“Well, I’m not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That’s for sure. Talk about a waste.”

— Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm, in hindsight. He tells Fierce Wireless that the company really “had no choice,” but that Hewlett-Packard never really gave the Silicon Valley smartphone and webOS maker “a chance to flourish.” (Another Rubinstein regret: Before the sale to HP, the Palm Pre smartphone was only available on Sprint.) Rubinstein, formerly of Apple, worked at HP after the Palo Alto company bought Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010. He left HP last year, a little over a month after the company announced it would make webOS open source. (The webOS-based TouchPad tablet flopped; HP announced its discontinuation after less than two months on the market.) This week, though, Palm and webOS were back in the news. Some, including the Merc’s Troy Wolverton, pointed out after Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference that the new feature in iOS that allows for switching between tasks looks a lot like Palm’s cards feature. (Ars Technica said it was “more like a direct homage.”)

Jon Rubinstein unveils the HP TouchPad in 2011. (Mercury News archives)

Nearly a dozen tech executives made Forbes magazine’s new list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women,” an annual ranking based on somewhat subjective assessments of the “money, media presence and impact” wielded by various female celebrities, politicians and business leaders around the globe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was ranked first on the list, followed by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.  Melinda Gates, cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was third, with Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton ranked as #4 and #5.

According to Forbes, Sheryl Sandberg (#8) outranks Meg Whitman (#15) and Marissa Mayer (#32), even though Sandberg is second-in-command at Facebook while Whitman and Mayer are the chief executives at Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo, respectively.

The reason?  “Facebook’s COO incited a new conversation on feminism in the workplace with her March 2013 book, ‘Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,’ ” said Forbes.  (They also credited Sandberg with building Facebook’s nascent mobile ad business.)

Other tech figures on the list include Oracle CFO Safra Catz (#23), Google advertising chief Susan Wojcicki (#30), Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior (#57) and Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker (#79). From outside Silicon Valley, the magazine listed IBM chief executive Virginia Rometty (#12), Xerox CEO Ursula Burns (#14), HTC co-founder Cher Wang (#46) and Huawei chair Sun Yafang (#77).

Though not a tech executive, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, was ranked at #39 based on her philanthropy and advocacy for education and immigration reform.  That put her one notch above Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (#40) but one below “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara (#38).

The complete list is here.

And here’s how Forbes says it developed the list:

We’ve selected women that go beyond the traditional taxonomy of the power elite (political and economic might). These change-agents are actually shifting our very idea of clout and authority and, in the process, transforming the world in fresh and exhilarating ways …

From a preliminary group of over 250 candidates from around the world, we selected the 100 most influential women from seven categories or power bases: billionaires, business, lifestyle (including entertainment and fashion), media, nonprofits and NGOs, politics and technology.

To determine the rank within each category, as well as overall rank on the list of 100, we applied three metrics: money, media presence and impact.

If you want to get a look at Silicon Valley’s vital signs, there are few better ways to do it than to look at the SV 150, produced by the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group.

In their latest Hangout, Pat & Mike (business columnist Mike Cassidy and Apple beat writer Pat May) talk about the SV 150 and how it’s a good way to get a clear look at how dramatically the valley has changed in the past 10 years.

The two also stray into a dicussion of the rise of Apple and the fall of Hewlett-Packard, with a tip of the hat to the New York Times’ James B. Stewart’s weekend piece on the company’s dysfunctional board. Cassidy says HP will be gone in 10 years. What do you think?

“[Boards] are like the Hotel California. Directors check in but they never check out.”

