Another Hazy, Crazy Summer in Technoville

What a Summer!

-- Uncle Bill and the Boys from Redmond announced that the Windows 7 operating system will be released in October. Hopefully this won't be just an upgraded version of Vista in sheep's clothing.

-- The wunderkinds at Apple released their Snow Leopard upgrade for the OSX operating system. Unfortunately it's only for those using Macs with Intel processors, leaving a majority of faithful Mac users out in the cold.

-- We discovered that the Sun never sets on Oracle's Larry Ellison, who is awaiting European approval of his purchase of Sun Microsystems. This gives him entry into the mainframe hardware business and adds Java, MySQL (a free database product),Solaris and Sun's free Open Office software to his growing arsenal. Apparently the EU is worried that Oracle would hinder the free distribution of MySQL.

-- Ellison also agreed to take a significant pay cut this year, taking a page from Steve Jobs' economic policy and cutting his salary to a dollar. Of course this doesn't include bonuses.

-- Another season has passed without a significant tech trade show scheduled for NYC. This is the second year New York has been snubbed by major show organizers, with DigitalLife being cancelled at the last minute last year. Press events that usually run concurrent with trade shows, such as Showstoppers and the Pepcom shows, will still be coming to Manhattan, but even they are surely suffering because there's no major show to attract a significant amount of national press coverage.

You can email Michael L. Berman at jocgeek@earthlink.net or through his website at www.jocgeek.com.