"Two weeks ago," he began. "I completed the debt restructuring of Greece."

It was pretty bold statement, but not entirely out of character. After all, Apfel runs a company called Bondholder Communications Group that does this kind of thing.

But MORE]]> Apple's tablet plays a key role in the largest debt restructuring in history

Apfel in Greece with iPad

FORTUNE -- I got a London call last week from a Bob Apfel, a Brooklyn neighbor (and fellow Oberlin College graduate).

"Two weeks ago," he began. "I completed the debt restructuring of Greece."

It was pretty bold statement, but not entirely out of character. After all, Apfel runs a company called Bondholder Communications Group that does this kind of thing.

But that wasn't the real reason for his call. He wanted to talk about the computer network his team had created to get the job done.

Greece, as you may recall, was facing bankruptcy this spring, unable to make good on debts worth, on paper, more than $270 billion. In a series of complex restructuring transactions, the country's Finance Ministry had offered to settle for a fraction of the bonds' paper value.

But getting roughly 100,000 bondholders scattered around the globe -- from Russia to South Africa to Kazakhstan -- to sign off on the deal on a tight deadline was going to be a logistical nightmare.

"I wanted to do something different," Apfel says. "So I bought 100 iPads."

The Apple (AAPL) tablets, equipped with a custom-made debt-restructuring app, were handed out to the leadership team, including representatives from the Finance Ministry, the Hellenic Exchange (the Greek equivalent of the NYSE), the Bank of Greece (their version of the Federal Reserve) and the three external banks that managed the deal, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Lazard.

The idea was to give the participants a rich set of analytic tools and real-time, secure connections to both the global clearing systems and the back offices of banks around the world.

"During the lead-up to the launch," says Apfel, "members of the financial leadership team were spending over half their time on the road, meeting with investors or financial overseers from the EU and other parts of the troika. There was a palpable need to create a financial decision-makers' platform that could follow the financier – not vice versa."

Toward the end, things got pretty exciting.

"I watched hundreds of millions of bonds being 'slam dunked' as these guys were running down the halls," says Apfel. "Split-second decisions were made that couldn't have been made without the data platform."

When last deal finally closed on April 25, $270 billion of Greek debt had been reduced to $130 billion.

"It was the largest financial transaction in the history of the world," says Apfel. "And we couldn't have done it without the iPad."

"Those who have been waiting for a correction in Apple to buy the stock," MORE]]> Andy Zaky has called a bottom for the fifth time in a row

FORTUNE: Bullish Cross' Andy Zaky, never shy about tooting his own horn, has asked me to remind readers that on Thursday, with Apple (AAPL) trading just over $530, he announced that the share price was at or near a bottom and was about to bounce.

"Those who have been waiting for a correction in Apple to buy the stock," he wrote," now have that opportunity to do so."

On Monday, as predicted, the stock rose $30.90 to close at $561.28. It was the second largest dollar gain in Apple's history, according to AAPLInvestors.net.

(In percentage terms that was nowhere near the record 33.22% gain the stock registered on Aug. 6, 1996, when it rose $6.56 to close at $26.31. Those were the days.)

In a weekend update, Zaky wrote that the selling pressure that brought the stock down from its record intraday high of $644 on April 9 was unlikely to have dissipated completely.

"We will likely see a second and maybe even third leg down in this correction," he wrote. "But between this first leg down and the next leg down, there will be a major rebound. A rebound that could take both Apple and the indices significantly higher."

Zaky was particularly pleased to see the stock perform as predicted Monday because his buy recommendation post had been rejected last week by the editors at Seeking Alpha.

"The technical part of your reason for the buy rating seems to go counter to a bunch of very good momentum studies that have been done in recent years," they wrote. "Please flesh it out further – the market clearly knows Apple's P/E and has decided to continue selling anyway."

"That," Zaky says, "is why financial editors shouldn't try and edit for content."

FORTUNE — Does anyone want to talk about a bubble now?

