HP on the skids, Microsoft's online vids

With each passing day the HP spying case gets stranger and more sinister. According to a New York Times report, now-deposed chairwoman Patricia Dunn pondered a plan to plant spies posing as clerical workers or cleaning staff in the newsrooms at CNET and the Wall Street Journal. (Clearly Dunn has never been inside a newsroom, or she’d know how hard it is to find evidence that it’s ever been cleaned.) Along with Dunn, HP’s chief security and “ethics” officers have also been purged. FYI, HP’s spy program went by the code name “Project Kona.” Sources speculate this may refer to Dunn's uncanny resemblance to the late Jack Lord, aka Detective Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O. Book ’em, Dunn-o.

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Take this job and shovel it: After 14 months of advertising on Monster.com and handing out flyers at job fairs, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has finally found someone crazy enough -- er, willing to take on the job of Cybersecurity czar. Gregory Garcia will report to the guy who reports to the guy who reports to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, assuming everyone figures out how to operate their BlackBerries. Unlike most presidential appointees, Mr. Garcia lacks an equestrian background, but we’re all confident he’ll do a heckuva job.

Snakes on the brain: Intel has announced its intention to bring Amazon.com to the Amazon. The troubled chipmaker has picked Parintins, a remote island on Brazil’s portion of the Amazon river, to showcase its WiMax technology. The island is home to 114,000 humans and considerably more snakes. No word on whether Intel will use the Anaconda image processor for handling video.

Down the tubes: Microsoft has unleashed its MeTube online video site: “Soapbox on MSN Video.” Right now, the only thing that non-beta testers can see is a 28-second clip of a guy in a butterfly suit dancing in an empty disco, once again proving that asking Microsoft to do something hip is like asking Grandma to pick out your school clothes. Now if Redmond dropped Butterfly Guy into a swimming pool filled with Diet Coke and Mentos, that would be worth watching.

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