More emails have been released in the Vista Capable case this afternoon. Including more on the email exchanges between Microsoft’s Ballmer and Intel’s Otellini and the loosening of the ‘Vista Capable’ requirements. Microsoft senior vice president Will Poole e-mailed Ballmer:

Steve, following up on the call you took from Paul today, we have changed our program so that Intel’s current integrated parts qualify for ‘Vista Capable’ branding …

This change completely resolves their problem.

Also released were some emails regarding Best Buy’s CEO wanting to talk to Ballmer about Vista-related issues. One Microsoft executive described Best Buy as “whining.” while another was not too pleased, saying:

We feel BBY is being ridiculous in trying to escalate to Ballmer but it is their MO

Just in case there was any doubt that Microsoft wasn’t aware of ‘Vista Issues’ here’s a great email from Steven Sinofsky to Ballmer and ccing Bill Gates about issues with his Vista running laptop:

I still do not have a machine that is as reliable as XP for productivity use. I gave one presentation at Harvard this week where I just kept losing the signal to an external monitor which is a new driver model problem. I gave one at CMU where I spent 10 minutes trying to make sound come out of the external output jack which is a problem with Intel’s HD audio drivers.

And then we have board member Jon Shirley complaining to Ballmer about driver problems, to which Ballmer responded:

the drivers is painful i do not disagree but of course the real problem was we blew almost 2.5 of the 5 years we cannot do that again

Source: The Microsoft Blog

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Julius Genachowski: Obama asked for Julius' help in picking a CTO, and speculation runs high Julius might pull a Cheney and suggest himself. Julius knows all the right people: he's a Harvard Law school chum of Barack's, a former general counsel at IAC (IACI), and a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Souter. Bonus: Valleywag hates him.

Don Gips: Don is chief strategy officer at Level 3 Communications (LVLT), and like Julius, already close to Obama and on the transition team. What makes Don a candidate: He was previously Al Gore's chief adviser on technology issues, has deep ties within the Democratic party, and served as chief of the FCC International Bureau under the Clintons. Also a McKinsey alum.

Charles "Chuck" E. Phillips, Jr.: Chuck is president and director of Oracle (ORCL), and a director at Viacom (VIA) and Morgan Stanley (MS) as well. He came to Oracle after a Wall Street career at several investment banks, and served a few years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he promoted to captain. Chuck's downside: He backed the wrong horse early, having financially backed the Hilary Clinton campaign before executing a 180 and giving heavily to Barack.

Perhaps more importantly: What the heck is Obama's CTO going to do, anyway? Why does this position matter? How much power will he or she have? The "what" here is probably more important than "who."

See Also: Obama CTO Search Gets Help

It's about time. IAC's subscriptions-supported Match.com reported $93.5 million revenues in third quarter, but Facebook could do much better.

AllFacebook, which first spotted the personal ad, reports that the New York Times charges personal ad rates of $48 per week, $72 for two weeks and $96 for four weeks. Considering that Facebook-using romance-seekers would be able to target who sees their ads by age, city, interests, employment, college and religion, we feel Facebook could charge more.

Think someone looking for a Greek orthodox Harvard-educated bankruptcy lawyer with a thing for ballet and ice-fishing would pay a premium? We do.

See Also:
Here's A Billion-Dollar Business For Facebook
Facebook Now Worth About $4 Billion, Revenue Light

Now why on earth would Facebook substitute precious advertising space to alert you to one of your friends? Honestly, I don’t think they would. Instead, I believe (which is as of yet unconfirmed) that Facebook is testing out an ad network for displaying personals. I’ve discussed with a number of friends the opportunity for personals ads on Facebook.

Imagine being able to target potential matches based on their profile. There is tons of data including the schools they went to (for instance if you only want to date Harvard grads), the interests they have, and numerous other data. Rather than having a cost per click (CPC), or cost per thousand impressions (CPM), you can have a cost per date (CPD)!

Still Speculation

This is complete speculation though unfortunately. Perhaps Facebook is having inventory issues due to the struggling economy and decided to place other internal advertisements as filler. Typically the company would place advertisements for their own ad platform though and not substitute advertisements for friends.

As such, it’s difficult for me to rationalize any alternative reasons for Facebook to display profile previews of friends without the long-term goal of making it an alternative to the traditional “personals”; the dating ads that used to be popular in newspapers. Can you think of any other reason that Facebook would test this out? Honestly, I think this could be extremely popular.

Update
I just called the New York Times to find out their rates for personals ads, and they quoted $48 for one week, $72 for two weeks, and $96 for four weeks. That’s not a bad business and considering that the advertisements are not targeted, Facebook could be a great substitute.