In the weeks leading up to Facebook's (FB) much-trumpeted IPO, a debate simmered over whether Silicon Valley was entering another bubble. Some cited "bizarre activity" like spending big on companies with no revenue. Others dismissed fears of a MORE]]> The results of Facebook's IPO last week may indicate there isn't -- at least not in the public markets.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE – Does anyone want to talk about a bubble now?

In the weeks leading up to Facebook's (FB) much-trumpeted IPO, a debate simmered over whether Silicon Valley was entering another bubble. Some cited "bizarre activity" like spending big on companies with no revenue. Others dismissed fears of a new bubble as overblown. And of course, none of this was new. Last year, there were sober discussions of a Silicon Valley bubble. And you can find people wondering about one all the way back in 2006.

Facebook's IPO was supposed to be an acid test to show whether investors were falling back into irrational exuberance. And it could have been more than a test, it could be the powder keg that ignited a mania for tech stocks, enticing investors to speculate in web stocks and bringing a flood of new startups into the queue looking for easy capital.

MORE: The scene at Facebook's Hacker Way

Or that's how it seemed before Facebook filed its IPO prospectus. Once it did, any close look at Facebook's financials revealed an indisputably successful company, but one whose best years may already be behind it. Facebook's most recent quarter was lackluster. And its last-minute, $1 billion purchase of Instagram wasn't received as a way to strengthen its weakness in mobile, but as a sign of desperation.

So small investors weren't lining up Friday when Facebook finally became – after years of availability for high-net-worth investors on secondary market exchanges – theirs for the buying. Underwriters priced Facebook fairly for the company, but they didn't do themselves any favors. The irrational thinking that has influenced some recent deals in Silicon Valley wouldn't infect the public markets. There would be no bubble – at least not for now.

But neither is there an absence of irrational investing in the tech world. And it's interesting how many of the venture investors who are so quick to dismiss talk of a bubble are also reluctant, unless pressed, to decry the strange behavior that is, if not rampant, growing increasingly common.

MORE: No, Facebook did not make Bono world's richest musician

Start with the valuation of Facebook. One reason many investors were quick to sell their IPO-alloted shares must be its absurd valuation: 26 times its trailing 12 month revenue and 107 times its net income. If that doesn't seem high to you, just ask the same investors (like Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies) who were clamoring to buy a piece of Facebook a few years back. Now they couldn't wait to sell: 57% of Facebook's IPO proceeds went to insiders. Only 43% went to the company.

Things are even less logical in the area of M&A, where it only takes one buyer to create a valuation worthy of a mania. Take the emerging trend ten-figure valuations to wildly popular apps and sites with little or no revenue. A new watermark was set last month when Instagram was bought by – that's right – Facebook. So you have a company with an absurd valuation using its stock to buy companies at even crazier valuations. Facebook seems to be a daring innovator not just in social media but in creative fundamental analysis as well.

It didn't take long for another buyer to get even crazier. Last week, as Facebook was readying for its offering, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten led a $100 million stake in Pinterest in a deal valuing the hot social network at $1.5 billion.

MORE: Inside Facebook

So no, there is no bubble on any scale that should concern everyday investors in the stock market. The Nasdaq is, barring any global calamities, not going to lose three-quarters of its value. But there is a growing trend of dealmaking that seems to leave logic locked outside the conference-room doors. And there are few financiers in Silicon Valley who seem to care, creating a complacent environment where the nonsensical is increasingly received as sensible.

As a journalist, I covered the Japanese stock bubble and the dot-com bubble. As a homeowner, I lived through the housing bubble. And I know that, when a kind of upside-down thinking becomes commonplace, that's when you have to start worrying about a bubble. True bubbles are illogical investing scaled up to huge markets. Facebook's lackluster IPO may have sucked the air out of a tech-stock bubble. But that doesn't mean we've seen the end of irrational investing.

But two takeaways are clear: (I quote)

The differences between the kinds of patents the two companies are MORE]]> In the court-ordered talks that begin Monday, the two sides are playing by different rules

Choi and Cook. Photos: AP and Reuters

FORTUNE -- The federal judge overseeing the Northern California front of the global smartphone patent war has the power to bring the CEOs of Apple (AAPL) and Samsung -- Tim Cook and Choi Gee-sung -- to a mediation session, but even he can't force a settlement.

