Powers Unfiltered

As a vocal detractor of Microsoft’s Channel Builder, I feel I have to report anything positive that happens there, too (note that prior to this week I have never had anything even remotely good to report in my 2.5 year history of using this tragically misguided Microsoft tool). So I promise, buried in this long […]

[Read more →]

I will post another million positive things about the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) any day now.  Promise.  I love this event.  Honest.  But for now — arrrg.  Microsoft’s use of its own tools is driving me nuts.  Here we go again.  As many of you know, I’m a big fan of large conferences, under […]

[Read more →]

I post a lot about our experiences as a partner and customer of Microsoft, and anybody who cares to go back and count knows that most of my posts are positive.  For whatever reason, my complaints / rants tend to get more attention, so I want to re-iterate – our experience with Microsoft is on balance […]

[Read more →]

John Dvorak’s column in the back of the May 22, 2007 issue of PC Magazine (and online here) points out the “Windows’ Words of Doom” that he “dreads to hear” which are:  “Preparing to Copy.”  He goes on to lament the decades-old problems that Windows users encounter in moving or copying files (or more accurately, […]

[Read more →]

I just returned from New York where Dan and I worked the 5th Annual Microsoft Financial Developers Conference at the Grand Hyatt hotel. Dan and I did a tag-team presentation entitled “Scaling SOA with Grid Computing for .NET,” which was well received. Frankly, I felt like I stumbled through the first part, but eventually warmed […]

[Read more →]

OK, it’s hard to admit, but I am nowhere near the gadget guy that many of my friends are.  Don’t get me wrong — I love new toys, and I consume my fair share of clever devices.  But I am much more likely to see what Rob or Nathan thinks of a new device before […]

[Read more →]

I use a password manager and form-filler-outer called RoboForm.  It is by far the best solution I’ve found to creating and remembering multiple non-trivial passwords.  (Like much of the reliable technology I use, this was recommended to me by Robert Anderson, who is almost as good at finding technology that works as he is at […]

[Read more →]

I’ve planned a series of posts on the opportunities and perils of growth, with non-Digipede examples.  Here goes. The first example comes from, of all places, my new home PC. Last summer, my reliable old Gateway began to suffer from the same fate that eventually afflicts every PC — it was getting old, slow, and […]

[Read more →]

Emil Sit has an excellent post on his recent experience with SunGrid, charitably titled “Observations on SunGrid Customer Care.”  He begins with: I  haven’t used the SunGrid this week. In fact, no one has: there was a four day outage from last Saturday morning through this morning. His post is quite illuminating about Sun, customer care, […]

[Read more →]

I don’t know where I first heard the expression “pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land,” but it applies in a great many new businesses.  My hat is off to Sun for taking the roll of “giant pioneer” in the area of utility computing, with their SunGrid $1-per-CPU-hour offering that’s been in the headlines for […]

[Read more →]