"We've become a victim of rapid growth." 
- Willow Baum, Iomega spokesperson, finding a new place to put the blame, in the Wall Street Journal 

"Frankly, I don't lose any sleep worrying about being year 2000-ready." 
- Eric Benhamou, CEO of 3Com, easing all our fears, in TechWeb 

----------------- 
Pure stupidity 
----------------- 
Okay, throwing a pie into Bill Gates' face is one thing, but sending him death threats in order to get money to open a night club is just dumb.  A man from Illinois apparently sent multiple death threats to Bill Gates in an attempt to get the billionaire to pay him $5 million to open a night club.  Smart.  Real smart... TCI President, Leo Hindery, used Jennicam as an example of the "immoral nature" of the Internet in a speech to Roman Catholic Bishops. (Okay, Leo, first of all, just because you missed the boat on the Internet, doesn't mean you need to go bad-mouthing it to others.  Second, if you're going to pick an "immoral" site, at least pick one that's really immoral)... 

------------ 
Overhype 
------------ 
How many stories were written about the spectacularly unimpressive Ioptics storage device?  Okay, it's a small storage device.  Okay, it works with portable computers.  There are many other players shooting for the same market.  I'll give Ioptics credit if they can pull of a Iomega Zip style marketing coup with this one, but I don't see it coming just yet... 

------------------------------------------ 
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like 
------------------------------------------ 
Quantum warned that it only expects to break even this quarter, well below expectations, and even further below last year's numbers... Cabletron reported a loss, as opposed to expectations of breaking even... NewsEdge is spinning off ClariNet to ClariNet management... Xerox decided to lay off 11% of its staff (10,000 workers) and up went the stock... 3Com announced extremely poor earnings, but tried to make it sound good by explaining that they've solved their inventory problems (sounds like they sold off their excess inventory at extremely low prices, right?  How's that a good thing beyond getting rid of the carrying cost?)... Microsoft expects strong earnings this quarter and the stock jumped (of course, did anyone hear the bit about the rest of the year stagnating?)... Adding to this year's "strong out of the gate" IPOs, Internet Security Systems had a nice first day of trading... Broderbund hit expectations and beat last year's numbers (can we all say, "Thank you, Riven"), but warned they needed to "cut costs"... Corel (yes, they're still in business) reports another big loss... Adobe misses earnings big time, and the stock heads downward accordingly... SGI warned that it expects to report a "significant" loss for the quarter (the Street expected break even)... 

------------------------------------------------ 
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week... 
------------------------------------------------ 
Cable and Wireless and Sprint called off not-so-secret talks about a possible merger last week... Lots of talk this week about a Windows 98 that will run on Apple's G3.  After being reported as "silly" on some rumor sites, a follow-up was that maybe Microsoft will by Connectix and package Virtual PC as Windows 98 for Mac... IBM to buy Sun?  Apparently McNealy suggested it, and Gerstner wants to see more info... AMD's K6 3D to be delayed again... SGI to spin off MIPS?... 

