Former IBM CEO and Chairman Louis Gerstner.

Blackstone, a PE firm interested in bidding against Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell for the company, reportedly reached out to Mark Hurd, co-president of Oracle and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Dell’s nemesis. Hurd is charged, in part, with making Oracle’s hardware business as margin-rich as its software business, and so far that effort has been underwhelming. Financier Carl Icahn is also pursuing Dell, according to published reports.

Some have also mentioned Michael Capellas, the former CEO of Compaq who helped engineer its sale to HP for $25 billion in 2001. Then-HP CEO Carly Fiorina drove that deal. Capellas was more recently involved with The VCE Co. created by EMC and VMware.

Dave Donatelli, EVP and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group.

But seriously people, if we’re going to play guessing games, let’s really play. Hurd and Capellas? Puh-leaze. Why not Louis Gerstner? Gerstner, who is credited with turning IBM around during his tenure there, has “got one more in him,” according to one of my  panel of experts on Twitter.

Or how about Todd Bradley, HP’s PC guy who was passed over as CEO at least once and perhaps twice. What better way to strut his stuff than to reinvent HP’s biggest PC-and-server rival?

Former HP CEO and Chairman Mark Hurd

Or Dave Donatelli? The HP storage-and-servers guy  is clearly not afraid to jump ship. His departure from EMC for rival HP in 2009 sparked a lawsuit.

As EVP and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group, Donatelli is responsible for “the development and delivery of server, storage, networking and technology services solutions”. That pretty much sounds like Dell’s mission statement — except for the enterprise part. As Dell’s president of software told me a week ago, Dell is more focused on SMBs than the largest enterprises, where IBM reigns.

Todd Bradley, EVP of HP’s personal systems and printing group.

And heck, if former HP CEOs carry a premium (why that might be is a mystery to some), why not Fiorina herself?

Others think Gerry Smith, who heads up Lenovo’s U.S. operations, would be an interesting pick. Or Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk and then Yahoo.

Or, Y.K. Kim, CEO of  Samsung Electronics America. Now there’s a company that knows from success.

Intel’s outgoing CEO Paul Otellini could be looking for work.

But, since Dell is fashioning itself as a sort of IBM for the small and medium business (SMB) set, it really needs more Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) expertise. Maybe they should hire someone from Saleforce.com or Box?

One of my Twitter experts put it this way: ”The market for SMB is pure SaaS plus cloud and only enterprises, [service providers], and government [accounts] will be buying hardware,” he noted.

If the new bids from Blackstone and activist Carl Icahn gel, Dell’s board has a few more days to sort through them and make its decision. Dealbook has a good explanation of the process as it will unfold now.

Of course, this new CEO discussion, as entertaining as it is, may be moot if the Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners buyout bid wins the day. If that’s the case, presumably Mr. Dell will remain CEO if he so desires. If not, let the games begin again.

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Intel CEO Paul Otellini

In December, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said the company was open to building chips for companies that were not directly competitive with its key PC- and-server-chip business.  Critics say that Intel missed an opportunity to dominate the low-power chips powering fast-selling cell phones and tablets where ARM is king. This deal, if it pans out, means Intel would build Cisco-designed chips for Cisco networking hardware and become a player in the $30 billion custom chip making business.

A move into the made-to-order chip business would also mean facing off with Taiwan Semiconductor, a foundry that makes chips for customers including Qualcomm, and which appears ready to take on Samsung for Apple’s chip business.

Intel had no comment in the Bloomberg report. A Cisco spokeswoman reaffirmed to me that Cisco and Intel have worked together for years — Cisco’s Unified Computing Systems (UCS) servers run Intel chips for example — but would not comment further.  But this deal would validate the notion of Intel as a manufacturer of special-built chips to run things other than servers and PCs.

It’s interesting that Intel may now build chips to other companies’ specs. The company’s own silicon technology and designs drove the PC and laptop business pretty much from the get-go in the 1980s when Intel and its software partner Microsoft. This looks like a leader becoming a follower.

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Still, Intel is definitely getting close to lifting the curtain on its plans for the living room. I’ve been talking to sources familiar with the project for a few months now, and done a fair share of digging online as well. Combined with a few previous leaks, a much clearer picture about what Intel is up to in the TV space is emerging: it’s a box, it’s a service, and it’s intriguing, to say the least.

