ferikoy.net

On Sunday, Microsoft announced a proposal that calls for a transaction, but would not involve the acquisition of all of Yahoo’s assets. That said, Microsoft further noted that it “reserves the right to reconsider” tossing in a new bid, depending on how discussions go with the Yahoo, Yahoo shareholders, and third parties, and within its own company ranks.

He noted it may make more sense for Microsoft to take a slice-and-dice approach in a transaction with Yahoo that falls short of a full-blown acquisition of the entire company.

“Microsoft’s new move helps Microsoft to keep the price within its comfort zone, avoid any possible push back at Alibaba (in which Yahoo is a major owner), and let Yahoo realize perhaps higher value for those assets that Microsoft was less interested in but still work with Microsoft,” Aggarwal said in his report.

Yahoo climbed as high as $28.33 a share in early morning trading, before settling back a bit to $27.93 per share, up nearly 1 percent, as the morning progressed. Yahoo, on Friday, closed at $27.66 a share.

UBS analysts Benjamin Schachter and Heather Bellini issued a research note Monday, noting that this latest twist may serve as a stepping stone for a friendly deal.

Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal considers a Microsoft-Yahoo combination imminent, valuing Yahoo’s search business at $21 billion, its display advertising at $14 billion, and its international investments at $9.25 billion.

Shares of Microsoft were down 1.33 percent to $29.59 in morning trading, while the broader markets were up across the board.

Shares of Yahoo received a boost in morning trading, following Microsoft’s announcement over the weekend that the two companies have re-entered talks.

“We believe that a core issue for Microsoft is to acquire Yahoo on friendly terms. A near-term deal could act as an intermediate step that would go a long way toward testing the waters,” the analysts stated in their research note.

“We believe that Microsoft has at least three options to structure Yahoo deal. One, buy Yahoo’s selective assets and pay nice valuation multiple for those assets. Two, buy entire Yahoo at mutually agreeable price and then spin off certain assets based on a predefined plan. Three, partnership in search,” Aggarwal said in a research note.

Update 10 a.m. PDT: Morning trading update and analyst report from Collins Stewart.

All of them, it should be noted, still sell HD DVD players and/or movie titles.

This is surely a smart way to build goodwill with your existing customers when a technology becomes obsolete. And what better way to lessen the sting of money lost than by offering the cool salve of the opportunity to spend more money?

(Credit:
Toshiba)

Lucky for some early adopters, the number of retailers lining up to ease your pain is growing: first Best Buy, then Wal-Mart, and now Amazon. The online retail giant is currently offering a $50 credit for every HD DVD player purchased on its site. The offer is good until April 9, 2009, for HD DVD players bought before February 23, when Toshiba said it would stop making the devices.

“New technologies don’t always work out as planned. We at Amazon.com value our customer relationships more than anything and would like to support customers who purchased these players by offering a credit good for $50 off any products sold by Amazon.com…In addition, we’d like to share some of our top offers on Blu-ray discs, HDTVs and other high-def technology…”

Best Buy launched a similar program last month, rewarding $50 to customers who purchased the doomed devices. Wal-Mart said Tuesday it is extending its return policy from 90 days to 6 months on HD DVD players.

Gizmodo has posted the e-mail sent to some Amazon customers on Tuesday. I’ve excerpted the best parts:

Amazon gives $50 credit to early HD DVD adopters.

Still reeling from the recently concluded format war?

Notably, HP isn’t trying to market this as a UMPC-like device that could work for everyone. It’s a wise move that could spare the Mini-Note PC from the same fate as HP’s previous attempts at this category (the Journada, the OmniBook), according to Shim. “We all have drawers full of handhelds that can attest to that. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of wiggle room in the market for this type of product from a mass-market standpoint.”

Who’ll use it?
For its part, HP is looking at two very specific niches of users for the Mini-Note–primary and secondary school students, and business travelers. Though Asus also insisted it was targeting kids with the Eee PC, HP’s brand name and more sophisticated configuration options give it much more room to actually reap a profit from these things, noted Rubin.

“The mass market (for these kinds of devices) isn’t as wide as a lot of folks think because of their limited functionality,” said Richard Shim, PC analyst for IDC. Though the feature set of small notebooks like the Mini-Note and its ilk will expand in the coming years, its best feature–the price–will lose its shine as mainstream notebook prices also continue to fall.

HP's Mini-Note has an 8.9-inch screen and weighs in at 2.6 pounds. (Click image for photo gallery.)

What’s more likely is this: It’s probably the first major fork in the road for this category of computing. NPD is predicting that many more manufacturers will throw their hat into this same ring sometime this year (Acer is rumored to be next). The devices will probably break along the lines of an Eee PC-type device, and the Mini-Note: low-cost, Linux-based Web companions versus tiny, full-featured Windows notebooks, according to Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group.

The biggest name in computing is joining the growing mini-notebook fray.

