Dell Inc.

Two top executives are saying goodbye to Dell as part of the company's restructuring and realigning of business segments. Michael Cannon, president of global operations, and Mark Jarvis, chief marketing officer, will leave the company.

If you're one of the lucky ones who received a shiny new PC under the tree ... congratulations. Twice if it's an Apple. Before you fire up your new baby, you will need to do some maintenance.

The first, if you have a Windows PC, is anti-virus software.

Verizon to cybersquatters: Can you hear me now? Verizon Communications sent a clear message this week after the telecom giant won a lawsuit against OnlineNIC, a San Francisco-based domain-registration company.

OnlineNIC, which has more than 1.18 million domains registered, had more than 663 domain names identical or similar to Verizon trademarks, the company said.

A judge in the Northern District of California found that OnlineNIC tried to take advantage of Verizon by tricking its customers into going to OnlineNIC domains and misrepresenting them as Verizon Web sites.

Over the past quarter, PC makers shipped more notebook PCs than desktops for the first time ever, marking a major milestone in the industry, according to market research firm iSuppli. While the number of units shipped worldwide during the third quarter looks relatively close -– 38.6 million notebook PCs vs. 38.5 million desktop PCS -– sales of notebook PCs experienced far more growth.

Over the past quarter, PC makers shipped more notebook PCs than desktops for the first time ever, marking a major milestone in the industry, according to market research firm iSuppli. While the number of units shipped worldwide during the third quarter looks relatively close -- 38.6 million notebook PCs vs. 38.5 million desktop PCS -- sales of notebook PCs experienced far more growth.

Japan's fair trade watchdog on Thursday slapped Sharp Corp. with a 261 million yen ($3 million) fine for fixing prices of liquid crystal display panels used for Nintendo's popular DS portable game machines.

The Fair Trade Commission said Sharp and Hitachi Display Ltd., a unit of Hitachi Ltd., had violated the Anti-monopoly law by controlling prices. A commission official said the investigation began in December 2006. He declined to say why Hitachi Display got no penalty.

Michael Dell has grown tired of discussing his company's reinvention.

He mocks suggestions that the company he founded is taking more risks than in the past and parries questions about how Dell's culture had changed.

"It's O.K. if everyone doesn't understand what we're doing," Dell said during an interview at Dell headquarters here, just north of Austin.

My pick for the most interesting social media trend of 2008 was the growing focus on talking about social media engagement results - not just actions - across a broad spectrum of social media initiatives.
Here are three innovative uses for social media that generated strong quantifiable results (engagement, awareness, or conversion):
- In crowdsourcing, My Starbucks Idea reported receiving over 75,000 suggestions since its inception in early 2008; the company has implemented several of those including complimentary wi-fi at stores

Sherman Black, a senior vice president at Seagate Technology, the leader in hard disk drives, lies awake at night worrying that his teenagers are part of a new generation of computer users who don't care if their data is stored locally or on the Web.

It matters to Black's industry because a growing number of consumers are eagerly eyeing a new wave of solid-state disk drives. Made from arrays of flash memory chips, these new drives are smaller and many times faster than the traditional hard disk disks that read and write magnetic ones and zeroes on a rotating platter.

Industry analysts say the technology sector needs to brace for a tough quarter and year. There's no longer any doubt about the U.S. being in a recession. The questions at this point are how deep it will be and how long it will last.

As consumers tighten their wallets, so will businesses tighten IT budgets. Computer sales are falling and sales of other products such as communications equipment and software are expected to slow, according to a report released Tuesday by Forrester Research.