Bill Gates... Fer real this time

Palm's patent portfolio

http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-2000-webos-patents-and-how-they-could-reshape-everything-2011-8

" Now remember, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobile, mostly to get their hands on the 17,000 patents that Motorla held. Now, if you just price HP's patents at the same price, you come out with $1.48 billion. HP paid $1.7 billion for Palm. So that gets you pretty close to even.

But this VP told me that these patents are almost ALL for modern smartphones, while the Motorola patents included a lot of old stuff that isn't relevant anymore. So, this patent portfolio could get a premium of, say, 2x what the Motorola patents did. That gets you up close to $3 billion."

Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-is-the-carcass-of-palm-worth-2011-8

" right now!

Apple led a consortium to buy Nortel's patents for $4.5 billion. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola, largely based on the strength of its patent portfolio. Interdigital's market cap has spiked on rumors that its selling itself for its patents. Kodak's stock is spiking now that it wants to sell its patents.

The big question is how good are Palm's patents?

It was in the smartphone game from day one, so we would assume it has a pretty strong portfolio. It's the only smartphone company Apple hasn't sued, which suggests to us it's a pretty strong portfolio. Alternatively, Apple might not care about Palm, so it didn't bother.

But, when Palm was up for sale a year and a half ago, it ultimately ended up selling for just $1.2 billion to HP. At the time, Apple was interested in buying it for its IP, probably offering $600 million.

With the little patent valuation bubble going on right now, you'd have to think it would be willing to pay a little more."

Bill Gates (from Rage Reader)

All Things D: HP kept executives in the dark about webOS decision -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/21/all-things-d-hp-kept-executives-in-the-dark-about-webos-decisio/

"All Things D reported yesterday that key executives -- specifically Todd Bradley of the currently-in-limbo Personal Systems Group and former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein --weren't informed of the move until Sunday night."

HP will 'discontinue operations for webOS devices', may spin off Personal Systems Group -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/18/hp-will-discontinue-operations-for-webos-devices/

Timeline:
4.28.10 - HP buys Palm
4.28.10 - HP: 'We're doubling down on webOS,' Palm: 'That was the whole point'
7.1.10 - HP / Palm buyout officially complete -- get ready for webOS printers
2.9.11 - RIP,Palm: 1992 - 2011
2.9.11 - HP's 9.7-inch TouchPad: webOS 3.0 tablet with 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon, coming this summer
2.9.11 - HP Pre 3: 1.4GHz Qualcomm CPU, 3.6-inch WVGA,coming this summer (video)
3.9.11 - WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year,says CEO 6.29.11 - HP confirms it's in talks about licensing webOS,Samsung tipped as a possibility
7.11.11 - HP's Stephen DeWitt to lead webOS global business unit,Jon Rubinstein stepping aside
8.18.11 - HP unveils 64GB TouchPad, spurns America (and freedom)

Rubenstein: Out of the Frying Pan (Palm) and into the Fire (PSG)

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110711006653/en/HP-Drive-Innovation-Scale-Growth-webOS

July 11: "To support this next phase of growth, HP has appointed Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president and general manager of its webOS global business unit. Jon Rubinstein, the visionary behind webOS, will assume a product innovation role within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at HP."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/238482/death_of_hp_touchpad_changes_the_tablet_landscape.html

Aug 18: "WebOS could have been a contender. WebOS should have been a contender. HP had the financial resources, marketing muscle, and corporate presence to develop and promote WebOS and take the reins from RIM as the de facto mobile OS for business. Instead, it launched a half-baked tablet, scrambled around for seven weeks with no coherent marketing vision, and threw in the towel without even putting up a decent fight."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/238465/tablets_are_here_for_good_just_not_at_hp_companys_ceo_says.html

Aug 18: "HP's desktop and notebook revenue dropped 4 percent since last year's third-quarter report, and while the PSG division remains profitable, falling revenue and shrinking margins--coupled with the failure of HP's attempt to break into the tablet arms race--have likely soured the company on sinking any more resources into a division whose end is likely nigh.

Before HP made its stunning announcement, new sales figures showed that HP had slipped behind Apple in sales of laptops and tablets. During the quarter, Apple shipped 13.6 million units, 10 million of them iPads. That meant that Apple sold more iPads than HP did laptops (the company shipped 9.7 million notebooks in the period)."

Google buys Motorola so it can name itself "Motor-oogle" or "Google-rola"

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4218793/Google-s-Moto-bid--It-s-all-about-the-patents

"The big blow came last month when a consortium including Apple, Microsoft and Research in Motion acquired for $4.5 billion about 6,000 Nortel patents, many of them said to be fundamental wireless patents. Google quickly bought 1,000 patents from IBM, but it clearly thought the move was not enough.

