So this blonde walks into a bar ...

Well, not really, but I would guess that 99% of readers would interpret that title as an indication that this post contains a blonde joke... and they're right.

Last year I replaced all the computers in my office with those new energy efficient kind from IBM, and today I got a call from the IBM Business Partner who installed them. He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I still hadn’t paid for them.

HELLLOOOOOOO…………..just because I’m blond doesn’t mean that I am automatically stupid.

So, I reminded him what his fast talking sales guy had told me then, that in ONE YEAR these computers would PAY FOR THEMSELVES!

Helllooooo……??? It’s been a year already!

There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up..

He never called back. I bet he felt like an idiot.

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The Microsoft Ministry of Truth

When Albert Einstein was confronted by a publication entitled "100 Scientists against Einstein" he replied quite succinctly, "If I had been wrong one scientist would have been enough."

When I am confronted with adjective-laden articles written in the style of Julia White's publication I think to myself, "If she was right, then the facts alone would have been enough"

"... costs and antiquated architecture of Lotus Notes and Domino."
"... complicated, proprietary Notes applications."

Puh-lease!!! Someone find me a bucket to laugh into. Alright, it's from last September and this type of marketing is nothing new from Microsoft but I had to comment on the sheer chutzpah of this comment:

"IBM may even respond with a press release announcing ‘new’ customers, who are, in most cases, simply deciding to keep Notes a bit longer."

I suppose I shouldn't laugh. After all, marketing your product by making kindergarten-logic unsupported statements like this is what got Hitler elected and it's all the rage in Iran where the current dictatorship is currently having a great time demonizing ( + imprisoning + torturing + killing) their opposition.

How can you reason with these people?
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Interesting result when googling Foundations

This morning I googled for 'Lotus Foundations' on pages from Australia and found the following result:



Our international colleagues may not have heard of EOS Solutions or ISW. They are two of our local Lotus Business Partners and given the comparatively small size of the Australian market we all find ourselves in friendly competition now and again.

It's amazing how the Foundations product pages on these two sites are now heading the local Google page rankings for Lotus Foundations despite the fact that Foundations has not yet been officially launched in Australia. I'm shocked to realize that despite my daily preoccupation with researching and blogging about Lotus Foundations Server I have missed every reference to these two organisations in the local IT news. I must be looking in the wrong places since their high page rank shows they are doing a far better job of marketing Foundations than anyone else including IBM!

Surely that must be the reason ;)

Tim, you may need to have a $erious talk with your PR agency to see how EOS beat you to the top spot.

It's interesting that Google searches for 'Lotus Domino', 'Lotus SameTime' or 'Lotus Quickr' don't produce the same results, but given the apparently overwhelming market presence of these two consulting powerhouses I'm sure that's only a matter of time.

Go to it guys!


Heh... heh... heh...
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