ShadowRAM: December 5, 2005

Ingram Micro&'s VentureTech Network VARs chipped in at the distributor&'s Fall Invitational to raise money for members affected by Hurricane Katrina. Some $33,000 is available to help business-recovery efforts. Ingram Micro&'s Justin Crotty and See-Comm&'s Greg Starr are distributing the dough.

Perceptive Software founder Scott Coons wants his folks to be happy, so what does he do? Puts in a dodgeball court at his Shawnee, Kan., document management company. I like the way he thinks.

OnTrack Data Recovery sounds the usual “Back up your data, dope!” refrain. Oh yes, and “maintain a relationship with a professional data-recovery company before disaster strikes.” But its list of the year&'s bizarre data mishaps had some teeth. My fave: a customer whose dog mistook a memory stick for his chew toy. OnTrack was able to recover the data—bite marks notwithstanding.

HP last week announced the “formation” of its SMB partner council. “Resurrection” might be a better word. Compaq, and then HP, always had an SMB partner council, which was left fallow in recent years. Partners have been urging the vendor to re-form the group.

Massachusetts&' about-face on open formats and investigation into its CIO&'s travel is curious. It would seem Gov. Mitt “I Wanna Be President” Romney—and his new finance and admin secretary—don&'t want to alienate Microsoft. At least that&'s what conspiracy theorists say is behind the state&'s pre- Thanksgiving statement that it hoped Microsoft&'s new Office XML formats would be accepted as open standards. That happened hours before Microsoft said it would submit its proposed document format to the ECMA international standardization org. The two IT chiefs who drove the open standards format, CIO Peter Quinn and former Secretary of Finance and Administration Eric Kriss (who left in September), are getting more than a wrist slap for their stance against Microsoft, open-source backers claim. At least most of Quinn&'s travel was related to open-source conferences, to exotic spots like Ottawa, no less. The guv, on the other hand, has been jetting to Israel.

Intel and Toray Ultrasuede last week trotted out “ultrafashionable” concept laptops last week. The design “that screams chic” features Ultrasuede “to add a unique and luxurious personal touch to mobile computing.” Microsoft was all atwitter last week about the placement of its realtime collab wares on “The Apprentice.” Don&'t they know that show is so last year?