HP 4Q profit jumps 28 percent (AP)

The board of the Palo Alto-based computer and printer maker also authorized an additional $8 billion for stock buybacks, a sign the company believes its shares are undervalued. HP’s net income leaped 28 percent in the three months ended Oct. 31, rising from $1.69 billion, or 60 cents per share, to $2.16 billion, or 81 cents per share. Excluding one-time charges, HP’s profit was 86 cents per share, four cents higher than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Sales jumped 15 percent over last year to $28.29 billion, nearly $1 billion more than the $27.4 billion Wall Street was expecting. In the upcoming first quarter, HP expects earnings of 75 cents per share or 80 cents per share, excluding the amortization of intangible assets, and it predicts revenue between $27.4 billion and $27.5 billion. Analysts are forecasting a first-quarter profit of 77 cents per share on sales of $27.03 billion. HP shares fell Monday by $1.13, or 2 percent, to close at $49.62 before the results were reported.

Amazon sells own gadget to boost e-books (AP)

Monday’s long-anticipated announcement comes as e-books remain a sliver of overall book sales, partly because they lack the comfort and intimacy of bound paper. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said the online retailer spent three years developing the Kindle reader, which the company is selling online for $399. Rather than try to “outbook” the bound book, Bezos said, Amazon designed Kindle with the e-book’s strengths in mind. It is thinner than most paperbacks and weighs 10.3 ounces. Yet it can hold some 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines and an entire dictionary. Readers can buy and download books directly to the Kindle — without a PC — through Sprint Nextel Corp.’s high-speed EV-DO cellular network without fees or contract commitments. They also can take notes on what they read and store them on Amazon’s servers. Kindle users can turn off wireless connectivity when they are on airplanes — though they also must shut off the device during takeoff and landing, prime reading time for some. Sony Corp. already offers an e-book reader that imitates the look of paper by using an innovative screen technology. The Kindle screen takes a similar approach and has no backlight to reduce battery use and eyestrain. Bezos said Amazon decided to make its own device so it could seamlessly build a service around it. Best sellers and new releases will typically go for $9.99.

Get smart: a guide to spiffy phones (AP)

Prices also have come down to the point where some of these feature-packed models cost little more than “dumb” phones. Sizes have come down too — gone are the days when carrying a smart phone was a workout. Remember, though, that you need a data plan to get the most out of a smart phone, which usually adds about $20 to the monthly cost. (Prices below are with two-year carrier contracts unless noted.) The top contenders of this holiday season (and a few to avoid): Apple iPhone (AT&T) This is the star of the field, despite a number of shortcomings. Remarkably, Apple’s very first phone succeeds at combining a phone with an iPod and a great Web browser. Its large, crisp screen, touch-screen user interface and multimedia abilities are unmatched. But good luck using it with any headphones but the ones that come with (unless you shell out more for an adapter), or getting work e-mail. The on-screen keyboard takes getting used to. The AT&T Inc. data network it uses is slow, and there’s no real third-party software available yet. All the same, a fantastic phone. ($399) ___ Palm Centro (Sprint) The Centro does everything Palm’s larger, more expensive Treo does, but in a cuter package. It has a small but sharp touch screen and a teeny hardware alphabetic keyboard. You need fingernails to type on it. It’s not great as a music or video player, but it’s good for e-mail, contacts and calendar management. Palm’s software is the closest thing to the iPhone’s in terms of ease of use and versatility, and there are tons of third-party applications. Comes with a neat Sudoku game. ($99.99) ___ Motorola Moto Q Music 9m (Verizon) This update to the Q has a good, wide keyboard but no touch screen. It runs Windows Mobile 6 and uses a fast data network, which helps if you want to get work e-mail. But the overall experience is slow and clunky. The music-oriented interface that’s been grafted on Windows is as cheerful and useful as a party hat on a bank clerk. The lack of a touch screen limits usefulness of Web browser. AT&T has a similar model without the music interface. ($199.99) ___ Nokia N95 (unlocked, works with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile) This European luxury phone has a big 2.8-inch screen, a nice 5-megapixel camera, a real GPS receiver and a large number of buttons, yet lacks both a full keyboard and a touch screen. The latest model works on AT&T’s fast data network. Best for photo buffs and possibly hikers — doesn’t excel at e-mail or multimedia. (About $550 in stores, no contract) ___ Touch by HTC (Sprint) Like the iPhone, this is a touch-screen phone, with no hardware keypad or keyboard. Unlike the iPhone, the Touch is a hassle to use. It runs Windows Mobile software designed for use with a stylus, and the features that have been bolted on in an attempt to make it useable without a stylus are a disaster. Thankfully, it does include a stylus, so it’s not a complete waste, but this is still a phone to avoid. ($249.99) ___ T-Mobile Shadow The big screen slides away to reveal a 20-key keyboard, with most letters sharing a key with another. Relatively friendly interface, but sometimes sluggish performance from Windows Mobile software. It does an OK job of e-mail, personal information management, but the lack of a touch screen limits the usefulness of the Web browser. Using the limited keyboard can be a chore. The software guesses what you’re trying to type, which works for common words but is no help for Web or e-mail addresses. No headphone jack — the included headphones use the charger port. ($149.99) ___ LG Voyager (Verizon) The layout of the icons on the touch screen makes this look like a chubbier copy of the iPhone, but — lo and behold! — the phone folds apart to reveal a full keyboard and a second screen. Just the thing for those who can’t imagine typing on the iPhone’s touch screen? Not quite. It’s good for text messaging, but the e-mail application is weak and hidden in the menus. And having one really good screen that does everything, as on the iPhone, is better than two smaller screens that don’t. The flip-open design and extendable antenna make the Voyager a great way to watch Verizon’s Mobile TV. Available Nov. 21. ($299.99) ___ BlackBerry Pearl (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile) BlackBerry e-mail pagers used to be very businesslike affairs. The slim Pearl aims for the consumer, with a built-in camera and media player. Remarkably for such a small phone, it has a full-size headphone jack. The interface is still heavily e-mail-oriented, and like any BlackBerry, comes into its own if your company uses a BlackBerry server. As with the Shadow, typing e-mail and Web addresses on 20 keys can be frustrating. ($149.99-$199.99)

