Gartner Loves Microsoft
Gartner used to be famous for its probabilities, like George W. having a 0.9
percent chance of being reelected against the wooden, rich and unlikable John
Kerry. More recently Gartner has been pushing quadrants. But for Gartner, a
confident group if there ever was, its quadrants are “
magic.”
Microsoft put out a press release boasting that it’s considered a leader
and a member of the magic quadrant in Web services based on visionary strategy
and ability to execute. What Microsoft’s release failed to mention is
that IBM and Oracle also made the Gartner cut.
Back to School
Bill Gates may have dropped out of college, but the world of academia still
tugs at his heart. Yesterday at the company’s sixth
annual academic conference, Gates and educational leaders discussed how
academic research and vendor research share common goals and can work better
together. As usual for Gates, he looked to the future, highlighting some of
his top research investment interests, including Trustworthy Computing, building
clients for scientific research that reduce the grunt work of collecting and
mining data, and the whole notion of digital memories, a single device that
can store all of our data, images, sounds and documents -- a digital history
of our entire life at our fingertips.
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You might think this strange, but I’ve long believed it would be great
to replace a nondescript tombstone with an in-depth record of one’s life.
Imagine a gravestone with a digital memory which you could query for videos,
photos, writing and maybe a 3-D image of the deceased (when they were alive,
of course). A cemetery becomes one huge reality show, and our memories live
forever.
Oh, and it could be pretty cool in the workplace, too.
The Mac Is Hot, But Macworld's Not!
The recent Macworld
show in Boston lacked pizzazz, news, Apple and attendees. The show floor
was dominated by exhibitors, journalists desperate for a story, and those just
looking to escape the New England heat.
Part of the problem is that Apple, perplexingly, doesn’t support the
show that vigorously (or, at least, it used to vigorously) promotes the Mac.
But there’s a deeper problem: Large general purpose shows are all but
dead and buried. I went to the very last Comdex and managed to visit every booth
-- before lunchtime! At least I was in Vegas where I could fill my time with
more fulfilling pursuits.
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.