Tech Today: H-P: Apotheker Out, Whitman In - Digits - WSJ

By Tom Loftus

Charles Platiau/Reuters

H-P: Apotheker Out, Whitman In: Questions surround the whirlwind elevation of former Meg Whitman to H-P’s top slot with analysts wondering if the board was a bit too hasty in their decision. The Wall Street Journal notes that while Whitman grew eBay into a multimillion company during her stint as CEO, it was, in the words of one high-tech recruiter, “an Internet services company that manufactured nothing.”

Ray Lane, the company’s executive chairman, says that its review process is solid, stating that the board revisited the results done before hiring Apotheker just one year ago. The WSJ profiles Lane and his history of supporting and then “sharply revising his opinions” of high-profile friends in the tech world.

In AllThingsD, Whitman lays out some plans, starting with meeting Wall Street expectations, integrating Apotherker’s controversial $10 billion buy of Autonomy int H-P and making a decision on whether to keep or spin off its PC business.

Meanwhile, H-P’s CFO says that the company may see another tough quarterly earnings report. [H-P, WSJ, AllThingsD, New York Times, Forbes]

Facebook Wants Your Life: At its developer conference yesterday, Facebook announced partnerships with music service Spotify and video streamer Netflix and unveiled a profile page refresh that organizes user activity into a timeline-like format. Beneath all this, an update to Facebook’s “open graph,” a system that allows outside applications to tap into Facebook user’s data.

AllThingsD calls recent updates “a giant leap forward in the media cosmos.” At the conference, Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the new Facebook in action by showing how Spotify’s integration into Facebook allowed him to not only see what his friend’s were listening to, but actually listen in as well.

Everyone mulls over the significance of a network that records everything that users do. “Facebook will be its own not-so-little internet,” writes Wired. Slate’s Farhad Manjoo hates it, saying the whole sharing activities without actively sharing activities–what Facebook calls “frictionless” engagement–will kill taste as we know it.  [Wired, WSJ, Facebook, GigaOm, Slate, AdAge]

Amazon Buys Some Air Conditioners: The retail giant announced that it spent $2.4 million installing air conditioning at four warehouses. One warehouse to benefit, the Allentown, Pa. location that sparked a story in the Allentown Morning Call over unsafe working conditions. Heat last summer sent several workers there to the hospital. [AllThingsD, Allentown Morning Call]

FBI Arrests Suspect in Sony Hack: An alleged member of LulzSec, a hacker group believed to be responsible for a number of high profile hacks last spring and summer, was arrested in Arizona. Cody Andrew Kretsinger, is suspected in taking part in the this year’s denial of service attacks against Sony’s servers. [Wired, ArsTechnica]

iPhone: From My Cold Dead Hands: A survey by UBS reveals that when it comes to deciding whether to keep or switch phones, Apple has an 89% retention rate. HTC is number two with 39%. And Research in Motion? 33%. [AllThingsD]

via blogs.wsj.com