High-tech gadgets for TV, movie lovers (AP)

A bumper crop of gadgets and services can grab, deliver and play back television programs and movies anytime or anywhere to give couch potatoes their fix. All you need is a high-speed Internet connection. Never miss the game or a prime-time drama again. Find a movie to fit your mood of the moment without having to leave home. A sampling of some of the latest offerings: VUDU It’s like a video store crammed into a small black box. The machine serves as a gateway for the Vudu movie download service, which offers more than 5,000 movie titles to rent or own. That’s significantly more than some rival download services though it still pales next to Netflix’s DVD mail-rental service. But movie buffs will like the convenience of being able to watch a film right away and directly on their TVs. Vudu also has an intuitive navigation system and smart search features. Narrow your browsing, say, to action films that came out after 2003 and got rated at least three stars. Or preview a movie, then ask Vudu to find similar films. The catalog ranges from old flicks to new releases that are available on DVD. Rentals of high-definition movies will soon join the mix. The video quality is very good and it’ll work with both standard- and high-definition TVs. The contoured remote control with a clickable scroll wheel cradles nicely in the hand. A drawback: purchased movies are stored on the built-in 250GB hard drive and can’t be transferred anywhere else. (MSRP: $399 for the box. Movie rentals cost 99 cents to $4.99 and purchases, $4.99 to $19.99.) ___ TiVo HD DVR Satellite and cable TV operators offer digital video recorders but for those willing to spend a bit extra, TiVo still has the easiest, most intuitive menus. DVRs let users easily record television shows and pause live TV, and now TiVo has added Internet goodies, such as the ability to rent or buy videos directly from ’s Unbox download service or access to the Rhapsody music subscription service. This newest TiVo model sports two high-definition TV tuners so you can record two programs at once or record one while watching another live. TiVo users also can transfer recorded TV shows to PCs or compatible video-playing handhelds, including Apple Inc.’s iPods. A 160-gigabyte hard drive stores up to 180 hours of standard-quality programming or 20 hours of HD content. A separate external hard drive can be used for extra storage. (MSRP: $299.99. Requires monthly service fee of $12.95 or other yearly plan.) ___ Sling Media Slingbox SOLO This trapezoid-shaped video-streaming gizmo lets you watch and control your television — from your cable or satellite box, or your DVR — on any broadband-connected Windows- or Mac-based computer anywhere in the world. The Solo is a step up from the basic Slingbox AV by supporting high-definition content. But like the basic model, it supports only a single video source. The higher-end Slingbox Pro can control up to four video inputs and has its own tuner. For an extra $29, Slingbox users can buy software that streams the video to Windows Mobile-, Palm- or Symbian-based smart phones. If you don’t have a wired Ethernet connection near your TV setup, a separate adapter can be used to access the computer network via Wi-Fi or a power line. Beware: the Slingbox piggybacks your home system so if you change the channel from a remote location, someone watching TV at home will see the channel flip, too. (MSRP: $179.99) ___ Sony PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 Confused about high-definition DVDs? The battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats hasn’t yet yielded a clear winner, so this holiday season, you’ll still see “Spider-Man 3″ only in Blu-ray or “The Bourne Ultimatum” in HD DVD. If you don’t want to end up with a useless piece of equipment but still want a taste of the crisp, clear pictures of HD, perhaps game consoles can be your answer. The PS3 has a built-in Blu-ray drive and is one of the most affordable Blu-ray players on the market, while an HD DVD player can be added onto the Xbox 360. With the Xbox Live online service, you can use the console to buy TV downloads or rent standard- and high-definition movies. The Xbox also can pull multimedia content from a Windows Media Center PC for playback. So if you land on the losing side of the format war, at least you’ll be left with a powerful game console. (Sony PS3 MSRP: $499 for 80GB, $399 for 40GB. Xbox 360 MSRP: $349 for 20GB model, $449 for 120GB model, $180 for the HD DVD player. TV shows on Xbox LIVE are $2 to $3, movie rentals, $3 to $6.) ___ Netgear Digital Entertainer HD EVA8000 This set-top box that acts as a bridge between your PC and TV is geared for the tech-savvy multimedia hound. It takes videos, music or photos from your PC and