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Today’s Bloomsday, a holiday observed annually on June 16 to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941) and commemorate the events in his novel Ulysses.
We sign off on this quote from Ulysses: “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” |
June 16, 2006
Bloomsday
Google, the Un-Microsoft
Since our anger for-no-good-reasons has dissipated, we revisit the Google vs Microsoft debate, esp. after news of Bill Gates’s managed fade-out came to light.
While Microsoft is part and parcel a software “plumbing” company that defines the PC era, Google is in effect a consumer services company and a digital-age advertising concern, as the FT’s Richard Waters sees it. Micosoft is par excellence in the business of building applications (Office) on top of its platform (Windows Operating System). But lately, Google, the un-Microsoft, it appears, has endeavored to be Microsoft. Couple weeks agao, it released a test version of an online spreadsheet, the latest in a series of products that look like web-based versions of Microsoft Office.
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Anger Management
TGIF - It’s time for our random Friday rant.
A quote by Benjamin Franklin just came our way: “Anger is never without reason, but seldom with a good one.” Inspired, we compile a sample of offensive, incendiary and blasphemous opinions voiced by the famously enraged and outraged.
Is Ann “Godless” Coulter’s tirade against liberals justified with good reasons? If by that you mean money, fame and power, then it is. James Wolcott says, “She works the talkshow and lecture circuit the way a stripper works the pole, as a ritualized form of exhibitionism, going through the moves she knows will get the desired response. ” Her choice of words are meant to outrage her opponents, to excite and enthrall her worshippers.
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In Search of (China) Audience
While the world tunes to World Cup, the most popular game, major league media companies are quietly revamping their strategy toward the world’s most populous country, China. Well, revamp is an understatement, retreat is more like it.
The latest retrenchment came from News Corp, which announced last week that it would sell off half of it stake in Phoenix Satellite Television, its Hong Kong-based Chinese TV joint venture. Phoenix earned a paltry $23m last year.
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Life after Gates?
While the (tech) world is indulging itself in the long goodbyes, nemeses of the Great Gates waste no time calling the head of Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. CNN lists a litany of Ballmer’s failures.
Probably more than any other person, as the NYT states the obvious, Gates has been identified with personal computer software, while the center of gravity is increasingly shifting to the Internet. Ballmer is an old guard trying to take Microsoft and its personal computer-era dominance to the internet. History tells us IBM didn’t become the PC giant, a new comer Microsoft did. Microsoft is the IBM in Web 2.0 era.
End of An Era
Bill Gates made headlines overnight:
FT: Bill Gates Calls Time on Career at Microsoft;
BusinessWeek: Bills Gates’s Long Goodbye;
Forbes: The (Almost) Exit Interview;
AdAge: (the more prosaic) Gates to Leave Day-to-Day Post at Microsoft;
Mercury News: Microsoft faces future without Gates at helm.
Gates’s glorious legacy will always be the PC revolution he sparked. Microsoft, the software company synonymous with his name, has democratized personal computer that heralded the advent of technology as consumer products. Along the way, Gates’s technology vision and shrewd business skills have made it a Goliath that geeks love to hate, the man himself has become the subject of obsessive love of true nerds at Silicon Valley.
Experts predict a surge in withdrawn syndrome as many intelligent people “with large emotional investments pent up in disliking Mr Gates” will have a tough time seeing Bill leave the stage.