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From: spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 12:30 AM
To: eWEEK readers
Subject: Do-err profiles; true falsity; CRM blood in the water
“Wake me when something historic happens,” groused the Grimalkin to a fellow attendee at the Sun-Google press conference at the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, Calif. Spence soon had a history moment of another sort, observing that the characters onstage were more inbred than the royal house of Spain in the 16th century.
The Sun king himself, Scott McNealy, noted that his onstage partner, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was once his first consul at Sun. McNealy also pointed out that Andy Bechtolsheim, Suns chief architect and senior vice president of network systems, was one of the first investors in Sun and Google.
There were printed handouts parodying the Dewars Profiles whiskey ads, which Sun called “Doers Profiles.” Schmidt noted that his most admired person is Vint Cerf, to whom some attribute paternity of the Internet and who recently joined Googles staff.
When Spence saw that Schmidts pet peeve was “executives, including myself,” he was overcome by a wave of violent agreement and decided it was time to skatt back to Boston.
There, he received a call from a banking buddy who said the FDIC is about to take a hard line on authentication for banks and online commerce sites, requiring them to secure customer log-ins using multifactor authentication, like Bank of Americas SiteKey program.
Bidding his pal adieu, Spence got a giggle out of a story echoing throughout blogland that claims Microsoft is developing inexpensive, self-destructing, play-once DVDs for the entertainment industry. The next day, after the story made the usual rounds and all the comment boxes had demonized Bill Gates, the story was denounced as a hoax. “False but accurate,” laughed the Lynx in a Dan Rather moment.
Spence decided to pass on the pack of cheddar crackers he got from the office vending machine, when an old tech maven invited him to lunch. Munching on mako shark, the pal noted the feeding frenzy in the CRM business since Oracles announced acquisition of Siebel. Salesforce.com bigwig Marc Benioff is offering a $5,000 signing bonus to any Siebel employee who joins his crew by the end of the year, and Onyx Software is offering a credit of up to $500,000 to any enterprise wishing to migrate from any of the Larry-owned CRM providers.
Over clownfish casserole, Spence noted that Cisco Systems is acquiring its network memory chip supplier, Nemo Systems, for $12.5 million. “Yes,” said the crony, “and if I hear or read one more Disney-based pun like Ciscos finding Nemo, Im gonna have a Technicolor yawn.” “Uh, yeah,” tittered the Tabby tentatively, and then quickly excused himself to call his editor to change the headline hed written earlier for this weeks column.