With the Nortel patents, competitors could levy patent licensing fees of as much as $15 per Android handset, Drummond said in his blog. Press reports suggested Microsoft stood to make more on the sale of Android handsets than on its one Windows Mobile 7 software.

Google is paying an estimated 63 percent premium for Motorola, making it the biggest proposed acquisition of it history to date. Google even agreed to pay a whopping $2.5 billion fee if it walks away from the deal, according to the New York Times.

The all-cash deal uses about a quarter of Google's cash reserves. "

HP Touchpad sales low

http://allthingsd.com/20110816/ouchpad-best-buy-sitting-on-a-pile-of-unsold-hp-tablets/ 

"A second person who has seen Best Buy's TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as "consistent with what I've seen," and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be "charitable." This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We're also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives." 

Time to switch phones again

I finally gave up on the Palm Pre for corporate email. I really tried hard to make it work but eventually I just stopped using the phone altogether.

The phone wouldn't autoconnect to known wifi networks. What's worse, Half the time I found WiFi had turned itself off.

And, The phone couldn't stay connected to the outlook server even with a good wifi connection . My inbox was never up to date. I'd have to re-login to outlook to force a sync. Messages would get stuck in the outbox for days and there was no option to resend.  It was infuriating to find emails hadn't been sent when i thought they had been.

It all became a vicious cycle when my growing disuse of the phone meant it was more likely for the battery to be dead when i pulled it out.

So I was missing meetings and not responding to emails very fast. Not good.

So... In desperation I got a used Motorola Atrix off ebay. I wanted it for the fingerprint sensor, because y'all know how much I hate the 4 digit PIN.

The fingerprint sensor works pretty well, although half the time it takes more than one swipe. But it double-buzzes you when the swipe fails, so at least you can get into the phone without having to look at the screen.

And - since I'm using it without a sim card - it autoconnects to known wifi networks with no intervention, which is awesome because there's 4 different networks available to it between the home and work networks. So it's got connectivity as often as it possibly can. Thank you Motorola! The Pre could never do that.

Never loses contact with with exchange, never leaves mail in the outbox. Email just. plain. works.

Other advantages of the Atrix :

Better screen. The QHD screen, even tho its the much maligned pentile LED type , has higher contrast, more resolution, and less reflectivity outdoors than the HTC Inspire 's.

WWAN radio: speaker, mic, voice quality rock solid as I would expect from Motorola. Atrix calls were crap.

Music speaker: kicks ass. Great fidelity and loud. So loud I don't even need to plug into the cassette adapter in the car. As good as my old Blackberry 's, which was way ahead of its time.

Fast: opens apps and browser pages faster than any other device i've ever used.

Downsides :

4" screen seems really small after the Inspire 's humongous 4.3" display. Makes the keyboard smaller too.

Camera is just poor, and there's no excuse for this. Noisy sensor, terrible in low light, not sharp, low contrast, dull colors. Certainly the worst Android camera i've ever used (and I've used the Samsung Galaxy Tab, dell streak, htc inspire, htc incredible). Dudn't matter that it's 5MP. It's like going back to the Blackberry Bold's camera and that was only 2MP. 2009 called, they want their camera back.

Plus... After 6 months it just seemed like time for a new phone. :-)
.

Exclusive: Operation Shady RAT—Unprecedented Cyber-espionage Campaign and Intellectual-Property Bonanza

http://m.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/09/operation-shady-rat-201109

"The evolution of Shady rat's activity provides more circumstantial evidence of Chinese involvement in the hacks. The operation targeted a broad range of public-and private-sector organizations in almost every country in Southeast Asia—but none in China. And most of Shady rat's targets are known to be of interest to the People's Republic."

Reasons to love living in Japan « Notes From Tokyo

http://notesfromtokyo.com/2010/11/reasons-to-love-living-in-japan/

"61. The mind your own business mentality. If you're bleeding from the eyeballs in the middle of the road, this mentality can prove to be fatal. But if its 6:30 in the morning and you're obviously just coming home after a long night of partying dressed in sequins and spandex, stuck on a crowded train smelling of cigarettes and booze, the fact that everyone around ignores you because they don't want to embarrass you is actually kind of comforting. Japanese people are trained to strictly mind their own business, which is why in Tokyo there are so many weirdos that can get away with almost anything. In fact, it seems the stranger your behavior, the more people pretend you aren't there."