Burning Lemons

I know nothing about NFL so I have no idea why I am so excited about my first reason to stay up late to watch stuff coming out of the US this week (the second being Super Tuesday which I will start covering in way too much depth very shortly).

From what I can make out of this this one isn’t going to be that great given that the New England Patriots haven’t lost at all this year, a stunning achievement in any sport. However being the clueless newbie I will of course be cheering for the New York Giants leave support, abuse and lectring over my decision in the comments.

Enjoy the game!

 Update: Clearly it was my rining endorsment in this post that caused the New York Giants to win so well done gentlemen

The entire tech community was shaken today by the news that a long running rumour has actually turned out to be true! Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion dollars (more than the entire GDP of Kenya or Luxembourg according to the CIA World Factbook) to buy “rival” internet company Yahoo!

Many people have claimed that this will almost certainly be blocked by regulators but since Yahoo isn’t doing great and Windows Live (despite being pretty ok in my opinion) has totally failed to catch on. MSN/Live is solely reliable on it’s popular MSN IM protocol and Yahoo’s only good decision of the last 5 years was buying flickr. Google on the other hand has had significantly fewer mistakes GMail has grown incredibly quickly, the core search business remains really strong, Google Docs is catching on (slowly), everyone seems to have Google Desktop (though no-one uses it to search) and Picasa does quite well. Vista hasn’t done well for Microsoft and no-one seems to use Office ‘07 nor has the Zune and no-one I have spoken to really likes the new hotmail and Yahoo has basically done nothing, well it’s done lots but only the core service of Mail still does any good.

So the deal could either kill them both by combining two companies with weak product development or perk them up by combining two companies with good core products and good cash reserves for future devlopment.

Dull bit: Just to clarify Microsoft has only made an offer and Yahoo! is yet to accept or decline it

Twitter took another of its increasingly frequent nose dives this afternoon. Twitter has fast become my favourite web 2.0 type social networking tool. Even though I don’t really get myspace or Facebook I really like reading 140 character updates of other folks lives. Those of you on twitter prepare for 100 ZOMG TWITTER WAZ DOWN posts in a few hours when it finally pulls out of its tailspin.

Hurrah! It’s time for another primary which means CNNi gets to take away CNN Today and provide us with wonderful election night ‘alternatives’ such as Lou Dobbs Tonight (seriously who the hell is that guy and why does he have a TV show). Then we will have the ‘best political team in the business’ spending 4 hours telling us what a great political team they are and occasionally mentioning the voting thing that seems to be happening in Florida right now. On the other hand Al Jazeera may send Dave Marish to stand in a room and tell me nothing I don’t know. The BBC will send Katty Kay out in snowboots to talk to some old Nixon Republican and a desperate Edwards supporter and France 24 will desperately try to scrape together enough euros to afford a flight to Florida.

 OK I guess this is the point where I give you my view on the whole thing, I was kind of ok with Guliani until I read an article in Vanity Fair (I know, I know) about his sleazy business links and that put me right off him so I now don’t even have a ‘least worst’ option for them. For the Dems (even though tonight doesn’t count for reasons I don’t understand) Obama seems the best bet but anyone who isn’t Clinton will do.  

Update: The Primary has been and gone and the projected results have been borne out. What worries me though is how well Clinton did once we finally got to a big state. It will be interesting to see if similar results come on Super Tuesday.

Welcome along to Burning Lemons, the successor to the Rants and Raves vox blog. We’re currently kitting this place out so thanks for your patience while we unpack and arrange the furniture.