Having difficulties trying to get people to understand you?

One way to get your message across in a more effective manner is just to simplify what you’re trying to say.  Cut the jargon, use simpler words, and you’ll be surprised how much more receptive your audience or readers may be.   This is often simpler said than done, and for that reason I introduce to you… one of my favorite pieces of writing freeware - Bullfighter.

Bullfighter was released in 2003 by Deloitte Consulting, to help with better writing but has since been released for free to the public.   What it is really, is a Microsoft Office add-in for Word and Powerpoint which will analyze your work, tell you how complex it is, and potentially help you simplify and make it better.

For example, after I had recently finished a report, I ran the Bullfighter add-in which then analyzed my work and confirmed that my document had no jargon (bull-free).  In case you’re wondering - yes you can add your own jargon to the list of words Bullfighter will mark down as ‘bull’, so its really quite flexible in that respect.

Bullfighter also analyses sentence length, and syllables per word to help ensure waffling is minimized.  On top of that, it also gives you something called the Flesch score.  This famous test was designed in the 1960’s and is still relevant today, and is used to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of English.  Higher scores indicate material that is easier to read; lower numbers mark “more difficult to read” passages.

• Where a score of 90–100 means that it is easily understandable by an average 11-year old student
• 60–70 would easily be understandable by 13- to 15-year old students
• and 0–30 would be best understood by college graduates

To give you an idea of what that means, according to Wikipedia:

Reader’s Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30’s.

So as you can see, a low score doesn’t necessarily mean a bad score - it just means that it’s better understood by a wider audience, which in most cases - is a good thing.

Finally, Bullfighter also comes with a nifty online tool called the ‘Mystery Matador’ which helps you to analyze and anonymously send scores by email to some of your friends or colleagues who just love to ramble on and on.  All you need to do is copy and paste their letter or any other document text in the mystery matador.   Bullfighter will measure the jargon and verbosity, and send an email with a link to their score for free.

Do you use other cool writing tools?  Would love to hear your thoughts!

(By) James helps others solve everyday problems with simple technology on his blog Friedbeef.com

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New subscriber? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

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Having difficulties trying to get people to understand you?

One way to get your message across in a more effective manner is just to simplify what you’re trying to say.  Cut the jargon, use simpler words, and you’ll be surprised how much more receptive your audience or readers may be.   This is often simpler said than done, and for that reason I introduce to you… one of my favorite pieces of writing freeware - Bullfighter.

Bullfighter was released in 2003 by Deloitte Consulting, to help with better writing but has since been released for free to the public.   What it is really, is a Microsoft Office add-in for Word and Powerpoint which will analyze your work, tell you how complex it is, and potentially help you simplify and make it better.

For example, after I had recently finished a report, I ran the Bullfighter add-in which then analyzed my work and confirmed that my document had no jargon (bull-free).  In case you’re wondering - yes you can add your own jargon to the list of words Bullfighter will mark down as ‘bull’, so its really quite flexible in that respect.

Bullfighter also analyses sentence length, and syllables per word to help ensure waffling is minimized.  On top of that, it also gives you something called the Flesch score.  This famous test was designed in the 1960’s and is still relevant today, and is used to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of English.  Higher scores indicate material that is easier to read; lower numbers mark “more difficult to read” passages.

• Where a score of 90–100 means that it is easily understandable by an average 11-year old student
• 60–70 would easily be understandable by 13- to 15-year old students
• and 0–30 would be best understood by college graduates

To give you an idea of what that means, according to Wikipedia:

Reader’s Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30’s.

So as you can see, a low score doesn’t necessarily mean a bad score - it just means that it’s better understood by a wider audience, which in most cases - is a good thing.

Finally, Bullfighter also comes with a nifty online tool called the ‘Mystery Matador’ which helps you to analyze and anonymously send scores by email to some of your friends or colleagues who just love to ramble on and on.  All you need to do is copy and paste their letter or any other document text in the mystery matador.   Bullfighter will measure the jargon and verbosity, and send an email with a link to their score for free.

Do you use other cool writing tools?  Would love to hear your thoughts!

(By) James helps others solve everyday problems with simple technology on his blog Friedbeef.com

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New here? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

Related posts

• Recover Your Lost XP, Vista & Office Serial Numbers (14)
• Quick Tip: How To Add Password to Word Documents (6)
• How To Repair Corrupted Word Files (12)
• Give Microsoft Word an Adrenalin Shot (2)
• 6 Free Office Suites That Are NOT Microsoft (32)

Why did the most Republican banks suffer mortal wounds while the least Republican survived? "I have three explanations," Peter told me. "I'm not sure which one is right, but I am sure at least one of them is."

