Yes, I realize it's Friday, but put your thinking caps on and ponder what sex, storage and snoring could possibly have in common.

If you're thinking something porn related go get another cup of coffee.

If you're thinking bedroom entertainment you're on target.

Storage is clearly crossing lots of boundaries these days.

Not only can you store files in attached black boxes, in the cloud using digital vaults and online safety deposit boxes, now you can even store them in your bed.

Yup, you read that right.

The Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed from Leggett & Platt dishes up 1.5 terabytes of disc storage for 400,000 songs or up to 2,000 hours of video. Its operating system runs on a solid-state hard drive and offers 4 gigs of DDR2 ram.

On top of that it promises to cut down snoring using a vibration-detection system that changes a person's sleeping position once snoring has been noticed by the system. Once the snoring stop the bed goes back to the original position.

According to its description it "comfortably supports the ballerina and the bodybuilder."

For those looking for "boogie nights," it boasts a surround sound system, headboard projector and Internet connectivity all for the price of $20,000 to $50,000 depending on customizable features.

One can always count on Carl Icahn to bring some levity into his battles. And his letter to shareholders following Motorola's announcement yesterday to split into two companies provides just that.

Here's his take:

Ladies and Gentlemen: Today's — much delayed and long overdue — announcement regarding the spin-off of the Mobile Devices business and the establishment of two fully independent companies with separate management teams and Boards is clearly a step in the right direction. As you know, for some time I have argued that this should be done. However, as one of the largest Motorola stockholders, I continue to have concerns about the speed and manner in which a new management team is selected for the Mobile Devices business and the separation transaction is consummated. Time is of the essence and decisive action is required to reposition the Mobile Devices business for success as an independent company. Furthermore, today's announcement begs a few key questions:

1. Why will it take you until sometime in 2009 to accomplish the separation?

2. Why does it take the threat of a proxy fight for you to make promises we all want to hear?

3. Do you intend to carry out your proposals or will it be a repeat of last year's proxy fight strewn with a string of broken commitments?

Obviously the tepid reaction of the market manifests shareholders' views concerning the value of your commitment. The only statement made in your conference call we totally agree with is that . . . "there can be no assurances that any transaction will ultimately occur." You stated during today's conference call, "we discussed Board Nominees with Carl Icahn and we proposed two nominees and he declined." Again this is only partially true. It is true that Sandy Warner, head of the Nominating Committee called me and offered seats to two of my Nominees if I would drop the proxy fight. However, you failed to mention in your conference call that I told Mr. Warner that I would gladly accept this offer if the Board would also accept Keith Meister. Mr. Warner replied summarily to this offer that Meister did not "qualify." I asked Mr. Warner what does one have to do to qualify--lose $37 billion dollars? Mr. Warner then replied that the Board did not "know" Meister. My answer was that Meister would fly anywhere at any time to meet the Board so they could "know" him (I did mention that the situation at Motorola is too serious for the Board to remain a country club). My offer to Motorola stills stands.

You have stated to the press that our request for information about what steps the Board actually took to correct the problem at Motorola is an unnecessary distraction. We disagree. In a political election when constituents believe their representatives' performance was inadequate, they are certainly not denied information as to whether their representative acted in a grossly negligent fashion. Why should it be different in Corporate America?

I do however agree with you that this proxy fight is a distraction that Motorola at this junction can ill afford. If as you have stated, we all want to benefit the stockholders of Motorola, then what possible reason is there for not putting Keith Meister on the Board. After all, how much can he eat at the Board meetings? On a positive side, having a highly intelligent, energetic individual like Keith, who has 145 million reasons to spend his time working toward the spin-off being accomplished, may well make this promise come true in a timely fashion. We ask the Board meet with Meister, put egos aside and let's get on with the urgent business at hand. Sincerely, /s/ Carl C. Icahn Carl C. Icahn

EMC's CEO Joe Tucci likely better stick to his day job and forget about trying out for any major league baseball team.

According to a Boston Globe report, Tucci was tossing a ball with Red Sox hurler Hideki Okajima following an exhibition game in Japan against the Oakland A's. It was at some fancy, schmancy reception, which featured what sports writer Dan Shaughnessy called a "Green Monster-sized LED screen."

Okajima lofted a ball to Tucci, who caught it with little effort. The CEO then whizzed the ball back -- high and wide -- right through the LED screen.

As Shaughnessy notes, he'll have a hard time looking at the EMC logo whether it's on Sox uniforms, which it was during the Japan series, or at Boston's stadium, without reliving the memory.

With little fanfare Motorola has shuffled some of its corporate bean counters into new spots.

Laurel Meissner is now Corporate VP, Finance, Chief Accounting Officer. Phew.. say that title three times fast.

Her predecessor, Marc Rothman, is now Sr. VP and CFO, mobile devices business. Rothman's title should fit on his new business cards.

According to a SEC filing yesterday Meissner joined Moto in 2000 as director of technical accounting, served as VP, finance and assistant controller from November, 2001 to August, 2007 and as Corporate VP, finance and assistant controller from August, 2007 to March, 2008.

Last week I reported on a study about the expanding digital universe in which we all live. And everyone clearly is doing their part to contribute -- data requirements are growing at an annual rate of 60 percent. Right now that means about 45 gigabytes for every person, or 281 exabytes total (equivalent to 281 billion GB).

To help enterprises understand what data loads they're currently dealing with EMC offers up a neat little tool -- a digital data calculator.

Check it out and report here on what you find. For some reason I think we'll all have some surprising results.

Motorola CEO Greg Brown is busy, busy, busy.

He's now replaced two more top executives, specifically the European half of the mobile device business and the company treasurer, bringing the total number of Moto leaders who've left the building to lucky seven.

