morgan

While the adaptation of BioShock into a movie seemed like a no-brainer, the announcement of a Gears of War film doesn't exactly carry with it the same weight.

There's no doubt that this title was a huge success, let alone an absolute blast to play, but there's something to be said about the story and whether or not it can carry an entire feature-length film. How many times can you tell the tale of "aliens invade Earth, big tough dudes stop them?"

Stepping up to the task of directing the Gears of War movie is … Read more

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, said Tuesday that he likes Netflix and has no wish to see the company kill its nascent streaming movie service.

I wrote Monday that Pachter was being too short sighted by questioning the size of Netflix's investment in a streaming-movie service. After reading the research report Pachter issued last week, I believe his arguments deserve closer examination.

Quotes from Pachter appeared in a story last week in Portfolio.com (via Wired.com) about how the costs of establishing a digital rental service are making some Netflix investors nervous. Pachter speculated in … Read more

Google has found its new chief information officer, CNET News.com has learned: Benjamin Fried, a programmer who rose through the ranks to run much of Morgan Stanley's computing infrastructure.

Fried, a managing director who led Morgan Stanley's Application Infrastructure group, will take the new post in May, Google spokesman Matt Furman confirmed Thursday.

According to an internal Morgan Stanley memo seen by News.com, Fried will leave Morgan Stanley at the end of the month "to pursue opportunities outside the firm."

The memo also indicated that Fried is no stranger to Google. While at Morgan … Read more

Hydrogen fuel-cell projects are usually only the realm of global automakers such as General Motors, Ford Motor, and Honda, with enormous R&D budgets and a few thousand spare engineers. Boutique British carmaker Morgan is bucking the trend, however, with the unveiling of its LifeCar fuel-cell vehicle here in Geneva. The car is powered by four electric motor/generators, which in turn are driven by electricity from a four-stack hydrogen PEM fuel cell provided by QinetiQ, a British defense technology company. Morgan claims that the LifeCar differentiates itself from other fuel-cell cars through improved efficiencies: the fuel cell is … Read more

On this side of the pond, the marquee alternative-energy sports car is the electric-powered Tesla Roadster. In the U.K., it's the Morgan Lifecar, which uses hydrogen fuel cells, though apparently they don't generate nearly the power of your average street-legal internal combustion engine. So Morgan Motor has also incorporated a bank of ultracapacitors to help with acceleration and hill climbing, and it's keeping things light(weight) with an aluminum chassis, wooden seats, and a lack of certain modern amenities ranging from a stereo to airbags.

Yes, for now it's just a concept car (backed by … Read more

Microsoft has tried the front-door approach in wooing Yahoo. But, pssst, the backdoor is unlocked.

The software maker, in its pursuit of Yahoo, has tried knocking on the Internet search pioneer's front door, then banging with its unsolicited bid, and now it's two weeks away from using a battering ram, should the deadline remain fast and firm to name an opposition slate to Yahoo's board.

But the backdoor has plenty of potential.

Yahoo's nonexecutive board chairman, Roy Bostock, and Microsoft director Charles Noski both serve on the board of investment bank Morgan Stanley. With Morgan Stanley'… Read more

Morgan Stanley is the banker representing Electronic Arts in its unsolicited buyout bid for rival game publisher Take-Two, the investment bank confirmed Monday.

While that news alone is no big deal, consider this: Morgan Stanley is also representing Microsoft in its unsolicited buyout offer for Yahoo, which was announced a mere 25 days ago.

That's two megabillion-dollar buyout bids the premier investment banking firm has agreed to handle in the past month. And both have the potential to get mean and nasty, should the target companies kick and scream all the way to the altar.

So, this raises the … Read more

I read a lot. Well, as much as I can, anyway, usually six to ten books a month. It's a welcome distraction from work and a useful source of inspiration for my own writing-- and work. One never knows when a PowerPoint slide might benefit from a clever turn of phrase...

I got hooked on… Read more

This next installment has us "In the trenches with...Ryan Morgan of Hyperic. When I asked Javier for his recommendation on an "unsung hero" at Hyperic he suggested Ryan. I demurred once I heard Ryan's title (Chief Software Architect). But Javier insisted, informing me that Ryan had grown with the company. He wasn't blessed with executive status from Day One, but instead proved himself over time.

Since that's precisely the sort of tenacity that I was looking for in this series, I capitulated. Here's a guy who has done just about everything at Hyperic (including the accounting), and who helped to see the company through its sometimes rough transition from Covalent Technologies to Hyperic. Talk about bootstrapping....

Ryan is particularly interesting because he represents the next (people) wave of open source: developers and business people who have never known anything beyond open source. Ryan's first job was an open source company. I suspect his last will be, too.

Name, company, title, and what you actually do

Ryan Morgan, Co-founder and Chief Software Architect, Hyperic. My primary role at Hyperic is the technical lead for Hyperic's main product, Hyperic HQ. In addition to those responsibilities I frequently engage with Hyperic's larger customers to ensure their HQ deployments are successful. I'm also an active member of Hyperic's online community. Prior to Hyperic raising funding I also managed Hyperic's books, though I think that had more to do with being the son of a CPA than it did my financial skills.… Read more