ShadowRAM: June 11, 2007

HP Garage Gets National Nod As Historic Place
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The structure, at 637 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, has been a California landmark since 1987, but now it's gone national.

Bill Hewlett and David Packard built their first breakthrough here—an audio oscillator—after founding their company in 1938.

Now, if we could only remove those images of Carly Fiorina posing out in front from our collective consciousness.

Microsoft Goes Back To The Future
Microsoft ServerTools chief Bob Muglia was in rare form at TechEd 2007.

After pulling up on stage with "Back to the Future" (not to mention "Taxi") star Christopher Lloyd (aka Doc or Jim Ignatowski) in a classic DeLorean, the Microsoft exec went back in time himself, poking fun at some of the company's ill-fated visions and innovations. Like "Bob." Like "Hailstorm." And the annoying Clippy paperclip from Word. And don't forget WinFS. Yes, I know you're trying to forget WinFS. Aren't we all?

Muglia then talked up Microsoft's four-year-old Dynamic Systems Initiative, which itself may fall by the wayside if Redmond doesn't get its Viridian hypervisor vision right. And out.

DSI was dreamed up before VMware virtualization software turned the value prop of the operating system on its face.

Also, whoever dreamed up the "Dynamic IT" theme might start thinking about a new gig. If TechEd made anything clear, it was that Microsoft don't know diddly about talking to IT folks. That better change if the company is serious about upping its share of the enterprise IT budget, not just in OSes and tools but in ERP apps.

Seen And Heard
• Oli Thordarson, our pal at Alvaka Networks, is a bit nuts, and here's proof: Over Memorial Day, Oli competed in the SCCA national race. "No carnage and no breakdowns that I can recall," he writes. And he qualified for the championships in Topeka, which was his goal. Bonus!

• Ciscos execs who double as The Burnt Factory Band raised more than $5,000 for Katrina relief efforts when they took the stage at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. The group started as something of a joke about a year ago when they jammed at another Cisco event. Now they're the company's "unofficial rock group." They've even been supported by Cisco, which matched more than $2,500 in ticket and T-shirt proceeds from the Vegas event through its i-Give charity program.