Somebody go tell Steve Ballmer that Palm is off the table before Microsoft tries to partner with the washed-up mobile pioneer that's now part of HP.
Apparently, Microsoft is in full Morris Buttermaker mode, putting together a rag-tag group of cast-offs to take on the mighty leaders of the mobile world. Of course, you know who Morris Buttermaker was. He was Walter Matthau's character in The Bad News Bears, perhaps the greatest team-sport underdog movie of all time -- which, incidentally, came out the same year as Rocky, the greatest sports underdog movie of all time. More
Posted by Lee Pender on May 03, 20113 comments
There was only one big loser from yesterday's announcement that U.S. Navy Seals took out Osama bin Laden, and that was Osama himself. Given that we all agree that he was due for a big defeat, we can feel grateful (as always) for the brave members of our armed services and satisfied that we as a nation finally brought this evil mastermind to justice.
Last night's news was good news, and we don't intend to cheapen it or minimize it with what we're about to do here. Every big story, though, has byproducts and subtexts, and last night's late-night news explosion was certainly no exception. So, given that this is a tech-focused media outlet, after all, we thought we'd look at the early returns on which tech companies came out as winners in last night's media coverage and which didn't fare so well. More
Posted by Lee Pender on May 02, 20110 comments
Stand up if you care about privacy. Great, thanks. Now, if you have one of those discount cards from your grocery store or drugstore, sit down. If you've ever submitted a credit report for pretty much anything, don't remain standing. If you've ever just clicked "I agree" without reading one of those terms-and-conditions documents, have a seat. (And if you managed to get through South Park's "Apple Human CentiPad" episode last night, bless you. Your editor watched primarily out of a sense of professional obligation, but that was some nasty stuff.)
If you have an iPhone, watch your next move -- Steve Jobs can see you right now. OK, not really. Well, maybe he can, but he's probably too busy looking in a mirror or checking his stock portfolio to notice you sitting there in the coffee shop with your hipster iWhatever sipping something bitter and foamy. (Speaking of bitter, somebody needs to name a coffee after Paul Allen. But we digress.) Still, you're worried about what Steve, or Google, or even Microsoft with Windows Phone 7 might know about you, right? More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 28, 20116 comments
We introduce this topic here today not to dig up a tired reference from a mediocre movie that's nearly 15 years old but instead to discuss a topic of interest to everybody in the Microsoft "ecosystem": how much Microsoft employees get paid.
Why, you might ask, should that matter to you, the partner? Well, as we've written in this space before, and as readers have told us many times over the years, Microsoft is not the destination company it used to be. The phrase that's floating around now is that Microsoft is a place to have worked rather than a place to be. The company's recent and ongoing execudus seems to support that line of thinking. More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 21, 20111 comments
There was a time when everybody knew that Microsoft would arrive late to a new-technology party, and everybody waited for it to get there. After all, Microsoft was eventually going to crush or subsume all of the companies that had been responsible for the breakthrough, so it made no sense to be an early adopter with the specter of Redmond constantly looming on the horizon.
Well, as Mary Jo Foley so articulately states in this month's Redmond magazine, those days are over. Tablets, portable music players, a mobile platform -- all those trains have left the station, and Microsoft either missed them entirely or is desperately hanging on to its cabooses. (Yes, cabooses. Try to find another tech blog that uses that word.) More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 13, 20116 comments
Microsoft's Convergence conference is taking place this week in Atlanta, but don't feel bad if you've forgotten all about it. Convergence has been a pretty forgettable event over the last couple of years, with news being relatively light and keynotes a tad on the drab side.
Not this year, though. While your editor is not actually in Atlanta, the peachy state of Georgia is nevertheless on his mind, at least in a virtual sense. And we at RPCU were surprised to hear that Microsoft decided to make a little news down south this year at its annual ERP get-together. More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 12, 20110 comments
There exists a story, supposedly true, about George Best, the late and legendary Northern Irish soccer player whose wild nights and hard living might have made even Charlie Sheen blush. It's a story about how the Irish have a certain contempt for, or maybe shame about, success -- especially among their own. (Don't ask us whether or not that contempt really exists; we're just retelling the story here.)
Anyway, it seems as though ol' George was in a hotel room in Dublin when he called room service. An Irish busboy rushed up to the room, only to find Best, um, relaxing with what we'd now call a supermodel, rolling around in a pile of money and swilling champagne. The busboy, rather than expressing delight over his countryman's obvious glee, simply dropped his head and said, "Oh, Georgie, where did it all go wrong?" More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 01, 20114 comments
The fangs of the punditsphere are out today, this time thirsting for the blood of Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. Mundie said in Australia this week that the tablet market might not be around forever.
Most outlets have reported that he said that tablets are, or might be, a fad. Whether he used that word or not, we're not sure -- we haven't read the whole text of his speech (hey, it's a busy week). But here's what he definitely did say: More
Posted by Lee Pender on March 31, 20110 comments
Go figure. Nearly five years into writing RCPU, and probably my most popular entry ever is a raging rant about Twitter. Well, if all I have to do here is moan about things I don't like and then rake in the hits, you haven't seen anything yet.
First, though, let's get to a couple of e-mails from fellow Twitter-haters, who, along with many of the good folks who have commented on the blog entry, have made your editor feel a lot less alone in the world on this topic. More
Posted by Lee Pender on March 24, 20112 comments
I'm going first-person in this entry because this is a personal rant that I don't want ascribed to any of my RCPU colleagues. So, there will be none of the obnoxious royal "we" I so love to use in this space. Just so you know.
Twitter, the infernal social networking site, apparently turns 5 years old this week, an age that seems to match the emotional maturity of many of its frequent users. Now, recently, Twitter and Facebook, its far more tolerable cousin, have gotten a lot of credit for enabling protesters in places like Libya to, well, protest. If folks are using Twitter to advance the will of the people in a climate of repression, then good for them and good for Twitter. More power to them. I still wish they would find some other way to do it, though.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 21, 201143 comments
Oh, wow, this is awkward. Yeah, Microsoft, about that deal to run Windows Phone 7 on Nokia phones? You know -- the one between two companies going absolutely nowhere in the mobile space? Well, we kind of hope that you didn't think that deal was for Nokia tablets, too. Because it's probably not, if the sources who talk to Reuters are correct in their assessment. So, yeah...apparently, pretty much nobody wants to have anything to do with you when it comes to tablets, Microsoft.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 20, 20115 comments