The differences between the kinds of patents the two companies are bringing to the table may simply be too great.

Steve Jobs set the terms of the dispute in 2007 when he unveiled the touchscreen smartphone that is now Apple's No. 1 source of revenue.

"We've been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this," he said. "We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone, and we intend to protect them."

According to Walter Isaacson, Jobs was as angry as his biographer had ever seen him about the way Google (GOOG) and the Android phone manufacturers had "slavishly" copied the iPhone's design, threatening to go "thermonuclear" on them -- a term with special resonance in the Far East.

Samsung may have an equally powerful arsenal of patents at its disposal -- including many covering the fundamental technologies of cellular telephony that Apple relies upon -- but those patents are not so easily deployed in a court of law.

Many of Samsung's telecommunications patents were submitted to the technical committees in charge of setting international standards under so-called FRAND terms, whereby a company is permitted to collect royalties for use of its proprietary technology, but must negotiate those royalties for rates that are "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory."

Samsung has tried to use those standards-essential patents against Apple, accusing the company in countersuits of exploiting them without permission, something Apple may well be doing.

But as a legal strategy this carries risks, because as long as Apple is willing to pay for the use of Samsung's patents, Samsung is required to negotiate terms that are fair and reasonable and don't try to unduly punish Apple.

Apple is under no such obligation with regard to its patents. If it doesn't want a competitor to use its proprietary technologies, it doesn't have to license them under any terms.

It's in this context that we must consider the remarks Steve Jobs' successor made during the most recent earning call:

"I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it," Cook told analysts in April. "We just want people to invent their own stuff. So if we could get to some arrangement where we could be assured that's the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that's occurred, I would highly prefer to settle than to battle. But it -- the key thing is that it's very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff." (transcript)

Many commentators interpreted that statement as an olive branch extended in advance of this week's Samsung talks.

But it's just as likely that Cook was signaling something quite different. Apple is willing to settle those things that Samsung is required to negotiate. But when it comes to protecting Apple's inventions, the Cook's heels seem to be as deeply dug in as his predecessor's were.

FORTUNE -- About a year before Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion, General Electric (GE) joined. Instagram users take and share pictures on their smartphones and "follow" other users' photostreams. GE (No. 6 on the Fortune 500) has 86,066 followers. Instagram's retro-filters can make GE's photos look like a history MORE]]> Fortune 500 companies are looking at the big picture as they embrace social media.

By Colleen Leahey, reporter

FORTUNE -- About a year before Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion, General Electric (GE) joined. Instagram users take and share pictures on their smartphones and "follow" other users' photostreams. GE (No. 6 on the Fortune 500) has 86,066 followers. Instagram's retro-filters can make GE's photos look like a history of the company, which turns 120 this year. But the shots are current. Starbucks (No. 227) and Target (No. 38) may have many followers (526,009 and 12,979, respectively), but their pics feature products, while GE's show a process, a look at how the company builds its big machines.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Target's Instagram account had 150,000 followers. The account actually has 12,979. The numbers of GE and Starbucks followers have also been updated from the story that originally appeared in the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune.

FORTUNE -- An ingenious, Rube Goldberg-style invention called Aereo, backed by Barry Diller's IAC/Interactive Corp., is posing riddles for a federal judge, whose decisions could have enormous consequences for the future of television distribution.

The lawsuit is the latest iteration of a now MORE]]> Aereo wants to revolutionize web TV by making it easy to stream and record basic TV. Question is, will the major broadcasters let it?

By Roger Parloff, senior editor

FORTUNE -- An ingenious, Rube Goldberg-style invention called Aereo, backed by Barry Diller's IAC/Interactive Corp., is posing riddles for a federal judge, whose decisions could have enormous consequences for the future of television distribution.

