Thursday, March 11, 1999

Salon: Microsoft's Scorched-Earth PR Strategy.

Bruce Tognazzini: Maximixing Human Performance.

Another interesting Tog piece.. How I Made a Small Fortune at Apple Computer (out of a much, much larger one).

MacWEEK: Why MacOS X Server? The question had crossed my mind too. Playing Monday Morning Quarterback, Apple would have done well to invest in WebSTAR. Sorry!

In May l998, US President Bill Clinton stayed at the home of a Silicon Valley mogul, Steve Jobs. Chelsea Clinton, the President's daughter, three friends and an entourage of Secret Service agents had dinner at Buck's.

Fortune: A Cautionary Tale of Silicon Valley. A grossly unfair story. Marimba was quiet for a long period after the initial hype. They're now selling software at an impressive rate. I was as critical as anyone of Marimba during their massive hype period, but this story doesn't give Marimba credit for adjusting to the realities of their market, which they did.

Salon: Beauty and the Geeks. "The most egregious aspect of the Fortune feature wasn't the article's text but its accompanying art. While the author criticized Polese for posing for 'glamorous close-up [photos] with her face softly lit and airbrushed, eyes beaming up at the camera,' Fortune decorated the article with a series of its own glamorous close-up photos of Polese, dolled-up and beaming at the camera. Apparently, Fortune wanted to criticize a woman for using her sex appeal and capitalize on that sex appeal at the same time -- to have its cheesecake and knock it, too."