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Contest
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So, Up-To-Date's first contest on creative ways to deal with Microsoft
was pretty successful in getting you folks to fill up my email box.
Some of the suggestions were pretty amusing. Some of them were more
realistic than others. Plenty of you suggested doing nothing, which
isn't all that creative. However, Dan Burzynski expressed it most
succinctly by stating: "Basically, sit down, have a beer and wait for MS
to shoot themselves in the foot." There were the violent responders,
such as Joel Garry, who opined: "Blo 'em up rel gud" with a link to the
good folks at Survival Research Labs (http://www.srl.org/)
for those of you who haven't been paying attention. Lots suggestions
on splitting up Microsoft into various units, but Derek Kerton took it
a step further, suggesting the Gov't take control of the different sections
and give 'em away as foreign aid: "Okay, Yassir, if you let them have the
West bank, we'll let you have the Gaza strip, Encarta, 100 POWs, Steve
Ballmer, and 30 DLLs of your choosing." Of course, he pointed out
the downside of this plan: "In order to bolster the small arms industry,
for example, you could give the Hutus Internet Explorer, but give the Tutsi's
the Windows OS. This would assure a long drawn out war, because there
is absolutely no way to separate one from the other." In the end,
though, the winner (in my extremely subjective mind) goes to Kevin Yeung
for the following submission:
i think that they should run a microsoft org chart through a paper shredder
and scatter the shreds in a gladitorial arena. then, at high noon, all
the microsoft employees are to be released into the stadium along with
a few savage animals and an occasional visigoth (spectator value) to fight
for the shreds. any individual that can piece together a complete
org chart entry gets that division/business group. continue until
sun down or until only one combatant remains.
Kevin, of course, got no extra points for mentioning in his email that
Up-To-Date is more fun that the Starr Report. Of course it is...
Thanks to everyone else who entered as well and didn't get his or her name
published. There were plenty of good, creative solutions (some involving
things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the original contest).
I may even be forced to hold more contests in the future...
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Say that again...
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"It becomes increasingly clear that the Internet business is strongly
accretive and that our customer base and market share are growing as a
result of our entry into this exciting area."
- Leanard Riggio, Chairman of Barnes & Noble Inc. on results that
really weren't that positive. However, the more important thing to
note: accretive? No wonder the guy runs a book company. Call
me uneducated or a verbal underachiever, but I'd not come across that one
before. http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?db=*&term=accretive
says it's all right, though.
"Unlike bookstores, where people like to go to shop, discover, get a
cup of coffee, no one likes browsing the Preparation H section of the drugstore."
- Peter Neupert, CEO of Drugstore.com
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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
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The NYTimes plunked down $15 million for a "minority" stake in TheStreet.com
the day before they filed to go public (expecting a quick return?)... Barnes
& Noble only made $31 million in revenue from its .com business last
quarter (tiny compared to Amazon.com)... Media Metrix, sick of seeing all
the companies it tracks make big bucks from IPOs, is going down that road
itself... Ouch! Priceline reports that they lost over *$90 million*
in just three quarters of business last year. Plus, they are only
making matches on about 10% of flight bids. Of course, they still
plan on going public soon... Lycos reported their second quarter losses
to be slightly smaller than expected... Intuit is selling their entire
stake in Excite... Nvidia has a pretty damn good quarter... Novell is making
money... PCOrder and Intraware both go public, though PCOrder has a slightly
better first day...
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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
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CBS to buy NBC?... CNet redesign coming (wait, didn't they just do
that? However, I've been told that this is "bigger than it sounds".
Hmmm.)... HP is looking to buy a part of BEA (been reading too many stories
about application servers and feeling empty?)... AOL and AT&T in merger
talks?...
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News you should have read elsewhere
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3Com released the funky new PalmV and PalmIIIx... AMD released the
K6-III and, of course, the media had a field day (like they always do)
claiming the end of Intel's domination (though a study also came out showing
AMD beat Intel's processor sales in January)... ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox
are suing DirecTV for providing network TV over its service... Computer
crackers have apparently taken control of a British military communications
satellite and are issuing blackmail threats (okay, Reuters picked this
up, but I haven't seen much reporting on this)... Echostar offers to buy
Primestar assets...
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News you could do without
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CNet on a buying spree, picking up AuctionGate and Winfiles (you'd
think a company worth over $10 million - albeit conditionally - can have
a better design than the retro 1995 sky/clouds background .gif)... Compuserve
gets a new look as they target a higher class of users than parent AOL...
