Bloggers@large

As it looks now the alliance between Google and Sun Microsystems is a significant development for both companies and for the computing industry, but there seems to be a distinct difference in scope between the grand “multiyear, strategic agreement” the companies heralded at a press conference this Tuesday and the much narrower particulars they actually announced. One of the more tangible things that will happen: Sun will begin distributing the Google Toolbar with its Java software when people download the latter from Sun’s Web site. Google also committed to buying more Sun servers, though they did not reveal how many. […]

“Monkeyboy” Ok folks, this is old news, but nonetheless it’s funny. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft also known as “Monkeyboy” vowed to ‘kill’ Google in a chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google. Thus the engineer claimed in court documents made public in September this year. C|Net reports about the incident as follows: In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky, another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in November 2004, recounted Ballmer’s angry reaction when Lucovsky told Ballmer he was going to work for the search […]

So, here I am: officially a bachelor again. Last week my girlfriend Carrie announced she met someone else and wants to be with him. We have known each other for 8 years (I thought it would be 10 years next year, but then I realized it’s 9 years in april) and maintained some sort of long-distance relationship (me being in Holland and she in the US). Off course given that fact we both knew that the day might come that either one of us would meet someone else or just get fed up with the whole situation. When the moment […]

Today was my last day at work. Under normal circumstances I probably would have felt good about that. But I guess my mood is at an official low for this next millennium. I slept barely last night – thanks to a casual yet devastating phonecall at 00:45. So I woke up feeling like I had a huge hangover. To match my mood the weather has changed into regular Dutch autumn: falling leaves, dark, cold, windy and rainy. The sort of Dutch weather I always joke about that is avoided best by commiting suicide by hanging yourself from a nice, big […]

Tomorrow is my last work day. Just like last time (at Lost Boys) it crept up on me completely unexpected. You know how they have this warning on mirrors that they use on cars? The one that says: “Warning: objects may be closer then they appear”. Well, I think they need to print that on calenders: “Warning, dates may be close than they appear on this calender”. So the last few days I have been busy tying up the proverbial ‘loose ends’. Today I was quite busy sifting through all my paperwork etc. I always have so much stuff I […]

Allrighty then. I have got a new job. As I wrote previously I got fired AND hired on the same day (last friday). Then some other company called me to ask me for a last-minute job-interview. Yesterday I went to talk to them and they ended up doing me an offer this morning. And, after some contemplation (I could hardly sleep last night), I decided to take it. If all goes well I will start at November 1st as a projectmanager there. What a twist of fate! I wound up being able to choose between two nice jobs! I could […]

So there I was. Unemployed. But the twist is bigger than you expect. In the previous weeks I had been looking for a new job. And guess what: the same day I got fired, I got hired! How did all this happen? Well just read on.. It all started when I got back from my vacation on July the 18th. I just started working 1 day and we had a sales meeting on the 19th. Our CEO announced there that our figures were off the scale (in a negative sense), so technically speaking we were bankrupt. However, there wasn’t any […]

What a day it has been! Yesterday they announced at my work that we’re going to fire 33 people. Since I survived the previous 4 reorganizations, I did not really expect that they would try to fire me as well. I mean: I’m one of the few (if not the only one) at my work that has any knowlegde of Internet and Internet applications in general. Then again: the way they announced it kind off made it look like a lottery. So low and behold: they fired my complete department (“solutions”) and sacked 35 people in total (2 of them […]

Ok, so I am a bit late with this subject, but the fallout of Katrina (no pun intended) occupied most of my blog the last weeks. Anyway: afterall there was something stirring at Apple. But it wasn’t the big one (it has been rumoured that Apple will come with it’s own video iPod or iTunes Movies). Instead the hoopla was about yet another iPod, the Nano, and the Motorola Rokr, the first Phone with iTunes. Just weeks before that Apple tried to create a stir by claiming they “reinvented” the mouse by introducing “the mighty mouse”. Now, it so happens […]

Some pretty surprising news today, when eBay announced its plans to buy Skype, the peer-to-peer VOIP enterprise from the same guys that launced Kazaa some years ago. The deal has the makings of the kind of bilion dollar deals that were made at the highpoint of the Internet hype in the end of the ’90’s. Like many others I do not get the deal at all. However, according to eBay’s own justification of the deal, “markets are conversations” and “enabling the conversation” enables the market and eBay is the new market. And if trust is king, then being able to […]