ShadowRAM: January 15, 2007

Steel-Cage Match From Hell

Luckily, there's a specious "tech" angle. Our old pal Mark Cuban,former VAR and current gazillionaire, has weighed in—on Rosie's side.

If you remember, Mark tried to out-Donald the Donald with his own reality series, "The Benefactor," which lasted about three minutes a few years back.

In a pre-holiday blog entry, "Trump The Chump," Mark observed: "Every couple weeks I get e-mails from people asking me if I heard what Donald Trump said about me on some radio or TV show."

"I have to be honest," Mark wrote, "I love it when he rips me. It's been three seasons since 'The Benefactor' tanked, but Donald still couldn't find something else to rip on. It always gives me a good chuckle knowing that he thinks of me so often.

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"I guess all good things must end as Donald turns his attention to Rosie O'Donnell," Mark sighed. (Or at least we assume he did.) He also lauds Rosie for her use of modern technology to fight back. "Rosie gets it. She has a blog." (www.rosie.com.) Trump's blog? "Sucks," wrote Cuban.

Bonus dirt: The New York Post reported last week that Rosie called boss (and friend of The Donald) Barbara Walters an "(expletive deleted) liar" for not backing her up better.

Not good for job security. But certainly great for gossip columns. And (cough, cough) gossip columnists.

Seen And Heard
Ed Zander makes a great entrance. The Motorola chairman rode onto the CES stage last week to deliver his keynote. That's right, rode. Not strode. As in on a yellow bicycle. Zander joked that he had ridden all the way from Chicago to keep costs down (and quipped that he had to practice beforehand), but the stunt had a point. The bike was equipped with a docking station to charge Motorola's low-priced MotoFone with pedal power, no electricity required. Cool stuff, especially as mobile communications spread to rural areas in China and India where electricity may be unaffordable or even unattainable. Zander said there are 500 million cyclists in China alone.

McAfee execs have a lot of 'splaining to do. And we're not talking about stock options backdating. At the company's sales kickoff last week, staff was briefed on their new duties in the wake of two rounds of channel layoffs. The story better be convincing 'cause sources say partners are tired of the musical chairs going on in channel account management and that remaining channel team members are polishing up their resums, muttering stuff about "zero job security."

Steve Jobs' use of The Beatles' "Lovely Rita" to demo Apple's new iPhone raised hopes that ugly Apple-on-Apple violence is done. No definitive word yet out of Infinity Loop on whether hostilities with the record label are over.

Whaddup With Qwest?
Is that a "For Sale" sign hanging outside Qwest's Denver HQ?

Watchers of the Baby Bell say CEO Richard Notebaert has been dolling up the carrier for a courtship with another telco (hint: three letters and an ampersand). Cutting operating costs at the expense of agent commissions has already begun, with as much as a 5 percent drop in partner commissions set to kick in by March.

If that means Notebaert is putting Qwest on the auction block, it won't be the first carrier he's sold. Flashback to 1999, when Notebaert, then chairman and CEO of Ameritech, sold the company to SBC Communications. Many still say it was a sloppy deal that didn't meet fair-competition contingencies ordered by regulators, and that a $1.18 billion penalty for such remains unpaid. Not Notebaert's problem, though. Regulators can chase SBC for the remit—just index their snappy new name. (Hint: 3 letters and an ampersand.)