I predict Microsoft will have another layoff this year.
This is either a bold or stupid thing to say, much less write in a blog. Probably both. I’m no economist, financial guru (to which my last set of brokerage statements will attest), or business seer. Nonetheless, I have two eyes, and a brain that occasionally produces a worthwhile thought.
Microsoft faces serious challenges ahead, which I think will result in another round of layoffs.
The most significant will be that the economy simply won’t recover as quickly as the company expects it to. (For that matter, this is also true of many other companies, and our Federal Government.) I say we’ll surpass 10% unemployment. And the “recovery” will be shaped like an “L,” and not a “U” or “V”. The result will be a very challenging environment for revenue and profit targets, even if all their products were on otherwise firm footing.
Another challenge will be specific to the Windows product line. I believe Windows 7 won’t bring in the hoped-for revenue, even without this economic clime, for three separate but interconnected reasons.
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Tagged: Microsoft, Seattle, Windows
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Tagged: Mac
I should have a preamble here, but my mind’s blank. I’ll jump right in.
Comparing Portland and Seattle
I’ve been ruminating over this since returning from Open Source Bridge. I felt odd the day after returning, and I quickly realized that my mood was… depressed! For the first time ever, I was in a funk about Seattle.
OSB was a rush of camaraderie, intelligence, and cutting-edge developers. Portland (in the tech realm) struck me as approachable, celebratory of cooperation, and tuned for geek individualism. My vexation, and the cause of my blues, was that Seattle isn’t as solid in those characteristics. I’m not claiming they don’t exist here, but that they are stronger and more evident in Portland. I’ve been thinking about why this is, and what if anything to do about it.
Admittedly, I have asymmetrical data points. I’m drawing on knowledge gained about the Portland locale over time, but at a distance. I’ve tried to compensate for my familiarity with Seattle, so that I can infer (or perhaps rediscover, or finally acknowledge) some fair conclusions.
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Tagged: career, Open Source Bridge, Seattle
All the talks I attended were very good to excellent, with one exception. I didn’t like one that was at a more elementary level than its synopsis had led me to expect.
The sessions were more casual than those at OSCON or PyCon. It’s hard to explain why, but that’s the impression I came away with. Well, here’s one example: More than one presenter commented about how they had generated their slides the night before. I never heard that at the other conferences. It’s neither better or worse; just different. Although, maybe these presentations were slightly more survey-ish in nature. Hard to say. Spelling or layout errors were evident in two talks, including my hot button of “its” vs. “it’s.” Gaaaaaa! I also caught a “your” vs. “you’re.”
One in three presenters were female. I didn’t hear attendee statistics, but it also seemed that women were a high percentage (i.e., higher than in a typical software conference) of the entire assembly. I found the social atmosphere was a little more sophisticated (mature?) than in some other conferences I’ve attended. Probably not a coincidence.
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Tagged: Open Source Bridge
This conference is great, great, great!
The Open Source Bridge organizing team deserves kudos and huzzahs. They hit the ball out of the park and tore off the cover, like that scene from “The Natural”. If I could, I would buy all of you new cars. (They would be BMW 7-series.)
I heard two numbers: Over 400 attendees, and about 500 attendees. This is an extremely strong showing, from a new nonprofit 100% volunteer conference, in this economy, without prior brand establishment. Open source world, take notice.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams gave a keynote address today. He spoke about government’s use of open source, digital media, and governmental openness. The crowd went wild. Nobody asked any embarrassing questions.
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Tagged: Open Source Bridge, Seattle
I’ve checked into a swell room at the Portland Hilton. I hope to link up with other Open Source Bridge attendees later, for dinner or drinks. PDXPHP is hosting a kickoff meeting tonight; I’m not a big PHP user, so I’ll probably not attend.
Apparently, the 24-hour hacker lounge is located on the floor directly above mine! That means two things. One, I can overdose on the 24-hacker lounge. Two, I’m hoping the lounge’s wifi reaches down here, because the in-room network is $10/day. (It’s fast, but it’s still an unacceptable extra expense coming from a business hotel chain.) So I’ll be able to continue being connected overnight, without the additional fee.
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Tagged: Open Source Bridge
Lately, I’ve seen an increase in “Twitter porn.”
