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Samsung Electronics has agreed to sell its investment stake in Symbian to mobile phone maker Nokia, according to a Reuters report.

In June, Nokia announced plans to acquire the remaining stake in smartphone software developer Symbian that it didn’t already own. Nokia, by having full ownership of Symbian, wants to beat back the competition from Apple’s
iPhone and other competitors by accelerating its product development and serve as an open-source operating system platform for other handset makers, wireless carriers, and software developers.

Nokia, according to the Reuters report on Tuesday, will pay $410 million for its Symbian stake.

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OpenX, one the industry’s largest ad networks and the dominant open-source ad server company, just got a little bigger. OpenX announced that Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL, has joined the company as its chairman. Writes Scott Switzer of the announcement:

Jon has much experience working with major advertisers, as well as large and small publishers. He understands how difficult it is to provide software, service, and media to medium to small publishers, which is the core user base of OpenX. He can help us grow from a small company to a larger one. He understands our need to continue to focus on making OpenX simple, scalable, and extendable.

This is huge news for the OpenX team. OpenX continues to prove itself to be one of the top open-source companies to watch.

If you work in icy storage warehouses or happen to do most of your computing in an igloo, you may want to know that Glacier Computer, a designer and distributor of rugged industrial computers, is out with a heated touch screen for its Everest line.

“This activity causes condensation and then a refreezing of that condensation, making the screen unusable by the operator,” explains Dan Poisson, director of engineering for Glacier. “Development of a clear, touch-screen heater now allows for uninterrupted use as the operator travels between these locations.”

Come to think of it, even those of us who don’t work in harsh conditions might enjoy a slightly heated PC on those cold winter days–as long as the warmth’s not coming from a burning battery.

The heated touch screen on the Everest keeps things legible regardless of temperature fluctuations.

The non-wimpy Everest is designed for use on forklifts, carts, pallet jacks, and yard jockeys. The computers come with a 10.4- or 12.1-inch color LCD, and have an Intel processor, integrated 802.11 wireless, and a solid-state hard drive that offers protection against shock, vibration, and temperature extremes commonly seen in warehouse, logistic, and manufacturing/shop floor environments.

(Credit:
Glacier Computer)

The warmth solves a challenge that arises when the computer is being transported back and forth between sub-zero environments and areas above freezing–in and out of a freezer, for example.

Of course, doing what Icahn wants doesn’t always mean investors are amply rewarded. In October, when Icahn was throwing knives at the management of BEA Systems (an enterprise software maker since acquired by Oracle), News.com’s Dawn Kawamoto took a hard look at Icahn’s impact on companies in which he gains board seats and the companies that turn him away. The results, according to her analysis, were quite mixed.

Last year, Icahn waged a proxy campaign for a seat on the company’s board of directors and as of early March, he held a 6.4 percent stake in the Shaumburg, Ill., company. On Monday, he announced he was filing suit in Delaware court to get access to Motorola documents regarding its board of directors, financial performance, and expenses such as executive use of the corporate aircraft.

We contacted Icahn’s office in New York City and we’ll let you know if or when he does, in fact, have something to say about today’s news. But should he like this? Motorola shares were only up about 2.5 percent in midday trading, so it’s not like this news is stirring hearts on Wall Street. In fairness, it hasn’t been a great day for the financial markets, but you would expect a little more enthusiasm than what we’re seeing so far.

Icahn: Thumbs up or down on Motorola's news?

So the king of the corporate raiders doesn’t have all the answers. Unfortunately, up to now, neither has Motorola’s management.

This year, Icahn is trying to get a four-person slate onto Motorola’s board. Motorola CEO Greg Brown said in a conference call Wednesday that the company offered Icahn two seats, but he turned down the offer. Brown also said (I wasn’t in the room, so I can’t say if it was with a straight face or not) that pressure from Icahn didn’t have an impact on the decision to split the company in two.

Suuure. And former Motorola CEO Ed Zander stepped down last year to spend more time with his family.

Update: Now we know what Icahn thinks. In a letter to Motorola’s board of directors released after trading ended Wednesday, Icahn called the Motorola split long overdue, but questioned the company’s timetable. He also said he plans to continue with his proxy fight.

Wednesday morning, ailing Motorola announced that it will split into two companies next year. The news doesn’t come as a shock to the many who believed something dramatic had to be done to fix Motorola’s troubled handset business. And it probably doesn’t surprise Icahn, who has been hounding Motorola for nearly a year.

