ShadowRAM: October 11, 2004

Big Blue is planning PartnerJam, its attempt to bring the concept of an all-night rave to the biz. The five-day virtual round-the-clock open house will enable partners to share ideas with 50 of IBM's top channel pooh-bahs. Or so says IBM. The event, kicking off Oct. 11, will include honchos like Donn Atkins. No techno music is expected, but IBM's hoping for some lively convos. Atkins will share the results in a November Web cast.

Old-timers may remember IBM's toga party at the late, lamented Comdex. You haven't lived until you've seen IBM execs tie bedsheets over their oh-so-professional-looking casualware. I wonder if the cyber version will be as entertaining.

The traffic at TechXNY last week got a boost from the gigunda Johnny Walker booth. (Don't ask me how I know how busy it was, 'cause my boss might read this.) But bigger stars were spied uptown where The Donald was shooting a commercial on Central Park West near 60th Street. Donald Trump--and his hair--were both surrounded by a phalanx of video gear, reflectors, cameras, and assorted sycophants and hangers-on. An irate young woman tried to shoo assembled watchers along while refusing to answer questions about the nature of the shoot. "I'm not at liberty to say," she said. The response: "Well, we're not at liberty to get out of your way then."

Best laugh of the week came from Joe Kraus's Web log (bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/) under the heading "Potty Talk." In it, Kraus, who co-founded Excite, describes his up-close-and-personal encounter with Bill Gates in a men's room--they met in front of a urinal in December 1995. You need to check out the blog for full impact, but Kraus ends the entry: "I should have shaken his hand."

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Mission accomplished? (Where've I heard that before?) Microsoft and Sun are expected to detail completion of phase one of their pact imminently, or at least some time this month, a Sun exec said. It'll be interesting to see how much of what they promised will be deliverable. Phase one is interop between their respective directories and single-sign-on capabilities. Next up: Web services and, according to one Sun exec, interop between the companies' file systems. At least Microsoft won't have to worry about interop with two file systems, since we all know that the long-promised WinFS remains more fiction than fact.

Meanwhile, as the companies prep their big-deal directory announcement, their common foe, Red Hat, has announced its acquisition of Netscape's directory services from America Online to address a big gap in its Linux distribution.