On The 'Net

Two days .. two companies, going in different directions.

Yesterday, Yahoo, aside from the layoffs, told a story of slow growth. Lots of visitors, but a stalling bottom line, and it's stock sunk today to a near 4-year low.

Amazon.com on the other hand, says its profit just doubled. Amazon stock has been hot as of late .. the online shopping leader seems to be firing on most, if not all, cylinders.

Do you Yahoo? Or, are you more likely to do your shopping on a website like amazon.com? Online shopping has become practical, safe, and part of life. As for Yahoo's portal-like approach? .. Seems to be losing ground to fast-movers like Facebook & Google.

Speaking of Google, we get its earning report tomorrow.
We'll let you know what the third company in the group has to say then.

Steve Jobs To The Rescue?

As we wait for the latest quarterly numbers (and possibly restructuring news) from Sunnyvale's Yahoo, we caught a glimpse of a surprising letter sent out recently by Steve Jobs to his Apple troops.

Courtesy of "Apple Insider," the letter shows Jobs reassuring Apple employees and other shareholders, in light of Apple's recent drop in stock price. "Hang in there," Jobs advises, suggesting that the company's huge cash stash, absence of debt, and well-known products will carry the company through the stock drop-off.

Jobs, as usual, has a point .. lots of stocks have been pummeled lately, many undeservingly. You could make a case, as Jobs does, that Apple's stock drop has been largely because of a hit taken by the overall economy. If you watch financial news, you've seen a parade of tech-watchers recommending Apple stock as a "buy," because the company remains so strong, with good future prospects.

Unusual, perhaps, for a CEO to put out a stock-related letter himself, but Jobs has never been one to fall victim to commonality. he himself has lost hundreds of millions of dollars on paper as Apple stock has tumbled, so he knows of what he speaks.

Now .. what will Jerry Yang say to Yahoo shareholders today.....?

Ebay's Whitman to Retire

After a crazy, investor-affirming day that saw stocks rebound by more than 600 points to end firmly in the black, we got news from Ebay that shifts the way the Silicon Valley looks, and the way it will act.

Meg Whitman, after ten years leading the world's biggest online auction house, will retire at the end of March. It makes sense, especially when you hear Whitman herself say that CEOs in the tech industry should be replaced every ten years or so. Nonetheless, her presence will be missed. Not only did she transform Ebay into a world-beating entity worth tens of billions of dollars that helped launch the dot-com boom (and survive the bust), but just think of the jobs (and wealth she created).

She was also one of the early female executives in the go-go atmosphere of the Silicon Valley .. clearing a path for many others who have followed, especially in the dot-com arena.

She made a big mark, did very well for herself, and stepped away while things were still good.

The Tech Wreck

Technology has, for several months now, been seen as a safe place for your money, even as our economy spins into recession.

And why not? Sales during this last holiday season were very strong for tech products, even as they were fairly weak among other industries. And, as banks and credit companies bleed cash, technology companies sit on big piles of it. Since cash is king during a recession, it makes sense that tech companies would be able to whether the storm.

All that may have changed in the last couple of days. Last night, Apple warned of possible weakness in the next three months. This is a company that set the bar very high with recent holiday sales, so a bit of a slowdown can be expected. Nonetheless, investors bailed out of Apple stock, sending the share price tumbling.

Then, this morning, Motorola says it's struggling to sell cell phones .. now the entire wireless industry is paying the price.

Is tech actually safe? We here in the Silicon Valley will be watching very closely to see if we're part of the problem, or a potential solution.

Bike To Live

Here's a great combination for you: Google, IDEO, Specialized Bikes, and the environment.
Add them together, and you get a cool bicycle that could potentially save a lot of lives.
It's called the "Aquaduct," and it's from the IDEO design house. Pedal it, and you filter water. It seems simple, but it lets people in developing countries get around, while purifying their water.

The Aquaduct was created as part of the "Innovate Or Die" contest sponsored by Google & Specialized. We'll show you the contest winner in action tonight at 5 & 6.

