The Washington Post’s Michael Rosenwald this morning pens an interesting piece about how the federal government, under CIO Vivek Kundra, is letting more and more government workers choose their own gadgets of choice, rather than impose on them use of government-specified devices.

Although a number of anecdotes come up in the piece about Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPad, and Google’s (GOOG) Gmail, the article is titled, somewhat more pointedly, “Federal government loosens its grip on the BlackBerry,” meaning, of course, the traditional use of Research in Motion (RIMM) messaging devices.

In part, it’s simply the “consumerization of IT,” as many have identified, and as Kundra maintains, but it’s also RIM’s failure to win third-party developers with a “flexible” software platform, Rosenwald writes.

Rosenwald cites several instances of switchover:

At [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms], there are about 50 iPads or iPhones in use, and the number could increase to 100 soon. At the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the 1,000 BlackBerrys used last year have dropped to about 700 as workers picked other smartphones. The State Department is testing iPads. Congress now allows iPads and iPhones on the House floor. And the Department of Veterans Affairs is getting ready to allow its clinicians to choose an iPad or iPhone instead of a BlackBerry.

Update: In a note to clients today, Mike Abramsky with RBC Capital Markets, who maintains a Sector Perform rating on RIMM and a $53.45 price target, argues that RIMM will hold onto some clients who prize security above all. Reflecting on the Wash Po article, he writes,

While these developments offer headline risk to valuation and may continue to pressure RIM’s share in the US, BlackBerries are unlikely to lose favor with higher-risk users, as security remains a high priority following recent high profile security breaches and privacy concerns (Lockheed Martin’s secure VPN network was recently hacked, which could slow Android/Apple deployment in regulated industries like banks and the government. The U.S. Senate recently focused on mobile privacy concerns; House oversight committee chair Darrell Issa raised concerns White House employees could circumvent federal record-keeping laws by using iPhone and iPads.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Or may he did and “patently ill-advised” and “grossly wrong” were compliments?

From The Gartman Letter:

“Finally, The Wall Street Journal yesterday had an article entitled “Hedges Clip Gas Producer’s Earnings,” wherein the journalist took Chesapeake Energy, Clayton Williams Energy, Devon Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources and a few other smaller cap energy companies to task for their losses they’d suffered on their hedging operations.

Several of these are clients of TGL, and most notably Chesapeake Energy, and we thought the tone of the article was patently ill-advised and grossly wrong. The article made it appear that the hedging operations of these energy companies were speculative in nature, and that they would have done better for their shareholders had they chosen not to hedge, which in almost all instances means having taken short positions in either the Brent, or WTI crude futures or perhaps in nat-gas futures. We suspect too that the article was prepared prior to the massive plunge in crude oil prices last week that suddenly turned these supposedly ill-conceived hedge programs into much more profitable once instead.

Hedging is given a bad name by articles such as his. WE suspect that many of the hedges were put into place when the companies in question borrowed large sums of money to undertake oil exploration programs. With costs high but with prices higher still, wise management acted to sell production for months or years forward, thus protecting the borrowing programs from going from ones that are profitable when begun to ones that might become massively un-profitable when half way through if crude oil prices fell. As the CFO of Pioneer Natural Resources said, defending his company’s decision to hedge, “The hedging program in place allowed Pioneer to plan for drilling activity and make sure we can achieve our cash flow goals.”

That is precisely what good, sharp businessmen and women are supposed to do: play for business activities that allow them to achieve their cash flow and earning’s goals. To do otherwise is rank speculation and that is not the business they are supposed to be in. They are in the business of finding and distributing energy. If their shareholders wished management to speculate upon the direction of crude oil prices, would it not have been cheaper to shutter in all drilling activities, fire all employees, cancel all drilling rig leases, lease a quote machine or two and begin a program of organized gambling. Then, we supposed, the Wall Street Journal would have been satisfied.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Benchmark Capital analyst Gary Mobley this afternoon reiterates a Buy rating on shares of MIPS Technologies (MIPS), writing that an article yesterday in Bloomberg Businessweek by Ashlee Vance and Peter Burrows is deceptively written and implies trouble for MIPS that might not actually be the case.

MIPS competes with ARM Holdings (ARMH) in licensing chip designs for use by various chip makers, including Nvidia (NVDA) and others, and the vast majority of microprocessor makers have so far gone with ARM’s designs.

Vance and Burrows write that executives at various companies working on Android-based products have said that Google (GOOG) is putting the screws to “willy nilly” development, in an effort to stem fragmentation of the operating system.

Mobley’s problem is that the article makes it sound like Android will become standardized around ARM’s chip reference architecture and that as a consequence, “MIPS, MIPS’ licensees and Intel (INTC) will be precluded from the Android-based application processor market. The implications, if the details of the article were true, could be a negative for MIPS.”

However, “Based on conversations with our contacts, MIPS has welcomed a defragmentation effort by Google’s Android,” writes Mobley. For one thing, he points out, MIPS has been developing tools to translate versions of Android designed for ARM chips into versions that will work with MIPS chips.