This weekend's departures of treasurer Steve Strobel and EMEA head of mobile devices Mike Fenger are interesting and understandable.

I mean why a treasurer change? What possible impact can a treasurer have on mobile device business strategy?

I mean it's no surprise Brown's pushed out Fenger since he pushed his US counterpart, mobile services honcho Stu Reed, out the door just last week.

Larry Raymond, who reportedly is a former VP and treasurer at Sears Roebuck & Co., is taking Strobel's job.

Fenger is being replaced by Stephen Nolan, who just last week was VP of sales for Motorola in continental Europe.

Fenger now has time to have coffee with Reed, former CMO Kenneth Keller, ex-CTO Padmasree Warrior. ex-CFO Tom Meredith (though apparently he's still in the building for transition reasons) and ex-HR director Ruth Fattori.

What I wouldn't give to buy them all a cup of Starbucks in return for a little chat.

Yes St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, and if you're in the mood to celebrate ahead of time you might want to check out this cute Colgate-Palmolive Irish Spring site.

You can make yourself into a leprechaun, share your own limericks and even hear yourself with a snazzy Irish accent -- pretty much get your Irish on.

NetApp (or as we used to know it, Network Appliance) launched a massive re-branding effort last week. The marketing effort caught lots of news attention and blog traction.

What it didn't seem to do is impress stock watchers.

Following NetApp's Analyst Day event this week, Jayson Noland, a Robert W. Baird analyst, downgraded the company's shares from Outperform to Neutral.

Simply the stock pundit wants to see more profitability.

This downgrade comes despite NetApp's CEO saying he expects fiscal 2009 revenue to jump 15 percent to 20 percent over this year. That seems pretty positive.

But there are clearly some underlying issues in play.

For example a pretty big part of the storage device maker's market base includes the banking industry. And we all know what's happening there given the mortgage debacle.

While NetApp says it's pushing into new industries with a vengeance it's going to take time. Even if it hires on the expected workforce -- the vendor plans to pull in over a thousand new employees within the next year. Right now it's got a little over 7,000 -- there are some challenges ahead.

Yes, it's true. Really. Size matters, as one researcher puts it.

And we're talking computer monitors here.

It seems the bigger a monitor, the more work us workers will do. Hmmmmm. But two small monitors together also seem to boost productivity.

But if it's too big then productivity can suffer.

Researchers at the University of Utah tested how fast people performed work while using various computer screen sizes.

Productivity was tested on an 18-inch monitor, a 24-inch and with two 20-inch displays.

Using the 24-inch screen workers completed the tasks 52% faster than those working on an 18-inch.

And those using the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones.

So obviously 18-inch screens aren't doing it for most people.

Yet productivity seems to drop when people used a 26-inch screen.

I should note here that NEC, which makes monitors, sponsored the study.

As one researcher noted, businesses should realize that the right monitor could make someone more productive.

The answer? Buy the biggest when you can. "Size matters,” said the researcher.

EMC has bought itself a service management software provider -- an acquistion EMC says "solidifies" its "Closed Loop Service Orchestration" strategy which is aimed at helping IT leaders automate data center operations.

Infra's tool, infraEnterprise, is a Web-based IT Infrastructure Library that provides a service desk for managing IT services.

According to Chris Gahagan, EMC's SVP of resource management software, the new tool will help EMC customers solve IT service delivery challenges.

Infra's Managing Director, Andy Wade, says the acquisition "makes perfect sense" as it allows his 17-year-old company to move ahead in terms of providing technology resources.

The buy-up comes on the heels of Iomega declining EMC's takeover proposal. Yet the door wasn't slammed in EMC's face and future negotiations could happen.

It's NetApp. Got it?

Not Network Appliance, not Net Appliance, and obviously not Network Associates, as company cofounder Dave Hitz related in his blog this weekend.

It's the new NetApp, boasting new tagline, new logo, new company website.

As Hitz says, the "whole shebang."

What's prompted the marketing makeover? Well it seems even NetApp was referring to itself in more than one way and branding, as most of us know in this industry, can be a killer app.

I liked this line especially in Hintz' blog post:

"The brand launch is not about driving more change; it is about introducing people to what NetApp has matured into."

Now that you've bought that coveted Lamborghini it's time to check out the appropriate smartphone device to use while cruising the highway.

And that would be the Lamborghini-branded Asus ZX1.

The $15,000 device is a Quad-band GSM, tri-band WCDMA phone with GPRS and EDGE. It also boasts GPS for finding that next Starbucks. It runs on Windows Mobile 6 Pro.

In the spirit of celebrating the advent of Spring (two weeks and counting until the equinox) I wanted to share the following mobility tidbits:

2 trillion messages will be sent worldwide in 2008, according to a new report from ResearchAndMarkets. 2 trillion. Mind-boggling I think.

So it doesn't come as a huge surprise that a small UK town is piloting a program to pad lamp posts after a survey by research firm 118 118 reported one in 10 English pedestrians have injured themselves by texting while walking.

No matter what article you read about Motorola these days, most pundits claim the handset maker's biggest mistake was not following the Razr with another blockbuster device.

There is some truth to that. But the bigger truth may be that Moto just couldn't move fast enough when it needed to four years ago.

As an interesting New York Times article points out, 2004 may mark the turning point of where Moto stumbled.

The iPod was out and AT&T, realizing its importance, called up its partner to find out what it could offer up in terms of music capabilities in a handset.

There were two choices -- Moto's Rokr, which stored 100 songs and the then-popular Razr. The glitch was that no music player coming for the Razr for at least a year.

So AT&T went with the Rokr -- a savvy move that showed the provider knew where things were heading, but one that failed due to product design.

Yet AT&T keep moving forward and now offers the iPhone.

And Moto? Well we all know how things have gone since then.