The lawsuit is the latest iteration of a now familiar spectacle in which federal courts are tasked with cramming a digital technology into the Procrustean bed of analog-era legal concepts. In this instance, the service looks quite dubious when viewed from 30,000 feet, but becomes more plausible as you get closer and start wading into the weeds.

Aereo, which launched on a limited basis in March, currently allows New York City residents to watch broadcast (but not cable) TV shows on their iPhones, iPads and web browsers, and to tape those shows and play them back later. The company has been sued for copyright infringement by all the major networks and local New York TV stations, including Disney's (DIS) ABC, NBCUniversal (CMCSA), CBS (CBS), Fox (NWS), Telemundo and Univision. The plaintiffs claim that Aereo is engaged in the unauthorized, public retransmission of their over-the-air programming, and they seek a preliminary injunction to shut it down. A hearing before U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan of Manhattan is set for May 30.

Aereo's technology works like this: The company rents space in a warehouse in Brooklyn and fills it with custom-made, wine cooler-sized computer hardware jammed with vertically aligned blades. (See photo.) Projecting from the blades are thousands of thumbnail-sized television antennas. These are tiny, modern-day versions of the old bunny ears that people have used to watch over-the-air television since time immemorial.

MORE: The real importance of the revived Viacom-YouTube case

Aereo then effectively rents each customer one of these antennas and all the other off-site hardware needed to operate her own individualized remote DVR using her Apple (AAPL) iPhone or iPad. As with most DVRs, the customer can choose to watch live (with a pause-function available) or watch later. The signal reaches the customer's device over the Internet. The service currently costs $12 a month, and provides access to the 28 over-the-air channels one can receive at that Brooklyn warehouse.

It works eerily well, though at the moment it's only up and running in the New York City DMA, or "designated market area." That's a funny story, too. Basically, Aereo uses FCC maps to determine the maximum perimeter around the New York City metropolitan area from which someone with a typical residential TV antenna on her roof would be able to pick up over-the-air signals from New York City. If the customer ventures outside that range, her phone's GPS or wi-fi systems will eventually detect that fact, and Aereo will dutifully cut off reception. (So, for instance, some parts of the Hamptons get reception, some don't.) Since it's ordinarily not possible to receive New York's over-the-air signals with an antenna beyond a certain distance, Aereo imposes analogous, if artificial, limitations on its users.

Legal precedents have already painted Judge Nathan into a weird corner. To the extent that someone uses Aereo for live TV, there's a strong argument to be made that Aereo is illegal. After all, if Congress requires cable and satellite providers, like Comcast and DirecTV (DTV), to pay broadcasters license fees to retransmit their over-the-air signals—and it clearly does—why wouldn't Aereo have to do the same? And if, for any reason, Judge Nathan finds that Aereo -- the brainchild of engineer/CEO Chaitanya (Chet) Kanojia -- is exempt from such fees, won't cable and satellite providers just switch to Kanojia's approach ASAP, socking networks and local TV stations with a huge financial blow? In legislation enacted in 1992 and 1999, Congress unambiguously expressed its intent that broadcasters be able to charge cable and satellite providers for retransmitting their signals.

On the other hand, to the extent that someone uses Aereo as a DVR, there's a strong argument to be made that courts can't lay a hand on it. There's already a binding precedent -- a 2008 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which covers New York -- that seems to say so. The plaintiffs aren't even challenging the DVR aspect of Aereo.

MORE: Angry at health care arguments? Get even.

So at first glance, if we take in the whole forest, it looks like Aereo's live TV function -- it's key commercial attraction -- can't be legal, while it's DVR functions probably are. In that case, we might think, Judge Nathan will just split the baby, banning Aereo's live TV functions while leaving untouched its DVR functions.

Yet there're two problems with that approach. One is logical. She'd be drawing a distinction between two process that are, according to Aereo's lawyers at least, technologically identical. The Aereo technology works the same way, they claim, "whether the consumer operates it in the 'Watch Now' mode -- i.e., playback at approximately the time the program airs—or whether the consumer waits until a later time to initiate playback of the recorded programming."