More companies are suing Microsoft every day... Shareholders filed a class
action suit against Lycos concerning Bob Davis' statements a week before
selling out claiming that Lycos planned to remain "independent"... Two
cybersquatters are forced to turn over microsoftwindows.com and micfosoftoffice.com
(yet they're still not chasing windows2000.com)... Of course, in Apple-land,
Apple is still chasing the 16-year-old kids who registered appleimac.com.
CNet did an excellent job reporting that Apple, in retaliation, registered
the name traya.net (the name of the kids' web design "business") without
actually checking the whois, which clearly showed that some random guy
in Washington registered it, and put Apple Corporation as the company name.
The new traya.net, incidentally, is now trying to get people to have major
publications print obviously erroneous bits of info without fact checking...
Charles Schwab's online business got knocked out for a bit Wednesday...
More and more British ISPs go free... TI and Liquid Audio working to create
a device to compete with the Rio, but obviously without MP3 support...
Sony is also working on a new digital music format... Gateway to offer
free Internet service, and buys a stake in NECX for online shopping...
SEC charges 13 people with committing fraud on the Internet by deceiving
the public about specific stocks... Readers Digest to dump $100 million
into the Internet... Peapod (apparently still in business) to open up a
new distribution center in San Francisco... Philips bidding for VLSI...
Viacom plans to move into the net in a big way... Hotmail breaks down (again)...
Intel investing in Linux firm VA Research...
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Surprises:
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Go.com is the number 4 website? (Frankly, I don't believe it, but if
the claims are true, I'd like to see if they can sustain it)... Spinner.com
jumps into the MP3 business (I think this is a good thing, I just didn't
think Spinner would jump in so soon)... So, everyone knew that Beyond.com
was looking to buy someone. Rumors were spreading that BuyDirect
was in play. Yet, no one put the two together until Beyond's $133
million announcement last Monday... Happily pissing off its channels, Compaq
has stopped (temporarily, they claim - and they'd better) sales of PCs
to Internet only retailers (including their own Shopping.com?)... Meanwhile,
Acer has gone in a different direction, stopping sales to US based retailers,
and will only sell PCs direct, over the web... Then of course, there's
Microsoft, (usually careful to avoid channel conflict, but always willing
to screw someone over if the chance arises) launching their own online
store (admittedly, pointing to selected online retailers)... Virginia
looking to make spamming a felony... Hollywood Video, who recently acquired
Reel.com, is now looking to spin off its internet business (easy come,
easy go)... Sun, sorta, but not really, opens up the source code for Solaris...
eBay is under federal investigation for illegal transactions on its web
site (perhaps having something to do with selling missiles: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=71421178
- or maybe just the children for sale, http://208.169.218.91/kids.html
- by the way, it's worth reading the seller's feedback at: http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=kidik2000
)...
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(Mis)Uses of Technology:
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Nokia's new Internet phone... In an attempt to show how they did not
mess up an investigation, British police publish a report on the Internet,
complete with the names and addresses of the informants... Earthlink posting
its service as an auction on eBay (clever, but...)... Pennsylvania has
new license plates with the state's URL on it...
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Studies:
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A study by InfoBeads suggests that e-commerce providers were so thrilled
with Christmas results that they completely forgot about Valentine's Day,
and did nothing to promote it. In turn, consumers purchased much
less than expected... The National Consumers League says that complaints
of fraud in online auctions has grown six times since 1997. My question:
how many more people are now using online auctions (my guess is that it's
more than six times)... ZD goes out on a limb predicting "astonishing"
growth in e-commerce this year... The Southern Poverty Law Center reports
that the Internet is empowering hate groups (this is obviously a very bad
thing, but the fact is the Internet can empower anyone - it's not the tool
that's the problem)... A new study by Shelley Taylor basically says that
e-commerce sites are, for the most part, pretty bad... AdKnowledge reports
that banner ad prices keep dropping...
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Overhype
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Drugstore.com, even having Amazon.com as a huge shareholder (was this
really *that* big of a surprise?) shouldn't have received so much press
this week... Microsoft, and how incredibly lame they are in court... The
FCC and a ruling that no one seems to understand about ISP calls and them
being long distance or not...
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Predictions:
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There is a certain amount of sickness in the air where people are beginning
to realize that just because you're doing *something* on the Internet,
doesn't mean it's worthwhile. I fully expect, now that every company
in the world is announcing their internet strategy, and the millions of
dollars they plan to pour into it, that there will be plenty of claimed
"failures" over the next year. People will start writing articles
about how the Internet isn't that great, and it's all been overhyped.
The reality, of course, will remain that if you use the medium to its fullest
potential (which, incidentally, means understanding what it can really
do) you can certainly receive the benefits...
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Too much free time:
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Time to quit and spend your days clicking for dollars: http://www.treeloot.com/
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