The Scarlet Letter "E"

This is hilarious. Same could be said for Motorola's Razr and its new lineup, the KRZR, the RIZR, and the SLVR.

Q U O T E D

Your absence has really thrown a spanner into the trademark and IP strategy of a lot of Web 2.0 firms. Where do you think you're missed the most?

"There definitely are companies that may be showing signs of having issues. In addition to Flickr, there are companies like Beggr, Coastr, Colrpickr, Fastr, Frappr, Gabbr, Mappr, Nabbr, Phrasr, Soonr, Talkr, Zooomr and probably a metric ton of other ones. A few individuals have flamed me for 'stifling innovation,' but I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to help those organizations out of a creative rut. Unfortunately, few seem to have risen to the challenge."

-- In an exclusive interview with BidnessWeek, the letter "e" talks about what he's been doing for the past few years

Prison Outsourcing

Prison outsourcing was heralded as the next India for BPO (close to home, no "cultural" barriers, and high productivity). How crazy is this suggestion? It's one thing to have prisoners do manual labor but can you imagine ordering a pair of J.Crew khakis through Sing Sing? I can think of so so many security breaches. In India, we're talking about highly trained professionals, many with masters and PhD's answering phones. I would fathom we won't find the same level of education amongst our prison population. Oh, well...it's nice to entertain the idea, albeit a bit scary.

SAP Buys Praxis

SAP AG acquired Praxis, n CRM e-commerce company to target the SMB market. This move is not so different from Oracle's continued acquisition binge, except that SAP is much more careful about which vendors to pick up. There's no reason that SAP shouldn't have an appetite for acquisitions despite its commitment to organic growth. While Praxis doesn't give SAP anything for its on-demand solution, it does lend important functionality that SAP needs for its on-premise offering which SAP can eventually offer as hosted somewhere down the line.

The bottom line on this acqusition is that it is a smart one if SAP is serious about SMB...and it is. Business One needed better CRM functionality and now it has it. Certainly, integration with Praxis will be far easier than the hairy monster Oracle is dealing with right now. Small aquisitions, small wins, for small businesses.

Quote of the Day - 7.11.06

"People think that we started Firefox just to take down Microsoft, just to win some kind of competition. Why would we want to win? There's no money involved for us. There's no (initial public offering) for this company; it's a non-profit. Why would we want to do this unless there's a real need? The truth is I think Microsoft is very directly responsible for spyware and adware and the pop-up ads in general that proliferated across the Web after they abandoned their product. I mean, this is the world's most-used software application ever ... and I just think it's irresponsible for a company to abandon it simply because they can't find a financial incentive to continue development on it."

-- Blake Ross, one of the founders of the Mozilla Firefox project

Oracle's 585 B.S.

Oracle recently released a ridiculous press release that said “585 Customers Selected Oracle Over SAP in Fiscal Year 2006.” In it, 12 customer names were named as examples of wins over SAP. Oracle also named yet another 15 wins against SAP in its Q4 2006 earnings announcement.

This is pure marketing b.s.! Having gone through this list of customers, only a handful were actually competitive deals. The rest, it seems, Oracle dreamt up or counted as wins on their own whim. The majority of claims were upgrades for Oracle or extensions of apps for vendors it recently acquired. Just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors...typical Oracle fare.

If Oracle spent half as much time on integrating its apps and finishing up Fusion as it did picking on SAP, it would have a killer product set. But no, it continues to pick petty battles and create false campaigns around its successes instead of focusing on customers. Face it, Oracle is just a big bully with a lot of hot air.

Quote of the Day - 7.4.06

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

— Thomas Jefferson


Happy Fourth of July!!!