It’s top-secret… but not for much longer

Intel Media’s office building may not look like much, but sources have told me that the company is trying to recreate a startup atmosphere inside.

Intel has been building its secret new TV platform inside a nondescript office building tucked away between two parking structures in a corner of the Intel Campus in Santa Clara, California. From the outside, it looks like any other building on the chip maker’s campus.

But I’ve been told by multiple sources with knowledge of the project that the things going on in the building are anything but dusty old Intel. The project, which has been dubbed Intel Media, is run like a startup in stealth mode.

Intel Media is overseen by a separate board, which includes Intel CEO Paul Otellini as well as Intel Media’s content head Eric Free. There has even been talk of spinning off Intel Media into a separate corporate entity. Intel Media boss Erik Huggers, who previously led the BBC’s iPlayer efforts, apparently prefers to hire outsiders over Intel veterans, and most people at Intel have no clue what’s going on in the building.

That may change soon. Even without any CES announcements, it looks like Intel is getting ready to finally unveil what it’s been working on. Forbes also reported that limited beta tests of the service are going to start in March, and Huggers is scheduled to talk at AllThingsD’s media conference in February, where he presumably has to give at least some kind of sneak peek.

It’s a box… and so much more

Intel Media’s retail efforts are driven by the same guy who brought Jawbone’s Jambox to Best Buy and Walmart.

At the center of Intel’s efforts is a set-top box manufactured by Intel and possibly Intel-branded as well. The device will be sold on Intel’s website as well as through retail partners. Intel Media has hired Sean Ludick, who helped Jawbone to get its speakers and headsets into the stores of retail giants like Best Buy, Costco and Walmart. Ludick is now is in charge of doing the same for Intel’s TV box.

Of course, Intel’s box will compete with a plethora of other devices at these stores, none of which are selling particularly well. That’s where Courtnee Westendorf comes in. Westendorf worked more than a decade at Apple, where she managed global marketing for the iPhone and iPod. Now, she is head of marketing for Intel Media.

But Intel Media won’t be just about that one single box. The company’s goal is to deliver its video service to all screens, including tablets, PCs and mobile phones.

That will likely include an ambitious licensing play to secure content across all of these devices. Intel’s set-top box will offer access to third-party apps, but also TV content licensed by Intel — something that has been one of the key challenges of the project. Reuters and the Wall Street Journal detailed earlier this year how the company wanted to secure the right to stream individual TV channels over the internet, and Forbes reported this weekend that it will offer consumers the ability to subscribe to individual channels, as opposed to a big and expensive cable bundle. I’m still skeptical about that last part, but we should soon know more.

It wants to beat Apple TV… without being Apple TV

Intel Media executives believe Apple got it all wrong.

Intel has made numerous attempts to capture the living room, most recently with its CE4100 chipset, which powered first-generation Google TV devices as well as the Boxee Box. Google TV’s first devices were largely ignored by consumers, and Intel wants to get it right this time around.

But Intel doesn’t want to just build a better Google TV. It wants to dethrone Apple TV, the de facto leader in the market for video streaming devices. Apple executives have long called the current-generation Apple TV a hobby, but the company nonetheless managed to sell five million units in its fiscal FY 2012. However Intel Media executives think that Apple simply isn’t doing it right with its current-generation TV product, I was told by a source.

One example: Apple TV currently offers a combination of VOD and apps, forcing users to make active choices about their TV viewing and making them browse through catalogs of media before they’re able to watch anything. Intel Media boss Erik Huggers, in particular, dislikes this approach, and wants to replace it with a broadcast-like approach of curated channels that require a minimum of interaction. Think Pandora, not Spotify.

It’s developed in California… and London

Much of the UI design for Intel’s TV product has been driven by a group of designers that incorporated as W12 Studios this year.

Huggers is known to have strong opinions about user experience, and has gone on the record saying that the user experience of many existing TV services is “absolutely dreadful, completely awful.” He has also been vocal about the power of small teams. One of his inspirations for Intel Media has been Free, the French telco disruptor that built its own IPTV set-top box with a staff of 20 engineers. Those two reasons explain why Huggers has quasi-outsourced the UI design of the Intel TV product to a small team of star designers in London, which incorporated under the name W12 Studios earlier this year.

