After months of turmoil, HP seems to have made a sensible decision as the company announced it has reversed a previous decision to spin off the PC division.

This looks like a sound move, and new CEO Meg Whitman will probably earn some good will inside HP for this decision.

That said, paidContent is reporting that webOS is toast.

But the Guardian understands that HP is to shut down its webOS division, acquired for $1.2 billion in April 2010 when it bought Palm, and make the staff there redundant or shift them elsewhere inside the company. That could mean losses of up to 500 jobs as the business which created the short-lived HP TouchPad and smartphones is closed.

If true, this makes less sense. Cheap tablets have a future, and HP shouldn’t abandon these efforts just because they botched the initial TouchPad release.

It’s amazing to see how political campaigns has evolved in the Internet era. We’ve seen a transformation based primarily in the areas of online fundraising and using social media to organize supporters and volunteers.

This makes it much easier for national figures to quickly ramp up campaigns. Elizabeth Warren is a great example. She has a ton of progressive support after her role in creating the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau, so when she announced her Senate campaign, she was able to immediately harness her political celebrity. She raised a ton of money online in a short period of time, mostly from small donors all around the country. The web tools for this are now very common and easy to implement. In addition to raising a ton of money, she is also organizing an army of volunteers. As a result, her opponents in the Democratic primary have dropped out.

These tools are also important for less well-known candidates. People can create local buzz, and then use the same new media tools to leverage that buzz. Things now move much faster.

That said, old-school politics are still critical, and things like appearances and shaking hands generate news stories, that then get disseminated and then motivate people to go to the candidates web site. Also, people want to show their support in many ways, so signs and stickers are still important. So campaigns still need to pay attention to things like sticker printing, but the web is also helpful here as well, as all these things can be ordered online.

It will be interesting to see what innovations are in store for 2012.

Tom Friedman is usually very good at explaining the disruptive influence of new technology and the implications for the global economy, even if he isn’t the first (or second) to notice something.

The latest phase in the I.T. revolution is being driven by the convergence of social media — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga — with the proliferation of cheap wireless connectivity and Web-enabled smartphones and “the cloud” — those enormous server farms that hold and constantly update thousands of software applications, which are then downloaded (as if from a cloud) by users on their smartphones, making them into incredibly powerful devices that can perform myriad tasks.

The emergence of the cloud, explained Alan Cohen, a vice president of Nicira, a new networking company, “means than anyone can have the computing resources of Google and rent it by the hour.” This is speeding up everything — innovation, product cycles and competition.

The October issue of Fast Company has an article about the designer Scott Wilson, who thought of grafting the body of an iPod Nano onto colorful wristbands, turning them into watchlike devices that could wake you up and play your music. He had no money, though, to bring his concept to market, so he turned to Kickstarter, the Web-based funding platform for independent creative projects. He posted his idea on Nov. 16, 2010, reported Fast Company, and “within a month, 13,500 people from 50 countries had ponied up nearly $1 million.” Apple soon picked up the product for its stores. Said Alexis Ringwald, 28, who recently founded an education start-up, her second Silicon Valley venture: “I have many friends — they introduce themselves as ‘reformed’ Wall St. bankers and lawyers — who have abandoned conventional careers and are now launching start-ups.”

Some like Rich Kaarlgard have been describing this as the “cheap revolution” for years. Friedman is explaining the new developments in that area. We now have it all at our fingertips all the time. It’s a powerful and exciting development. Kickstarter is a great crowdsourcing example that thrives in this environment.

Friedman uses the column to contrast Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It’s a good read.