The question that’s now bound to be on the mind of people who watch Wall Street like most people watch Sunday football: What does Icahn think about this?

Here’s one outcome Icahn may like: Motorola gussies up the handset business and sells it, as News.com’s Marguerite Reardon discusses in a post aptly titled,”Is Motorola putting lipstick on a pig?” That would get Motorola out of a tough, frequently low-margin, and crowded business. It would also provide the company with the cash to focus on its lower-profile but more successful Broadband & Mobility Solutions business, which does everything from enterprise and government work to cable set-top boxes.

You have to hand it to corporate raider Carl Icahn: He sure knows how to stir it up.

The iTunes Store is still the top destination for U.S. music shoppers, according to new data.

Apple is still the No. 1 music retailer in the United States, but Amazon.com’s online store is coming on strong.

More U.S. music buyers are getting their music fix through iTunes than from any other source, according to data released on Tuesday by NPD Group. Earlier this year, Apple took over the top spot from Wal-Mart Stores, and it maintained that lead during the six months from January to June, NPD said.

(Credit:
Apple)

Wal-Mart is still in second place, followed by Best Buy. Taking fourth place from Target was Amazon, whose own music store has been growing in popularity since it launched last September, perhaps in part due to its DRM-free stance.

Regarding the shutdown, AOL said in a statement: “Although these services have been an important part of our product portfolio for many years, AOL’s shift to a Web-based, advertising-focused company has caused us to take a close look at the products we offer and we determined that managing and maintaining these hosted and subscription-based services is not in the best long-term interest of our users or our business.”

The selection of PhotoWorks as the sole online destination for users’ files is limiting. When Yahoo shut down Yahoo Photos to favor its Flickr service, it offered users not just a sideload to Flickr but to Shutterfly or Kodak Gallery if they wished. PhotoWorks isn’t a bad photo site, but it’s not the most contemporary in terms of features, and as it is part of American Greetings, the service is definitely canted toward the creation of printed photo gift items. However, American Greetings’ GM of Digital Photography, Sally Babcock, told me that to sweeten the deal, “we are offering customers 50 free prints to migrate and may have some other special offers closer to the holidays.”

Out.

As has been previously reported, AOL is shutting down its photo-hosting services AOL Pictures and Bluestring, and its online file storage service Xdrive. Everything stored there goes away on December 31, 2008. Photos on AOL Pictures are getting an optional new home at American Greetings’ PhotoWorks service, although users have to actively sign on to the new service before June 30, 2009, to rescue their images.

Users of Xdrive’s paid services will get a pro-rated refund early in 2009; billing itself will stop as of November 5, 2008.

The best bet, for everyone, is to sign on to your AOL services before the end of the year and download your photos or files. All three services will have bulk downloading available until the end of the year; archival DVDs will also be available for a fee. Xdrive users will also find other online storage companies hustling for their business.

In.

Last month, AOL replaced Curt Viebranz as the president of AOL with Lynda Clarizio, who had led the Tacoda component Platform-A.

Time Warner’s AOL division began a 100-person layoff Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The cuts came from the Platform-A group formed last September to offer ad inventory on its own and third-party Web sites. It will cut its employee count to about 1,500, the newspaper said. It quoted an AOL representative who said some people held redundant jobs from the consolidation of several groups into the division.

This is a screenshot for Microsoft's adCenter Contextual Ads for Video service that is being developed in its adCenter Labs.

Tarek Najm, technical fellow at Microsoft, said in a statement that the technologies “can change the game of online advertising.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s got other plans for changing the game. The company launched a bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion last week. So far, Yahoo doesn’t appear to be biting and things could get messy if Microsoft refuses to take “no” for an answer, which is likely.

Microsoft showed off technology to journalists on Tuesday for enabling out-of-home ads and speech recognition-based contextual video ads, and blocking ads from popping up next to porn.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft also is working on improvements to keyword and content analysis that would help companies put their ads next to more relevant content. Other technology would block ads from being displayed next to objectionable or sensitive content such as porn or weapons.

Another technology under development uses a computer vision algorithm to calculate where to put an ad in a video that would intrude the least on the viewing experience, as well as technology that inserts contextual ads in video where appropriate.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

The technology is being developed in Microsoft’s adCenter Labs and is not on the market yet.

