July 18, 2008 
Inflection Point: What's the practical life span of DTV?
Futurists, especially those who claim to have a methodology beyond psychic prediction, tend to rely primarily on Moore's Law for figuring out what technology will be like 5, 10, or 20 years from now. But Moore's Law, which predicts that computing power will drop in cost by 50 percent every 18 months, isn't some absolute speed limit and some measures of technical achievement are actually moving faster than Moore's Law predicts. It's not that they violate the law (if it even IS a law) but that they take advantage of loopholes like the one where Moore's Law can sometimes be applied TO ITSELF, leading to even faster change. That's what's about to happen to television and why your new digital television probably won't matter much...more >>>
Will you miss having someone else decide what you want to watch on Sunday night TV?
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Jul 11, 2008
Acting Squirrelly: If SAP could make R/3 easier to use they would do it, right?
I have this theory about the behavior of squirrels and how they are like certain large software companies, especially SAP, the giant Enterprise Resource Management vendor headquartered in Germany. But obviously the most interesting part is the squirrels, so let's start there. You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren't on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the squirrel do? At the very last possible moment, rather than watching you drive by, THE SQUIRREL DARTS STRAIGHT FOR YOUR CAR, passing inches in front of or behind the front tires. Why does he do that? Obviously...more >>>
Jul 04, 2008
Independence Day: Because we're so much more than just consumers.
My young and lovely wife, showing what might be overoptimism or maybe artful timing given the economy but more likely just general disappointment with me, has decided to embark on a career in real estate sales. She has taken classes and passed tests, joined one of the very best local firms, and hurled herself into the business of selling historic Charleston homes while they still have some value and the termites haven't finished their work. And along the way, while mastering the Multiple Listing Service, she learned an important fact that was news to us both: people no longer find houses for sale by looking in the local newspaper. They use the Internet, instead. The irony here is that -- at least in these parts...more >>>
Jun 27, 2008
Go Home, Bill: It's time for a new era at Microsoft -- if only the company were ready.
This is the last week of full-time work at Microsoft for Bill Gates and given that I have written more than 40 columns about Microsoft over the years, it wouldn't make much sense for me to ignore this event. Yet that is almost what I did, which I believe is telling. It frankly didn't matter much to me that Bill was retiring. But then I figured longtime readers would expect a comment and perhaps there is some underlying theme here that IS worth 1,500 words. So rather than a fond or relieved farewell to BillG, I'd like to use this occasion to ask some deeper questions: "How relevant is Microsoft today?" and "Does the departure of Bill Gates really matter?" A few months ago producers...more >>>
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