February 2005 Archives

Back in early 2002 when Carly Fiorina was pushing a merger with the rival Compaq, many suspected that she may not make it through unscathed. Instead, she persevered and received the slight nod to merge with Compaq, much to the displeasure of Walter Hewlett. Today, with the announcement of her departure as a result of� board disenfranchisement, Walter must be in a high spirits, feeling a vindication of sorts.

And while investors seem to be cheering alongside Walter by sending the HP shares up on the news, one can not help wonder whether things just got better or worse at the company.

Gmail's claim to fame at its point of inception was the large storage (one Gigabyte) it offered its users. It prompted other major email providers to announce their higher storage services and quit bugging their users to pay money for more room. Remember the old 2-Meg Hotmail limit?

I had blogged about all this previously, and as compelling as the move to Gmail was, once Hotmail came through with their 250-Meg storage, I decided to stay with it, although I utilize my Gmail account occasionally.

As much as Microsoft would like to tout itself as an innovator, its history is largely a legacy of imitation. That is not in any way a negative trait. Most products in use today are imitations of the originals with incremental improvements. and the search technology seems to have caught Microsoft's fancy as of late.

Did you vote during the last presidential election? I did, and I realized that registering to vote gives you more than a power to voice your choice. It adds you to a list that can be used by a variety of government agencies for a number of purposes. One of those is for jury duty selection, and I was called for it for the first time ever.