Stove Top, 16 January 2008

I have successfully avoided the "stove top" solution to unload a whole bunch of Google Reader shared items into a single post.

Unfortunately, my Twitter favorites have built up to toxic levels, so now I gotta clear THEM out.

The first one will be quoted in full, because it is wise and it is wise. Courtesy @alangutierrez.

alangutierrez @zachhale How can you get behind on Twitter? It is ephemeral. Let it go. 10:46 AM January 14, 2008 from web in reply to zachhale

@Br3ndabot said I'm a technical. I think I read this just after I had tweeted or posted something that said how non-technical I truly am.

@juliaroy said that bubbl.us is great, but @khokanson is partial to mind42.com.

@mikedoe provided provided a link that allows you to check your Google PageRank. Last I checked, this blog had a PageRank of 4.

@orafaq noted that dizwell is back online - sort of. Meanwhile, @nateritter noted that he has been tagged.

@ariedana linked to Katie Couric outtakes.

@mufan wondered if ministers could learn anything from Steve Jobs. Then he wrote about it. (I liked most of the points, with the exception of "show success by numbers"; see my comment in Evan's post.)

@conniereece linked to the @michaelallison piece Frozen Peas: A Case Study.

@oemperor (that's me) tried to find some previous hints about the SUN - MySQL deal. I thought that everyone else knew about it, but that was not the case. @grigs didn't know, for example. The only interesting things that I found were that Sun's Startup Essentials program provided participants with MySQL, and that Dave Rosenberg said - actually, this is another thing that just needs to be quoted. This appeared on January 2.

So what happens in 2008? I think we'll see the beginning of a few major trends in open source: break-out stars (like MySQL), consolidation by big vendors (like Oracle) or stronger OSS players (like Red Hat), and fire sales at the companies that got funded but couldn't make it happen. It isn't clear yet whether these will be happy or sad trends, but I am fairly certain they will happen.

In terms of consolidation I think there is a strong likelihood that a major software vendor (SAP, Sun, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle) finally goes whole-hog on open source and buys the leaders in each segment.

And, by the way, the MySQL conference will occur in April. Sun and Microsoft are among the scheduled exhibitors. And @oracletechnet (Justin Kestelyn) is pessimistic about what will happen with MySQL. For full disclosure purposes, it should be noted that he works for a MySQL competitor.

Meanwhile, I also noted that it's possible to get MacWorld VIP passes with a 100% discount. I may, or may not, return to this topic later. That's the fun of Stove Top.

I've said that Facebook doesn't want me almost as often as I've said that I'm not trendy. But Facebook does want some people, and @shelisrael noted that the Facebook Scrabulous players are out of luck, and why didn't Hasbro/Mattel embrace Scrabulous as a wonderful marketing opportunity? (Although, in my view, Hasbro/Mattel's action against Scrabulous isn't as bad as Ford's action toward one of its car clubs.)

And I wanted to add "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" to my last.fm playlist after reading this tweet from @acomputerpro. I did, but I had forgotten that it was 11 plus minutes long.

And I have to again quote, in full, the Twitter exchange between a presidential candidate (or, more appropriately, his flunky) and myself.

First, this is what @RonPaul2008 said:

Thus far in the race, I've received more votes than Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani. Freedom is popular!

Well, I had to respond to that stirring "We're number 4!" message:

@ronpaul2008 but not THAT popular, as it turns out...

Haven't heard back from the remarkable man yet.

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