Ha ha! funny joke! Well, the closest to that merger we’hv seen in recent yearsis the on-stage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference, with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. It’s been in the news a bit: they actually were on the same stage at the same time, and that’s newsworthy enough for it to be in the public memory for several years to come.
Now both men are congenial as well as witty by nature, so no-one expected an on-stage fist-fight. No fist-fight happened, either. It seems to have been a nice session, with jokes having been cracked, and the two talking about the future of computing. Not only the future, but also the past: ah, nostalgia… The two companies’ efforts to work together many years ago-Microsoft’s first software for Apple was BASIC for the Apple II-and other such things. Like the recent Mac vs. PC ads. (Actually, if we remember right, Gates was a little pissed at the ads when they happened-we’re wondering how he pulled off the ha-ha-ha face at this point.)
It wasn’t all jokes and jibes. Gates and Jobs did speak about the future. There was no particular focus, just general talk of how we’re going to go beyond keyboard and mouse-you get the idea. Quite the neutral topic, because all the rivalry is about keyboard and mouse computing.
And so, even as tech scribes focus intensely on Apple-MS competition, the men behind the madness are, apparently, good enough friends. God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world, but all just might not have been right with the world if it were Ballmer in Gates’ place. We think. Would have been much more fun, really.
TMZ.com is a rather popular celebrity gossip site. Now, after Paris Hilton was incarcerated luxury-class, site traffic jumped to all-time-high levels. Well, not quite. She-who-must-not-be-mentioned (oops-we just did!) has generated, in the past, even more traffic at TMZ. This is according to Internet traffic monitor Hitwise.com. There’s a page there that details traffic to gossip sites and blogs with interesting names like HollywoodTuna. com.
The question now is, why are we cluttering this page up with something about Paris Hilton, about whom you doubtless no longer care-even if the poor thing has been imprisoned? Well, it’s because we wish to report the sad state of affairs. According to blog pulse meter Blogpulse.com, the news that Hilton was going to jail put her above President Bush in the blog realm. Ah, the wisdom of crowds.
In an interview with Tim Ferriss, who is a lot of things (www. huffingtonpost.com/tim-ferriss), celebrity tech blogger and technology evangelist Robert Scoble explains how he keeps his thousands upon thousands of mails organised. (It’s also been reported that he reads 622 RSS feeds each morning, which, as you know, is impossible.)
‘ Keep all .PST files under 2 GB to optimise speed and prevent crashes. He goes on: “Creating a new .PST file is not intuitive. Tools > Options > Mail Setup > Data Files > Add.” Mr Scoble, it seems, has three separate .PST files as folders in his left-hand Outlook view, which he’s classified into “Old”, “Middle / Someday”, and “Hot”. These are in addition to the “Inbox”, which he considers his “working set”, Mr Ferriss tells the world.
‘Remove infrequently-used .PST files: “right-click and ‘close’ infrequently-used .PST folders and other folders.” Turns out this doesn’t delete them, so you can still use Google Desktop Search to search for those messages.
‘Respond to fewer mails (duh). Scoble has said that “based on his analytics over time,” each e-mail he replies to produces between 1.5 and 2 additional mails in return. Sending mail multiplies the mail you receive (duh). Replying to more people more often actually creates more work instead of cutting it down (duh).
There you have it-Outlook tips from The Scobleizer himself to supplement this month’s Tips & Tricks section!