Eric Lundquist

In a cab from Austins Bergstrom Airport, the driver told us that with the slowdown at Dell, it was tough to make $100 for a 16-hour shift these days. That was a far cry from a year ago, when cabs for the Austin-to-Round Rock ride were always in demand. It was also a far cry […]

The next big change in Internet-based computing will be one that most users wont see. And thats a good thing. Last week, IBM was the latest to trumpet its plans for middleware offerings that may finally deliver on the promise of Internet-based computing. Aside from the ongoing irony of what was once the most proprietary […]

“Turn down your AC from high to medium, or rolling blackouts start in 10 minutes.” That seems the type of message that would be worthy of your attention. And that is the type of content that will create a pur-pose for all the network gear I saw while wandering the aisles of the NetWorld+Interop show […]

Stabilize was a word much in the news last week as an array of commentators from stock pundits to hopeful investors looked for signs that the downtrodden markets had finally stabilized. The hope being that, once stabilized, the business of business can once again resume its advance. Odd that stabilization, especially in high technology, is […]

I was with a group of consumer and tech journalists having dinner last week at The Globe restaurant in San Francisco. The Globe is at ground zero of the dot-com meltdown, and as the wine flowed, talk turned to those execs we felt did the best and the worst job at handling the digital downturn. […]

Yahoo has a new honcho. Can the guy who helped Clint Eastwood find success after a start as the jet squadron leader battling a giant spider in “Tarantula” help the Yahoo crowd figure out how to make a fistful of dollars? I think Terry Semels move from Warner Bros. to Yahoo was a great choice […]

I have Microsofts Jim Allchin on the phone, and in my head Im counting up the number of Windows versions Im running at home. Theres the old 3.1 system running WordPerfect, which never crashes and is a favorite of the kids for typing. There is the 98 machine, which crashes if the cat walks by, […]

The bad news was that attendance at Comdex in Chicago was mighty sparse. The good news was that very few techies seemed inclined to jump headfirst into Lake Michigan as all the tech news continued to pile up in bad-news waves. Despite Web-based polling and instant news via the Web, technology shows are still a […]

Remember Energy Star? It was in 1992 that the U.S. department of Energy (www.energystar.gov) came up with the program to identify and promote energy-saving devices to counter carbon dioxide emissions. The purpose was noble, the logo including a star and a globe was far more artistic than most government labels, and after a brief burst […]

Heres the lineup: 200 of the richest people in the United States vs. a scruffy-looking pot scrubber armed with a copy of Forbes and sitting at a wheezing computer at the New York Public Library. Final score: busboy 200, rich folks zippo. I was walking down Park Avenue toward our Manhattan office when I saw […]

Novell and Cambridge Technology partners? At first blush, I thought it was a really goofy combination, but, on a bit more reflection, I think it makes a lot of sense. Heres why. The biggest problem with technology consulting companies is their inability to translate grand-sounding strategic plans into realistic information architectures delivered on time and […]

All that forecast snow that was supposed to bury the East Coast last week missed you and was dumped, instead, on my driveway and back yard near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. That nature herself decided to focus her wrath on my house (I promise to recycle more) rather than spread it out over the length […]