----------------------------------------------------- 
Berating the obvious: (they call this news???) 
----------------------------------------------------- 
Intel finally gets around to telling everyone that Craig Barrett will be the next CEO and everyone acts surprised?... Cyrix may be giving up the good fight against Intel and its slot design.  Apparently they are looking to reverse engineer the system, rather than continue to convince customers that they don't really need it.  AMD is not happy... At the same time, Cyrix is apparently going to start making chips for CE machines, a market Intel has avoided... You can already pre-order your copy of Windows98... Apparently Apple's board plans to force Steve Jobs into deciding whether or not he'll stick around full time... This comes the same week as its most likely CEO (until Jobs scared him away), Jim Cannavino decided to take the CEO spot at CyberSpace... Borland to "reinvent" itself (again)... Newsweek finally decides to go on the web... Europeans have no problem with Compaq-DEC... Deciding that their agreement to integrate similar technologies wasn't enough, i2 went out and simply bought InterTrans Logistics Solutions for almost $100 million... Cisco, the Franken-corp, plans to continue to grow by acquisition... Preview Travel is paying over $4 million to Lycos to be "prominently featured" on Lycos' site (I've got a web-site too, if anyone wants to be "prominently featured" on my site, let me know)... AT&T to offer "complete" electronic commerce solutions (well, thank goodness.  I was beginning to think they'd offer only partial solutions)... Time Warner, proving once again that they're a step behind, has picked an "exclusive" e-commerce partner in the form of Total E... AOL has ditched its Generation X site, The Hub (possibly because most Generation Xers have ditched AOL)... Cendant's books.com redesigned, including a feature that compares its prices to those of Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com... Go2Net to use Junglee technology to create a comparison shoppers site (good idea)... Compaq's new machines available at RadioShack... The Government finally checks the numbers and realizes that (well, gosh darnit) there really *isn't* a technology worker shortage... Will Yahoo! ever stop?  Now they've signed a deal with Internet telephony company IDT... Add to that Yahoo's new online store, and why would you ever need to go anywhere else?... Dell, chugging happily along, expects continued growth, and isn't at all worried about a PC price war... Tritium is still working on its advertiser supported, free Internet access plan... Major League Baseball to web-cast all games for free... FCC raised nearly $600 million in its latest LMDS auction... AOL to offer health insurance... ICat, an online catalog company has made a deal with NETcall, an Internet telephony company, so that when you find the product you want to buy, you can simply click to call a sales representative to complete the transaction... Oracle is reorganizing its applications division... Prodigy sold its Internet Investor unit as it continues to distance itself from anything that even hints of "content"... AOL has an email outage again (what a shocker!)... Lycos took an equity stake in GlobeComm, a provider of free email services (what are they trying to do, become Yahoo!?)... Sun licensed PersonalJava for Sony's set-top box... A bug in MS Office 98 for Macs (who would have thought it were possible?)... CyberPromotions (uber-spammer) settles lawsuit with Earthlink for $2 million... Internal Microsoft documents reveal that they have lists with "actual release dates" and "release dates for public consumption"... 

------------ 
Surprises: 
------------ 

Bertelsmann AG bought Random House, which is quite significant, considering their recently announced plans to create an online bookstore... Spyglass, apparently looking for something to do, has established a Java Consulting Practice... Intuit, @Home, BankAmerica and TCI to deliver financial services over the television... Network Associates, continuing to grow surreptitiously, picks up Magic Solutions for over $100 million... A judge has order Microsoft to take the Java logo off IE 4.0.  While the press made a big deal about this, do you think that anyone (outside of Sun) really cares?... Netscape, who everyone thought was getting *out* of the content arena has created a new division, lead by constant talker Mike Homer, to focus on its web-site business (ah, the copycat strategy)... Well, now that everything has pretty much gone to hell for Iomega, at least they can blame Kim Edwards, who quit as CEO this week... Hit 'em while they're down: Imatec has decided to sue Apple for over a billion in damages for patent infringement... The lowest online trading commission is from a Chase Manhattan subsidiary, Brown & Co, at $5 a trade (wait... micro-economics: perfect competition drives prices down to marginal cost... meaning...)... In a battle between two of my former employers, the largest manufacturer of TV set-top boxes, General Instrument, has shunned Intel, and decided to use MIPS processors... A "mysterious" interference disrupts a Chinese satellite and I didn't see any stories warning of aliens trying to contact us (I must be reading the wrong news sites)... AMD CFO, Marvin Burkett quits (anyone think they'll be able to find a replacement?)... Qwest picks up EUNet as there's a bit more ISP consolidation (watch out for Qwest, they seem to have a strategic plan to take over the world)... Intel has delayed construction on its Fort Worth, Texas fab... NASD has put the background data of all of its stockbroker members online for your viewing (http://www.nasdr.com )... Washington State has passed a law that bans forged spam and misleading subject headings (damn, I better stop using misleading subject headings)... Sun to beat Microsoft to the punch by porting PersonalJava to CE... 