— William Patterson, executive director of CtW Investment Group, who started the shareholder battle against Ray Lane and other members of the Hewlett-Packard board. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the director shuffle HP announced earlier this month — John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson will leave in May and Lane stepped aside as chairman but will remain on the board — was portrayed by the company as voluntary on the part of the directors (who each got less than 60 percent of investors’ re-election vote) but really wasn’t. CEO Meg Whitman, other board members and the company’s largest shareholder had to do a lot of persuading to get Lane to relinquish the chairman role, according to the NYT’s sources. Even then, he insisted on staying on the board. But Lane told the newspaper he “stepped down as chairman because I thought it was the right thing to do.” It looks like for former Oracle president Lane during the month of April, when it rains, it pours: Sure, he has his defenders, but another company where he is director, Fisker Automotive, is in financial and legal trouble. Now the NYT report paints him as stubborn and deaf to the will of the shareholders.

Photo of Ray Lane in a Fisker Karma by Gary Reyes/Mercury News archives

“The pressure is on Meg.”

— Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research analyst, thinks the board shuffle Hewlett-Packard announced Thursday has “bought [CEO Meg Whitman] a year” to keep on keeping on — or, as Whitman has said, “right the ship” in Palo Alto as the giant company struggles with many challenges that include slow growth, a major disruption in the PC industry and acquisitions that have led to billions of dollars in write-offs. Chairman Ray Lane is stepping aside but will remain on the board, while John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson will depart in May. A couple of weeks ago, the entire board was re-elected at a shareholder meeting, but Lane, Hammergren and Thompson were each re-elected with less than 60 percent of the vote, according to the Merc’s Steve Johnson, who points out that some big institutional shareholders and advisory firms all pushed for an overhaul of the board. (Then again, the board of HP has been under fire for much of the last decade.)  Ralph Whitworth, who will act as chairman while the company seeks a replacement for Lane, expressed support for Whitman’s efforts, telling the Wall Street Journal she “has undertaken a herculean task to turn this company around.” Whitman, the former eBay CEO and California gubernatorial candidate, became HP CEO in 2011, succeeding Leo Apotheker after he was fired after less than a year on the job. Shares of HP are down nearly 2 percent to $21.90 as of this post, amid a broader market decline today.

Photo by LiPo Ching/Mercury News archives

“We refuse to be a scapegoat for HP’s own failings.”

— Mike Lynch, Autonomy founder and former CEO, in an open letter released today, the morning of Hewlett-Packard‘s annual shareholder meeting — where, as the Merc’s Steve Johnson reports, five of its 11 board members are being targeted for removal. Lynch has fought back against HP’s accusations that the British software company lied about its finances before being bought by HP for more than $10 billion in 2011. In November, HP wrote down $8.8 billion related to that purchase, and CEO Meg Whitman announced that the PC maker had asked U.S. and British authorities to investigate Autonomy. (Investigations are under way.) A “shocked and appalled” Lynch then asked HP to explain why it seems to have misunderstood Autonomy’s value when it bought it, and to share its calculations. He continues to ask those same questions in today’s letter, in which he accuses HP of mismanaging Autonomy after buying it. Meanwhile, big investors such as CalPERS and influential shareholder advisory firms are recommending against the re-election of five HP board members, including Executive Chairman Ray Lane, who are being blamed for squandering money on acquisitions. Also last year, HP wrote down $8 billion related to its $13.9 billion purchase of Electronic Data Systems in 2008.

(File photo by Autonomy)

As the stock markets surge — the Dow was trading at a record high this morning and could close above its record high from 2007 — a couple of quick notes about tech stocks:

• The Associated Press notes in its article about the Dow’s big comeback that Hewlett-Packard is the only stock in the index that’s lower (22 percent) than it was four years ago. We know what’s wrong there: HP has been plagued by instability caused by turnover at the top (four CEOs in the past four years, including interim ones), plus a slowdown in PC sales amid the shift to mobile. However, the Palo Alto company’s shares are up about 30 percent since the beginning of the year. HP shares were trading nearly 2.5 percent higher at $20.45 as of this post. CEO Meg Whitman said a couple of weeks ago that the company’s turnaround is slowly but surely on track.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. Is HP’s stock rise today being sparked by more than just the broader market action? Influential proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is recommending against the re-election of Board Chairman Ray Lane and a couple of other board members, saying they ”bear the most responsibility for a very costly oversight failure” that was the $10 billion-plus purchase of British software company Autonomy, which HP has since accused of faulty accounting. In November, HP announced it was taking an $8.8 billion charge on that purchase. (See HP shares sink on double whammy of huge writedown, falling sales.)

