SiliconBeat

Cisco launched a new media advertising campaign this week, and this one doesn’t feature the quirky, indie actress Ellen Page.

Instead, the networking giant is using stories about some of its customers, in business and industry, and how they’re using Cisco technology to boost their operations.

That’s in keeping with Cisco’s s new focus, after CEO John Chambers took the company through a much-publicized reorganization last year. He pulled the plug on some ill-fated forays into consumer tech, including Cisco’s attempts to sell handheld Flip cameras and a home video-conferencing system that Page had demonstrated in some jokey television spots last year.

After acknowledging that Cisco had spread itself too thin with those efforts, among other things, Chambers is now vowing to stay focused on a shorter list of commercial tech priorities - where his company is competing with the likes of IBM, HP and Oracle.

The new ads don’t specifically mention Cisco’s internal overhaul, but the campaign “is a reflection of what we’re doing from a corporate strategy perspective,” Cisco Chief Marketing Officer Blair Christie told me last week. She added, “We’re a B to B company.”

The ads still use the “human network” catch-phrase that Cisco first began promoting in 2006. The company won’t say how much the campaign will cost, but Christie said the effort will extend to US and overseas markets and will include a sizeable online component - including “homepage takeovers” on several news sites and a LinkedIn blast to 140,000 C-level executives at companies with which Cisco hopes to do business.

The ads will appear in places where business leaders are likely to be tuning in, which means a heavy roster of televised sports events and finance-oriented sites like CNBC or the Wall Street Journal.

I’m in Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. Today is press day, where there is a series of press conferences from 8 a.m. until around 6 p.m.

I’m live-blogging/Twittering throughout the day. You can read my latest observations below.

Intuit, the Mountain View maker of TurboTax and other software, recently said it will pay $120 million over the next ten years to an unnamed party for the right to use an unspecified technology — and that’s prompting speculation among patent and licensing experts.

The Recorder, a San Francisco-based newspaper aimed at the legal community, reported last week that the other party in the deal is Intellectual Ventures, a company started by former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. If true — and the newspaper only cited unnamed sources — it would be the latest of several sizable deals that Myhrvold’s firm reportedly has struck with major tech companies.

Those deals have sparked some consternation because a big part of Intellectual Ventures’ business involves buying up the rights to hundreds of patents and then seeking licensing payments from companies that use the technology. Myhrvold told the Wall Street Journal last fall that he’s simply enforcing legal rules that require businesses to pay for using intellectual property that isn’t their own.

Some have compared Myhrvold to so-called “patent trolls” who buy up obscure patents with no intention of using the technology themselves, and instead concentrate on filing patent infringement lawsuits against a variety of defendants. Critics say some of those are no more than nuisance suits aimed at extracting huge payments from companies that may make only minor use of the patented technology.

So far, however, Intellectual Ventures has reportedly obtained payments of up to $350 million from companies like Verizon and Cisco without filing lawsuits. It does invite some of the same companies to invest in a fund that it uses to buy more patents.

Intuit makes a variety of financial software and has been increasingly offering software and services on-line. A spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on the licensing agreement, which the company disclosed in a recent SEC filing.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a couple of interesting developments regarding Halo, its high-end video conferencing service that uses souped-up cameras, screens and other hardware and software to make you feel like you’re in the same room with others who might actually be on the other side of the globe.

First, HP says it’s offering the capability for customers to use their Halo facilities as studios to produce high-quality Webcasts, which can be streamed live or at a later time to an audience of employees or others watching on their PCs or laptops. According to HP, it’s also possible for the audience to participate in live sessions using instant-messaging or phones.

In the second part of the announcement, HP said it’s “re-aligning” the Halo business, meaning Halo is being moved on the organizational chart from HP’s Imaging and Printing Group to its business-focused Technology Solutions Group, where it will be part of HP’s ProCurve Networking business.

There’s a back-story: Halo competes with other video-conferencing services, including the TelePresence service offered by Cisco — a sometime partner and, increasingly, a rival for the attentions of HP’s corporate technology clients.

Cisco has been expanding its own video business; CEO John Chambers has said video will be a huge part of the data that streams over public and private computer networks in the future. Meanwhile, HP has been expanding its ProCurve business, which competes with Cisco’s primary business of selling networking gear for data centers.

And Cisco, of course, has begun selling computer servers, a business in which HP has traditionally been a market leader. So the competition continues.