Friday, January 17, 2003

"Guffman Strikes Again" http://www.countingdown.com/movies/amightywind -- WARNING, ENDLESS POP-UPS on this site. Christopher Guest and Crew will be releasing their next "mockumentary," "A Mighty Wind," in April 2003. Plot description: The Folksmen, a folk trio formed in the 1960's, reunite after thirty years for a comeback tour following the death of a legendary folk music promoter. A mockumentary in the vein of Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and This is Spinal Tap. Cast: Christopher Guest Michael McKean Harry Shearer Eugene Levy Parker Posey Catherine O'Hara Bob Balban Ed Begley Jr. Fred Willard   5:51:08 PM    comment []

SAP starts the New Year with a "bang" SAP launched the year's first salvo regarding web services, integration and "standards-compliant" "products," with their announcement of NetWeaver http://www.sap.com/company/publications/overview/netweaver.asp -- who picks these names anyway? Perhaps it is worth $1 million or 2 to Landor to pick a name that doesn't suck? Peter Graf, VP of Market Strategy for SAP had some big-time quotes: (Who said it's not 1999 anymore?) http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle?doc_id=IWK20030116S0001 "We see [this] as at least as significant as the announcement of client-server architectures 10 years ago,"  and "It's the blueprint of all SAP solutions going forward."  In the 50 recent interviews that The Stencil Group  completed in Q4 2002, the fact that major application vendors such as SAP, PSFT, Siebel and Oracle were supporting the "infrastructure guys," made adopters a lot more comfortable in moving ahead with web services and SOA plans. In one bit of embarassing marketing execution, the analyst quoted in SAP's press release, Josh Greenbaum, (http://www.eaconsult.com/) didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic by the time News.com got to him. In the official release, "SAP NetWeaver will allow customers to achieve their goals by creating and improving business processes across their IT ecosystem without changing the underlying technology foundation.” In News.com: "This is stuff they've already got," .... Huh? Perhaps Josh was having a tough day? 5:48:37 PM    comment []

Goodman Gives Kimmel "Thumbs Up!" You may ask yourself, "Do we really need another 'Late Night' guy?" According to Tim Goodman http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/17/DD177972.DTL, whom my appreciation grows for daily, regardless of whether we need one, we got one and one that happens to do quite well, thank you very much. My favorite quote from the discussions. Kimmel apparently angered NBC and Jay (as in Leno), when TV Guide interviewed Kimmel, Kimmel described his show as, "a comedy version of 'The Tonight Show.'" Premiers Super Bowl Sunday ...   5:40:15 PM    comment []