HP’s annual meeting is scheduled for March 20.

• Google continues to climb to record highs, with analysts and investors thinking it is well-positioned in mobile and video. Shares of the Mountain View company were up more than 2 percent to $838.50 as of this post. A Reuters article with the headline “Is Google the next Apple?” quotes an analyst who says “it seems to be the big momentum stock right now.” As GMSV noted, Google shares reached $800 for the first time less than a month ago. They are up nearly 19 percent for the year.

Your Monday tech grab bag:

• WebOS, the mobile operating system that just won’t quit, is making its way into smart TVs from LG. The South Korean company is buying parts of Palm from HP — source code, documentation, website and engineering team for the client side — and it hasn’t ruled out using webOS in its smartphones, according to the Verge. Terms of the deal, which includes licenses for Palm patents, were not disclosed. LG’s webOS team will be based at the company’s new Sunnyvale lab, according to the company’s press release.

HP will retain the cloud computing part of Palm, while LG will take over the open-source projects of webOS, according to LG.

HP bought Palm of PDA fame in 2010 for $1.2 billion and launched the webOS-based TouchPad in 2011. However, HP pulled the plug on the tablet after less than a couple of months.

As GMSV mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the future of webOS, which HP had made open source but said it would continue to develop, has been unclear since reports about an upcoming Android-based HP tablet surfaced. Those reports were true: HP  on Sunday announced a new Slate 7 tablet at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It will go on sale in April for $169. Early reviews deem the 7-inch tablet decent and “relatively competitive,” with PC World saying the feature that stands out is that the Slate 7 allows for printing — a feature that’s mostly missing from tablets.

• Also at the Mobile World Congress, Samsung confirmed that the successor to its highly successful Galaxy S III smartphone will be unveiled March 14 in New York City. The Galaxy S IV is expected to be faster and have a higher-resolution display and camera. It may be coming just in time for the South Korean company: Apple beat Samsung as the top seller in the U.S. mobile market in the fourth quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics reported earlier this month.

• Meanwhile, there’s plenty going on with Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookseller/maker of Nook e-readers and tablets. Its shares are up sharply today amid news that the company’s chairman has filed a plan to try to buy it, which would probably mean the Nook Media division would be split from the bookstore.

Chairman Leonard S. Riggio owns about 30 percent of B&N’s shares. Its board had already been considering spinning off the Nook division, according to the New York Times. One complication the Wall Street Journal points out is that Microsoft and Pearson last year invested $400 million combined into the Nook business. B&N’s high hopes for the Nook haven’t panned out as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad remain the top-selling e-reader and tablet, respectively. 

B&N shares are up more than 11 percent to $15.05 as of this post, still off about 27 percent their 52-week closing high of $20.75, which they reached last April.

Silicon Valley’s big gainers on the stock markets today:

• HP CEO Meg Whitman says “we clearly still face a long road ahead,” according to the Merc’s Steve Johnson‘s report about the Palo Alto company’s earnings announcement Thursday. And Hewlett-Packard’s first-quarter profit and sales fell from the year-ago period. But the results beat Wall Street’s expectations, and so did HP’s forecast for the second quarter. Several brokerages raised their price targets on the stock of the PC maker, which is struggling with the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets over personal computers.

Shares are up more than 10 percent to $18.85 as of this post, up about 30 percent since the beginning of the year.

Still, many analysts echoed Whitman’s cautious tone: They say “this is just one step,”  and one pointed out that HP “posted declining year-over-year sales in every category except for desktops and networking.”

