Knowing .NET

My old buddy Eric Faurot (we used to work together on the Software Development Conferences) cancelled Comdex.

1:04:07 PM    comment []   trackback []

via [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Sara Ford got a four-word email from Bill Gates (in response to an email from her) and apparently this is cause for celebration, skepticism, and general up-roar-ary. That's extremely disturbing. Gates' is the boss^h^h^h^h ... er... "Chief Software Architect" of a 50,000-person business. A technology business. Quite frankly, everyone who's worked at the company for (say) more than a year ought to be able to get in touch with him and expect a response. Yes, he's the world's richest man and no doubt has a schedule chock full of calls with Oprah, Bono, and the rest of the Illuminati, but come on, people. Something's wrong if the majority of Microsoft is so isolated from Gates' capabilities that getting an ACK from him is cause for comment.

12:59:59 PM    comment []   trackback []

One of the t-shirt hurling contest entrants sent some photos of their entry. via [James Gosling: on the Java road...]

For those who've never been to JavaOne, the hurling of t-shirts to the audience (and let's face it: that is what keeps the conference industry alive) in ever-more-elaborate ways is a tradition. Last year, they used a trebuchet (tasteless yet compelling images of a cow flung 1/4 mile). The photo linked to above looks to me like an air cannon, which have come to dominate punkin' chunkin' (http://www.clubmedia.com/punkin/)

11:33:07 AM    comment []   trackback []

The "Tablet isn't for consumers" story is a myth. Tell it to the students using Tablets. Tell it to the start ups that leverage the flexibility of the Tablet in their highly fluid states. Tell it to the doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, and on and on, that purchased a Tablet out of their own pocket--and not as part of an IT deployment strategy--because they saw it could help them.  via [Incremental Blogger]

If I were a Tablet OEM, I'd create an ultra-portable "Clark Kent" edition and ship copies to the first two rows of the White House Press Corps, the Courtroom TV reporters, and the top on-air reporters in NYC, LA, and Chicago. Then, I'd create the leather-clad "Titan of Industry Limited Edition" and advertise it in The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, etc.

9:33:07 AM    comment []   trackback []

Loren laments that ultra-portable computers aren't Tablet PCs. Check out the Sony U-70:

Man, I'd buy a Tablet in that form-factor in a microsecond! But I've come to realize that I'm more pen-centric and more note-taking centric than most people (I have dozens of paper notebooks going back to High School, and thousands of index cards). Still, I'm not sure that I'd buy a U-70 with a touchscreen, even if the new Tablet Input Panel was available. Touchscreen's are really mushy and get scratched too easily. It's something that I've noticed between my original Palm PDAs, where writing was on a separate area (that I ended up covering with magic tape), and my PPC.

9:10:53 AM    comment []   trackback []