Connecting the dots ...
There’ s been some speculation about a new, purple Yahoo logo. I know it was more than speculation, I saw it with my own eyes: if you opened www.yahoo.com in Firefox, you saw the purple logo for a split second, then it was replaced with the good old version.
But none of this matters anymore, here’s the new, authoritative Yahoo logo:
Yesterday was supposed to be a relaxing day of networking and watching startup pitches at Launch: Silicon Valley 2008, a joint event of SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures. The event started smoothly, with 400 or so participants when I received disturbing news: my next-door neighbor’s house was one fire. These side-view photos were taken from my window:
Here’s a video courtesy of the Pleasanton Weekly:
It was a bit of a nerve-wrecking day. “Luckily” enough the neighbor’s son and daughter both live in town, so they had a place to temporarily move to, until the house becomes habitable again.
Update (6/12): Apparently reconstruction will take several months, just as bad (or worse) than building a new home. The problem with old houses is that you have to bring everything up to current code. My neighbors, a nice elderly couple are now looking for a house to rent until they can move back.
I received a surprising voicemail from Microsoft Legal – they demand that I take down the content at www.theultimatebug.com since it points to a promotion that’s no longer running. Click below to hear the voicemail, courtesy of GrandCentral:
There’s only one problem (actually more): this is not my content, it was set up and is controlled by Microsoft, or an entity that created the promo for Microsoft. The promotion it refers to, The Ultimate Steal was actually quite generous, giving MS Office away to students for $60. My post on the subject was partly promotional, partly poking fun at MightySoft since they could not even get the promo site up working properly:
The countdown reached zero, and started again. And again… several times, even after the advertised opening of the promotion, users were not able to get in, they were just staring at the recycled counter. A commenter @ CrunchGear called it The Ultimate Publicity Scam. I thought it was just a bug, so I created www.theultimatebug.com and pointed to to the MS promo site.
Now they want me to take it down. I can’t, since it’s not my site. The Ultimate Bug domain points to 209.162.191.152, which appears to belong to Peek Consulting LLC, in Louisville, KY. Perhaps MS or Digital River worked with them to create the promotion … I have no clue. Ultimatesteal.com is owned by Microsoft, and while they rerouted the main page to an end-of-life notice, the original content, the one Microsoft Legal wants me to take down is still available here: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.microsoft_office_ultimate
Dear Microsoft, feel free to take your content down any time. And perhaps next time use a smarter agency.
Of course this makes me wonder: what if I really had duplicated the content on my site? Could MS legally force me to remove it, even though it clearly identifies the end-date as May 16 2208? I know some attorneys who read this blog, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to jump in with your comments. Thanks in advance.
Update (6/13) : Someone at Microsoft is reading this blog, after all. 209.162.191.152 which theultimatebug.com was pointing to now shows ‘under construction’. The “bug” lost its meaning after MS fixed the error anyway, and now the promotion itself is over… I need to figure out what to do with this cool domain. In the meantime I am redirecting it to the original post that started it all.
I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in April when I received this short email via my blog contact form:
Hi Zoli,
I think we are related. Your father is my cousin (this picture of you looks just like him). Anyway, I am trying to get in touch with your father for old times sake…I got this blog address from ….Please let me know if you are who I think you are.
Irma …
(my maiden name is ….)
I removed personal details, but the names matched, so we exchanged more details, including old family photos. I have to add that I barely know my Dad’s family. He is of the unfortunate generation that grew up during World War II. His family perished in Nazi concentration camp, he himself barely escaped from a Russian labor camp at age 19. He doesn’t like to talk about those times, and I don’t ask.
And now there was this email from a long-lost relative. Irma remembers me, I don’t remember her. Apparently she was a teenager when she saw me as a baby. She is now semi-retired in Arizona and is coming to meet her long-lost cousin, my Dad in California this weekend.
I thought these things only happen in the movies…
When I lived on the East Coast and flew US Airways (back than just USAir) a lot, we just called it Useless Air. Today I received an email from Useless Air trying to get me buy back the miles I lost:
Our records indicated that 19,560 miles were forfeited on 12-01-2007 because your last activity date 05-19-2006 was more than 24 months ago.
May 2006 to December 2007 is more than 24 months on Useless Air’s calendar. Thank God I am not aging according to their schedule. 
Zimbabwe’s currency plunged to a new record low on Thursday, trading at an average 1 billion to the U.S. dollar on a recently introduced interbank market and triggering massive price increases.
That’s one Billion, with a B. Unimaginable… almost. The world has seen worse.
Until now Hungary held the rather unpleasant world record for the most extreme hyperinflation ever. After World War II, in July 1946 the monthly rate was 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 1016%). I can’t even read out such a large number, and it’s monthly, not annual.
The currency in Hungary for decades was the Pengo. The first banknote I’m showing on the right is 1 Billion Millpengo. (Millpengo = 1 Million Pengos). Crazy enough? It was soon followed by 100 Million Bilpengo, where Bilpengo = 1 Billion Pengos. But it’s not over yet: the highest denomination ever printed, but fortunately not issued ( new currency was issued instead) was 1 Billion Bilpengo. Again, I don’t even know what number it translates to, but Wikipedia says it would be one sextillion or 1021 pengo. Another indication of how surreal it was is the fact that all these banknotes were printed on the same day…
Instead of the large numbers, let’s try to imagine what such hyperinflation means in everyday life. Wikipedia says it amounted to prices doubling every fifteen hours. My parents’ recollection is even worse: employees were paid daily in large wads of cash and they had to rush to the stores to spend their earnings before it would become worthless. They would join endless lines, and by the time they got to buy their bread, it cost double the amount it was when they joined the line.