• Zynga shares are also up sharply this morning, the day after Nevada proudly became the first state to legalize online gambling. The San Francisco-based social-games maker, which has struggled with fickle gamers, management turnover and a volatile ride on the stock markets since it went public in December 2011, is betting that part of the answer lies in real-life gambling. As previously mentioned on GMSV, Zynga is launching online poker sites in the U.K. by June, and also bringing gambling to Facebook there.

Shares are up about 5.5 percent to $3.15 as of this post.

• And speaking of hot stocks, Aruba Networks is smoking right now, boosted by a rise in demand for WiFi-enabled mobile devices. Shares of the Sunnyvale maker of wireless network gear, a competitor of much-bigger Qualcomm, are up more than 20 percent to $25.30 as of this post — they’re trading at a 52-week high. Thursday, Aruba reported it had swung to a profit amid strong revenue growth in the second quarter, and forecast continued gains in the current quarter, prompting analysts to raise their price targets on the stock.

We’ve got news about the Silicon Valley biggies:

• Time for yet more excitement — depending on your level of Apple and timepiece lust — over the rumored iWatch. The U.S. Patent Office today published a patent application by Apple, reportedly first filed in 2011, for a slap-bracelet-type wearable device with a flexible touchscreen display. The bracelet appears to have the ability to “take on the form of an uninterrupted screen,” according to AppleInsider. Possible uses for the iWatch include texting, re-ordering playlists and the ability to communicate with an iPhone, says Patently Apple, which also points out that the design includes a solar panel that could serve as an additional power source for the watch between charges.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple has a team of about 100 working on the iWatch. (Also see Apple watch: Apple watch?…)

• HP is scheduled to release earnings after the stock markets close today, and expectations are low. Analysts reportedly expect the Palo Alto tech giant to post a first-quarter profit of 71 cents a share, down from 92 cents a share in the year-ago period, on revenue of $27.9 billion, which would be a decline of 7 percent.

When it announced fourth-quarter results in November, Hewlett-Packard reported an $8.8 billion write-down of its $10 billion purchase of software company Autonomy, along with a continued drop in sales. At the time, the company’s shares hit their lowest level since 2002.

HP is in the midst of a restructuring that CEO Meg Whitman has said could take years. (See Quoted: Meg Whitman and HP’s skeptics.) Tuesday, competitor Dell posted a drop in sales and profit, reflecting the slowdown in the PC industry that both companies and other PC makers are facing.

Shares of HP are up slightly, about 0.5 percent as of this post, amid a mostly down day for tech stocks.

• Tesla shares are tanking today, down nearly 10 percent after the Palo Alto electric-car maker reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss Wednesday.

CEO Elon Musk, fresh from his war of words with a New York Times reporter who wrote of a disastrous drive in a Model S sedan, sought to reassure analysts during yesterday’s call that the company would be profitable for the first time this quarter because it is producing more cars.

“It took us an enormous amount of blood, sweat and tears to get there,” Musk said, according to the Merc’s Dana Hull. Where’s there? Key numbers include production of 400 cars a week, 2,400 cars delivered and 6,000 new reservations in the fourth quarter, and a goal to deliver 20,000 cars in 2013.

Still, Tesla lost $90 million in the quarter and Musk spoke of high labor and shipping costs. Despite analysts’ long-term optimism, shares fell 5 percent in late trading yesterday. They were down 9.8 percent to $34.75 as of this post.

• Google, whose shares closed above $800 for the first time this week, has gained more votes of confidence. A couple of analysts this morning raised their price targets for the search giant’s stock, to $1,000, according to the Wall Street Journal’s MarketBeat blog, which says analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein and CLSA appear to be the first to utter the $1,000 targets. They cite YouTube’s “growth potential” and mobile as factors for their optimism.

Shares of the Mountain View company are up slightly, less than 0.5 percent, as of this post. They have risen 30 percent in the past year.