Blue, Green, & Mac

Good news for investors this morning: IBM gives a rosy outlook for its future, and stocks, after a big loss last week, start the week off on a positive note.

While it may be a (Big) Blue Monday on Wall Street, it's Green Day at the Detroit Auto Show. Easy to imagine hybrids and other "green" tech-related cars stealing the show with oil and gas prices as high as they are .. what you may not know is that much of the funding for all this green tech comes from here in the Silicon Valley. We'll talk tonight with Khosla Ventures, the VC firm responsible for putting its money where its ideals are.

And of course there's MacWorld. Steve Jobs kicks things off tomorrow morning with his annual keynote .. lots of rumors swirling around about what we'll see (new rental possibilities for your iTunes, new laptops...); we'll know for sure in about 24 hours.

Keep it here for details.

Judd Apatow and the Game Chair

Remember "The 40-Year Old Virgin?" Remember that scene where the guys are playing video games in those ultra-cool chairs? I think Judd Apatow had his eye on the future. Those chairs are now for sale.

Developed in the Bay Area, the company, called fittingly, Ultimate Game Chair, is selling a streamlined version of what you saw in the movie. I got a chance to play a game while sitting in it...and it's very choice.

For $299 (which actually seems pretty reasonable once you've tried it), you get all sorts of vibration, as the chair picks up when the game moves - you can also "feel' the movies you watch, and the music you listen to.

It's a great experience, and UGC executives tell us they'd love to bundle their chair with new consoles from the likes of Microsoft and Nintendo. We'll keep you posted.

You can see the chair in action tonight at 5 & 6pm.

Don't Tase me, Sis!

You may be familiar with the "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" saying .. repeated endlessly since the poor guy who was hauled away from the Kerry press conference yelled it out.

We just saw a Taser stun gun aimed at women. How? Try leopard-print design, and an MP3 player (with 1 GB of storage) built into the holster. Taser (the company) says it wants women to buy a taser (the stun gun) as a personal protection device.

Will it help the company? If you think about it, Taser started as a company making devices for individuals, even though it really took off when its products were adopted by Police Departments. Can it return, with a little high-tech boost, to its roots?

We'll follow this potentially "stunning" development.

CES #6: Scraping The "Surface."

Today, we hung out with Microsoft a little, for something that company really isn't known for .. original technology. "Surface" is a table that thinks it's a creation from the Jetsons' TV show .. it can wirelessly move pictures from your digital camera to its surface, and can let you shop, draw, and compute with the touch of a finger.

A bit pricey for my livingroom at $10,000, but if the technology catches on, it could be in all of our houses soon.

We also sat in the "Ultimate Gaming Chair." This is a Silicon Valley creation, that lets you feel and hear the video game you're playing. Very interactive, and very cool. Toss in the 3-D glasses we found, and you've got a wierdly realistic gaming experience.

You might have seen "The 40 Year Old Virgin." In that movie's funniest scene, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are playing in the first versions of the Game Chair .. it's now evolved into something a little smaller, and, at about $299, very tempting.

CES #5: Ozzy's Guitar and The Frag Dolls

I just got off the set .. doing live shots with the new Ozzy Osbourne special edition "Guitar Hero" axe.

This is super sweet .. kind of a bummer that it doesn't have strings, though .. if you're a gamer, and a guitar fan, this lets you play with a real-weight, wood neck Ozzy model; just holding it makes you feel like you're on stage with Black Sabbath.

Oh, and I briefly had to sort of steal it from the booth next door. Gave the company some free press, and looked cool in the process. I think The Blizzard would be proud. And, I already gave it back.

That said, we're also putting together a big piece on video games here at CES.
We got a cool demo from the Frag Dolls, a female gaming team used to destroying all men who dare pick up a controller in their path. They're demoing on behalf of Seagate and the PS-3 .. down the hall, we found the HP (from their purchase of VooDoo) "Blackbird" PC .. this is ridiculously powerful, and can cost up to 20 thousand dollars. If you can get your hands on one, I recommend it. It's pretty choice.