plays them on your TV. It supports many video formats, so it can play YouTube Web videos or even BitTorrent downloads in the comfort of your living room. Video downloads from services that use Windows-based copy protections, such as Movielink or , work but the device won’t be able to play shows purchased from the online Apple iTunes Store. This newest model supports high-definition video, and works with both older and newer model TVs. (MSRP: $349.99) ___ iPod Classic Apple Inc. has been the butt of late night comedy jokes for continually miniaturizing its iPods and expanding their storage space. In real life, iPods remain the best-selling portable media players for their ultra-sleek designs and ease-of-use. Those who want to have their music library and a hefty selection of videos while on-the-go can look to the iPod Classic, which has a 2.5-inch screen and now boasts up to 160 GB of storage, enough for 200 hours of video. The battery can handle 7 hours of video playback. If you prefer a larger wide-screen and Wi-Fi access, consider the iPod Touch with a 3.5-inch touch screen, though it costs more and holds at most 16 GB of data. (iPod Classic MSRP: $249 for 80GB, $349 for 160GB. iPod Touch MSRP: $299 for 8GB, $399 for 16 GB)

Cyber Monday making less of a splash (Reuters)

Though retail watchers expect online sales to rise on the Monday after Thanksgiving, some say Cyber Monday as an annual phenomenon is waning as retailers look to draw shoppers online with deals earlier in the holiday season. The term, coined by retailer network , refers to the day when many people log on at work to look for gifts they didn't manage to buy over the long Thanksgiving weekend. It has been seen as the start of the online holiday shopping season. "Cyber Monday used to be if not the biggest online shopping day, certainly among the top few," said Ken Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online. But ever-faster Internet connections in people's homes have made the day less crucial over the past decade, Cassar said. "Because the vast majority of online users have access from home via broadband, it's less necessary that they wait to get to work to begin their holiday shopping," Cassar said. He and others noted that while online sales tend to show a pick-up on Cyber Monday, it is not even the biggest online shopping day of the season. Other experts put that down to increased marketing of big online deals even earlier in the holiday shopping season. "Thanksgiving is a huge day because everyone is at home," said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise, an Internet measurement firm. "There are a lot of moms who don't want to watch football," Dougherty said. "Thursday is a great day for online retailers to offer promotions and capture people." Shoppers are even hopping online early to get a jump on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally the kick-off to the offline holiday shopping season. Hitwise found traffic to Web sites advertising Black Friday deals rose 52 percent over last year in the week ended November 10. "The holiday season is starting earlier and earlier every year, which is what consumers joke about, but it's honestly happening," Dougherty said. "People are going online and researching products before the holiday gets started." Nonetheless, the effect of people returning to work and shopping from their desks still has an noticeable impact. A poll of nearly 8,000 consumers conducted for by BIGresearch found 54.5 percent of office workers with Web access plan to shop at work on the Monday after Thanksgiving, up from 50.7 percent last year and 44.7 percent in 2005. A survey by BizRate Research of 116 online retailers found that 72.2 percent were planning a Cyber Monday promotion, up from 42.7 percent two years ago. Promotions will range from special email campaigns to one-day sales, it found. Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst with Internet research firm comScore Networks Inc, said his firm is expecting Cyber Monday sales of more than $700 million this year, which would outpace the $608 million in online sales for the year-earlier day. But he adds that the heaviest online shopping days will come later, "a little bit more than a week before Christmas." As major retailers such as Macy's Inc and J.C. Penney Co have cut their holiday sales or earnings forecasts as consumers wrestle with higher food and gasoline prices, Nielsen's Cassar said Cyber Monday activity may be softer. "I would expect to see lower levels of shopping traffic," the analyst said. In addition to economic challenges, Cassar noted Thanksgiving falls earlier on the calendar this year, leaving more days to shop for Christmas. (Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage in Los Angeles; Editing by Braden Reddall)

