Allison Sheridan and I talk about HP splitting into two. Giving up on what made it famous, or history repeating itself? Or neither. Join us to find out.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Allison Sheridan, host of the Nosilla cast at podfeet.com
Headlines
HP announced today it will split itself into two companies by the end of October next year. Hewlett-Packard Enterprises will keep the bulk of the company with enterprise level IT offerings like cloud storage, servers and big data. Meg Whitman will be CEO. The other company will be called HP Inc. It gets the personal systems and printing business, which means all the desktops and laptops and lucrative printer ink sales, and have current EVP of the division Dion Weisler as its CEO. Whitman will also server as Chairman of the board for HP Inc. Separate from the split, Ars Technica reports HP said its current round of layoffs will total 55,000.
Facebook officially owns WhatsApp. TechCrunch reports that the deal closed for 4.5 billion dollars and 177.7 million shares of Facebook stock, plus 45.9 million in restricted stock for WhatsApp employees. WhatsApp founder Jan Koum will join Facebook’s board, and receive a salary of $1, plus almost 25 million units of Facebook stock.
GigaOm reports Redbox Instant will shut down tomorrow, October 7th. The streaming video service jointly operated by Verizon and Redboxhas’t been able to sign up new users in three months. Information on refunds will be emailed and posted on the Redbox Instant website October 10
ZDNet reports GT Advanced, the company that sells sapphire to Apple, has filed for bankruptcy. The company suffered a massive drop in share price after the latest iPhone did not use their material in its display glass. Apple still uses sapphire in its rear camera lens and Touch ID fingerprint sensors and the forthcoming Apple Watch will use sapphire in its display.
Reuters reports Samsung will spend $14.7 billion on a new chip facility in Pyeongtaek, 75km south of Seoul. Its Samsung’s biggest investment yet in a single plant. Samsung is the world’s top memory chip maker and chip-making is the only steady profit generator in the company. Profits from Samsung’s semiconductor division may be larger than its handset division for the first time in more than three years.
News From You
motang passed along a Times of India report that Skype will stop delivering calls on landline and mobile phones in India starting November 10th. Skype calls outside of India will still be connected. If you are outside India you will be able to use Skype to call a number inside India as well. Skype did not give a reason for the change but India has a law preventing internet-based phone calls originating from India. Companies like Skype usually reroute the calls internationally to circumvent the law.
spsheridan submitted the CultofMac story that T-Mobile CEO John Legere responded to questions about bent iPhone 6’s while speaking at GeekWire Summit 2014. In his usually sweary manner, Legere called bendgate Horse Manure and said anybody who bends an iPhone is an idiot. Going 12 straight words without cursing Legere said, “The demand for these devices in the last few weeks is unbelievable.” Not Un-effing-believable? That almost sounds disappointing John.
Sunbun sent us The Verge report with the latest info on Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to turn your entire living room/den/basement into an interactive gaming environment. Yes IllumiRoom is back and it has a new name and new capabilities. Now call Room Alive, the latest concept demo uses video projectors to map the room, and the Kinect sensor to track your movement, allowing you to interact with games on the walls of your room. Right now the system is still too expensive to live out in the wild, but Microsoft really believes it will get cheaper soon. Hang in there. Someday soon you’ll be banging your shin against the coffee table while playing Halo not just Kinect’s balloon game.
MikePKennedy writes in to let us know that the US Navy is building ‘swarm boats‘, automated small patrols ships to help protect large naval vessels while they resupply in port, to prevent incidents like the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Wired Magazine describes the technology as autopilot on steroids, allowing a human operator to control the small craft with a laptop. A swarm boat could also be used to deploy Navy Seals on a beach and then go back to sea and await instructions.
spsheridan and KAPT_Kipper submitted stories about Facebook’s hidden friend-to-friend payments system coming to light. Cult of Mac. Stanford student Andrew Aude found code in Facebook’s Messenger app referring to the kinds of data you’d need to handle in a payments system. Looks like you’d need to add a credit card and pin to make it work if and when a payment system goes live in Facebook Messenger.
Discussion Links: HP Splits
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1809455#.VDLWRildXA4
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/business/hewlett-packard-announces-breakup-plan.html?_r=0
http://recode.net/2014/10/06/after-the-split-what-will-the-two-new-hps-be-worth/
http://recode.net/2014/10/06/hps-meg-whitman-splitting-up-is-the-right-thing-to-do/
Pick of the Day: CodeReddit via Omni-mono
Fully functional Reddit rendered as a programming language. (Python, PhP and others).
Important for developers allowing Reddit browsing in a more discrete fashion, all of course, on company time.
Tomorrow’s guest: Patrick Beja