Lots of interesting stuff this week: Luxury hotel private sales, Southwest to start service from EWR, a must-read for hospitality CISOs and more:

1. Dell offers to buy 3PAR to get into the Cloud game…HP outbids…Dell matches…HP outbids…Dell matches. The current bid is now $1.8B! Giant game of chicken or is HP suckering Dell into a bad deal.  All I know is that the 3PAR guys are loving this. The latest bid from Dell is almost twice the original offer. UPDATE: Now HP is up to $2B. @monkchips leads the bidding at $3B though J TechCrunch examines what all the hubbub is about.
2. Stealth TripAdvisor unit to offer luxury hotel private sales. Part of the current trend to expect 4-star hotels at 2 star prices. Only puzzling thing is the name: Project RICO. Makes it sound completely illegal (see definition: Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). Treble damages if they mess up your reservation?
3. Online Travel Agencies are sometimes viewed as the lifeblood of high(er) occupancy rates, but also can suck the profitability out of your business. How do you solve the conundrum? Daniel Craig provides a 10-step program to decrease dependency on OTAs. I’m not sure if there’s anything in here that’s completely new under the sun, but good advice in any case.
4. Great guest post on the RockCheetah blog on why hospitality “leads” all industries in being attacked and breached by hackers…and advice on what you should do about it.
5. Good news on prospects for business travel from the New York Times.
6. Southwest Airlines to lease gates at EWR from Continental, begin service in March. Good analysis via tweet by Forrester analyst Henry Harteveldt: “I see Southwest-Continental Newark Airport slot deal as a way to get ahead of/proactively appease US govt review of CO-UA merger. Smart.”
7. How do airlines price flights? Search me.
8. Android’s openness is actually allowing carriers to perpetuate old business models and have way with consumers.
9. Microsoft founder Paul Allen sues the software industry.  Two thoughts: First I guess he felt screwing up the Portland Trail Blazers by firing the top GM in the league wasn’t enough, he might as well screw up the software industry. Second, I guess when you run out of good ideas, you might as well sue.
10. The closest thing to a viable iPad competitor? Video of a Samsung Android-based tablet in the wild. But when will it ship?

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I’m been flat out here in India as I am getting further up to speed with my new role at Ness Technologies Software Product Labs. Now that the excuses are out of the way, let’s get to the Top 10.

1. I’d be remiss if the first one out of the gate wasn’t the public announcement of Ness SPL’s relationship with travel IT giant Amadeus.  For the past year Ness has built an engineering team in Bangalore, supporting Amadeus’ continued investment in building industry leading software products for the travel industry.  It also signals Ness’ focus on providing software product engineering services to the travel industry.  If we can deliver for Amadeus, we can deliver for anyone.  Call me!
2. GM’s Augmented Reality Windshield: This is potentially very cool. Nice that it can highlight road signs, but better if it could superimpose hi-fi versions of signs I can’t see clearly.  Also the ability to check out where the drivers eyes are looking could be potential liability issues for drivers who crash while texting, dialing or otherwise distracted.
3. Google May Leave China on April 10. I can’t imagine they want to really do this, but their public stand has kind of boxed them in a corner.
4. Priceline Introduces Pay-at-Checkout for hotels.  I guess I didn’t realize that with online travel agencies (OTAs) that you had to pay the hotel fees at the time of booking.  I guess I never booked a hotel through an OTA because this seemed like standard operating procedure.
5. Musings from the Mobile Upfront: Recap from Mobile Upfront and insights from mobile guru @tgruber
6. Security Risks of Multi-tenancy.  Just goes to show that architecture in the wrong hands is dangerous and usually that’s at the core of bad software.
7. Cloud killing the enterprise software market? Hold that thought. I agree that there will probably be a lot of private/hybrid-cloud implementations, although don’t believe that’s a very good strategy, other than trying to recoup existing infrastructure investments.  It’s one thing to get leverage from what you already have, but let’s hope that few are actually thinking about buying a bunch of hardware to build-out new private cloud infrastructure.  This makes me think back to a post from last summer: Who will be the first to offer cash for infrastructure? I still think it’s a good idea.
8. Why RedMonk’s @sogrady is against patents – the system is broken.  But what if the system could be fixed. Then again this is an awful lot like tort reform. Too many special interests to make it happen and too many frivolous lawsuits/patents.
9. Webciety and Enterprise 2.0: A snapshot of today’s social computing conversations.  Notes and perspective from CeBIT on the opportunities and concerns about E20 by the one and only Dion Hinchcliffe
10. Enterprise 2.0: efficiency, effectiveness, blame and responsibility.  More good hard truth from Dennis Howlett.

Let’s see what came up:

1. Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on Oracle’s Cloud strategy. And for a bonus, a slightly different interpretation by fellow Forrester analyst Stefan Reid.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDnet: The Facebook imperative for enterprise software.  Hinchliffe is great. Longish articles at times, but good insight. Riffing off Benioff’s recent proclamation that enterprise software should look like Facebook (not sure I want my enterprise software UI changing every 3 months), he asks important questions like “Should Enterprises be Social” and has a Top 5 list of why IT should be social (I certainly won’t limit to IT).  But I think that social is critical for organizations, particularly global organizations, who want to innovate.  R&D has gone global and the best way to harness that is to make sure those teams are social with each other, collaborating and sharing.
3. David Linthicum: Cloud Provider Roulette.  Bottom line: If you are evaluating cloud computing technology today, you have to consider that your choice could be bought up this year or next. That means you need to make sure your legal agreements are rock-solid and spell out what happens if your provider is acquired
4. Wyndham Hacked for Third Time. Not good. Wyndham please talk to me about security testing.  Related article noting that recent research shows that the hospitality industry is hit hardest by hackers, with the natural focus on payment card information.
5. Tnooz: Will Priceline come back to the field?  The concentration of revenue in the OTA (online travel agency) business is pretty staggering.  It’s the Pareto Principle on steroids.
6. Tnooz: TripIt maps employee travel with TripIt groups.  Pretty cool way to keep tabs on the organization. Would be very helpful in case of a crisis and there was a need to know/get in contact with employees at a moments notice.
7. Daring Fireball: Thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by John Gruber (not related, but I’d be somewhat glad if people confused him with me. Would certainly help me get gigs on the speaking circuit)
8. Keeping in the iPad theme this TechCrunch article on Apple’s HTC patent Lawsuit indicates that the real focus of Apple’s ire is (spoiler alert) Google’s Android OS (ok, not really a spoiler).
9. Three theories why Google pushed Buzz out the door.  What’s more interesting to me is that it seems that the Buzz experience is vastly different on an Android device, with all it’s location-based goodness, than on a web client. Is this really targeted more at Foursquare than Twitter?
10. And last but not least: Ballmer’s really committing Microsoft to the Cloud. Yet somehow I still don’t quite believe it.