Friday, October 15, 2004

Well it took 2 full days but I've finally recovered from a relatively quiet (due to the Plus party going on at the same time) but great Wednesday at Irish. I made it to all my classes, meetings and even a late lunch date but by 11:30 PM after hockey practice I was totally done in. Just in time for the weekend :-)

Some notes, announcements and links from the past couple days:

Does anyone have a copy of English Microsoft XP for share with Carlos and King of Rohan? Thanks.

We're still waiting for hockey picks from many of you. PLEASE e-mail them to me as soon as you can so I can share with the group. Thanks!

Newey party is a little later this year (Nov 4th is the rumoured date) and we have inside access to getting tickets. Shoot me an e-mail or cum see me at school to get your name on the list for tickets (6-8 euros, not announced yet) starting Monday so you don't have to wait in the HUGE first day line or get screwed into waiting in the 6+ hours line at the door on the night. Newey party is of course one of the best nights of the year where all the students at the school set up a party right inside the school itself. There's multiple rooms playing all types/styles of music and beverage stands throughout. The MBA's usually have a student's committee meeting earlier that night and reserve a pre-drinking room beforehand, we'll let you know. This years party is even more important because of the CANCELLATION of herbsfest, the fall party. The school basically put the screws to herbsfest and will eventually stop newey party as well do to city complaints. So get your tickets to this years Newey party while you still can!

The Biz leadership course notes have now been completed (thank you King of Rohan) and can be picked up from the library main desk. The book copies (for the 6 people who requested them) will also be available there sometime after Saturday afternoon. Biz ethics notes have been e-mailed out to everyone but many of you will not be able to recieve the 6+ megabyte attachment and can get a digital copy from myself anytime on Monday - Wednesday (also in class on WEd although you'll probably want to read it before) or can photocopy the hard copy available in the library, again available sometime Sat afternoon.

Our Stuttgart pubcrawl is fast approaching. If your one of the people who want to check out the Stuttgarter Kulturnacht beforehand you'll need to contact JR for deets. Of course you can save the 13 euros and hook up with us at the Irish Pub for some pre- pub crawl drinks while watching the VFB-Frieburg game, we meet at haupbahnhof Pforzheim at 14:20 to take the 14:26 train to Stuttgart (25 euros for 5 people with the wochenende ticket, including the trip there and back). Either way we'll all be meeting up afterwards for the pub crawl.

Are you looking for a creative way to distinguish your resume from the mountain of other applicants? Well this might be taking it a little too far (quote taken from a registration required news site): "The man was arrested after he placed a ticking package in a men's washroom last month. He had included his resume. It was his way of drawing attention to the application, as he was among 400 contenders vying for six paid internships." The receptionist called the police and the bomb squad evacuated the building. Well at least he got noticed!

Intel has announced that they will not release higher clock speed processors in 2005 as previously stated. Instead they will now focus on dual core processors which improve computational performance by means other than processor clock speed. Although at first glance this announcement looks unimpressive, we must wonder about this new strategic approach as Intel is the market leader and sets the benchmark for the industry. After over a decade of marketing and teachning consumers that processor speed is the single most important issue when buying a processor, they now will try and focus on a new differentiating trait. The transition has not occured overnight, Intel's "hyperthreading" technology as well as the "Centrino" brand processors where an initial step in this direction, although processor speed was also promoted in tandem. After several clock speed "space races" between Intel and AMD in which Intel seems to have cum out on top, will they be able to repeat that success in the next round of processor marketing wars? Note: Many of my friends have recently purchased computers and it was quite difficult for me as a resident computer geek to convice some of my less knowledgeable friends that paying extra for a slightly faster processor is money best used to upgrade RAM and other facets of their new laptop. When dealing with users that require only e-mail, web, movies/music and office applications it's hard to convince them that they will not recieve any noticable improvement in performance from say a 2.x - 3.x speed processor because of all the marketing that's been pounded into the average consumers head. This experience tells me that chip makers have got a long road ahead of them to convince consumers to buy technologically more advanced processors with lower overall click speeds. Of course their multi-billion dollar marketing budgets might just do the trick :-)

Kermit the Frog is cool and his renditions of "It's Not Easy Being Green" and "The Rainbow Connection" are da bomb. Do yourself a favour and Kazaa them. Here's MBA Kermit:



Remember the hype surrounding the Segway? Well they've just released a promo on their new 4-wheeled version called "Centaur" (check out the movie link at the bottom). Looks like a fun toy, a very expensive fun toy.

I love Mark Cuban. Not only is he a dot-com multi-billionaire, but he bought the Dallas Mavericks just because he loves basketball and wanted a championship team (still in progress). On his blog he talks about the cool stuff going on in his life and his thoughts on technology and the market. It's not often that he oposses new innovations so I found his comments in this article a little surprising. Is he trying to suggest that having the ability to watch multiply replays, get radio feeds, have seat specific ordering are not killer apps to enhance the spectator experience? I have to disagree with him on this one.

An article on the growing popularity of blogging and its possible/current use/effectiveness as a marketing tool.

A very cool... er hot map of the highest carbon emissions in the world (click on the small picture to get the full map).

And that's all for now folks, MBA students committee notes etc from last week will be posted soon. Hopefully I'll see some of you on the other side of the bar this weekend :-)