PreCentral: HP to possibly cut up to 30,000 jobs in restructuring plan
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By News Reporter
While every webOS device comes with some kind of speaker, the TouchPad is the only one whose speaker is adequate to fill a (smallish) room. On the phones, even the rear speaker struggles to put out enough volume to allow sharing of music or other audio in a space with moderate or higher background noise. Given that webOS phones all support both standard 3.5mm headphone/speaker jacks (the Veer admittedly needing an adapter) and Bluetooth speakers, there are numerous options for boosting the sound so others can enjoy it too. Unfortunately, most of those external speakers are far less portable than the phone itself. There are, though, some speakers that offer both powered amplification and portability. One of these is the Naztech N15 3.55 Mini Boom Speaker, which additionally operates as a standalone MP3/WMA player (it accepts microSD cards as removable storage, and has minimal controls for music playback and track navigation). While the Naztech's design and standalone player capabilities are pluses, however, its minimal amplification power makes it a poor choice for webOS devices.
Naztech has done a nice job with the design of the N15. It folds to the size and shape of a flattened golf ball, with a recess for storing the non-removable (and very short at 2-3 inches) 3.5mm audio cable. Along the periphery of the speaker are the standalone music player controls, a miniUSB (not microUSB, unfortunately, meaning it cannot share charger cables with a webOS device) port, and the microSD slot. The play/pause button doubles as the power button for the speaker, and a blue LED lights up when the unit is powered on. Note that although the track forward and reverse buttons double as volume controls for standalone play, they do not affect volume when the N15 is connected to an external sound source. According to Naztech, the N15 provides 2 watts of speaker output, and its 3.7 volt lithium ion battery charges (via a powered USB port or charger) in 4 hours. Naztech does not provide any play time details, and our testing did not extend to battery life.
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By News Reporter
When Jon Rubinstein came out of retirement from Apple to join Palm way back in 2007, little did he know the odyssey upon which he and Palm were about to embark. From
link hidden, please login to view less than two years later, , guiding Palm into , launching the , and then watching as all the work he'd overseen Rubinstein's tenure at the lead of webOS was one of ups and downs, successes and utter chaos. So it was little surprise when, after watching webOS get a thin leash on life as , Rubinstein for his second retirement. Rubinstein returned to his Mexican beach villa and resumed the sipping of margaritas while browsing the web on . While he left the door open to returning someday to tech, if anybody needed some time off after the webOS debacle, it was Jon Rubinstein. His schedule of siestas and cervezas is about to be interrupted, though we can't imagine it'll be on an all to frequent basis: Rubinstein was today elected to the board of directors of chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
While Rubinstein joined Palm's board as a very active and hands-on Executive Chairman with the goal of dragging Palm into the future of mobile computing, he's coming to San Diego-based Qualcomm while it's at the top of its game and firing on all cylinders. Rubinstein's addition to the board brings a new heft and decades of computing and mobile experience to the table. Besides webOS, Rubinstein is credited as being the man who made Apple's iPod possible from an engineering standpoint, and was a key player at Steve Jobs's NeXT.
It's not quite Silicon Valley, but it's definitely silicon. Welcome back, Ruby.
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By News Reporter
The story of what happened to HP is a complicated and at times a depressing narrative. Things were going okay until 2010, when CEO Mark Hurd was forced out of his leadership position due to sexytime-driven accounting improprieties. That kicked off
link hidden, please login to view, a for HP . It's been known for a while that late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was a fan of HP as a Silicon Valley institution, and today Businessweek published an extensive piece on HP's fall from grace that included a fascinating nugget: despite HP being a competitor on many fronts with Apple, Jobs personally urged Hurd to reconcile with HP. Jobs went so far as to personally email Hurd within a few days of his departure, asking if he "needed someone to talk to" (Jobs had gone through a similar ouster, though with less sexytimes, from Apple decades earlier).
"Hurd met Jobs at his home in Palo Alto, according to people who know both men but did not wish to be identified, compromising a personal confidence. The pair spent more than two hours together, Jobs taking Hurd on his customary walk around the tree-lined neighborhood. At numerous points during their conversation, Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP’s directors and to call them up one by one."
Of course, Jobs's motives in talking to Hurd and attempting to smooth the ruffled feathers of HP's board wasn't entirely personal. Jobs believed that a healthy HP was "essential to a healthy Silicon Valley," with HP essentially standing as the founding company of California's technology hotbed. Of course, Jobs was not able to bring Hurd and HP's board back together, and in with as HP's new chief executive. How different things would have been under Hurd is hard to say, but it's all but certain that and .
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