Oracle's Ellison 'speechless' on new HP CEO, in his way Read more: Oracle's Ellison 'speechless' on new HP CEO, in his way - Denver Business Journal

When Oracle Corp. Larry Ellison says he's "speechless," he is apparently just warming up.
The leader of the Redwood City, Calif., software giant (NASDAQ: ORCL) took aim Friday once again at Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), this time for its choice of Leo Apotheker as its CEO.
(Oracle and HP both are among Colorado's biggest tech employers.)
"I'm speechless," the Wall Street Journal reports that Ellison wrote in an e-mail. "HP had several good internal candidates…but instead they pick a guy who was recently fired because he did such a bad job of running SAP."
The last time Ellison blasted an HP decision was when he criticized the board for the way it handled CEO Mark Hurd's departure. Then he hired Hurd as co-president, triggering a court battle that was later settled with both companies saying how how much they valued each other as partners.
Now HP has hired Apotheker, the former CEO of Oracle rival SAP AG, and put Ray Lane, a former Oracle president, on its board.
So Ellison is back blasting HP's board.
"None of the HP board members own much HP stock so they have little to lose,” he wrote. “But the HP employees, customers, partners and shareholders will suffer. The HP board needs to resign en masse … right away. The madness must stop.”
Maybe it's the opening gambit to hiring one of the talented insiders that was passed over by HP, Oracle's Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and software partner/rival.
Among the HP insiders that had been considered CEO candidates were printer division chief Vyomesh Joshi, personal computer chief Todd Bradley, storage and server chief Dave Donatelli, enterprise sales and marketing head Tom Hogan and enterprise business head Ann Livermore.
In January, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, another tech company with large Colorado operations, for $7.4 billion.

Facebook Quashes Mobile Phone Rumors

Facebook said on Monday it is not building a mobile phone, dismissing a TechCrunch story that it is working on software for a device from a hardware manufacturer.

"The story is not accurate," according to a company statement. "Our approach has always been to make all phones and apps more social, not build a phone. The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a "Facebook Phone" (even internally) because that's such an attractive sound bite, but our real strategy is to make everything social and not build one phone or integration."

TechCrunch reported that Facebook wanted more control over a phone's operating system in order to more deeply integrate with phone features such as contact lists.

Facebook said it is also working on enabling full support on mobiles for its Connect feature, which allows people to use their Facebook identification credentials to log into other Web-based applications.

"Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this," according to Facebook. "For an example, check out Connect for iPhone and the integration we have with contact syncing through our iPhone app. Another example is the INQ1 phone with Facebook integration (the first so-called 'Facebook Phone')."

But Facebook did describe its mobile work, such as an HTML5 version of the site. HTML5 is the latest specification for the Web's mother tongue that enables new graphic features and the ability to create snappy Web applications with desktop-like performance, among others.

Best Buy: Oops! iPad Isn’t Ruining Laptop Sales After All

One thing's for certain: Best Buy CEO Brian J. Dunn really, really loves the iPad. A few days ago he called Apple's tablet device a "magnificent shining light" that will be a favorite among shoppers this holiday season. And in a Sept. 14 article in the Wall Street Journal, Dunn remarked that the popular iPad has cut into sales of laptop PCs, particularly netbooks, by as much as 50 percent.

Although Dunn's laptop comment was buried deep in the WSJ piece, it created a mini-firestorm among tech bloggers, some of whom opined that the iPad was stealing away potential laptop buyers because did nearly everything that consumers could ask of a mobile computer. Indeed, if you're consuming digital content and not creating it, the iPad works very well.

Sensing the need for damage control--and perhaps feeling the heat from Best Buy's laptop-manufacturing business partners--Dunn on Friday released a statement that attempted to smooth things over:

"‘The reports of the demise of these devices are grossly exaggerated,'" Dunn said. "‘While they were fueled in part by a comment in the Wall Street Journal that was attributed to me, they are not an accurate depiction of what we're currently seeing. In fact, we see some shifts in consumption patterns, with tablet sales being an incremental opportunity. And as we said during our recent earnings call, we believe computers will remain a very popular gift this holiday because of the very distinct and desirable benefits they offer consumers. That's why we intend to carry a broad selection of computing products and accessories to address the demand we anticipate this season.'"

Note that Dunn's carefully-worded statement doesn't actually retract his Journal jaw-dropper--that the iPad is cannibalizing laptop sales by as much as 50 percent. It simply says that, well, laptops aren't dying, and that consumption patterns are shifting. OK, whatever. Perhaps the takeaway here is that many tech consumers, most likely casual users, feel the iPad meets their computing needs. And if they have strong feelings for the new Android tablets as well, 2011 could be the Year of the Slate.

Yahoo To Refresh Mail, Search

The web portal hopes to reinvigorate the brand by rolling out new versions of its services, including Yahoo Mail, search, instant messaging, mobile apps and content properties, starting in the fall.

Yahoo, which has seen its relevance as a web portal diminish with the rise of social networks, is hoping to make a comeback through a major refresh of its services, starting with online search and email.
The company on Thursday launched a product roadmap that will involve more frequent updates of all its services starting in the fall. Besides search and email, Yahoo services include instant messaging, applications for mobile devices and televisions and a number of content properties, such as news, finance and sports.

A new version of Yahoo Mail will be available in beta in a few weeks. Yahoo claims to have 281 million users of the service. Among the improvements is a "cleaner, sleeker" interface for easier use of features and navigation through the inbox, Yahoo said. The same look-and-feel of the interface will be available on a PC browser, smartphone, tablet and other mobile devices. Yahoo also is claiming to have implemented technology within its data centers to make Yahoo Mail faster. In a nod to the most popular social networks, users will be able to view and update Facebook and Twitter pages from the inbox. Other features include a new version of Yahoo's instant messaging service and a refurbished inbox search page.

With search, Yahoo is focusing on the client, offering "more visually compelling search results that let you discover information and be entertained all on one search result page," the company said. Under the hood, Yahoo Search is powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine. As of the last week of August, when Bing started powering Yahoo Search, Microsoft's search engine handled nearly a quarter of all U.S. Web searches, according to Internet metrics firm Experian Hitwise. Google continued to dominate the market with nearly a 72% share.

Former engineer gets 4 years for blocking computer

SAN FRANCISCO—A former San Francisco computer engineer convicted of locking other city officials out the city's network will be serving time in prison.
Terry Childs was sentenced to four years in prison Friday after being convicted in April of one felony count of denying or disrupting computer services to an authorized user.
The 45-year-old Childs had worked as a network administrator for the city when prosecutors say he changed passwords to the city's computer system, blocking others out for a 12-day period in July 2008.
Childs ultimately provided the passwords to Mayor Gavin Newsom during a jailhouse visit.
During the trial, Childs' lawyer argued that his client was trying to protect the network from security problems.