAR).

It was an odd event, because we were watching a concert on a big screen in what felt like a place more suited for a corporate retreat.

Still, in its ongoing attempt to push its telepresence technology into the consumer space, such a thing has become more typical for Cisco.

That’s why it will be interesting to see what the tech giant will announce at an event it is having on October 6.

The invite reads: “Come see a new Cisco consumer experience at an exclusive media event, hosted by Chairman and CEO John Chambers.”

What could the new consumer product be?

Perhaps Cisco has built its own version of Apple (AAPL) TV. Or perhaps a consumer-aimed home version of telepresence?

Until we all find out, here is a short video I did at the event yesterday:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100928/cisco-does-doobies-so-whats-next-in-the-consumer-space/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100924/doj-tech-companies-to-settle-hiring-probe/ http://allthingsd.com/20100924/doj-tech-companies-to-settle-hiring-probe/#comments Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:51:05 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=49319 The U.S. Department of Justice has reached an agreement with six major Silicon Valley companies over their employee recruiting practices and alleged no-poaching agreements. The companies named in the settlement: Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Intel (INTC), Adobe (ADBE), Intuit (INTU) and Pixar. Said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Molly Boast, “The agreements challenged here restrained competition for affected employees without any procompetitive justification.”

The official release below:

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REQUIRES SIX HIGH TECH COMPANIES TO STOP ENTERING INTO ANTICOMPETITIVE EMPLOYEE SOLICITATION AGREEMENTS

Settlement Preserves Competition for High Tech Employees

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice announced today that it has reached a settlement with six high technology companies–Adobe Systems Inc., Apple Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp., Intuit Inc. and Pixar–that prevents them from entering into no solicitation agreements for employees. The department said that the agreements eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees, and overall diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed a civil antitrust complaint today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, along with a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, the six companies entered into agreements that restrained competition between them for highly skilled employees. The agreements between Apple and Google, Apple and Adobe, Apple and Pixar and Google and Intel prevented the companies from directly soliciting each other’s employees. An agreement between Google and Intuit prevented Google from directly soliciting Intuit employees.

“The agreements challenged here restrained competition for affected employees without any procompetitive justification and distorted the competitive process,” said Molly S. Boast, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The proposed settlement resolves the department’s antitrust concerns with regard to these no solicitation agreements.”

In the high technology sector, there is a strong demand for employees with advanced or specialized skills, the department said. One of the principal means by which high tech companies recruit these types of employees is to solicit them directly from other companies in a process referred to as, “cold calling.” This form of competition, when unrestrained, results in better career opportunities, the department said.

According to the complaint, the companies engaged in a practice of agreeing not to cold call any employee at the other company. The complaint indicates that the agreements were formed and actively managed by senior executives of these companies.

The complaint alleges that the companies’ actions reduced their ability to compete for high tech workers and interfered with the proper functioning of the price-setting mechanism that otherwise would have prevailed in competition for employees. None of the agreements was limited by geography, job function, product group or time period. Thus, they were broader than reasonably necessary for any collaboration between the companies, the department said.

The department said in its complaint:

Beginning no later than 2006, Apple and Google executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Google on its internal “Do Not Call List,” which instructed employees not to directly solicit employees from the listed companies. Similarly, Google listed Apple among the companies that had special agreements with Google and were part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list;

Beginning no later than May 2005, senior Apple and Adobe executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Adobe on its internal “Do Not Call List” and similarly, Adobe included Apple in its internal list of “Companies that are off limits”;

Beginning no later than April 2007, Apple and Pixar executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. Apple placed Pixar on its internal “Do Not Call List” and senior executives at Pixar instructed human resources personnel to adhere to the agreement and maintain a paper trail;

Beginning no later than September 2007, Google and Intel executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees. In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google listed Intel among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list. Similarly, Intel instructed its human resources staff about the existence of the agreement; and

In June 2007, Google and Intuit executives agreed that Google would not cold call any Intuit employee. In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google also listed Intuit among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.

The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the companies from engaging in anticompetitive no solicitation agreements. Although the complaint alleges only that the companies agreed to ban cold calling, the proposed settlement more broadly prohibits the companies from entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees. The companies will also implement compliance measures tailored to these practices.

Today’s complaint arose out of a larger investigation by the Antitrust Division into employment practices by high tech firms. The division continues to investigate other similar no solicitation agreements.

Adobe Systems Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in San Jose, Calif., and 2009 revenues of nearly $3 billion. Apple Inc. is a California corporation with its principal place of business in Cupertino, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $42 billion. Google Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Mountain View, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $23 billion. Intel Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Santa Clara, Calif., and 2009 revenues of more than $35 billion. Intuit Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Mountain View, Calif., and 2009 revenues more than $3 billion. Pixar is a California corporation with its principal place of business in Emeryville, Calif.

The proposed settlement, along with the department’s competitive impact statement, will be published in The Federal Register, as required by the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act. Any person may submit written comments concerning the proposed settlement within 60 days of its publication to James J. Tierney, Chief, Networks & Technology Enforcement Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 Fifth Street N.W., Suite 7100, Washington D.C. 20530. At the conclusion of the 60-day comment period, the court may enter the final judgment upon a finding that it serves the public interest.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100924/doj-tech-companies-to-settle-hiring-probe/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091206/study-group-time-legal-briefs-for-ebay-craigslist-trial-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20091206/study-group-time-legal-briefs-for-ebay-craigslist-trial-tomorrow/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:09:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21534

The trial begins bright and early tomorrow morning in Delaware between online auction giant eBay and Web classified kingpin craigslist.

Since BoomTown is in a “Paper Chase” mood, I expect everyone to bone up on the legal issues of the Silicon Valley faceoff by reading the pretrial briefs below.

If not, as John Houseman playing Professor Charles Kingfield, said so memorably: “Here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.”

To review, here are the particulars of the case:

Fact: eBay holds a minority ownership position in craigslist (which was its first mistake, really).

Currently, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay (EBAY) owns less than 25 percent, although it had acquired about 28 percent in a deal in 2004.

That dilution is what’s at stake here, with eBay filing a lawsuit last year against the privately held craigslist for making that happen, via a “coercive plan,” by issuing more stock and thereby causing eBay to lose its board seat.

Of course, craiglist has put forth its own lawsuit in San Francisco, alleging that eBay stole confidential information to create a competing classified service called Kijiji, and other misdeeds.

First up tomorrow will be former eBay CEO Meg Whitman–who is running for the Republican nomination for California governor and who takes the stand to talk about the original deal with craiglist.

She will be followed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and others.

So, here are the prebriefs from both companies to consider:

Pretrial brief for craigslist:

craigslist pre-brief –

Pretrial brief for eBay:

eBay_PTB_redacted –

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