Rubber Chicken

In a previous post, I referenced a McKinsey article that did an economic analysis of the impact of offshoring. It turns out that this article, which is widely referenced, may have been funded by an Indian company. If so, the results were predictable.

If true, I'm wondering why more wasn't made of this after the debacle last year on the Microsoft vs. Linux piece in Forrester being funded by Microsoft. People need to cite the source of their funding and make it really clear which angle they are taking. I'm still tracking down the references to the funding source of the McKinsey article and will update this entry when I find more solid information.

Posted by Rob at 09:17 PM | Permalink

You know a technology is moving into the mainstream if it is available in Roanoke. VOIP has made that leap. Cox Communications is offering some VOIP packages for our local market.

If you made a lot of long distance calls, the packages aren't too bad. For basic phone service, they aren't that compelling (i.e. not worth changing from Verizon). Like many other people, our next step, is to go wireless only. I don't see a lot of advantage to going with VOIP on cable if you already have wireline and wireless phones.

Posted by Rob at 06:48 PM | Permalink

The argument against expensing options that is being pressed by some tech companies that says the expensing will cost jobs is so unbeliveably feeble that I'm almost offended.

So, we have to lie about compensation expenses to keep jobs in the US? Please. If that is going to make that much of a difference, then all of the tech jobs are gone anyway. Preserving the fiction that option grants are not expenses doesn't help anyone.

The one thing I have to give the purveyors of this story credit for is that they are in tune with the zeitgeist of the fear and loathing of offshoring.

Posted by Rob at 10:36 PM | Permalink

I've recently changed my cell phone service from Sprint (who was absolutely horrible in my area) to Verizon Wireless. One of the things that I was considering getting was a camera phone but I was underwhelmed by the state-of-the-art.

I can't imagine that I'd actually use it in practice once the gee-whiz factor wore off unless it was really easy to use. Maybe next year when my contract with Verizon is up, I'll consider it.

Posted by Rob at 11:36 PM | Permalink

I just moved Rubber Chicken to Movabletype. I wasn't unhappy with CornSharp, which was the tool I was using previously, but it was time for a change. Plus, I got this pretty nifty free website from 1&1 so I figured I would use it.

So far, Movabletype is pretty decent. It was easy to set up and not too hard to move content into. I had to write a small C# program to migrate the data, but that was no big deal. I like that it is totally web based and has a lot of flexibility. I haven't done much with the site so far, but I'll probably make some tweaks to the templates as I get more confident (or not).

Posted by Rob at 11:11 PM | Permalink