ShadowRAM: June 28, 2004

Some noteworthy memories of Comdex past: EDS' blowout a few years ago in an airplane hangar with Bare Naked Ladies and Macy Gray. Have you ever seen aging geeks in a mosh pit? Steve Ballmer planting a kiss on Philippe Kahn at a CRN Hall of Fame ceremony.

Fujitsu's tribute to high-tech excess a few years ago, when it rented out the amusement park in the back of the MGM Grand Hotel, with a small-but-exclusive invitation list and Lyle Lovett, among others, performing.

And how could we forget the mock slave auction hosted about 15 years ago by a large, Japanese hardware vendor who had attendees (male) bidding on prizes (women) who were carried out to the floor like Cleopatra? Media types were appalled at what was really the height of political incorrectness.

And those are the stories the editor will let us tell.

OK, we'll brag for a second: We received a highly coveted Google Gmail account last week. But when we went to auto-forward all of the mail from our Yahoo e-mail account to Gmail, Yahoo told us to pound salt. It would let us auto-forward to just about any other domain, but not Gmail. When we sent a note to Yahoo Customer Service (and the title "customer service" is generous), we received an auto-reply telling us, in words or in substance, "We're busier than normal lately. We'll get to your problem when we get to it."

A Microsoft flack swears the software giant has done nothing to interfere with Gmail's adoption, such as blocking Hotmail users from receiving Gmail invitations. But complaints and suspicions abound.

But while we're on the topic, Gmail hasn't exactly been problem-free. At least a few users have reported inability to access their accounts, including one who said he received this message: "Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers, and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience."

Dear Google: We've used Windows on our PCs since the late 1980s. We're tired of crossing our fingers.

Word has it that, intern-ally, some Intel folks are trying to cajole CEO Craig Barrett into starting a blog to chronicle his last month running the chip giant. (Barrett is approaching his manda-tory retirement age at Intel.)

Don't hold your breath waiting for a BarrettBlog, though. The guy's itinerary still reads like the globetrotting script for Jackie Chan's latest movie, "80 Days."