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Loading ...Now Microsoft just needs its own Oprah, too
The Canadian launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server and Visual Studio featured a special guest appearance by Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer. His has the credentials — former Wal-Mart CIO, Sam’s Club head honcho — but it was his looks and voice that caught the crowd off-guard. With his receding brown hair, bushy moustache and southern accent, Turner was the spitting image (okay, slightly rounder) of Dr. Phil McGraw!
“You people are heroes,” he drawled, and we were half-expecting him to end with an authoritative “Let’s do it!” or a stern, “I want you to get excited about your life!”
Turner even had Dr. Phil’s stage presence, asking questions of Microsoft employees during the demo that sounded straight out of a segment of The Shopping Channel, if not Oprah. Ever the media-savvy Redmond exec, however, Turner refused to weigh in on the medical condition or psychiatric treatment of Britney Spears.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...CNN sniffs out and fires employee/by-night blogger
CNN employee Chez Pazienza, a producer with American Morning, was recently fired by his employers for his blog, Deus Ex Malcontent.
Surprisingly, however, the blog didn’t feature anything about where he worked or his job, nor did it feature racy photos, extremist rants, or even pop-up ads. Said the Huffington Post entry: “[My boss], seeming to channel Bill Lumburgh from Office Space, informed me of that which I was already very well aware: that my name was ‘attached to some, uh, “opinionated” blog posts’ circulating around the Internet. I casually admitted as much and was then informed of something I didn’t know: that I could be fired outright for this offense. 24 hours later, I was.”
The company apparently has a cuddly policy of vetting anything written for a non-CNN outlet, and, just in case their employees aren’t forthcoming, an internal team constantly trolls the ‘Net for any hints of such.
Nothing like a warm hug from management, eh?
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Wordpress users: You’ve got mail — and a DoS attack!
The horror, the horror: users of Wordpress were hit with a denial-of-service (DoS) attack over the weekend, which silenced bloggers and their eager commentators. WordPress decided to inform users by e-mail (but not Shark Tales, oddly enough — how come we’re not good enough for WordPress spam?).
One unnamed user said told IDG News Service they were down for an entire 15 minutes, which is an eternity for online blabbermouths.
Fortunately, Shark Tales was goofing off over Ontario’s new Family Day long weekend and was thereby immune to any problems. There’s no better way to deal with system downtime than to enjoy a little downtime of your own.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...RIM: We’re supposed to be the ones charging exorbitant prices
Research In Motion, the market leader in attracting and pursuring intellectual property lawsuits, is sparring with arch-rival Motorola in a series of patent disputes. Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM has begun a court case claiming the American cellphone maker is infringing on several of its patents, according to CP. RIM also said Motorola is charging it “exorbitant royalties” for the use of some Motorola technology, which goes against the common accepted principle of giving your competitors a deep discount on intellectual property. In a tit-for-text, Motorola also sued RIM, claiming its BlackBerry wireless e-mail device violates seven U.S. patents.
Meanwhile, back at his lair in Cupertino California, Apple CEO Steve Jobs cackled with laughter as another shipment of iPhones was rushed out to an eager public.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...If you sell yourself online, you deserve to know who the buyer is
So a German woman agrees to be auctioned off to whomever happens to log onto a particular Web site. Said woman gets pregant with one of her suitors (that’s the nice word we’ll use for them).
Since they only told her her online names (after all, to tell someone your name when you sleep with them would be too intimate, wouldn’t it?) she didn’t know who they were once she got pregnant. But she wants to know who the daddy is. So she takes the Web site to court. To our surprise, the court agrees.
The kicker? The court refused to divulge the woman’s name. To get that, you may have to sue her ISP.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Forget about XP — it’s time to SavePolaroid.ca!
This week our flagship publication, ComputerWorld Canada, decided to offer a collective voice for all those frustrated by Microsoft’s decision to get rid of Windows XP by the summer. SaveXP.ca is your chance to make your voice heard.
Kodak’s decision to stop producing instant film, however, could be an even bigger nightmare. No more shake-shake-shaking a cheap piece of plastic in order to see a grainy image that no one ever puts in an album anyway? HOW COULD YOU, EVIL POLAROID! After all, instant film has only been around since 1948. Being forced to upgrade every 60 years is just outrageous.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Yahoo! Another megamanical company that wants us!
With Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer potentially ready to pounce even harder on Jerry Yang, rumours have Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. — which is already busy ruining the Wall Street Journal – discussing an alliance with the troubled portal player.
The partnership would likely involve integration with MySpace, which would mean the not-nearly-as-popular Internet site/search engine would be melded with the not-nearly-as-popular social networking site. The second best just got second better!
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(5 votes, average: 4 out of 10) Loading ...Johnny Depp is officially insulted
The United States has made its list and presumably checked it twice, and Canada has not ended up on the “nice” column for our allegedly poor attitude towards intellectual property.
According to a Reuters story, Canada joined Russia and China for having the worst record of fighting the piracy of copyrighted goods. U.S. business software companies lost an estimated $511-million in sales last year in Canada because of piracy, up from $494-million in 2006, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said.
Even if these numbers weren’t a crock (is open source counted in the calculations? Doubt it), everybody knows what all the best pirates have been American. This includes everyone from Captain Jack Sparrow to Captain Hook (okay, has British lineage but was played by Dustin Hoffman in horrible Spielberg film). Canada a land of pirates? Yo-ho-ho, we don’t be thinking so.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Searchin’ with Kanye
Hip-hop megastar Kanye West has launched his own search engine, SearchWithKanyeWest.com.
The engine—”enhanced by Google and Ask”—allows users to submit searches and thus win “Swag Bucks,” which are “points that can be redeemed for prizes like limited edition Kanye West posters, iPhones, Macbooks, instruments, Amazon giftcards and dozens of other high end goods.”
The site urges you to up your chances of winning by making it your homepage, installing the search toolbar, using it every time you surf the Web, and by sending in pictures of yourself with “prizes you’ve snagged.”
There doesn’t appear to be any ads on the site, suggesting that all Kanye gets in return for the search engine and “Kanye West swag” doled out is love. Sweet, precious love. (And even more exposure. Sweet, precious exposure.)
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Attention health nuts
When the recipe calls for five tablespoons of salt, four cups of brown sugar, a pound of butter and five eggs, do you ever get the impression that the end product will be good for you? Do you believe the rumour that you can reduce the calories and saturated fat present in double cheese pizza topped with bacon and ground beef by washing it down with Diet Coke? If so, Recipe Analyzer may be for you.
Recipe Analyzer is an online tool, recently announced by Dietitians of Canada, which lets users access the nutritional value of recipes. All you need to do is enter a list of ingredients, and you get a full nutrient profile for a serving of that recipe, plus the number of Food Guide servings the recipe provides.
To analyze your recipe, you need to register first. According to Dietitians of Canada (which, as the name sort of suggests, represents dietitians in Canada), the Recipe Analyzer will suggest substitutions that will give you, for example, less sugar or less salt.
ComputerWorld Canada has yet to test Recipe Analyzer, but we are confident that if you run your favourite poutine recipe through it, the tool will confirm that French Fries, gravy and cheese are indeed good sources of saturated fat.