1. A hostile federal bureaucracy. Despite a Republican in the White House, the bureaucrats who staffed the regulatory agencies, the Treasury and the Fed remain unfriendly to the GOP. Consciously or not, they proved unforgiving toward Bear, Lehman and Merrill but sympathetic toward Morgan and Goldman.

2. An inability to accept reality. At the most Republican institutions, the principals believed in free markets--only too devoutly. Even Milton Friedman would never have argued that markets work perfectly all the time, only that they work a lot better than government intervention. But at Bear, Lehman and Merrill, folks became convinced that the markets possessed almost magical properties. When trouble started, they literally couldn't believe it.

3. Uncoolness. All the investment banks recruited at the same elite universities, and political correctness at such schools is profound. (If you want proof, just look at the last election cycle. The faculty at Harvard contributed to Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of 93 to seven.) At Yale and Berkeley and Wharton--at all the elite schools--the Democratic Party is cool; the Republican Party, decidedly not. The least Republican investment banks were therefore able to snap up the best talent, leaving the most Republican firms to pick through the leftovers. "In big financial institutions," Peter said, "it could be that a Republican profile now correlates with technocratic incompetence."

See Also: Peter Thiel's Hedge Fund Blows Up

Well, for one thing, because they're not boneheads. This economy has the potential to become the worst economy since the Great Depression (it isn't yet, thankfully). VCs see this and understand that:

1. Profitable exits are going to be a lot rarer in the next couple of years, and
2. Potential investments--including current portfolio companies--are going to get a lot cheaper in the next few years (and, therefore, returns on future investments are going to get a lot higher than today's) .
   

That logic alone explains why money has gotten so tight so fast. But VC sources say there's also another important dynamic going on: The folks who supply the money that VCs invest--Limited Partners such as pension funds and endowments--are now strapped for cash because the values of their own portfolios have plummeted (and so many of the investments are illiquid). Some are reportedly beginning to default on or defer commitments. In VC-land, in other words, as elsewhere, the oxygen is being sucked out of the room.

Here are some notes from SAI conversations with two VC sources this morning:

There are now unbelievable difficulties in the LP world. Many of the best names are having liquidity problems. They are having trouble meeting capital calls from Private Equity and VC firms and need to sell stocks to get cash. Much of their stock portfolios are tied up in hedge funds with lockups, however, so they can't liquidate those positions.

Some Limited Partners are starting to default on their commitments to VC firms [this is scuttlebutt, not firsthand knowledge; the sources' firms have not seen defaults]. In some cases this can mean they lose their investment to date, but since the LPs think the the VC funds are going to be losers anyway it does not matter. Some second-tier VC funds are reportedly looking at the fine print to see if they can sue the LPs who don't follow through on their commitments.

[In case you don't know how VC funding works: When a VC "raises" a $100 million fund, what the firm really has done is gotten commitments from LPs that they will deliver $100 million over the life of the fund. The firm then issues "capital calls" over the next few years and gradually draws the money down. It is these calls that some LPs are reportedly starting to default on.]

The most agressive LPs have been hurt the most. For example, a rumor is circulating that Columbia's endowment fund is illiquid [can't raise the cash it needs to fund current commitments]. Harvard is trying to sell 1/3 of its private equity portfolio at a steep discount in a secondary offering. You would only do this today if you are really in deep doo doo.* [Private Equity Online is reporting this--see below]

The market price for LP positions in VC funds on average is 75 cents on the dollar. Limited partnership positions in PE funds are selling for 50-60 cents on the dollar. This suggests that $50-$100 billion in value has gone in the past few months from PE funds alone.

The major university endowments are reportedly down 25-30% on a mark-to-market basis [sounds extreme, but certainly possible]. Big universities are heavily in commodities, PE, VC hedge funds, and very little in bonds. They are getting killed across the board

Pension funds are a little bit less aggressive but they also may be more exposed soon.

We have only spoken to a couple of VCs about this, and we assume many firms are not affected. We have heard the endowment scuttlebutt before, though (Princeton was a name that came up a few weeks ago), and it makes sense: University endowments need to fund massive cash spending every year, but they also don't like to compromise annual returns by keeping much of the portfolio in cash. So now that the value of ALL assets has plummeted and so many endowment investments are subject to lock-ups, it certainly sounds plausible that the funds are having trouble raising necessary cash.

Any VCs or LPs care to weigh in? We'd love to hear from you. All sources obviously kept confidential. hblodget@alleyinsider.com.

See Also: Harvard, Yale, et al, Down 25%-30%?