ShadowRAM: June 26, 2006

First, what's the deal with the flaming Dell laptop? It happened in Japan and was photo-documented. Second, inquiring minds really, really wanna know what happened to Microsoft's Martin Taylor.

Taylor "was disappeared" from Microsoft early last week under mysterious circumstances. This, just a day after the company posted a QandA with him on Windows Live. Anytime the subject was broached, lips were zipped most conspicuously. Next thing, he'll probably be airbushed out of photos on the Microsoft site.

EMC has been seen holding hands with Altiris. The storage giant plans to add network client management capabilities to its checklist, and Altiris, which has such capabilities, has become the apple of EMC's eye. Folks say things are heating up between the two vendors, which will likely be one by year's end—pending regulatory approval, of course.

HP Exec VP Ann Livermore gave not one but two keynotes in one day. Last Wednesday morning she talked up services and talked down IBM to VARs at the HP Americas Partner Conference. By 5 p.m., she was talking to HP Storage's 2,300 users and solution providers at the HP Americas StorageWorks Conference.

In both, she was followed by Bill Belichick, coach of the NFL's New England Patriots. He was nearly unrecognizable in his suit and tie (Belichick is known for his sweatshirt chic). He focused on the importance of teamwork in his two gigs, which were similar except for the jokes. He told one about a salesman who won a Pats ticket as an award. The seat, however, was in nosebleed territory so when he notices an empty spot down front and center, he asks if it's available. The man in the next seat says it's his wife's seat. The two have never missed a game, but this time she couldn't make it. So why not give the ticket to a relative? Answer: They were all at his wife's funeral.

Belichick did touch on IT. "I can't say much about IT," he said. "I guess storage is a good thing. We can always use more of that." He made our storage reporter's heart skip a beat.

Longtime tech cogniscenti (or the get-a-life crowd, as The Boston Globe's Dan Shaugnessy would say) find it ironic that two former Data General guys—Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie—are now running the tech show at Microsoft, which was known early on for mocking the minicomputer world Data General helped drive. Of course, Ozzie was also the brains behind Lotus Notes, which really kicked some Microsoft ass for many years.

One Bostonian's first thoughts upon hearing that Ozzie would take over Bill Gates' chief software architect gig was that former Lotus CEO Jim Manzi must be loving this in a big way: "He can now claim victory that Lotus won the war."