The other problem is more practical, and seems like an obvious one, though neither side addresses it in its papers, and neither side's representatives were willing to discuss it with Fortune. If Judge Nathan splits the baby, it seems like she would also have to decide how long Aereo customers must wait before starting their DVR playbacks. If a fraction-of-a-second buffer suffices, then the ban on live TV would be meaningless. If not, then any minimum court-ordered delay will seem arbitrary as a legal matter, though crucial as a business matter. If a 5-minute delay suffices, Aereo might still have a viable business. But if customers have to wait till their show is over, that might kill Aereo's appeal.

Here's the legal landscape: Since 1976, the copyright law has generally forbidden unauthorized retransmission of over-the-air broadcast TV signals. These statutory provisions overturned two U.S. Supreme Court decisions which had found that cable providers didn't owe broadcasters squat for retransmitting their copyrighted programs to paying subscribers, which Congress considered unfair.

MORE: Solyndra report misses the point

So the copyright law gives broadcasters exclusive rights over "public performances" of their works, and then defines those to include any transmissions "to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the transmission receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times."

Aereo claims to circumvent all that gibberish because it facilitates only "private" performances of TV shows, not public. "First, a consumer turns on a remotely located and individually assigned television antenna, accessible only by her, and tunes to the over-the-air television programming of her choice," its attorneys write. "Second, [she] uses the Aereo system to make a unique copy of the over-the-air program, from the signals received by her antenna, and to store that copy in a remotely located DVR. Third, [she] uses the Aereo system to play back her unique copy to herself, and only to herself, on her Internet-enabled device."

If Aereo's argument ended there, I'm not sure I'd buy it.

But it doesn't. In 2006, some movie and television studios challenged the legality of Cablevision's (CVC) cloud-based DVR service, known as "remote storage" DVR. Not surprisingly, a federal appeals court ruled in 2008 that there was nothing wrong with a remote-storage DVR, which simply relieved customers of the need to make space for DVR hardware, like a TiVo, in their home.

Now again, at the 30,000-foot level, the Cablevision ruling seems totally unremarkable. After all, Cablevision was already licensed by the broadcasters to retransmit their live signals, so why would providing DVR services require still another license?

MORE: Facebook's patent headaches: More to come?

But that's wasn't the stated basis for the court's ruling. Instead, the court used language that seems broad enough to protect Aereo's DVR service, too. In fact -- and here's the rub -- the language seems broad enough even to protect Aereo's live service.

The content providers' main legal challenge to Cablevision's remote storage DVR service was that it amounted to unauthorized retransmission of over-the-air broadcast signals, resulting in an infringing "public performance" of their works. The appeals court rejected that argument in these terms: "Because each [remote storage] DVR playback transmission is made to a single subscriber using a single unique copy produced by that subscriber, we conclude that such transmissions are not performances 'to the public,' and therefore do not infringe any exclusive right of public performance."

That's a great description of what Aereo's DVR does, too. In fact, it's a pretty good description of what Aereo's live TV function does, also. See Judge Nathan's quandary? Does she look at the forest or the trees?

Then, once you locate the Ripley Center -- a tiny circular building, just to the right of the Institute's big red castle -- MORE]]> If you didn't already know about the Smithsonian's exhibit, you'd never find it

At the Smithsonian: The patents and trademarks of Steve Jobs

FORTUNE -- First you have to find which of the Smithsonian's 19 museums houses the Steve Jobs' exhibit that opened last week -- not an easy task for someone unfamiliar with the monumental geography of Washington D.C.

Then, once you locate the Ripley Center -- a tiny circular building, just to the right of the Institute's big red castle -- and subject your backpack to the usual weapons search, you still have to ask (because there is no sign) where you can find The Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology that Changed the World.

Then it's a subterranean voyage four stories below ground into a space that is deceptively, suspiciously large. A space deep enough to hide a vice president or two.

Finally, next to the MathAlive experience where all the middle-school-age kids seem to be headed, there it is: A blow-up of Steve Jobs' face on the cover of Walter Isaacson's biography. And behind it, row after row of framed documents representing every patent ever signed by Apple's late co-founder.