The key difference for a lot of users, however, will be the Mini-Note’s keyboard. It has essentially a full QWERTY keyboard, shrunk just 8 percent smaller than the traditional typing surface we’re used to.

Education is a niche in which HP doesn’t lead. The Palo Alto, Calif., PC maker shipped just over a million computers to U.S.-based K through 12 students last year, which puts them in third place behind Dell, with 2.7 million PCs in schools, and Apple with 1.2 million units, according to IDC.

“We like (market) share, but we’re more interested in profitable growth,” Forlenza said in an interview.

Key features
The Mini-Note is nice-looking and boasts some appealing features: it weighs in at 2.6 pounds, has an 8.9-inch screen with 1280×768 resolution, and comes with an optional Webcam. But the difference here is it could, if need be, actually function as a primary computer: the option of SUSE Linux with a 64GB solid-state drive or Windows XP or Vista with up to 160GB of hard drive space.

(Credit:
Hewlett-Packard)

Updated 6:15 AM PDT to reflect official announcement, as expected.

(Credit:
Hewlett-Packard)

HP touts the Mini-Note as "smaller and lighter than many math or science books."

Instead, it chose a combination of mature features (Wi-Fi, USB, a Via processor) with some nice bonuses, like a spill-proof keyboard, a shock-resistant hard drive, and a sleek aluminum case.

Though HP is flaunting the low-end $499 version of the Mini-Note, don’t be fooled. This is not a pricing competition with Asus. HP is the largest PC manufacturer in the world, and if it wanted to make the most inexpensive Windows machine out there, it likely could.

Like the three aforementioned machines, the Mini-Note is not aimed at the mass market. It starts on the low end at $499 for the Linux, SSD version, but a fully configured device with Vista can top out at $1,200.

HP might ship the most computers in the world, but it also recognized an opportunity they could be missing out on, according to Dan Forlenza, vice president and general manager of HP’s business notebooks division.

On low-cost laptops intended for students–like the XO from One Laptop Per Child, the Eee PC from Asus, and the Classmate PC from Intel–a major complaint and a key limitation is the twee keyboard, which poses a challenge for average adult-size fingers. That’s why the keyboard–and not the screen, the battery, or the motherboard–is driving the form factor of the Mini-Note. HP says it built the entire machine around the custom keyboard.

Now HP has just put its fairly large boot smack into the middle of Asus’ territory. Will it be able to steal the Eee PC’s thunder? It has a good chance. Though it’s slightly bigger than the Eee PC, the Mini-Note also has big brand-name backing, and slightly more flair for design than the Eee.

On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard announced its new Mini-Note PC, due to begin shipping next week. You might recognize it as the HP Compaq 2133, which was the internal HP name back when early images were leaked online.

HP’s entry into the trendy mini-notebook market is certainly the biggest name–so far. To get an idea of how popular these devices are of late, check out Amazon.com’s list of 10 most-purchased PCs. Three of Amazon’s top 10 notebooks are versions of the Eee PC from Asus. The rest is comprised of Sony Vaios and Apple MacBooks. That a traditional white box PC maker is in the same list as those two, which are pricier laptops with a legacy of good design is fairly amazing–but not entirely shocking. The Eee PC has been the talk of the gadget and tech world since its fall 2007 launch.

Adobe hopes Lightroom captures photo trends

Microsoft recently pulled an operating system switcharoo–a la the Folgers taste test or the Pepsi Challenge–on a focus group with the hopes of changing public perception of
Windows Vista. Now the company has posted some of the videos of people’s reactions online. But will the marketing scheme work? And separately, while in Redmond, reporter Ina Fried got an up-close look at an experimental research project, called Sphere. News intern Holly Jackson checks in with Ina on both those stories.

BT guns for Android and Skype with Ribbit buy

Taking Microsoft’s Sphere for a spin

Intel outside Apple’s pending MacBook launch?

Also in this podcast: after a 17-month antitrust saga, satellite radio companies Sirius and XM are now one; a new line of MacBooks expected to arrive soon might not include Intel’s Montevina chipset; IBM’s trying to reduce the number of “senior moments” people have (demo video embedded below); and Beijing considers emergency measures to improve its polluted air in time for the Olympics.

IBM mobile software helps ’senior moments’ (video below)

Sirius and XM close merger

Microsoft goes live with Mojave videos

Listen now:

‘Scrabulous’ disappears from Facebook

Download today’s podcast

Today’s stories:

In Beijing, blue skies prove hard to achieve

Gambino, Bebo’s global vice president of music and content, follows Bebo’s founders Michael and Xochi Birch out the door. A source close to the situation said that at least two other Bebo managers are considering a departure.

“The priorities right now are integrating ICQ and AIM,” Gambino said. “They are focusing on communication tools and integrating them into the platform. Music is on the agenda but it’s not tops on the agenda.”

(Credit:
angelgambino.blogspot.com)

MySpace has partnered with the top four recording companies to offer streaming music, sell downloads, offer ad-supported music, as well as sell concert tickets.