“If application development and hardware development for Android became more standardized by Google, the time it takes MIPS to port the newest version of Android could shorten.”

MIPS shares today are down 72 cents, or 6.4%, at $10.49.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

In other somewhat related yet totally irrelevant news, in their up-to-the-minute coverage of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, L.A. NOW also posted this phenomenally absurd story about a dude they found meditating on the beach next to the waves in Santa Monica this morning while the entire west coast was on tsunami alert. But he’s not crazy, he’s just zenned himself into oblivion somewhere on Neptune. Read the full story

Seems the Apple (AAPL) “cloud” is coming into focus.

Bloomberg’s Adam Satariano and Andy Fixmer today write that Apple “is in talks with record companies to give iTunes customers easier access to music they’ve purchased across multiple devices,” citing anonymous sources.

While not a subscription — the word is never used in the article — the agreements would provide for a “permanent backup of music purchases if the originals are damaged or lost,” the article states, something that has been referred to in other contexts as a “digital locker,” a notion pioneered by Sonic Solutions, now a division of Rovi (ROVI).

The authors write that such an arrangement is one of several options Apple is exploring against the backdrop of “stalled“ digital music downloads for the entire industry.

Apple shares today are down 96 cents, or 0.3%, at $358.60.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

The latest issue of AR Magazine features a lengthy profile of Ray Dalio’s mega-successful Bridgewater Associates, with much space devoted to the “culture” of the firm, as defined by Principles, a handbook of sorts written by Dalio, which we shared last May. In sum, the firm requires its employees to “trust in truth” and to “pursue the truth” relentlessly, in everything they do. Criticism is “both welcomed and encouraged” and rather than “depersonalizing mistakes” or saying “we didn’t handle this well,” the staff are told to “connect specific mistakes to specific people.” It’s an environment unlike any other hedge fund and those who’ve experienced the program firsthand seem to be divided into two camps**: Dalio, and the Bridgewater officials (senior staff are referred to as “culture carriers”) who think it’s great and the former employees interviewed for the article, who describe the place as “cultlike,” “sinister,” “eerie” and something out of George Orwell’s 1984. Here’s what one former exec had to say:

My fundamental belief is that Bridgewater is a cult. It’s isolated, it has a charismatic leader and it has its own dogma.” It was so stressful, he recalls, that one employee couldn’t sleep all night and then, in the morning, threw up before meetings with Dalio. (The incident could not be confirmed.)

Another likened being an employee at Bridgewater to being an abused puppy.

“It hits your confidence level after a while,” he said. Dalio’s “model is flawed because it denies human nature,” this former employee says, adding that the people who succeed at Bridgewater “are not afraid to get in your face. They believe you should have no emotion in anything you do. For many, because we’re all human beings, it’s a hard thing to get used to.” Says another: “What [Dalio] doesn’t understand is that if you kick a dog enough…[the dog] curls up and just whimpers. And he kicks pretty hard.”

Company meetings where most of the “in your face” conversations happen seem to be the biggest source of stress for those not comfortable with being on the receiving or giving end of a “let me tell you why your ideas suck” speech. One of the first passages that appears in Principles is a discussion of the dynamic between hyenas and wildebeest in the animal kingdom. It reads:

…when a pack of hyenas takes down a young wildebeest, is that good or evil? At face value, that might not be “good” because it seems cruel, and the poor wildebeest suffers and dies. Some people might even say that the hyenas are evil. Yet this type of apparently “cruel” behavior exists throughout the animal kingdom. Like death itself it is integral to the enormously complex and efficient system that has worked for as long as there has been life. It is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and the interest of the greater system, including those of the wildebeest, because killing and eating the wildebeest fosters evolution (i.e., the natural process of improvement). In fact, if you changed anything about the way that dynamic works, the overall outcome would be worse.

And while everyone is supposedly encouraged to be a hyena toward others during truth-seeking sessions (Bridgewater prides itself on being “flat” environment, without a hierarchy), it was decided not too long ago that, actually, some hyena’s opinions are less important than others. How is such a thing determined? Glad you asked.

The firm recently introduced a “believability matrix” to determine whose opinions matter.

Yes.

Ray Dalio’s Radical Truth [AR Magazine]

**The third group is Bridgewater’s investors, who don’t care either way.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Repost.Us launched today in beta with a new, one-button platform that instantly monetizes digital content and automates online syndication.

The feature extends the reach of original content, keeping an eye on the integrity and proper attribution of online assets.

As such, the startup removes the need to call for permission every time you want to republish an article. When the Repost.Us button is clicked, it generates an embed code for the article that can be used on all common web publishing platforms.

When a reader loads an embedded article, their browser requests the content from Repost.Us, and the site delivers a current copy of the article reformatted transparently to fit the republisher’s site.

By loading the article via an embed code, instead of copying and pasting, Repost.Us guarantees the content integrity, automatically generates updates and corrections, and ensures that search engines continue to see the original publisher’s site as the primary content source.

In doing so, it also opens up a significant and currently untapped market for content. The potential money at stake is huge — the company says an increase in page views of just 10 percent would conservatively generate an additional $300 million annually.

