More Idol Speculation

Who will be the next Microsoft Idol?” laughed the Lynx as he scoffed at rumors that Wall Street speculators think the Redmondians might be contemplating replacing CEO Steve Ballmer. “Gates and Ballmer are like Starsky and Hutch, Steve and Eydie, or peanut butter and jelly—they could never break that up, could they?” mused the Mouser. Meanwhile, on the Redmond campus, the Kitty heard that the Microsoftees are getting back some of their perks, like towels in the locker rooms, campus laundry service and better vittles in their cafeterias. “Mmm, and I thought the 40-ouncer Lundquist would sometimes leave on my desk was bliss,” belched the Boozy Babbler. Of course, the thousand-or-more contract developers and testers who Microsoft is making take seven days off without pay to keep some of its teams on budget would probably prefer to go towelless and be remunerated for that week.

Suddenly, the KattPhone alerted Spence to a call from a joystick jockey who claimed that the word among gamesters is that several Final Fantasy games that have been PlayStation 3 exclusives may be available on the Xbox 360 in the near future.

“Give me some news I can use,” groused the Grimalkin to his gamey groupie. The pal then told Spence that WindowsForDevices.com and Microsofts Mobile and Embedded Devices group are offering a contest for developers who can do something groovy with several of Redmonds Windows CE Shared Source components. Deets can be found at the WindowsForDevices.com Web site, said the pal. Although the Puss possessed prettier pipes than the final two “American Idol” contestants, he switched on the shows season finale—like a pop-culture lemming—to see the outcome. Just as he was getting his Seacrest on, the Tabby received a text message from a Merry Manhattoe who said that CA hired the former CIO for the city of New York, Gino Menchini, as its public-sector vice president for North America. “Im surprised he could get in the door with so many people running out,” cackled the Kitty, referring to several recent high-profile defections from the company.

Soon, deciding he didnt care whether the gray-haired guy or the girl was the next American Idol, Spence headed off to the Thirsty Scholar, a local pub. There, the Professor of Prattle overheard several patrons discussing that Tagsys, an RFID company, was moving its corporate headquarters from France to a Cambridge, Mass., location near MIT. Noting that Boston, Dallas and San Francisco have become the top U.S. RFID development centers, Spence remembered hearing that Tagsys CEO Eli Simon had said the Boston area “is to RFID what the Silicon Valley was to information technology.” Just as the Katt was contemplating putting together a French-Bostonese dictionary for the Tagsys transplants, he was astonished to see that the gray-haired guy did indeed win the American Idol title. “That guy needs a major makeover,” tittered the Tawny Titan. “Why, even Im not a natural redhead.”

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