Some are simple icons -- the iPhone's map icon, the air ballon for Messages. Some are objects so familiar they have become icons in their own right. The original Mac. That silly, circular mouse. The flying-saucer shaped AirPort base station. The Apple Store's glass stairway.

The first patent, filed on Nov. 3, 1980 and illustrated with the case of the Apple II, is described simply as "Personal Computer." The last patent, filed on Oct. 4, 2011, the day before Jobs died, is for "User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access."

Design patent 504,889

After a search of several minutes I was able to locate design patent 504,889, unhelpfully named "Electronic Device."

It's on the strength of that patent, according to FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, that Apple (AAPL) on Friday asked the U.S. government to ban Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1.

I snapped a photo and sent it to Mueller.

FORTUNE -- On Friday, Daring Fireball's John Gruber, one of the most influential Apple (AAPL) commentators on the Internet, began the latest episode of his Talk Show podcast by launching without preamble into a riff about Andy Pettitte's return to baseball.

No surprise there. Gruber's podcast style is as idiosyncratic as his widely-read blog, and he'll use any excuse to MORE]]> The equivalent, in podcasting news, of Conan O'Brien leaving NBC for TBS

Gruber. Photo: PED

FORTUNE -- On Friday, Daring Fireball's John Gruber, one of the most influential Apple (AAPL) commentators on the Internet, began the latest episode of his Talk Show podcast by launching without preamble into a riff about Andy Pettitte's return to baseball.

No surprise there. Gruber's podcast style is as idiosyncratic as his widely-read blog, and he'll use any excuse to talk about his beloved Yankees.

What was surprising was that after nearly two years and 90 episodes with Dan Benjamin's 5by5 Network, Gruber was podcasting from a new venue, Mike Monteiro's Mule Radio Syndicate.

In the absence of an explanation from the principals, the blogosphere rushed to fill the void with speculation about what had just happened; there were hundreds of posts on Hacker News alone. Among the theories put forward overnight (and collected by the candler blog's Jonathan Poritsky):

• A falling out (believe it or not) over a pre-WWDC batch of Talk Show t-shirts
• A dispute over the division of proceeds from 5by5's new iPhone app
• A disagreement over who owes whom more for the other's fame and prominence
• A divorce after one or the other partner grew tired of their on-air relationship

"I am honestly surprised at how bummed I am about the @danbenjamin @gruber break up," wrote @joshuaaleonard, in one of dozens of Twitter posts. "You guys were my favorite part of the week."

Most long-time listeners wished the new Talk Show well, but the consensus among those who caught the first episode on The Mule (title: "What if the Dolphins Had Thumbs?") was that without Benjamin to keep him on track, Gruber tended to go off the rails.

The iTunes customer review voted most useful Saturday morning pronounced Episode 1: "Unfocused, uninteresting and unlistenable."

Neither Gruber nor Benjamin returned our requests for comment. We'll try to keep an open mind.

Meanwhile, you can hear Gruber on The Mule here. You can get links to his old 5by5 podcasts here. You can hear a clip of Gruber and Benjamin's last awkward signoff here.

UPDATE: Benjamin on Monday posted a four-minute message about the end of Talk Show. He points out that it actually stretched back 120 episodes, wishes Gruber the best with his new show and tells listeners where they can find it. See Special Episode No. 6: Regarding the Talk Show.

Below: A song about the breakup by Jonathan Mann, the Song-a-Day guy.

FORTUNE -- In the Alice in Wonderland-universe of Silicon Valley, realities can be deceiving. That fellow in a T-shirt and flip-flops is a billionaire and "We're not in it for the money" means they probably are. So it was today at the headquarters of Facebook. That each employee and press flack declared "Today was just MORE]]> What was Facebook's wild Friday really like? Here's a first-hand account.

