Netizen

Thursday, August 20, 2009

It's Not HP, It's The PC

HP quarterly profit dips 19 percent CNet revenue down across almost all of its businesses ..... The one bright spot was its services division, whose 93 percent increase in revenue to $8.5 billion is due mostly to the company's acquisition of EDS last year. But in total, it was the third straight quarter of falling profit for HP. ...... HP saw better-than-expected growth in its sales in China ..... As the largest supplier of PCs in the world, HP is considered a bellwether for the technology industry.

It's Not Dell, It's The PC

What the PC companies like HP and Dell are facing is a paradigm shift that is underway. Not all of their woes can be attributed to the bad economy. The PC is not about to disappear, but it is about to lose its status as the center of the known universe.

In The News

HP quarterly profit dips 19 percent
What Netbooks are doing to the OS business
Blockbuster, Motorola team up for mobile movies
Two cloud standardization efforts made public
New alliance aims to unite malware fight
Linux booming, but unpaid adoption is high
CBS to run video ad in magazine this fall
Microsoft releases SQL Azure Database preview
Challenge to Google Books settlement focuses on class actions
Rogue pharmacies still a problem for search engines
Missouri woman charged with cyberbullying
Time Warner, YouTube ink distribution pact
Energy-aware Internet routing coming soon
BOL 1045: IE8: World's most secure browser

Chrome gets bookmark sync with version 4.x

Budget PC brands see biggest gains in consumer satisfaction

Adobe's next Lightroom to forsake PowerPC Macs

Mozilla nudges Firefox users to latest version

What would be inside an Apple tablet

What to expect from Apple's quarterly progress report

iPhone, Mac sales continue to propel Apple forward

Smartphones and low-cost handsets to dominate market

Budget PC brands see biggest gains in consumer satisfaction

Cisco CEO sees positive economic trends

PS3 and PSP slump, Wii hammered too

Nvidia loss reflects lingering chip defect issue

Motorola earnings jump despite lower sales

Judith Warner: Hillary Fights a Tide of Trivialization New York Times She visited a refugee camp and met with one woman who was gang-raped while eight months pregnant; she heard of another who’d been sexually assaulted with a rifle. She was told of babies cut from their mothers’ bodies with razors. ...... her marriage, her temperament, even her hair ..... some of our most sensitive allies have horrific records on women’s rights. Programs that show success tend to be slow-moving and incremental. ..... Maybe — if we stop viewing everything Clinton does as entertainment.
Dress Codes: Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair
Well: The Pain of Being a Redhead
Op-Ed Contributors: 10 Steps to Better Health Care

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Twitter Number 115 In New York City

I am honored to be thus listed.

[WordPress #336657]: Not Being Able To Leave Comments

Image via Wikipedia

For several months now I have not been able to leave comments on any Wordpress blogs. That is a lot of blogs. And I am not a happy camper. Wordpress has this wonderful thing called Akismet. Akismet's boast is that it does away with spam comments. I am an avid blogger and an avid commenter, I am no spammer. Looks like I got caught in the net, which is fine. What is not fine is I have written to them repeatedly to get me off the hook and so far they have not responded. This is a shame.

JP Rangaswami's blog is a Wordpress blog. TechCrunch is a Wordpress blog. To deny me their comments sections has got to be a misdemeanor.

I like the idea that I can leave comments at these two blogs - right now I can't - and I like the idea of trackback. If I link to posts on these two blogs, I want to be able to show up in their trackback sections. Right now I don't, and that is such a waste.

I have tried writing to them, I have tried tweeting them. Now I have resorted to blogging my complaint. Get me off the hook, folks. Or are you punishing me for having my blog on Blogger and not Wordpress? That can't be the reason.

Bye Bye Geocities
Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me

Image via CrunchBase

My Twitter Suspension Lifted
Netizen Is No Spam Blog

In The News

Looking Back at Google's I.P.O. Five Years Ago

150 Years of Central Park

Image via CrunchBase
New York in Photos

Obama Heads for a Montana Showdown
U.S. Sen. Jim Webb Meets Burma Junta Leader
Drought and Famine: Ethiopia's Vicious Cycle Continues
President Obama's Latin Challenge
Why an Investment Guru Is Bullish on Recovery
What Came Before the Big Bang?
Death of the Guitar Man: Les Paul (1915-2009)
10 Questions for Ashton Kutcher
Swimming with the Fishes in Palau
Eating in the Windy City

Is Britain's Health-Care System Really That Bad?
Bollywood Star Shah Rukh Khan
Will Iran's 'Kennedys' Challenge Ahmadinejad?
On India's Matchmaking Sites, the NRI Groom Goes Out of Style
A Brief History Of Wikipedia
Bollywood Changes its Tune

Threat Assessment: When Protesters Bear Arms Against Health-Care Reform
German Election Campaign Takes a Racist Turn
Health Reform Without Cost-Cutting Isn't Worth It
Why Does Obama Keep Flip-Flopping on Gay Marriage?

Huckabee: Palestinian State 'Unrealistic'
Syria Intervenes In Iran Cases On Behalf of New Friend France

http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/3408247089
http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/3408249560

Harlem

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

DSI Solutions: Repair Bad Credit

Turned down for a home loan? Car loan? Have you been paying ridiculously high interest rates? It might be time for credit repair, time to repair bad credit. DSI Solutions helps you improve credit.

Don't let your subpar credit history haunt you forever. Give yourself a fresh start. Take the sting out of credit repair. DSI Solutions helps you improve credit.

Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island (2)

Monday, August 17, 2009

India Day Parade

India Day Parade (1)
India Day Parade (2)
India Day Parade (3)

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Empire State Building

Saturday, August 15, 2009

George Washington Bridge

Friday, August 14, 2009

It's Not Dell, It's The PC

Image via CrunchBase

Dark Days at Dell BusinessWeek For company founder and Chairman Michael Dell and Chief Executive Kevin Rollins, this summer has been one mishap after another ....... its predicament may be intractable. Dell remained slavishly loyal to its core idea of ultra-efficient supply-chain management and direct sales to consumers, even as rivals have stepped up their game and markets have shifted to take away some of Dell's key advantages. Instead of adapting, critics say, Dell cut costs in ways that compromised customer service and, possibly, product quality. ........ "They're a one-trick pony. It was a great trick for over 10 years, but the rest of us have figured it out and Dell hasn't plowed any of its profits into creating a new trick." ....... [Dell's] culture only wants to talk about execution. ..... "Dell is not a fun place to work, and it's less fun now than it used to be." ....... Notebook PCs are becoming a far larger percentage of the market, but the Asian contract factories that make them for Dell also make them for other companies ...... a tightfisted approach to research and development stunts new-product innovation

Dell is not having a bad quarter or a bad year. Dell is a victim of a paradigm shift that is underway. The PC will stick around, but just like planet earth once, it will realize it is not the center of the universe. Dell was born and raised as a PC company. The chances of it doing well through the paradigm shift are slim at best.

Dell has been hit by a double whammy. One, the paradigm shift away from the PC that is underway. The netbook portends of things to come. Two, Dell has become the victim of its own success. It did well what it set out to do: churn out cheap PCs. But just like Microsoft is stuck with Windows, Dell is stuck with cheap PCs.

Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Cheap Laptops
Blog Carnival: Wimax
Blog Carnival: Internet For The Billions

Image via CrunchBase

The IC Vision: Sequencing The Components
David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

Image via CrunchBase