Gaming is, as we've talked about before, a monster consumer industry. Nice to see it represented so well on the CES show floor.

CES #4: Among Giants (and the really small...)

Just got back from another tour of the CES floor here in Las Vegas.
Quite a contrast when it comes to what we as consumers will be seeing (and likely buying) in the coming year or two.

First off, the 150 inch HD TV from Panasonic. Yes, 150 inches of pure plasma. It's awesome, and the city scapes, pandas, and rapids were eerily lifelike. It's easily the most amazing TV set you've ever seen .. if you think about it, the 103 inch screen we covered a couple of years ago was, at the time, considered a prototype .. and now they're on sale. Could the 150 inch version be coming to livingrooms soon?

To contrast, we also saw some amazingly small (yet capable) screens as well. Watches, specifically, that incorporate technology. One, from Garmin, has GPS inside, with a touch screen and a way to sync your running data to your home computer, to show your path on Google Earth. It's on its way to stores, I'm told, in March.

Next, a peek into the future, and the cell phone watch. This one is due (but not for awhile) from LG, well-known for shrinking technology down to size. Very futuristic, and Dick Tracy-like.

As for green tech, we just played with a laptop made of corn. Its casing is, according to Fujitsu, environmentally friendly, and biodegradeable. Maybe a nice companion to the Bamboo-cased laptop we showcased a couple of weeks ago.

CES #3: Hammer Time

Up again in Las Vegas, basically going against the typical Vegas grain, time-wise .. up at 4am, watching the rest of the town crawl back to its hotels.

No shortage of celebrities here talking tech .. this morning, I had a chance to talk to MC Hammer (a fellow Bay Area native) about his new social networking web venture. You know social networking is hot when MC Hammer is involved .. Mr. Burrell tells me he's got some (as yet unnamed) venture funding set up for his venture .. we'll keep you posted.

Not to name drop too much, but we also caught up with Carson Daly, trying to take his TV success, and bring it over to the web .. I'll tell you, the man draws a crowd .. by the end of our 3 minutes, camera phones were clicking all over the place (this interview, too, will soon be up on the web if you're interested).

We're soon to get back to the gadgets on the floor .. today's big hit, the 3 mm thick TV set from Sony. Off the charts cool, and it can be yours for $2500. There's also a 42 inch version .. just as thin. That's going to be the status symbol TV of the year. We'll also be driving around with new GPS technology, coming soon to a car near you.

CES #2: 3DTV, and a GPS Watch

Having now spent a full day at the Consumer Electronic Show, I know two things .. after covering CES for the last ten years, it has become a bigger than ever event for the press. I've never seen this much media interest in consumer technology. It's great to see, but it's also very crowded.

We've already been able to see the latest in digital TV .. awesome pictures, lots of features, and as you know if you went shopping this year, falling prices because of heavy competition. All in all, very good news for the consumer.

We also saw the latest robot from iRobot (this one cleans your gutters), along with 3D TV (you'll have to wait for this one to hit your livingroom), even a TV set that, if you wear the right glasses, will let you watch two different programs -or play 2 different video games- at the same time.

And, let's not forget the GPS watch. From Garmin, and about the size of the watch you're wearing now. If you want to know where you're going, it will track you...and let you know your vital signs at the same time.

Much of what we saw today is on its way to the web now .. More to come tomorrow.

CES #1 .. On The Way To Vegas

Hi ..
After a little time off, I'm about to hit Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This is a huge gathering of gadgets, and gadget makers, giving us a preview of what we'll see in our houses, cars, etc. in the coming year.

I'll be doing regular blog updates right here, as well as live shots for the morning and evening newscasts, while tracking down the latest in cool technology.

Let me know if there's anything you see that you like .. I'll be in touch regularly throughout the show.