The team includes a number of people who worked on the BBC iPlayer, and many were previously at key agencies like IDEO, frog design, Method, Schematic and Fjord. “The people that I’ve been able to attract I know very well, because they worked in my organization,” Huggers said in 2011. “These are the guys that have designed industry award-winning services across television, telephone, tablets, PCs.”

The W12 Studios team has taken multiple trips to Santa Clara while working on the project. During that time, the design underwent a number of iterations. I’ve heard that one version looked a bit like Apple’s Cover Flow, while another incarnation has been described to me as having the look and feel of the tile design at the center of Windows 8.

It’s a big bet on Intel’s future… which is uncertain

Intel CEO Paul Otellini has been key to the company’s TV initiative. But with him leaving in May, what will the future hold for Intel Media?

One source told me that as of six months ago, Intel had already spent $100 million on these efforts. Another estimated that the total spent on these efforts could end up being an order of magnitude higher. That’s real money, even for someone like Intel — and it shows how serious the company is making this new foray into the TV space. That’s because for Intel, it’s not just about capturing the living room. It’s about redefining its own DNA to be prepared for a post-silicon future.

Otellini has long been talking about his desire to embrace services as the future of Intel. The company’s TV service could become a key blueprint for these efforts, for a future in which Intel sells goods and services directly to consumers, as opposed to just powering devices made by others. That motivation was a big reason Otellini brought Huggers on board. Here’s how Huggers recalled his job interview with Otellini:

“I don’t know anything about silicon. Zero. And I told him that. He said: ‘That’s exactly what we need. We need someone who doesn’t understand silicon. We need someone who has launched services, who has worked in a content environment, and who can help bridge that gap.”

It’s worth pointing out that this move towards services has been championed by Otellini, who is going to retire in May. The question is whether his yet-to-be-named successor will share the same vision for Intel’s future, and whether he will give Intel Media a fair chance even if consumers don’t bite right away.

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We’re sorry to announce that we are no longer accepting uploads to Jumpcut.

We will be keeping the Jumpcut site up and running for the foreseeable future so you‘ll still be able to play, remix and share your existing movies – you just won’t be able to upload anything new.

If you’re looking for a place to upload and share your video, we recommend that you head over to Flickr: http://flickr.com/explore/video

Thanks for all of your contributions to the Jumpcut community.

The Jumpcut Team

The main Jumpcut site, however, gives no indication that uploads aren’t being accepted, with messaging on the main Jumpcut site encouraging people to “upload,” “make a movie” and “explore.” The Jumpcut FAQ, meanwhile, includes:

Why did you turn off uploads?
It was a difficult decision that we wish we didn’t have to make, but it was necessary in order to focus resources on other Yahoo! sites.

Users who have uploaded video can still access and watch their movies on the site (for the “foreseeable future), but cannot download them completely because of technical limitations of the service, according to the Jumpcut FAQ.

Yahoo never did much with JumpCut — unless you count those presidential campaign mashups — and the service was never fully integrated into other Yahoo video offerings, at least not as much as it could have been.

While it isn’t officially “closed,” we’re not sure how long for this world a video editing site is if you can’t upload video to it. This is the second major video service Yahoo has disabled this month, following the closure of the Yahoo Live live-streaming.

Hat tip to TechCrunch.

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Intel rightly points out that in a connected world, devices ranging from ATM machines to mobile phones need more speed (but lower power) to offer next-generation use cases for businesses and consumers (you know, things like your refrigerator texting you when you’re out of milk.) So it’s gearing up for this revolution with a line of system-on-a-chip devices, later versions of which will be based on the Atom processor, which was built for networks and mobile Internet devices. One of these SoCs, code-named Linmore, should be available for mobile phones in late 2009 or 2010.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini told us that Atom would be in mobile phones and in embedded devices, which is smart in case the netbook market doesn’t pan out. But will the embedded market embrace Intel? Will the mobile phone market embrace Intel? Most sources in the industry doubt this will happen given Intel’s behavior as the primary provider of chips in the x86 market.

However, the Intel effort does bring software issues to the fore. One of the reasons Intel argues that its SoCs are better is because developers can use a common operating system that will stretch across multiple platforms, something that’s already proving important in creating a user experience that consumers can embrace. That common software platform is why Nokia bought TrollTech, which means Intel might be able to use the common platform edge to push out other embedded chip guys.

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Otellini was excited about Atom, calling demand for the chip” robust,” but analysts pressed Otellini about Atom’s end market and whether the chip would cannibalize Intel’s low-end Celeron processor. The Celeron ranges from speeds of 2.13 GHz to 3.6 GHz, and is faster than Atom’s 1.8 GHz or 1.6 GHz. Otellini’s responses were less than a ringing endorsement of the chip. “[Atom] is less than a third of the performance of our Centrino (high-end mobile processor),” said Otellini. “You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use.”

Wait a second. Just weeks ago before the Computex trade show in June, Otellini told the Financial Times he anticipated a $40 billion market opportunity for Atom chips over the next few years. If most of us aren’t using these low-end chips, then who is? Otellini envisions the Atom chip for small computers in emerging markets that happen to have IP-based voice, but in late 2009 Intel will launch an Atom chip for smartphones. In emerging countries, a lot of computing is already carried out on cell phones, begging the question of where Intel’s demand for Atom is coming from. Will those products actually succeed?

As for cannibalization, Otellini said, “We do not see [Atom] replacing Celeron. If you look at the netbook products being built around Atom, they’re all lower-priced, lower features, smaller screen size notebooks aimed at first-time buyers or the second, third or fourth machine in a household. We don’t see any cannibalization.”

So Atom chips are designed for slow web access on cheap, portable machines that will act as the backup computer in my home. Wait, I have one of those already. It’s called a smartphone and plenty of companies already make processors for that market.

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The Tegra chipsets are based on the APX2500 processor built for personal media players and navigation devices, but the Tegra target will be portable computers with screen sizes ranging from 4 to 12 inches. Pay close attention to news coming out of the Computex trade show in Taiwan this week, where more details should emerge from vendors using the Tegra chipset. Products based on Tegra will be out in time for the holiday season at the end of the year and cost about $200 to $250.

Also in the run-up to Computex, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini told to the Financial Times his firm’s Atom chips (also aiming at MIDs) will chase $40 billion in market opportunities; Taiwanese computer vendor Asustek said it expected to double sales of it’s tiny Eee PCs in 2009 over this year. Even Dell is getting into the fray with a small computer. As products emerge, I’m eager to see how the market for the devices breaks down. Right now, the market opportunity is large because it’s ill-defined, with each vendor suggesting its own specs as the defining standard.

Will MIDs be small computers with voice as Otellini seems to think; phones with faster processing and media capabilities like Qualcomm, Apple and TI seem to envision; or will they be lightweight computers like the MacBook Air, Eee PC or what I bet the Dell effort is?

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Despite some recent bumps in the road for WiMAX, top executives from major WiMAX backers Intel, Sprint Nextel and Cisco all said at CES this week that they are bullish on the wireless technology’s future, albeit more so in countries other than the U.S. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in his Monday afternoon keynote here that “for the next five to 10 years, WiMAX will have a significant advantage” as a platform for wireless broadband, and Cisco CEO John Chambers said Monday night that the networking giant “remains bullish” on WiMAX, especially in developing-country deployments.

Chambers, who we spoke with at a Cisco party here Monday night, said WiMAX makes great sense as an architecture for developing countries that don’t have an existing copper plant the way the U.S. does. Sometimes, he noted, copper wires get pulled out of the ground by scrap-metal thieves.

Ali Tabassi, Sprint’s vice president for technology development, said after a Monday panel that his company is still moving “full speed ahead” with its planned WiMAX rollout, with Chicago, Washington D.C. and Baltimore on schedule for deployment this year. The rumor we hear is that Sprint employees in Chicago are already testing the WiMAX network there. (Anyone want to tell us how it’s working?)

Intel’s Maloney, who spoke with us after Otellini’s Monday afternoon keynote, didn’t have any new WiMAX financing agreements from the company to tell us about, but did say that deployments of the technology are continuing strongly, worldwide. And Sprint’s Tabassi said there is a lot of interest in WiMAX from Asian wireless providers who have 2G networks, and are considering jumping directly to WiMAX instead of deploying 3G technologies.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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