By David A. Kaplan, contributor

FORTUNE -- In the Alice in Wonderland-universe of Silicon Valley, realities can be deceiving. That fellow in a T-shirt and flip-flops is a billionaire and "We're not in it for the money" means they probably are. So it was today at the headquarters of Facebook. That each employee and press flack declared "Today was just another day" pretty much confirmed it was not.

Facebook (FB) finally went public, closing at $38.37, barely a Lamborghini above its offering price of $38. Most of the 2,000 or so employees here had spent the night at a "hackathon," coding some future Facebook app or feature. Philz, the in-house coffee shop, opened at 5 a.m. for the bleary-eyed. The employees wore special gray T-shirts made just for the day. Emblazoning the T-shirts: STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP HACKING, even if the thought balloons over a few employee heads might have read NEW WINE CELLAR or SMALL YACHT! Never did the instantly recognizable huge blue "Like" sign that marks the entrance to Facebook look more appropriate.

MORE: Rice Business Plan Competition: Hail to the champions

At 6:30 a.m. outside and in front of almost every one of those employees, Mark Zuckerberg -- co-founder, CEO, wunderkind of social media, and the richest curly-haired twentysomething on the planet -- remotely rang the opening bell of the Nasdaq back in Manhattan. "All this might seem like a big deal," he told his brigade of engineers and marketers. "But here's the thing: our mission is to make the world more open and connected."

Big deal? Of course not! Unless you count as ordinary the minting about 1,000 millionaires and the creation of about $100 billion in the public markets. Social mission? No doubt. But there was also the thing about pricing your stock at the really high end -- about 107 times earnings, raising $16 billion for the company.

In a cordoned-off parking lot of the 57-acre campus of pastel-colored buildings that used to be home of Sun Microsystems, 10 satellite trucks -- from CNN's to Agence France-Presse's -- beamed out the latest updates on the stock price, with commentary from network stars. Journalists hoping to learn whether treasure was being counted inside learned from stray employees in the parking lot that they risked their jobs if they said anything other than "no comment." Remarkably, on this day when risking your job was a particularly bad idea, most told me "no comment."

MORE: The draconian hidden penalty on student loans

I did learn, though, many employees actually weren't there, as the hackathon all-nighter left them exhausted and they went home. I did not learn whether they were on their way to check out $2-million fixer-uppers in Palo Alto -- sorry, all-cash bids only -- because at that moment a security guard pulled up in a pickup truck and urged me to go visit Google (GOOG). Just kidding about Google. But I was informed that I couldn't ask employees any questions. That rule didn't apply the delivery guy from purpletie.com, which specializes in corporate door-to-door dry cleaning and laundry around the Valley. He told me today was a particularly light day. But he steadfastly declines to talk about Zuckerberg's signature hoodies.

By the time the stock market had closed, most of the circus had left town. The newscopters had long departed and the security guards had gone home. Around the Menlo Park neighborhood, some of it surprisingly rundown, few seemed to have noticed the celebrated event that had taken place at Facebook. But one fellow on the roadside apparently had a sense of humor. He was holding up a sign that said WILL CODE FOR FOOD. Who knows, maybe he'll start a company tomorrow that in a few years will go public and itself make a fortune.

MORE: How Hewlett-Packard lost its MORE]]> Facebook employees are celebrating. Workers at Hewlett-Packard are wondering whether or not they'll still have a job

FORTUNE -- While Facebook (FB) employees are celebrating, workers at beleaguered Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are wondering whether or not they'll still have a job a few weeks from now. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech behemoth is said to be considering cutting upwards of 25,000 jobs, as reported by Bloomberg on Thursday.

MORE: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way

The layoffs could be announced next Wednesday, when HP reports quarterly results. Either way, investors will be looking for more information on new CEO Meg Whitman's restructuring plans. Whitman is in the unenviable position of trying to turn HP around (click here for an in-depth look at what went wrong at the once-venerable company). But while cuts may be necessary, in the long run they won't do much to curtail HP's declining revenues.

HP needs a bold makeover, and perhaps even deeper cuts than the 25,000 layoffs it is reportedly considering (the company has nearly 325,000 employees worldwide). But it just can't decide what it wants to be. Former CEO Leo Apotheker toyed with the idea of spinning off its PC business. But current chief executive Whitman has made it clear that's off the table, at least for now.

