Hits, Rumors Fly at Fenway

How did the unemployed programmer drown? He heard all the good jobs were offshore," bada-binged the Baron of Babble to a business analyst pal who was in Beantown on—what else—business. "Speaking of outsourcing," said the pal, ignoring Spencers sad stand-up routine, "I heard Bill Gates is visiting Vietnam this month to examine IT development opportunities in the country."

It made sense, thought El Gato. Intel already has a chip plant there, and Spence had heard a while back that some Indian outsourcing companies, lured by the cost-effectiveness of doing business in Vietnam, were considering setting up operations there, too. The Katt crony also noted that Gates had made a commitment in 2005 with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to help young IT students through a program called Partners in Learning. "Vietnam, now a trendy tourist mecca and the next outsourcing frontier," mused the Mouser.

The Grimalkin was in a giddy mood, since his pal had invited him along for an evening Red Sox game, with the Sox facing the Blue Jays at Fenway Park. Spence had hardly scarfed down his sausage sub when the manic-depressive Drudge was overcome with bafflement as to why the Sox had activated pitcher David Wells, as Toronto racked up seven runs and 10 hits in the first four-plus innings. "A bigger mystery," said the Katts business-minded buddy, "is what secret project the chip makers at Transmeta are working on for Microsoft." Speculation had been that Transmeta has been working on a chip for Microsofts proposed iPod killer or its "Origami" mobile PC project, but analysts now think the chip maker may be helping the Redmondites with a much bigger hardware endeavor. The home runs were flying off the Blue Jays bats faster than rumors from Spences word processor. Faced with the Jays 8-4 win over the Sox, the pair pushed on to the Four Seasons for a nightcap.

There, the clarion call of the KattPhone turned up a personable personnel watcher who said that former HP CEO Carly Fiorina will serve on the board of directors for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The caller also said that the crew at Microsofts Open Source Software Lab recently launched a blog at port25.technet.com to give insight on how Linux and Redmond mix. Bidding the caller adieu, the Katt ordered a Glenlivet as his companion told him that Riverbed Technology may be filing an IPO soon. The WAN wranglers claimed in February that they had doubled their customer base between September and December of 2005, and Riverbed is seeing quarterly sales growth for its Steelhead WAN optimization appliance. The pal also noted that the bloggarazzi are buzzing that Boot Camp will allow users to run Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on a Mac, despite earlier speculation that it wouldnt work. "Thats cool," sighed Spence, "as long as no one uses it to play back that game we just saw." ´