Month: October 2004

NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter. If portability tops your list of critical OS requirements, NetBSD may be for you. The Unix OS is aimed at organizations looking for a slim and stable platform that makes it possible to run the latest server apps on modest or specialized hardware. [Datamation Product News]

Malcolm Gladwell on the instability of preference. A conflict prevented me from attending PopTech this year, but fortunately Doug Kaye was there with his microphone. The talk I most wanted to hear — Malcolm Gladwell's — was posted over the weekend. In this two-minute clip, Gladwell sums up the dilemma of the Aeron chair, a… Continue reading Malcolm Gladwell on the instability of preference

Under Gmail's hood. I'd been experimenting for a few months with Gmail, Google's Web mail system, without really taking it seriously. But this week I decided to take the plunge and try using Gmail not only as a mail search engine, but as a replacement for Outlook (on Windows) and Mail (on OS X). Now… Continue reading Under Gmail's hood

Home PCs Plagued With Problems. Researchers find that net users are not as secure as they think. Among surveyed adults who believed they were safe from online threats, most had spyware running on their home computers and few had firewall protection. [Wired News]

Tinderbox: Simple Project Manager. New in the Tinderbox Public File Exchange: Jennings Aske contributes a sleek, simple project manager framework that combines a smart todo list and a daybook. [Mark Bernstein]

Software Pricing. Ipswitch's IMail customers seem to be in open revolt over a new pricing scheme. IMail is a popular email server for Windows-based servers. Ipswitch is a normally smart company in Massachusetts. This story will be interesting to follow for anyone making pricing decisions about software and trying to move upmarket. Disclosure: We use… Continue reading Software Pricing

Google & Clustering. eWeek has an article on Google's ideas for expanding into translation and clustering (it's about durn time!) While it might make sense for startups to deploy clustering technology today, Norvig said, Google still views the technology as too immature. It is most useful only for a small percentage of search results, he… Continue reading Google & Clustering

Oligopoly brief: Cendant Cendant is becoming a dominant force in the travel industry in the US and in Europe. Cendant is a name made up in 1998, a modish name with the “-ant” or “-ent” ending typical of that era (Viant, Scient, Versient). It was originally named HFS Inc. Curiously HFS once owned, spun the… Continue reading

Oligopoly brief: Cendant

Cendant
is becoming a dominant force in the travel industry in the US and in
Europe. Cendant is a name made up in 1998, a modish name with the
“-ant” or “-ent” ending typical of that era (Viant, Scient, Versient).
It was originally named HFS Inc. Curiously HFS once owned, spun the
company off, then Cendant brought it back in 2002.

During the
1990s Cendant grew rapidly through acquisitions in key travel and
property areas. It skirmishes its risk by being a major franchisor.

The
Cendant empire is a major player in a number of areas. It is the
largest hotel/motel franchisor in the world. It has 6,400 locations
under such names as Days Inn, Super 8, Ramada, Travelodge, and others.
In addition, the company owns Avis and Budget auto rental companies
(together 3,800 locations across the world) It has a major online
travel presence (to be expanded greatly by the planned acquisition of Orbitz

InfoWorld: Under Gmail's hood. Jon Udell. But this week I decided to take the plunge and try using Gmail not only as a mail search engine, but as a replacement for Outlook (on Windows) and Mail (on OS X). Now I'm ready to join the chorus singing the praises of GMail's user-interface technology. Its combination… Continue reading Under Gmail's hood