Besides a dysfunctional board, scandals and a revolving door of chief executive officers, HP has had to contend with a decreasing demand for printers and computers, its core businesses. The company completely missed the boat on tablets and mobile phones -- not for lack of trying, but for lack of getting it right. And while it's made efforts to increase its enterprise software market share, those revenues still comprise just a tiny percentage of the company's overall sales. Just last week, HP announced a slew of new products, including a line of ultra-thin laptops. But even if these end up selling well, they won't do much to help HP reinvent itself.

MORE: HP's cast of characters

For now, Whitman seems focused on stabilizing the company. Expectations from Wall Street are low, which should make her job just a tiny bit easier. But HP's problems have been building up for years, and employee morale is in a downward spiral. Whitman can trim some of the fat, realign organizations and make other iterative improvements, but there's not much she can do to significantly alter HP's prospects, unless it involves some painful and drastic changes. Even then, it's not clear an IBM-like turnaround would be possible. There's a reason IBM (IBM) is always used as the example for this kind of solution to the classic Innovator's Dilemma -- most other companies haven't succeeded in making such a dramatic change.

Just a few miles away from HP, Facebook is hiring and beefing up its ever-growing staff. It's not perfect, and it will likely make many more mistakes, especially as it faces the scrutiny of Wall Street in the coming years. But it's become the poster-child for innovative, engineering-centric and highly valued Silicon Valley companies -- much like HP used to be.

FORTUNE -- With Apple (AAPL) trading just over $530 a share -- under 13 times last year's earnings and 10.56 times his estimated October earnings -- Bullish Cross' Andy Zaky on Thursday told his readers to buy:

"Those who have been waiting for a correction in Apple to buy the stock now have that opportunity to do so. On a technical MORE]]> A cult figure among day traders issues a rare "buy" recommendation

Zaky

FORTUNE -- With Apple (AAPL) trading just over $530 a share -- under 13 times last year's earnings and 10.56 times his estimated October earnings -- Bullish Cross' Andy Zaky on Thursday told his readers to buy:

"Those who have been waiting for a correction in Apple to buy the stock now have that opportunity to do so. On a technical basis, Apple is the second most oversold it has been since the lows of the financial crisis. Only on June 20, 2011 — when Apple bottomed at $310.50 a share ahead of a 30% July rally — did we see more oversold conditions on Apple. Even the flash crash didn't result in more oversold conditions." (link)

For those of you who've never heard of Zaky, he was one of the first independent Apple analysts to challenge Wall Street, issuing estimates quarter after quarter that were considerably more accurate than the professionals'. (See, for example, here.)

Through his articles on Fortune.com, Apple Insider and Seeking Alpha, Zaky became something of a cult figure among Internet-oriented day traders. In 2011 he started a hedge fund -- Bullish Cross Asset Management -- that was quickly oversubscribed. At the 2012 Apple Investors Summit in Los Angeles, he was mobbed by his young admirers.

Between July 2006 and and July 2011 Zaky issued four "buy" recommendations on Apple, and his timing has been -- as he would be the first to tell you -- "impeccable." Each was made at or near a bottom, and the stock not yet failed to reach his price targets. See here.

He was warning subscribers to expect a correction long before April 9's all-time intraday high of $644, which he felt was unsupported.

Thursday's call to buy Apple was Zaky's fifth:

"Today we feel that Apple is a strong buy anywhere between $500 and $530 a share and a buy between $530 and $550 a share. We expect Apple to test $750 a share sometime before the end of this coming January. That is roughly 50% higher than where the stock is trading today."

You can read his full post here.

Apple closed Thursday at $530.12, down nearly $114 (17.7%) from its peak in April. It was up more than $12 in early morning trading Friday.

UPDATE: Asymco's Horace Dediu tweets: "Apple's P/E ex cash is about 10. On a forward basis ex cash $AAPL P/E is 7."