MediaFile

Hewlett-Packard is close to a deal to buy software company Autonomy for $10 billion and will announce a long-rumored spinoff of its PC division.

Autonomy, which counts Procter & Gamble among a long list of major corporate customers that use its software to search and organize unstructured data like emails, confirmed it was in talks with HP.

Google+, which has picked up more than 25 million users since launching in June, is headed down the right path and is the first serious challenge to Facebook’s dominance.

Google’s infant social network, which counts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a member, has met skepticism so far but some venture capitalists see reason to be optimistic.

Speaking of Facebook, the social networking giant has won access to computers, files and emails it hopes will prove an upstate New York man’s claim to own half of Zuckerberg’s stake in the company is a fraud.

From: Mark Zuckerberg

To: All Facebook Staff

Subject: New cafeteria menu

Friends,

While some of you have welcomed the new all-you-can-kill menu at the company cafeteria, our monitoring of your status updates and private messages suggests some of you would have appreciated advance warning about the changes. This update aims to clarify some of the misinformation, much of which was deliberately spread by disgruntled former employees. You might also find it helpful to study the photographs I shared with you from my Memorial Day barbecue, where I demonstrated how to turn twin cows named Tyler and Cameron* into hamburgers. Once you’re comfortable with killing your own meat I’m sure you’ll find the new cafeteria options simple, healthy and cooler than a million dollars!

BREAKFAST

The bacon preparation area has been moved to the opposite end of the grill counter from the egg station to avoid splattering blood on the omelettes. Once you have selected your pig from the pen, be sure to choose a sharp knife and channel your inner angry bird. Hand the carcass to our friendly cafeteria butchers and return five hours later for your freshly cured meat.

GRILL

Join us in celebrating the diversity of our worldwide community by sampling a different country’s slaughter techniques every day!

If you can say one thing about those folks at AllThingsD, it’s that they really know how to throw a party. This year’s premier U.S. tech conference, at the swanky Terranea Resort in upscale Rancho Palos Verdes just an hour south of LA, brought out the Ferraris, CEOs and fancy gizmos in droves.

Such an event deserves a worthy schwag bag, and the folks at AllThingsD did not disappoint. This year’s trove of goodies for the 600 monied attendees included a brand-new HP Veer smartphone,   a “Pogoplug” personal cloud box (for backing up content and stuff), a Disney skull-shaped decanter meant to commemorate the release of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, a Lenovo wireless keyboard-and-mouse.

Last but not least — a “very special” D9-logo-emblazoned hoodie meant as a tribute to D8′s now-classic onstage interview with Mark Zuckerberg, during which Kara Swisher managed to get the clearly-perspiring Facebook chieftain to doff said item.

Apple’s iPhone 5 isn’t expected to hit the market until Christmas or early next year, according to Business Insider’s Jay Yarow. Avian Securities said in a note, based on conversations with a “key component supplier” to Apple, that the the iPhone 5 should go into production in September and that Apple could also be developing a lower price/lower spec iPhone model, Yarrow writes.

The $214 billion cellphone industry is bracing for a hit to its supply of components as top phone makers get set to report quarterly earnings next week. “We believe the shortages will start to bite in the third quarter, when we’ll get a clearer picture of who is most affected,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

On average analysts expect global cellphone sales volumes to have grown 10.8 percent in January-March, according to 18 analysts in a Reuters poll. The phone market has recovered from a slump in 2009, but growth is expected to have peaked in the first half of 2010, with a slowdown to 9 percent forecast for 2011, the Reuters poll showed.

It’s Kremlinology day in Silicon Valley as industry-watchers pore over the details of the two photographs released by the White House of President Obama’s big dinner with the lords of the tech world.

Who sat where, who was drinking what, and what does it all signify, were among the top questions under debate the morning after the commander-in-chief and fourteen guests broke bread at the house of venture capitalist John Doerr.

If proximity to the president is the key measure of clout, then Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Steve Jobs won top honors, with both executives flanking Obama at the dinner table, as can be seen in this picture.

In the 21st Century, Shakespeare might ask, “What’s in a domain name?” To the 6 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation, the answer is a lot of money.

Facebook paid $8.5 million to acquire the Internet address ‘fb.com’ for internal use by its employees from the largest U.S. farm group.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the purchase on Nov. 15, when Facebook unveiled its new messaging service. But he didn’t reveal the pricetag.

Innovation doesn’t know what day it is. It’s also true that we never seem to predict the most interesting things which actually do happen. Oh sure — years of speculation preceded Apple’s iPad announcement last January. But did anyone actually figure on the iPad?

With trepidation, then, I’ve committed to a forecast at years’ end, a moment of no moment for either tech or media. Sadly, there is no fiscal year option in the pontification game that could postpone this to a more sensible time in Q2.

So, in the spirit of tradition, I offer my First Annual Backward Compatible Tech Forecast.

Facebook has had its differences with Google and Apple in recent months.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried his best not to comment directly on the budding rivalry with the two tech titans during his appearance at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

But Zuckerberg did offer some clues about Facebook’s philosophy towards working with big companies that might offer some insight into its relationships with Apple and Google.

“If you’re a very large company and supporting you is going to cost us tens of millions of dollars, then we want to at least have an understanding of how you’re going to use what we’re doing, and that you’re not just going to import the data but also try and contribute back to the ecosystem and make people’s Facebook experience better.”

Apple and Google may be battling for a piece of the nascent mobile ad market, but Facebook is happy to sit on the sidelines.

Despite the fact that more than one-third of Facebook’s 500 million users sometimes access the social networking service from a cell phone, Facebook does not currently show any ads to its mobile users.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’s not in any hurry to begin generating mobile advertising revenue.

Give a guy $100 million, and the least he could do is get your name right.

But such decorum was not to be for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who saw his $100 million donation to Newark New Jersey’s public school system repaid by Mayor Cory Booker clumsily referring to him as “Zuckerman.”

The gaffe occurred during a conference call with the media on Friday to trumpet the 26-year-old Facebook CEO’s largesse (ahead of  a not-quite-so-flattering depiction of Zuckerberg in the new Sorkin/Fincher movie The Social Network). Booker tried to make a joke about the conference call’s participants speaking in reverse alphabetical order so that “Zuckerman” could go first…before quickly correcting himself.

It’s possible that the good Mayor had Zuckerberg confused with another famous figure of Newark lore.