Meg Whitman, the company’s new chief, said that she would succeed. “I’ve done this a number of times in my career,” Ms. Whitman said during a call with Wall Street analysts. “It’s what great business leaders do.”

I need to remember this quote when she's fired next year.

And then, later in the article,

We have to meet a desire for security and customer delight in enterprise sales.

Security and customer delight rarely go hand-in-hand. I'm hard-pressed thinking HP will discover the secret sauce.

(Via NYTimes)

How to Make Us Grow, How to Make Us Shrink

Use a horizontal scrollbar to move from the largest to the smallest known objects.

Gingrich is the first conservative presidential candidate to campaign on a package of traditional values from which he is exempting issues relating to personal sexual behavior. And there are reasons why this strategy worked on Jan. 21: The moral vision of the religious right is collapsing everywhere, including within its own ranks.

(Via NY Times)

Herman Cain, who ended his presidential bid in early December, endorsed Newt Gingrich on Saturday night, three days before the crucial Florida primary.

Stupid is as stupid does.

(Via New York Times)

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Fascinating.

(Via Flickr)

The Basecamp business is booming.

But too much good news is a formula for complacency. And honestly, we have grown a bit complacent.

That’s about to end.

We’ve gone back to the basics and made them better, faster, clearer, easier, and smarter.

In early 2012, 37signals will introduce Basecamp Next and change the way people collaborate all over again.

Ballsy. Looking forward to it.

(Via 37signals)

The company named Thorsten Heins, currently one of RIM’s two chief operating officers, as chief executive. He pledged during an interview on Sunday to follow the strategy Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis set in place.

Their strategy was pretty rock-solid, so it's a relief that nothing will change.

(Via NYTimes)

In its test run, the "HMH Fuse" application helped more than 78 percent of students score "Proficient" or "Advanced" on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.

I don't believe throwing technology at school will solve every problem, but this is promising.

(Via AppleInsider)

Amazing data. The adoption rate of tablet devices (iOS as well as Android) is nothing short of phenomenal.

(Via Asymco)

Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?

(Via Slate)

The new Wes Anderson film with Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Tilda Swinton.

Be still my beating heart.

Davis is recovering from a herniated dick.

Ouch.

(Via The Charlotte Observer)

Let me be as clear as I can be: the iOS multitasking bar does not contain "a list of all running apps". It contains "a list of recently used apps". The user never has to manage background tasks on iOS.

Insightful. Bookmark this.

(Via Fraser Speirs)

The overall unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, but break down the number by educational attainment and the picture looks different. Those with college degrees are the lucky ones: the jobless rate for them is 4.4 percent. That compares with 8.8 percent for those with only a high school diploma and 13.2 percent for those with no diploma at all.

Consider, too, that less than 30 percent of the United States population age 25 or older has a bachelor’s degree or higher. Large groups of Americans will continue to be unemployed or underemployed unless more training and educational opportunities become available.

Interesting article. I was specifically stuck by the information above. Perhaps it's just because I live in NYC (where everyone seems to have at least a bachelor's degree) but to see that less than 30 percent of the above 25-year old population has a college degree is jaw dropping.

It confirms my belief that the only way to rebuild our country is to rebuild the schools.

(Via NYTimes Technology)

We’ve focused over the past year in four key areas. They’ve moved a little bit away from what I’d call aesthetics and focused more on user experience and performance.

I don't understand why she thinks "aesthetics" and "user experience and performance" are mutually exclusive.

We’re not a content company, per se. We don’t have a music store or a video store or a book store. We’ve really never gone down that path, because we believe the consumer has many viable paths for buying content already.

So she's admitting that a single seamless enduser ecosystem isn't important? How is this different from other Android makers again?

Smart actions are essentially your device is monitoring its own performance behavior. If it starts to notice there are things it could be doing better, it will make a gentle suggestion to the user. Something like, “I notice that your battery is running low, if you wanted to dim the screen and turn off a certain network setting then you will get better battery performance.” And, if you are open to it, “Would you like your phone to continue making those kind of suggestions?”

Great, so the phone is constantly interrupting me to fix it when I'm trying to actually use it.

This sounds fan-freakin'-tastic, Christy. Let me know how this works out for ya.

(Via AllThingsD)