ShadowRAM: November 26, 2007
OpenWorld Meets Reality
• Oracle San
The shooting just inside the doors of the Metreon entertainment complex at 7:05 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 11, came as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was wrapping up his opening keynote speech at the Moscone North, which is on the same block as the Metreon. At the same time, Oracle channel partners were headed over to the Marriott for the PartnerNetwork reception and Oracle North American Titan Awards ceremony. Other conference attendees were exiting the Moscone West building across Fourth Street.
Police said the shooting stemmed from an argument between two people inside the Metreon, leaving an 18-year-old Oakland man dead and a 15-year-old San Francisco boy—who was arrested a block away—charged with murder, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Chronicle reported the sound of gunshots was heard outside on the street, and people scattered as police directing traffic at the busy Fourth and Mission intersection from the show rushed into the Metreon. For more than an hour after the shooting, passersby stared at the yellow police tape blocking the Metreon doorway.
Lexmark Still Under Pressure
• Lexmark left several Wall Street analysts nonplussed after company executives, including CEO Paul Curlander, conducted the company's annual analyst day earlier this month to present its view on its business and future plans. Lexmark is reeling from the atrophy of its OEM, inkjet and supplies businesses, and was set to begin pink-slipping the first of 1,650 employees during the holiday season.
Some observers seemed particularly unimpressed with Curlander, saying his remarks at the analyst meeting added little, if anything, to his last quarterly earnings meeting. To make matters worse, rival Xerox, whose Chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy shot down the thought her company would make a bid to buy Lexmark, last week said it would start paying out dividends to its shareholders. Lexmark shares have lost about 50 percent of their value this year on the New York Stock Exchange and remained mired at close to a 52-week low. Keep an eye on this space.
Seen And Heard
• From the Blogs We Wish We Knew About Earlier Department: ZuneInsider.com. This is a blog written by a developer on "Microsoft's new music project."
Among the news included in Zune Insider: "Just spoke with our Dev Team, and we'll be issuing a small software update today. There are no features in this update, but it does help users who haven't upgraded yet avoid some metadata issues we're reading about in the forums."
We were shocked that we hadn't heard about the software update to the Zune, until we realized that nobody else had heard of it either. Compare that to the iPhone community, where even a hint of a software update is met by 50 million blog posts, 10 million Digg threads and 45-minute Web videos by Robert Scoble. We're now starting to understand this Web-as-a-market-barometer thing