Philips’ remote control pill may cure your allergies

Google Mulls Bid for Wireless Spectrum (NewsFactor)

Reuters reported that Google is preparing to bid by itself at the FCC's 700-MHz spectrum auction, although no final decision has been made. The news service cited company sources, who also said that executives had met with FCC officials, including Chair Kevin Martin, to discuss the bidding. The cited sources indicated that Google has talked with several possible partners, including carriers. The key issue for Google, according to the sources, is creating more openness in the wireless networks. 'Buy, Create, or Partner' A partner is essential if Google is going to use the bandwidth, noted Bill Ho, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis. "It is not a telecommunications service company," he noted, and so will either have to "buy, create, or partner with a company." Ho said he didn't "have a good sense yet" whether Google will actually bid by itself, but he said that the 700-MHz spectrum is "the chance of a lifetime." He pointed out that Google has become the default champion for open access, and has positioned itself as a nontraditional telecom player. During the summer, Google announced that it would participate in the bidding, although it said its participation would depend on the FCC providing "a framework requiring greater competition and consumer choice." The federal agency has not approved all of the open-access provisions that Google and others had sought, such as a provision requiring the winning licensee to sell access to the bandwidth on a wholesale basis to resellers. However, the FCC did vote in July to approve a Google-backed plan requiring that any compatible mobile device or any nonmalicious software be able to use a portion of the bandwidth to be auctioned. Jumpstarting the Mobile Web That nontraditional positioning as an open-access champion was further bolstered earlier this month when the Google-led Open Handset Alliance announced Android, a software stack for mobile devices. Android includes a Linux-based operating system, middleware, and some initial applications, such as a browser. Such a platform, coupled with a fertile ecosystem of small developers, would be especially valuable to Google if the company owned wireless spectrum. Industry observers have noted that it's in the company's interests to jumpstart the mobile Web, which is used regularly only by a small portion of the more than three billion mobile device owners around the world. The January auction of the 700-MHz spectrum could result in a big boost to the mobile Web, as those frequencies penetrate walls and various obstacles more effectively than other frequencies.

IBM making ‘agile’ moves (InfoWorld)

"This is not a fashion trend," said Sue McKinney, vice president of strategy, integration, and development transformation, IBM Software Group. "We believe this is going to be the way we develop software." The agile approach differs from traditional waterfall-style development, where a project begins with a set of requirements and proceeds sequentially through various stages, such as design, implementation, and testing. completing multiple "iterations" of a project within discrete chunks of time, such as once per month. This system theoretically allows application requirements to be tweaked along the way and provides business-side users or clients greater input into the final result. But IBM's sheer size means a top-down mandate to adopt agile practices won't work, according to McKinney. "You can't be too dictatorial or say one size fits all," she said. McKinney, a 23-year IBM veteran, has faced some resistance. "We'd bring some of the legacy guys in, and they'd say, 'My release takes three years. This is a bunch of bunk,'" she said. Certain projects may in fact require multiyear gaps between ship dates, but agile development presents an opportunity for more customer involvement and additional beta releases along the way, she said. Another challenge lies in applying agile broadly within the huge programming teams that produce IBM's major product lines, such as Websphere. "Agile really works well within small- and medium-sized teams. The question is, how do you scale it?" she said. IBM's Jazz project, a collaborative development platform, is attempting to . It is unclear when IBM will see truly widespread use of , but McKinney asserted that tangible progress has already been made. "It's not like a foreign concept when I talk about it anymore," she said. IBM is logically pursuing this direction, according to James Governor, an analyst with "Waterfall has demonstrably failed," he said. "It has failed to deliver on its promise. Requirements always change on an ongoing basis. If you don't give users input early on in the process, you end up giving them something they didn't ask for. "IBM is by no means alone in acknowledging there are some drawbacks to this methodology they previously used," Governor added. "We've seen vendors using agile. Now we may be seeing the second stage, where they're marketing their use of it."

