Hot on the heels of O2’s plans to corner the nation’s exclamation marks, comes news that Intel has laid claim to the word “inside”, in so far as it relates to almost anything. British online photo-processing firm FotoInsight is the unfortunate company offering the evidence, given that it was called FotoInside until very recently. Heavy-handed lawyergrams from a clearly bonkers Intel intellectual property department led to the enforced rebranding exercise, as the UK firm felt ill-financed to take on Intel’s army of writ-slingers in the courts. So far as Sneak knows, Intel does not think it owns the word "insight". Sneak is confident that level-headed Honda, maker of the environmentally-friendly Insight hybrid motor car, will not adopt the Intel Inside-the-Asylum approach to protecting its brands. However, lawyers at Nasdaq-listed Insight Enterprises Inc. may share Intel’s zeal, and may be sharpening their quills even now...

June 29, 2005 Copyright | Permalink | Comments (1)

Late last week Oracle announced the appointment of Greg Maffei, former CFO of Microsoft, to the position of president (the company’s third) and also to the role of chief bean-counter from mid-July. Today, air/finger-interface consultancy Ovum tried to make sense of Oracle’s “now we are three” approach to the presidency, with top analyst David Mitchell revealing exactly the kind of expert commentary you'd expect of an ex-Oracle insider:
“There were ten in the bed and the little one said 'roll over, roll over'. They all rolled over and one fell out," Mitchell noted, before moving on to some adult-speak. “We wonder if one of the presidents will fall out of the Oracle bed in the next 6-12 months.”
Well, yes, but which one? Obviously Maffei, newly under the covers, is safe. The other two are Safra Catz and Charles Phillips. Perhaps there is a clue in their pay-packets? Last year Catz was paid $2.7m in cash. Phillips got just $1.08m, according to SEC filings. Assuming that both got paid largely on the basis of hitting their business targets - or not - Sneak has to assume that it’s Phillips’ neck that’s uncomfortably close to the chopping block. Unless, of course, Oracle is looking to save a few bucks on payroll next year...

June 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brits with long memories may recall a particular spoof that used to run on the satirical TV show Spitting Image, lampooning the then-popular children’s phenomenon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With typical Spitting Image subtlety, its four doppelganger heroes were called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds - and were indeed four brown, lumpy, pointy-topped, sausage-shaped characters fond of yelling “Cowadunga!” Why is Sneak dredging up this item from the sewers of yesteryear? Because for some reason antivirus firm Grisoft appears to have resurrected the Turds, and used them as branding around its freeware product. Sneak is at a loss to understand this move. After all, Grisoft’s free tool is actually quite good. It might not be as full-featured as the paid-for product, but neither is it a crock of sh*t...

June 24, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft's MSN arm is currently running a competition for budding filmmakers, Sneak hears, soliciting short films on the topic of intellectual property theft. Thought Thieves asks entrants to convey a world "without protection for intellectual property". It doesn't require a dog's ears to detect the sounds of axes being ground on the part of the world's richest software firm. Still, Sneak does wonder what the world would look like if protection of intellectual property was at the other extreme: and no-one was able to pinch anyone else's ideas. It's rather doubtful that Microsoft would be in a position to sponsor the competition. Would Windows exist if Xerox and Apple had enjoyed perfect protection of their ideas?
The competition opened in May and the deadline for entries is next Friday. Sneak has just received a reminder from Microsoft's PR machine urging entrants "not to miss the deadline", a publicity tactic that suggests entries may be a little thin on the ground.

June 23, 2005 Film | Permalink | Comments (0)

This account of how to make your own wine left Sneak's hot, non-alcoholic beverage all over the desk, via the nasal cavities:
"You know, there's an old expression that says In wine, there is truth.  In this case, I could also make out some chunks and what appeared to be a severed foot. Then there was the 'white' wine. This one's aroma was slightly more earthy. Do you know that smell of grass right after it's cut? That's nice. I was just making chit-chat, because this smelled like rotten eggs tucked into the anus of a dead cat."

June 22, 2005 Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firms that like to put a bit of emphasis into their marketing materials, say for example by asserting that their product or service is “Great!” or “Super Value!” or “Just About OK!” may soon need to tone it down a bit. It appears that O2, purveyor of mobile telephony products and services, is in the process of trying to trademark the exclamation mark. And what’s more, it’s not simply laying claim to the punctuation mark in the field of telecommunications. No, it foresees using the “!” symbol in relation to printed matter, banking, advertising services, estate agency services, ticket booking, insurance provision, transport, education, science, food and drink, accommodation services, agriculture, legal services, sports and leisure, and, presumably, breathing.
All of which could be bad news!!! (better use it while we can) for IT Week’s consumer-oriented sister title, Computer Act!ve.

June 17, 2005 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is disappointed to learn that BT’s newly launched Bluephone product is to be called BT Fusion. OK, so the catchy codename might have given consumers entirely the wrong idea about what the vibrate function is for, but even so, Sneak was hoping for a better name for what is, after all, a groundbreaking product. Something futuristic would have been nice. Something like what you'd hear in Futurama or The Jetsons. The Roam-o-phone, say, or the Dual-Mode Auto-Talkamatic. Or, given that all incoming calls to what is often a landline will be charged at mobile rates, perhaps the Cost-o-phone or Dual-Mode Rip-offomatic might have been more apposite...

June 15, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a comms company, BT has a bit to learn about clear lines of communication. Last week a call came in inviting Sneak to meet one of BT’s top management bods. The PR person doing the inviting was (a) American and (b) sitting at his desk in the US - not the best vantage point from which to arrange a meeting between two people at London’s BT Centre, but fair enough in these days of global interconnectedness.
Sneak gets a bit mixed up about BT locations, and so dutifully asked if BT Centre was the one with the big phallic tower. “Yes,” confirmed the remote PR person, wrongly. The meeting was set for 3pm. The PR person then confirmed 2pm by email. Sneak rarely reads emails carefully and didn’t notice the discrepancy until the last minute. A call to the London press office happily confirmed the time to be 3pm after all. “Just ask for me at reception,” said local PR person number 2.
Half an hour later, on arrival at the reception desk, Sneak was informed that PR person number 2 was in fact on annual leave. After much head-scratching, a third PR professional was found to escort Sneak to the meeting, during which Sneak’s phone was, naturally, switched off.
With the meeting successfully concluded, at 4pm Sneak left the BT Centre (the one without the big tower) and fired up his phone to find a series of increasingly frantic voicemails from PR person number 2, asking why Sneak had not turned up for his 3pm meeting. Sneak then returned to the office to find a final email message from PR number 1, reminding Sneak not to forget his 2pm meeting...

June 13, 2005 Business intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0)

It must be tough trying to bring a sense of gravitas to board meetings, as a technologist,  when you labour under the name Anurag, which sounds a lot like Anorak. It must be doubly difficult being taken seriously when your surname also happens to be Dikshit. Still, at least Anurag Dikshit, a director of PartyGaming.com, can console himself that it could have been worse: at least, unlike his chairman, he's never mistaken for that other bloke called Michael Jackson...

June 8, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the up and down world of software reliability it was a case of both up and down yesterday for London's Tower Bridge, which seized with its roadways in the elevated position for ten hours after software control systems went down. Sneak was initially surprised to learn that 2,000 tons of Victorian ironmongery needed any software to swing open and shut - surely a really big lever ought to be sufficient - but apparently it's impossible to crack an egg these days without a laser-guided scalpel. So kudos to Rockwell Automation and Fairfield Control Systems for bringing a landmark piece of 19th Century engineering into the 21st Century world of unrecoverable system errors.

June 3, 2005 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)