executives

Fancy a thin ThinkPad? Lenovo's venerable ThinkPad brand may seem from a distance to look the same every year, since lately the interesting changes have been made under the surface lately. It's also a confusing landscape to navigate, even when you know what size you want. Case in point: the ThinkPad X1 and the ThinkPad Edge E220s.

In one sense, they're completely different laptops. The X1 is a full-powered 13-incher, with a serious professional bent and durable construction. The Edge E220s is a smaller, low-voltage laptop, a 12.5-incher with a more reasonable price tag. And yet, … Read more

Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO and new executive chairman, has been handed a huge pay raise, according to a document that Google filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the filing, Google's Leadership Development and Compensation Committee has granted Schmidt annual compensation of $1.25 million. In addition, he will be allowed to receive a "target bonus of 400 percent of his base salary." In other words, Schmidt could walk away with more than $6 million in cash compensation in a good year.

Schmidt's raise is effective as of April 4, the … Read more

Over at Twitter, they like metaphors that involve birds. Maybe a little too much. So here's one for them: Right now, according to a couple of in-depth reports about Twitter's past and present executive structure, the whole company sure looks like a flock of birds that can't quite tell which among them is the leader. And as a result, they're all crashing into one another.

These reports run the gamut from well-researched to wildly speculative, from a Fortune profile of the company's current management turmoil--co-founder Evan Williams is out, ex-CEO Jack Dorsey is back, … Read more

Google has confirmed the resignation of Jonathan "J.R." Rosenberg, its senior vice president of product management, who has been at the company since 2002. Rosenberg's departure was reported today by Business Insider--the same day that co-founder Larry Page returned to the CEO post at Google, taking over from Eric Schmidt.

Business Insider reported that Rosenberg had planned to leave the company in a few years, when his teenage daughter graduated from high school, but that Page wants executives to commit in the long run. So Rosenberg, the report said, decided to bow out early.

"… Read more

Today marks Google co-founder Larry Page's first day back on the job as CEO since he handed over the reins to Eric Schmidt in 2001. He's been deeply involved with the company during Schmidt's tenure, of course, but in a decade's time the job of chief executive of Google has invariably changed. A lot. Instead of a company on a fast rise, it's a conglomerate that in the meantime has gotten itself involved in telecommunications, self-driving cars, television hardware, and venture capital investing.

So maybe this is what Page should be focusing on for his … Read more

Both AT&T and Research In Motion decided to choose Friday afternoon to announce shifts in their respective executive ranks.

AT&T announced late today that CFO Rick Lindner, a 19-year company vet, will retire as of June 1, to be replaced by Controller John Stephens. Meanwhile, Research In Motion said that its chief marketing officer, Keith Pardy (seen here), is leaving the company for personal reasons. Although the departure wasn't announced until Friday, Pardy let the company know of his plans a month ago, according to a person familiar with the situation.

RIM did not immediately … Read more

Google's Eric Schmidt, who, the company said Thursday, will move from CEO to executive chairman in the spring, has received an award of $100 million in stock and stock options, according to a report.

Following on an initial report from Bloomberg, and citing compensation specialists and data, The Wall Street Journal called the award "highly unusual" for a sitting CEO, adding that equity awards like this are usually given to new chief executives.

The Journal said Schmidt's award, which vests over four years, is the largest in grant-dollars for a sitting CEO since Sanjay Jha, Motorola'… Read more

Jay Adelson, who departed his post at the helm of Digg as the company's downward spiral became increasingly evident, has been hired as the CEO of geolocation software start-up SimpleGeo. Co-founder and existing CEO Matt Galligan, who previously founded a social aggregator called Socialthing and sold it to AOL, has stepped aside to take the title of chief strategy officer.

"A little over a month ago, I approached our board and discussed the idea of me moving into a new role that would allow me to focus on what I'm best at--company strategy, evangelism, and new concepts … Read more

MuldeR's MakeInstantPlayer is open-source freeware for converting video recordings into self-running executable files. By converting videos to program files, it makes it so they'll run when clicked, without requiring a media player. You can extract clips from movies and other sources and turn them into self-running videos that can be embedded, uploaded, and attached to lots of stuff.

MakeInstantPlayer's compact, efficient interface was easy to figure out: Click and browse to source and destination directories, select some options, and click Preview. The tool's player window opened and, after a moment, displayed our source video. Satisfied, we … Read more