IBM Updates Blade Management Tools (NewsFactor)

The manager supports a wide range of blade "fabrics," from vendors such as Brocade, Blade Network Technologies, Cisco, and others. IBM said that this open approach will allow small and midsize businesses to increase performance and save money by using existing switch technology and preserving investments. "For most customers, the pain points with blades is managing the power and managing the complexity," said Stuart McRae, product line manager for BladeCenter. "When you had one application with one server, it didn't take that much to replace. Now, with multiple workloads on a blade server, customers need an extra layer of automation in that environment." Automatic Mapping Saves Days The technology address a critical pain point, Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics, wrote in a research note for Pund-IT. To provision and configure blades, administrators need to assign and manage a myriad of access control addresses and identifiers, a monumental task in large-scale environments, he explained. With Open Fabric Manager, Clabby said, "IBM has found a way to mix data and storage into a common virtual pool of I/O resources that can be shared across a set of blade servers." So, instead of having to physically map blades to external networks, IBM now does the mapping automatically. The result is that "blade managers can cut configuration time down from days to minutes," Clabby said. Approach for the Future With Open Fabric Manager, IBM competes with HP's Virtual Connect offering, but, said Clabby, the two solutions are very different. HP's solution uses a hardware module to mask blade server addresses from external LAN and SAN networks, Clabby said. IBM's is more a software-based management approach that integrates blades with external networks. IBM's solution is differentiated by its open approach to third-party network switches, for example. "Because IBM has so many third-party vendors in its portfolio — and because HP does not — the level of HP's Virtual Connect integration with other vendors' management environments is not as feature-function rich as the IBM offerings," Clabby said. The pricing of IBM's offering is also "significantly less" than HP's, Clabby added. "I believe that systems and storage management will ultimately merge under the control of the same administrators," he concluded. "IBM's approach is more in keeping with the way that blades will likely be managed in the future."

Samsung work force shrinks (AP)

Samsung Electronics Co. is the world’s biggest manufacturer of memory chips and flat screen TVs and makes a range of consumer electronics, including mobile phones. The company had 1,630 fewer workers as of Sept. 30 compared with the total six months earlier, spokeswoman Lee Eun-hee said, citing figures reported last week to South Korea’s financial regulator. She said the work force reduction was voluntary and not part of a larger restructuring. “It has nothing to do with downsizing,” she said. Samsung Electronics is the flagship unit of Samsung Group, South Korea’s largest conglomerate. The Suwon, South Korea-based company had 85,269 employees at the end of the third quarter, compared with an all-time high of 86,899 as of March 31, Lee said. Of the 2,379 employees who left the company during the period, 1,447 were classified as office workers, while the remaining 932 worked in manufacturing, she said. Lee could not provide a breakdown for which of its businesses were most affected by the departures. She said the company added 749 employees during the period. A total of 15 executives also left the company, she said. The last such reduction was recorded at the end of September 2002, when employee totals fell to 48,364 from six months earlier, according to Lee. Analysts were divided on the significance of the decline in Samsung’s work force. Jay Kim at Hyundai Securities Co. called it a “natural headcount reduction.” But Lee Min-hee, an analyst at Dongbu Securities Co., however, said it was a sign of broader issues. “Samsung faces a severe problem in semiconductor business profitability,” Lee said, adding that the company, as well as its competitors, will need to trim workers. Analysts’ concerns about Samsung have grown as the company’s profitability suffered during the first half of this year amid oversupply and falling prices for its mainstay computer memory chips. But Samsung said last month that its profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 rose on strength in mobile phones and flat-screen televisions. The result snapped three straight quarters of profit decline. Samsung shares declined 2.9 percent to 541,000 won ($591) in trading Monday. The stock price has fallen 12 percent in 2007 and 21 percent from its high this year of 687,000 won ($750) hit in July. South Korea’s benchmark stock index, meanwhile, has gained 32 percent this year.