The Fair Syndication Consortium reports that over 75 percent of sites that copy content from other sites would be willing to pay for that content. The same study found that more than 75,000 websites have used unlicensed content at least once, with around an average usage of three times per month.

The company has plenty of competitors, including Copyright Clearance Center, the Associated Press, Vertical Acuity, Publish 2, and Amplify, all of which are looking to cash in on that same market.

But Repost.Us says it offers something those other companies don’t, saying that while wire services and rights clearance centers are available, they ignore most small- to medium-sized publishers, which represent a big chunk of the market.

The new platform, from Free Range Content, is the brainchild of CEO John Pettitt, founder of Beyond.com and Cybersource.com.

“The Internet is about democratization of information. Unfortunately, democratization has made it difficult for content creators to control and monetize their work,” said Pettitt. “Repost.Us is for everyone who creates original online content — from individual bloggers to major media companies, and it provides an actionable business model for producing quality work.”

The startup said Free Range Content is currently raising a first round of external investment.

Tags: launch, online content, Social Media, syndication

Companies: Amplify, Beyond.com, Copyright Clearance Center, Cybersource.com, Fair Syndication Consortium, Free Range Content, Publish 2, Repost.Us, The Associated Press, Vertical Acuity

People: John Pettitt

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

“Even if a guy is really lazy and has done s*** all year, he’ll still get a £600,000 bonus.”

Those words supposedly comes from a “sharp-suited trader” guzzling Cristal with his colleagues in a London bar yesterday, who went on:

“Everyone in here is BarCap. The reason there’s so much champagne is because it’s our bonus day…The PAs even got bonuses today, some of them got £60,000. Most traders got two, three, four, five and even six million.

One of the more believable lines from the article which may have been written by Stephen Glass: “Some people are annoyed because they don’t think they got enough this year.”

Bankers Celebrate Bonuses Like Crisis Never Happened [Mirror via BI]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Motorola (MOT) shares are up 14 cents, or 1.8%, this morning at $9.16, the most obvious “catalyst” being the article by Spencer Ante in The Wall Street Journal quoting Verizon Communications (VZ) wireless COO, John Stratton, who said Mot would be one of their vendor offering a 4G handset next [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Ladies, do yourselves a favor and pick up a book called He’s Just Not That Into You. Not to be blunt but the President doesn’t care about you; get that through your heads and move on! You deserve so much more. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can open yourself up to meeting a man that treats you right.

From: Daniel Loeb

Subject: Holiday Gift

Dear Friends/battered wives:

It is that time of year and I just thought of the perfect gift in light of some of you. In case the President’s hostage rant wasn’t enough to turn you off, I thought I’d buy any of you a great book for gals who just keep on pursuing the wrong guy. Made popular on Oprah a few years back, “He’s Just Not That Into You” seems like the perfect holiday stocking stuffer for true blue Democrats who just can’t get enough of our President’s smack downs on hard working successful Americans known as “the 2%”

http://www.amazon.com/Hes-Just-That-Into-Understanding/dp/068987474X

I am sure, if we are really nice and stay quiet, everything will be alright and the President will become more centrist and that all his tough talk is just words; I mean he really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it; he just gets a little angry….i mean when I am alone with him —at $30,000 a plate fund raisers—he’s really nice and once I got invited to the White House! It was so cool, because I could tell all my friends…and when he gives speeches, I mean i get to sit in the front row and my friends see me on TV…..and he usually doesn’t hit me in the face to it doesn’t show except for that one time…he’s not that bad really, unless he gets drunk (from power) and…..well, he really does love me or he wouldn’t invite me to all those $30,000 a plate fund raisers and ask my opinion all the time, right?

Henninger said it best in case you haven’t read his article: http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html (an excerpt below):

He lashed “the wealthiest Americans” three times, not to mention “the wealthiest 2% of Americans,” “tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires,” “wealthy people” and—channeling the French revolution—”the wealthiest estates.” (Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, answering the party’s casting call for the role of Madame Defarge, denounced the deal as “morally corrupt.” Keep her away from knitting needles.)

I don’t buy that all this was said as a sop to the angry left. One month into his presidency, the Obama budget message repeatedly ripped into “those at the commanding heights of our economy.” When at the White House Monday Mr. Obama suggested his next campaign will be “a conversation with the American people” about ending those rates (35%!) for “wealthy people,” I take him at his word. He won’t be at peace until this violation is erased.

Franklin Roosevelt in his speech to the 1936 Democratic Convention attacked what he called “economic royalists.” Nearly 75 years later, Barack Obama, everyone around him in the White House and the kind of Democrats who migrate to Washington seem stuck in some sort of Ma Joad idea of the American economy.

But they’ve gone FDR and John Steinbeck one better. In the world of the Grapes of Wrath Democrats now gagging over Barack Obama’s “sell-out” to the rich, the new economic royalists aren’t limited to “the Ishmael or Insull.” Now it’s any single person or married couple in America with a pre-tax income at $200,000 or $250,000.

DL

Related: Loeb To Obama Supporters: He’s Just Not That Into You [AR]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker