Dan Frommer in Forbes:

HP wants what Apple has: One operating system, which it completely controls, at the heart of all of its consumer electronics—phones, tablets, lightweight PCs, perhaps music players, digital cameras, televisions, etc. And HP doesn’t want to have to license it from Microsoft anymore, always having to wait for Redmond to make a move before HP can.

Why will HP’s move to Palm’s webOS fail?

The problem is that WebOS, despite its nice user interface and some nice technical qualities, is a failed platform. Consumers haven’t found a need to buy Palm devices instead of Apple or Android devices.

The result of most successful plans hinge on execution, not strategy. It’s a crowded field of OS wannabes, not completely unlike the CP/M and DOS days of the early 1980s.

In another sign that HP gets it and realizes that Microsoft’s tablet efforts, after 10 years of failures, won’t lead the company to compete against the iPad:

HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

This is about Palm’s webOS. Why not just use Android, Google’s free operating system for smart phones and tablets? HP doesn’t want to make the same mistake it made by hitching itself to Microsoft’s Windows. Differentiation is a key factor in products. If every product runs Windows, how are the products different? If every tablet and smart phone runs Android, how are the products different?

Apple’s products—Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod—are different, in many respects better than competitors, so Apple can charge a premium. With PCs and Windows, HP cannot differentiate their product line. They won’t make that mistake again.

Did Apple just get into the search business? Dan Fommer in Business Insider on Apple’s purchase of Siri, a mobile assistant app maker:

Basically, you type stuff into your phone, and it connects to APIs across the Web to bring you a result. Sure sounds like search. (Without having to scrape and index the web, build a formal search engine, etc.)

Apple vs. Google.

In another episode of The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Apple nemesis Microsoft says Google infringes their patents in HTC’s Android smart phone. Ina Fried in CNET:

Microsoft and HTC announced they have inked a new patent deal that specifically provides the Taiwanese cell phone maker with the right to use Microsoft’s patented technologies in phones running Google’s Android operating system.

HTC was sued by Apple for infringing on patents.

An iPhone helps Arizona deputies find illegal immigrants. From Jamar Younger in the Arizona Daily Star:

Deputies will be able to do more than make calls, download program applications, send text messages and surf the Internet. The phones will come equipped with a special application called Coplink, which will allow deputies to access information on suspects and their mug shots.

Illegal immigrants? There’s an app for that.

File this one in the What Were They Thinking? file. Charles Memminger reports on Roslyn Catracchia’s big mistake.

Thieves broke into her Aina Haina home the other day and stole, among other things, two computers and a backup drive containing her life’s work of of musical scores and musicals.

Catracchia’s files were backed up on two computers and a backup disk drive. That’s better than no backup at all, but still leaves files vulnerable to a real catastrophic event—flood, fire, earthquake, and theft.

The incident is an important warning to every computer user to not only back up their computers on an external hard drive, but to make sure that hard drive is kept “off the property” (like in a safe deposit box) so that in the event of theft, fire or something like that, the files aren’t lost.

Off premise backups will become a big deal this year. It’s one thing to have files saved on multiple computers, something else again to have more important files on backup disk drives, but even better to have the non-replaceable files backed up off premise. That means CD, DVD, small disk drive, or online service—somewhere else other than near the computer.

It’s easy enough to replace a Mac or PC operating system and all apps, utilities, and games. But what about music, photos, movies, and documents? Memminger recommends an online backup service.

Carbonite could use this incident as a promotional tool because if Catracchia had backed up her computer using Carbonite, resurrection of the last files would be a simple download to a new computer.

Compared to other online backup services, Carbonite is expensive. Other choices for Mac users include CrashPlan, Mozy, iBackup, iDrive, Backblaze, BackJack, and Arq for Amazon’s S3 service.

To test whether or not you need an off-premise backup, answer this question:

“What would you do if your Mac or PC died or was stolen? Everything is gone. What would you do?”

If you don’t know, or you’re officially in Worry Mode™, you need a better backup plan.

UPDATE: In a good ending to what could have been a tragic story, local police recovered Catracchia’s computers. All the data was safe.