I think we all sort of expected that business would not be good… but with car sales plummeting like that, it does not look good…

HOnda was the only one that did not g down, it increased by slightly over 1 percent, but that was because of their cars. Their trucks were down 24 percent.

Nissan was off 18 percent, Ford 28 percent, Chrysler 36 percent.

Chrysler has an innovative offer.. It guarantees to pay the difference between $2.99 and the pump price for 12,000 miles …. but despite that, it seemed like it did not do much.

Ford’s F series trucks was down 41 percent, and it did not even do half the number of Explorer SUVs compared to a year ago.

When consumer sentiment is down, it does signal that there is still a way to go before business will pick up.

June car sales plummet for nearly all automakers - Yahoo! News

Toyota, with its flexible, efficient factories, couldn’t make the shift from trucks to cars as quickly as American drivers. Its sales for June shrank 21 percent.

The overall market fell 18.3 percent, according to Autodata Corp. It
was the worst June for the industry in 17 years, said Jesse Toprak,
chief industry analyst for auto information site Edmunds.com, who predicted more misery ahead.

This is a good read… and points to the important distinction which I think is important — whether you have processes or not, whether you can scale the projects or not, and most important — whether the software you are producing is aimed at being ‘cool’ or being ‘useful to business’. ..

Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft @ WEB 2.0 JOURNAL

Google software business is divided between producing the “eye candy” - web properties that are designed to amuse and attract people - and the infrastructure required to support them. Some of the web properties are useful (some extremely useful - search), but most of them primarily help people waste time online (blogger, youtube, orkut, etc)
…
This orientation towards cool, but not necessarilly useful or essential software really affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter.

My eNGy Business Cartoons Vol 1 has reached almost 2,000 downloads after 2 months. My eNGy Business Cartoons Vol 2 has reached 100 downloads after a few days.

I have been playing around with 2 cool netbooks – a new category of notebooks that promises to be lighter, and also cheaper. Based on the feedback, it looks like this has not only revolutionize the way we play, but also have attracted a whole new batch of enthusiastic users, thereby increasing the market significantly, and broadening ownership.

The first is the second version of the Asus EEE PC , which was one of the first bestsellers that launched it all. The Asus Eee PC 900 is a new version that still promises to be less than one kilogram, and of the same size as before, but is slightly more expensive, but have more features.

First is that it has upgraded the specs as well. Instead of the 512 mb, it is now 1 gigabyte memory. It now has a bigger 8.9 inch widescreen ( it was 7.9 inch before), and a higher resolution

Read the rest of this entry »

In this experiment, it confirms what we believe all along:

- when you reply, you don’t get unsubscribed.
- when you click, you get a lot of malware.
- when you give your financial bank account, it will be hacked.
- when you give your physical address, you will get a deluge of snail mail offers.
- there’s not that much legitimacy in what they are offering.

Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife - Network World

By the time it was all over, after every bank-account phishing scam, Nigerian bank scheme, and offer for medication, adult content and just plain free stuff had been pursued. “I was horrified,” says Mooney, a realtor by profession. “It’s all snake oil. I’m amazed at what true junk is out there when you’re clicking through on e-mail.”

Among the big number of news that came out about Bill Gates retiring, some are really funny.

This is a collection of saying that Jobs have said about Bill Gates, and the other way around.

Apple and Microsoft have had a love hate relationship for 30 years.

At that time, they worked together, and they lambasted each other. I believe there was one time Microsoft came in to save Apple, and there are of course numerous times that they just try to showcase who is better.

At the end of the day, I think some of the quotes will be quoted out of context - which is why we always have to be careful - something you say 20 years ago can always come back to haunt you - just like Bill Gates purportedly saying that 640k of memory is about all we need….

Jobs vs. Gates: A thirty year war - (8) - FORTUNE

You can always tell whether you’re on a Mac or on a PC. Just stick your applications in there and see whether they’ll run.

This is an excellent article and gives us pause to think and rethink accepted principles on how to lift people out of poverty and generate progress for all. Here are some gems of facts and questions in the article:

- Globalization does improve standards of living, and World Bank will report that the proportion of people living on less than $2 a day has shrank from 67% in 1981 to 47% in 2004. However, 59% of the planet’s population lives in countries with widening inequality, while only just 5% of the countries have the disparity declining.

In short, the gap between the haves and the havenots is worsening.

- People are threatened with this globalization, and this could well slow it down. A 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Survey said that a majority in every country except Japan, South Korea and the Palestines now want immigration reduced.

- Pretty soon, hopefully, and yet with challenge, the battle may soon be less about the black-white divide as it will become a battle of the have vs have-nots.

Poverty Trap - TIME

One of the defining phenomena of our age is migration. As the world shrinks and economies integrate, national boundaries become less important. At least, that’s the theory. In reality, there is an élite of international professionals who do live comparable and seamlessly connected lives, whether they be in New York City or New Delhi, Johannesburg or Tokyo. But among the world’s poor, things do not go as smoothly.

Its stupid! Its dangerous! people should not be doing it, andthey shold be warned….. so says my head.

But that said, yes, I must admit, I still do it…..

Slashdot | Text-Messaging Behind the Wheel

TIME interviews 21-year-old Taylor Leming, creator of the 600-member Facebook group I Text Message People While Driving and I Haven’t Crashed Yet!
While Alaska and Louisiana just became the latest states to pass laws
banning text-messaging behind the wheel, Virginia resident Leming is
still happily texting away while driving despite some near-accidents.
‘Sometimes it just seems easier to text ‘Be there in 5′ instead of
calling,’ explains Taylor.”

Another take on bill Gates. He left with very clear vision on what he wants to do.

As this article says, that can be a good or bad thing….

when a CEO leaves a big shadow, it can help guide the company, or it can help discourage certain changes that might be necessary.

Bill Gates moves on, but Microsoft keeps his ‘quests’ alive - Yahoo! News

“Some of the technical folks may even be better suited than Gates to lead the company into the next generation of computing,” said Michael Silver, an analyst for Gartner who has covered Microsoft for a decade. “Some would say that maybe he had too much power … Some would say Microsoft hasn’t failed enough, hasn’t gone out on enough limbs and been as innovative as they could have been.”

This is a great read, and it shows the importance of making sure that the things we design are intuitive.

It is not great technology when it doesn’t follow the way we think and rather insist on its own way….

Classic Clips: Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP

we came across this jewel from 2003. A leaked memo from Microsoft, it’s several pages of Gates just laying into his design and programming staff for—among other issues—his personal experience when trying to install Windows Moviemaker. And it’s a very fulfilling read if you’ve ever been frustrated by a Microsoft product.