------------------------------- 
(Mis)Uses of Technology: 
------------------------------- 
CBS and Excite teamed up to let people at home, using the web, vote on ice skaters performing on the TV show, the Great Skate Debate... QuickTime for Java... JavaStation notebooks... The FDA and the FCC have made it official: Digital Television may interfere with heart monitors (oops)... VRML?  We don't need no stinkin' VRML.  Microsoft continues its master plan to ignore any standards and creates its own 3D animation language, Chrome, which will work only on high end Windows based machines... Online coupons available through AOL... NetCreations' email list of folks who have "chosen" to be on the list is up to nearly 900,000 names... NASA comes out with a report on what it would take to make civilian space travel marketable (turns out some of the requirements include safety improvement, solving the sickness thing, and making it a couple of orders of magnitude more affordable)... 

---------- 
Studies: 
---------- 
According to Media Metrix, AOL users spend an average 46.6 minutes online per day, which is more than double the average web user (my theory is that the extra time can be attributable to weeding through all the pop-up ads, spam, and "downloading new artwork")... The Internet Industry Almanac has announced that Finland has more Internet users per capita than anywhere else, and Scandinavia as a whole, is the most well connected region of the world... A Deloitte & Touche study says that 91% of executives plan to use the net as their source of "key news issues" by 2005, and very few expect to continue to use newspapers... More and more on lax computer security (however, the sources seem *very* questionable).  The FBI reports that computer crime increased 36% last year (and how many more computers were there?  Anyway, all this means is that the FBI wants more money and freedom to spy on you just a little more)... On the same side of things, WarRoom Research has found that a "large majority" of Fortune 1000 companies have experienced computer break-ins reporting losses of $200,000 or more on each break-in (and just how do they calculate that one?)... The Information Technology Association of America has reported that 44% of respondents to their survey have already experienced Y2K problems (67% under test conditions).  That's all well and good, but I'd still like to see the survey methodology (also, note that, despite all of the scary warnings for us to expect the end of civilization as we know it, no governments have yet fallen due to these glitches - but, let's wait and see)... A study by H&Q and Link Exchange shows that 22% of web users give up TV time to surf the web... The National Sleep Foundation has released a study saying that 51% of men and 42% of women would go to sleep earlier if they didn't have television or access to the internet (I certainly would)... According to Thirteenth Floor Internet Services, online retailers within Internet shopping malls are having problems.  Nearly one half of them have not made a single sale (are we beginning to get the idea that the Internet is a *different* kind of medium?)... Forrester Research has a new study that predicts that the number of households to use e-commerce will double this year from 5 to 10%... Executive Strategies has conducted a study of ISPs which say that they don't expect themselves to have any problems staying in business, but expect all of their competitors will need to consolidate (as if they're going to say, "well, yes, we really expect to run out of money soon")... 

-------------- 
Predictions: 
-------------- 

So called "click wrap" software, like the new system from @Home and Release Software will be slow to catch on.  When you buy a shrink wrapped software package, everything is all there for you.  It's easy to install, and there are nice manuals for you to read through when you mess everything up.  Click wrap systems where you first download everything, and then need to worry about if you paid for a "trial version" or a "two week rental version" simply adds an unnecessary layer of complexity.  It needs to become easier, and (haven't we heard this before) we need more bandwidth... Everyone loves standards.  Delta Three and ITXC Corp. announced plans to share traffic between each of their web-based telephony networks.  The more that these types of companies share, the more benefit and overall value the web-based telephony systems will add.  Look for more of these types of deals, or more of a standard to come about... AOL Enterprise is going nowhere fast... 

----------------------- 
Memes o' the week: 
----------------------- 
Ah, who needs new Microsoft products?  All sorts of reports and articles this week on why you might not really need Windows 98 or NT 5.0.  It sounds nice now, but people will switch.  As soon as their favorite app will only run on Win98, people will switch... Ethical hacking.  IBM has created a group of "ethical hackers" who will break into your systems for you to prove why you should buy new security systems from IBM, of course... Forget the Y2K problem, according to the Wall Street Journal, a more pressing problem is the Dow 10K problem.  Apparently many financial software packages are only set to recognize four digit Dows (while I don't know, I sense the work of "mass change" software vendors in making this known)... 

------------------------ 
Too much free time: 
------------------------ 
For any of you who ever spent time trying to figure out if your phone number spelled anything (can you believe someone actually bought a domain simply for this purpose): http://www.phonetic.com/ 
 

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