A merger would help Microsoft better compete against Google in the search and online ad market. It’s unclear whether Microsoft would go with its own adCenter online ad platform or with Yahoo’s Panama platform if the merger were to go through. Microsoft launched adCenter in 2006, and Yahoo launched its overhauled online ad system last year. So far, neither of the systems seems to be giving Google much grief.

In its demonstrations at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters, Microsoft showed off something called “Air Wave,” which allows advertisers to reach consumer on interactive multitouch screens in public places.

On the desktop, Intel took back its first place position (year-to-year) with a 38 percent share against Nvidia’s 36 percent, while AMD moved up to 19 percent, Peddie said.

Total graphics chip market shares for the first quarter of 2008.

In the notebook market, Intel held its dominant position but slipped one point to 53 percent while Nvidia gained a point to 27 percent and AMD slid a point to 17 percent.

Nvidia’s share stood at 32.7 percent, up from 28.5 percent in the year-earlier period. Advanced Micro Devices was at 18.6 percent, down from a 22 percent share last year.

Intel officially still rules the graphics chip market. But an arcane-sounding statistic called “double-attach” may redefine the chipmaker’s standing.

Intel dominates market share figures because virtually all Intel-based PCs (shipping over the last few years) have an Intel Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) built in. And PC suppliers opt to use this low-end Intel IGP configuration in a number of models–particularly in the notebook market–because it’s an extremely inexpensive way to provide graphics. Intel graphics chips are used in specialized markets like ultra-portables, too. The Apple MacBook Air and ThinkPad X300, for example, ship only with Intel X3100 integrated graphics.

“The overall ‘double attach’ is about 35 percent,” said Jon Peddie. That puts a sizable dent in Intel’s market share. A recent report from Doug Freedman of American Technology Research went so far to say this: “Nvidia remains the No.1 graphics supplier as up to 73 mil Integrated (Intel) IGPs are unused in systems due to ‘double-attach’ with a Nvidia solution.”

In the overall graphics market (desktops and notebooks), Intel held its first place position, claiming 42.7 percent, up from about 38.7 percent in the same period of the previous year, the market researcher said.

But this isn’t the whole story. In a post Nvidia-CEO-rant world, there is a push to recognize a pesky statistic called “double-attach.” This means that a PC shipped with an integrated Intel graphics chip will be double attached when a separate graphics card is attached on top of the existing Intel graphics silicon. The Intel chip is disabled and goes “unused.”

(Credit:
Jon Peddie Research)

“Traditionally, the first quarter has flat to negative growth for the computer industry as retailers and OEMs sell what’s left from the holiday season. The quarter saw the biggest drop since 2005,” said Peddie.

First, the official first-quarter graphics chip market share numbers. Total shipments for Q1 were 95 million units, down 5.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 and up 20 percent over the same period in the previous year, according to Jon Peddie Research.

A new Googler has offered a rare glimpse into the process by which the search giant turns ideas into products.

Brian Ussery, a technologist at an interactive marketing agency who moderates a Google forum on SearchEngineWatch.com, wrote a recap of the talk on his blog and has made the presentation available in PDF form.

Another important tool is Google’s intranet search engine, “Moma,” which lets employees search for everything from available conference rooms and lunch recommendations to the employee handbook and time cards. The application is integrated with Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Docs.

However, the real meat is in the screen shots. Marked “confidential” and “proprietary,” they are so detailed I feel like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t. (In a comment on Google Blogoscoped, which posted some screenshots and other information from the presentation, Ussery explains: “This isn’t a leaked document, the webcast encouraged sharing and provided the pdf.”)

(Credit:
Google) (Credit:
Google) (Credit:
Google)

There are screen shots of e-mails dubbed “Product Snippets,” in which engineers tell each other about their weekly activities. The e-mails are then compiled into a searchable database. There’s a “Google Ideas” application where Googlers can read about what other people are working on and offer comments and ratings.

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise

Here are some screen shots:

The gist of the presentation is that Google’s flat management structure fosters innovation and good ideas get percolating faster with Web-based apps that allow engineers to find information and collaborate.

(Credit:
Google)
Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation on Tuesday as part of a webinar entitled “Innovation @ Google: a Day in the Life” hosted by KMWorld.