Only an idiot would use Network Solutions e-mail. I am an idiot.

I ran my own mail server for many years until the end of 1999 when we moved out to the Wine Country boonies where the only broadband service back then was by satellite. I couldn’t run my own server but still wanted a cringely.com address so I fell back on what seemed to be the simplest alternative, which was e-mail through my domain registrar, Network Solutions. What a mistake.

We all have friends who claim to have had a more-or-less continuous headache since, say, 1946. That’s how I feel about Network Solutions mail. It was never very good, but I was lazy and it was better than nothing… until this weekend when they appear to have […]

Getting my GroupOn

My last column was about Eric Schmidt losing his CEO job at Google and how that company’s failed bid for GroupOn may have been a factor in Schmidt’s demise.  Weep not for Eric, who lasted in the CEO position for 10 years and earned $5.6 billion, which puts every other U.S. CEO to shame, even Steve Jobs. It’s interesting to consider Schmidt’s career arc and how he got where he is (isn’t?) today.

Eric Schmidt started his post-academic work life at Sun Microsystems where he loved all the smart people but was ultimately frustrated by management that he felt was simply not as smart as he.  Remember Scott McNealy was in charge of Sun […]

Bring me the head of Eric Schmidt!

No, Eric Schmidt didn’t step down from being CEO of Google to take Steve Jobs’s position at Apple. I’m fairly certain Schmidt was demoted. Or if he wasn’t, then he should have been.

From a strict business perspective I suppose it’s ridiculous to criticize Schmidt’s performance at Google, but that won’t stop me. The guy has done a fabulous job of optimizing search and web advertising but nearly everything else he and Google have done has been a failure. What else does Google make money from other than search and ads?

Nothing.

Yeah, but YouTube is almost profitable, right?

Hardly. While YouTube may be operating at near break-even that completely ignores the minimum $5 billion sunk and lost in […]

No white smoke yet in Cupertino

At the Vatican, white smoke coming from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel indicates that a new Pope has been selected by the College of Cardinals. Well despite yesterday’s news of Steve Jobs’s departure again from Apple for medical reasons there is as yet no sign of white smoke in Cupertino where Jobs remains firmly in charge.

Readers expect me to comment on this news and I will, but frankly I’m still trying to figure it out so here are a number of random thoughts.

I sent an e-mail to Steve Jobs early last week and he didn’t respond. That’s not in itself such a big deal because Steve periodically ignores me. But other folks at Apple were […]

Strangers in our midst

Last week’s murder of six and wounding of 14 in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson has led to a lot of discussion in both the blogoshere and the traditional press. Did heated political rhetoric in the media fuel the confrontation? Why didn’t the clearly erratic behavior of the alleged gunman tip-off authorities? I can speak from some experience in the latter case and feel that — for better or worse — teachers and administrators simply don’t extrapolate beyond their own social groups when assessing possible damaging behavior. I know I didn’t.

Thirty years ago I was teaching at Stanford University. One of my students was in a graduate program in the School of Education. He […]