On Monday, Meg Whitman hosted her first earnings call since becoming HP's CEO. Photo: Ron Edmonds/AP

HP boss Meg Whitman says that companies trying to build their own servers — without the help of traditional server giants like HP — are having little success due to the global hard drive shortage.

Speaking on her first quarterly earnings call since taking the reins at HP eight weeks ago, Whitman said that a small number of companies are skipping server vendors like HP and building their own machines — and that this number is getting smaller. “We hear all the time that people are building their ow...

HTC and Facebook are reportedly working on a Facebook phone, according to a report. The HTC Status (above) was the first phone to incorporate a Facebook button in its hardware. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Be warned: In 2012, your Facebook friend activity ticker could go insane — that is, if Facebook is indeed working on an actual “Facebook phone,” as reported Monday by AllThingsD.

According to AllThingsD sources, Facebook is working with Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC on the purported phone, which would run “on a modified version of Android” that Facebook has “tweaked heavily” to integrate it...