Meeting a Blogger and Blog Reader: Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords

Last night I met and had dinner with Buzz Bruggeman who is the CEO of ActiveWords, a software company that provides the ActiveWords utility for Windows.  Buzz was up in the Boston area from Florida to attend the PopTech conference in Maine.  PopTech is one of those high end conferences like Agenda which talks about the future of the high tech industry.  This is where you can actually meet folks like Stephen Wolfram, Bill Joy and others (Buzz told a great tale about meeting Bill Joy at the last PopTech which I just don't have time to repeat now).

ActiveWords, which I've talked about before, is a very cool product and totally worth trying out. I talked about it here and here (and I'm rushed right now to get to a client meeting so I just can't write more right now).  He also gave me good feedback on my Inbox Buddy product which is still in beta and all I can say is "Ahem Brother, Ahem.  We'll get his changes into the next build".

Thanks Buzz!

[ Go to ActiveWords ] [ Go to the PopTech Blog ] [ Go to PopTech ]

[Disclaimer: He paid.]

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Ouch! 50% Of Software Firms to Vanish

As if we need more bad news in high tech, now there is this:

Gartner: 50% Of Software Firms Soon Will Vanish
By Sharon Gaudin
 
Industry research giant Gartner Inc. is predicting that half of today's software vendors will have gone under within the next two years.

...

"Not only will the small and weak disappear but major players will merge or be acquired to cause even well-known and substantial brands to vanish," says Claunch, who adds that an improved economic climate should spur renewed growth in the vendor community by 2007. He predicts that new technologies and initiatives will generate a new round of innovations, funding and start-ups.

[ Go ]

Unfortunately, while positive market research is almost always wrong (the dot com boom), negative research tends to be more correct.  And I don't really disagree with these points.  As I've commented before most software products aren't all that good and IT folk actually understand this now.  A huge amount of the problems the high tech industry has right now are of their own causing.  We need to innovate and find new applications.  We also need to do a better job on customer service and support.  Even our biggest companies (say Dell for example) are pathetic at best when it comes to support.

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