In Zimbabwe, a loaf of bread, which cost about Z$15 million before the polls (in which Mugabe lost but does not give up) now costs about Z$600 million. Will Zimbabwe displace Hungary’s world record?
Update: Hungary also holds the world record of kissing.
Update (6/16/09): Mint has the story of nine hyperinflationary currencies.
The transition of power from Founder to Successor is never smooth. If there’s one company that planned it carefully and has been on the path of smooth execution, that’s Microsoft. Life-long friendship, 8-year-long transition – yet things got bumpy at times, especially in the early days. The Wall Street Journal runs a story with rare insight into some of the difficult times:
Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Mr. Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Mr. Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues…
The conflict between the two men paralyzed business-strategy decisions that the company still wrestles with today.
The two men clashed as Mr. Ballmer tried to assert himself in his new job. As the firm’s iconic leader, Mr. Gates still held sway that wasn’t tied to a title: In meetings Mr. Gates would interject with sarcasm, undermining Mr. Ballmer in front of other executives, Mr. Gates and other Microsoft executives say.
Two worked out their differences in 2001, when Founder Bill Gates realized he himself needed to change: having formally relinquished the CEO title to Steve Ballmer, he had to let him lead without constantly being challenged, overshadowed.
But let’s turn back to our angle here, how Microsoft could have been a very early SaaS pioneer:
In one case, two vice presidents clashed over the future of NetDocs, a promising effort to offer software programs such as word processing over the Internet. The issue: Because NetDocs risked cannibalizing sales of Microsoft’s cash-cow Office programs, some executives wanted NetDocs killed.
Messrs. Gates and Ballmer were unable to settle on a plan. First, NetDocs ballooned to a 400-person staff, then it got folded into the Office group in early 2001, where it died.
Fascinating. Eight years later web-based products still threaten to cannibalize Microsoft’s cash-cow, but they can no longer be ignored – largely because of Google and Zoho which now offer viable alternatives to users formerly “stuck” with Microsoft’s products. A costly debate, indeed.
The above lines are all bulleted – except WordPress 2.5.2 can’t display them. Does anyone know why?
Update (6/5): Well, apparently Stuart does. In a comment below he explains:
The Newsgator widget is inserting the following CSS which is disabling the bullets:
li {
list-style-type: none;
list-style-image: none;
list-style-position: outside;
}
Oops. I thought it was specific to the latest WP release, as I’ve only noticed this error recently. The Enterprise Irregular badge (the one from NewsGator) has been on my sidebar for a long time without causing any problems, so they must have changed something very recently.
I temporarily disabled the widget and bullets are displayed correctly, which confirms that Stuart is right. I am going to re-enable the widget (and thus kill bullets) hoping that NewsGator will soon fix the problem.
Update #2: NewsGator fixed the issue in a matter of hours. Thanks, guys, now we have our ammo bullets back.
I often stated my preference for Copernic Desktop Search, fought Microsoft’s sneaky plan to install Windows Search on XP systems without the owners consent, yet I find myself using Windows Search by default. Only on my Vista PC though, where it’s easier to keep the default than switch to third-party products. On the XP machines I’m still running Copernic.
And now it’s time to admit my title is misleading: Windows Search actually works – at least half-way. It can add files to the index. It just doesn’t remove them. Not when they are deleted, not when they are moved.
I’m not kidding, try it yourself: move a file to another directory or delete it, then see the multiple, redundant pointers to it in Windows Search. No way to tell which entries are dead until you click them.
Today Microsoft released Windows Search 4; let’s hope they learned the basics of updating an index. (Oh, yes, I know I can force a total rebuild of the index, but this should happen automatically, in the background). I’m not going to find out for a while: I learned the hard way not to touch Vista components and wait till it becomes part of Windows Update.
The Zac Browser’s market share is close to 1. Not 1%, but one user. It does not have fancy features, certainly can’t compete with Firefox, Safari, Opera or IE7. But that’s why it’s users (in reality likely more than one) can use it. It is largely simplified, a lot of “noise”, be it adult sites or enhanced features are filtered out. The UI is very kid-friendly, here’s just one screen courtesy of the Associated Press and SFGate.
It was built by John LeSieur, whose 6-year-old grandson, Zackary has autism.
I know very little about autism. My only exposure was a few days after I wrote a post about autistic kids – for the next 3-4 days I was totally submerged in intense discussion on a number of blogs and forums, as well as private email correspondence. The reaction was massive and passionate, and a very moving experience for me. In the end all I learned was that I still don’t know anything about autism, and that everybody involved, including the children, their parents, family, teachers…etc are coping with difficulties every day I (we) can’t even fathom.
Which is why it’s great to read that this Grandfather first helped his grandson, and now is working on making the tool available to other children with autism.
Thanks to Jeff Nolan for discovering it. It’s the best news I read today.
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
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