” (AOL is) focusing on communication tools and integrating them into the platform. Music is on the agenda but it’s not tops on the agenda.” — Angel Gambino, former Bebo exec

Some critics of AOL’s deal have worried that Bebo’s teen audience may be turned off if the site becomes too buttoned-down as it goes corporate. The news comes as AOL scrambles to defend its purchase price. Earlier this week at the D conference, Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes acknowledged that AOL “may have overpaid.”

She said that she jumped to Bebo a year ago from MTV to be part of a start-up and wants to be part of another. Another reason why Gambino said she is leaving is that developing Bebo’s music offering was not AOL’s highest priority.

Gambino said that was due to one thing: money.

“We weren’t willing to pay the money that the labels expected for the licensing deals,” Gambino said. “We didn’t have the cash or the resources of a MySpace. We also didn’t think having loads of back catalog would be that beneficial.”

“We tried to be creative in offering new models,” Gambino said. “We created some new models.”

Angel Gambino, the Bebo executive in charge of attracting record labels and musicians to the site, has resigned and she appears to be part of an executive exodus at the company following its $850 million acquisition by AOL.

Instead, Bebo has gone with a more grassroots approach, catering to unsigned artists who were interested in showcasing their music on the site.

While MySpace, YouTube, and Imeem have built up their music offerings, Bebo has stood on the sidelines. Imeem has licensed music from all the major recording companies and now offers a free streaming music service. YouTube has deals to offer rock videos and to allow users to insert music into their videos.

AOL and Bebo representatives could not be reached for comment.

“Bebo has been nowhere with music,” said one music-industry insider. “They have a very music-hungry community, but they have not done anything with it. They went to the labels a year ago and said they had plans to formalize their approach to music. But nothing has happened.”

Former MTV exec Angel Gambino announced Friday she has left Bebo.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Gambino acknowledged that her Bebo stock had fully vested when the all-cash deal closed last week and the extra money will allow her to spend time with her young son.

Trion World Network just announced it has raised $70 million for its server-based online games. TWN creates massively multiplayer online games that run almost entirely on the Internet with little/no PC component download. This is different from games like World of Warcraft–or pretty much every other MMO that require you to download some component.

I’m a huge believer in the idea that you can have high-quality gaming experiences in the browser. Casual gaming has proven that people are willing to play browser-based games and the value chain just needs to catch up with more hard-core experiences. Add in subscription fees and other monetization efforts and all of the sudden you have real business.

Trion doesn’t yet have any products out the door yet so investors are clearly betting on the technology and the business relationships the company has already established with the Sci Fi Channel and others.

Via VentureBeat

Toshiba said Wednesday that it will showcase a 512GB solid-state drive at the Consumer Electronics Show next month and begin shipments in the second quarter of 2009.

Pricing in sample quantities ranges from $220 for the 64GB drive to $1,652 for the 512GB drive, Toshiba said.

Toshiba 512GB solid-state drive rivals hard disks in capacity

(Credit:
Toshiba)

To date, this would be one of the largest-capacity solid-state drives for use in laptops and come close to matching the size of mobile hard-disk drives.

Toshiba said it sees SSDs growing to approximately 25 percent of the notebook market by 2012.

The drives achieve a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second (MBps) and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps. This is roughly the same read-write speeds offered by Samsung on its 256GB SSD.

Toshiba said it is releasing a broad family of “fast read/write SSDs” based on 43-nanometer Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash technology that will be showcased at CES. MLC technology allows solid-state drive makers to deliver higher capacity drives at lower prices.

Updated on December 18 at 3:25 p.m. with pricing information.

Samples of the new drives will be available in the first quarter of 2009, with mass production slated for the second quarter, in the April to June time frame, according to the company.

In addition to the 2.5-inch 512GB drive, the new series of Toshiba drives also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drive enclosures or as SSD Flash Modules, the company said in a statement.

Samsung has begun mass production of a 256GB SSD and Micron Technology is readying a 256GB drive that will ship in March.

According to Litvack, the government would have sought an injunction to stop Google from serving up search ads for Yahoo, alleging that Google was violating two sections of the Sherman antitrust act.

It is widely known that Google pulled the plug on the search advertising deal with Yahoo only because it appeared that it would face a regulatory challenge. However, it emerged on Wednesday just how close the company came to facing an antitrust suit from the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the end of the interview, Litvack said he’s happy to be heading back to his law firm, but says he regretted not getting to take part in the legal battle.

Sandy Litvack, the lawyer hired by the Justice Department to look into the search advertising pact between Google and Yahoo, said in an interview with American Lawyer’s AmLaw Daily that the government had a suit ready and was just three hours away from filing it.

“Of course I was looking forward to it,” Litvack said. “We felt pretty good about it, we felt pretty confident. Yeah, I would have liked to have done it.”

“We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day,” Litvack said in the interview. “We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.”