That’s my term. I just invented it.
I’m not referring to web-cam girls, accounts with handles like lusty[insert name]2755, or other sexual porn activities. I’m referring instead to twittering about Twitter. Twitter porn is meta-twittering. It’s being social about being social. Like sexual porn, it can be good, but usually it’s teh suck.
Hey baby. You got girlfriend?
I was a CB radio user in the 80’s, when I lived in Massachusetts. I got into Single Side Band transmission, joined a local CB radio club, and briefly planned to buy a high-power (cough illegal cough) transmitter. I eventually lost interest, because I discovered that most CB conversations were about … CB radio. People bought CB radios to talk to other CB radio owners about CB, and this was a lot of navel-lint gazing.
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Tagged: social networking
Rush Limbaugh
Hermann Göring
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Tagged: politics
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Tagged: blogs
An update to my earlier reviews of Retrospect 8.0 for Macintosh.
- There have now been two updates to the product since its release on March 22.
- It still has a ton of problems.
- It still is not at a minimally acceptable level of quality or performance.
- It still sucks.
- It is still a Failboat.
- It is still not acceptable.
- You should still not buy it.
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Tagged: Mac
Looking for a new job is an intriguing experience ITE. Here’s what I’ve been doing.
Where to?
In every search, you’ve first got to understanding what you’re searching for. This can happen automatically, so that you don’t even realize you’ve done it, because you examined your search objectives subconsciously and/or over a few milliseconds. For this job search, I wanted this to be a very deliberate and methodical step, and even stretch it out a bit, so that I left no internal stone unturned.
So, I selected a decent mind-mapping package, and did mind-mapping exercises about what I wanted in my next job slash career. I plotted the mundane (e.g., commute time vs. salary), middling (e.g., responsibility vs. authority), and weighty (e.g., company values). This helped me better understand what I wanted to find, recognize what issues were really important vs. really trivial, and frame my trade-offs. No stellar epiphanies, but a lot of fine-tuning.
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Tagged: career
Over the years, I’ve used many website forums and bulletin boards. They’ve been based on a variety of packages, such as phpBB, LiveCloud, or vBulletin. PhpBB is, I think, the reigning king of forum software.
To add a forum to a site, you can use an off-the-shelf system, or roll your own. Casual sleuthing will reveal an assortment of at least 50 some-odd off-the-shelf bulletin board systems, from which you can choose one to run your forum. If you want a bespoke forum, most frameworks provide bits of the necessary functionality, if not entire customizable forum modules. For example, see the Django forum applications or Drupal’s Forum module.
Web forums are OK, but I’ve yet to encounter one that wasn’t clumsy in some way — sometimes, in multiple ways. And you know what? I’ve yet to find one that beats august Usenet, when accessed with a decent reader such as Agent or Unison.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: tools
A Seattle Django Users’ group is forming. Here’s the official announcement:
—— Forwarded Message
From: Brian Gershon
Reply-To: A group of Python users in Seattle
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:57:35 -0700
To: seattle-python, plone_seattle
Subject: New Seattle Django User Group meeting June 2 (Save the Date)
This is an invite for the newly forming Seattle Django User Group.
Please save the date for our first meeting: Tuesday, June 2. More details coming soon.
If you’re interested in getting regular updates, please sign up on our mailing list:
http://lists.webcollective.coop/listinfo.cgi/djangoseattle-webcollective.coop
What topics are of most interest?
Please let us know if you have a topic you’d like to present on, or a topic you’d like to hear someone else talk about.
We look forward to seeing you!
Brian and Leo
Leo Shklovskii
Brian Gershon
—— End of Forwarded Message
If you’re a Seattleite Djangonaut, sign up now!
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Tagged: Django, Seattle
I attended Seattle Lunch 2.0 at Pelago today.
- Food: -1. Cold cut sandwiches, cookies, and soda. Meh.
- People: +1. About 60 in attendance, by my count. A good cross-section of Seattle geekdom.
- Talk: -1. A circle jerk about whether you can make money from Facebook apps. Let me assuage your anticipation: “Maybe.”
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Tagged: Lunch 2.0
What’s wrong with this picture? (Copied without permission from The Daily Dish.)
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