Assorted musings

DeviantArt gets 1.5 billion page views a month, making it one of the most popular Web sites that many people have never even heard of.

Despite the name, only a fraction of the art on the site is what might be labeled deviant. In reality, the site boasts millions of user-uploaded works of art, everything from photography to 3D digital conceptual art to old-fashioned canvas-and-paint portraits.

Think of it as a YouTube for artists trying to show their own work. Pieces can be viewed, commented on, even added to a user's own gallery of favorites. The range of … Read more

Microsoft has renamed its enterprise health care business to something with a whole lot fewer Scrabble points.

The software maker said the Azyxxi product line, which Microsoft acquired in July 2006, will now be known as Amalga.

"One of the health care enterprise's biggest issues is that providers and executives can't access patient information when, where and how they need it," Microsoft health unit general manager Steve Shihadeh said in a statement. "Microsoft's Amalga products offer proven solutions that bring together information from across the health care enterprise into one, easily accessible view. In … Read more

Jerry Yang has already gotten calls from Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt, but he's having trouble filling up the rest of his five faves.

Try as Yahoo might, apparently no one wants to bid against Microsoft's bulging bank account.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night that no serious bidders have emerged to rival Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. The one party most interested in scuttling Microsoft's efforts--Google--faces uphill regulatory battles in almost any kind of partnership, alliance or investment it might want to do.

The clock is ticking. Does anyone other than Ballmer … Read more

I've always been leery of Microsoft Outlook's autocomplete feature. That's the one that guesses who you want to send the e-mail to by looking at the first few letters you type.

It's right most of the time.

But with e-mail used to send everything from jokes, to family photos to corporate secrets, "most of the time" seems like far too low a bar.

Eli Lilly and its outside lawyers found out this the hard way this week when one of the esquires sent a note intended for a colleague to a New York Times … Read more

It remains to be seen how much Bill Gates' plea for creative capitalism changes the face of business, but it has certainly sparked a considerable amount of discussion at Davos and elsewhere.

It is common for the topic of the poor to come up at the gathering of the mega-rich known as the World Economic Forum. But the notion that businesses themselves are responsible, at least in part, for solving poverty has gained increased attention at this year's forum, according to reports coming out of the Swiss ski resort town.

According to Marketwatch, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced … Read more

As a tech writer, it's not uncommon to see a press release or a photo of some new gadget and have an instant sensation of "I need that."

But, I'm not sure the words have ever been more true than when I saw the info on Inada's latest massage chair, the Sogno.

I've been in a colossally bad mood today, for no particular reason. But I am sure 15 minutes (OK, 30 minutes) in this baby would do the trick. It uses an infrared body scan to determine a particular individual's central acupressure … Read more

UPDATE: The actual speech is available for viewing.

Few people have benefited more from capitalism than Bill Gates.

But these days, Microsoft's chairman is seeing first-hand the failures of the market system and is now calling on businesses to take greater responsibility for those left out in the cold by the free market.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates is calling on companies to think more broadly about how their products can benefit society.

Much of Gates' work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has centered on two particular shortcomings of … Read more

Most people compare Bill Gates' keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show and Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo address by analyzing the relative strength of the products announced.

That's all fine and dandy, but what about looking at the words themselves? That's exactly what the ever-resourceful Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has done. In a blog posting Tuesday, Bishop includes a tag cloud showing the most frequently used words by each, as well as an analysis of the rate of big words used by each.

In terms of which words came up the most, a tag cloud shows words … Read more

While most of Steve Jobs' energy on Tuesday was spent touting the new MacBook Air, the Apple chief did take some time to praise longtime rival Bill Gates, who plans to stop working full-time at Microsoft at the end of June.

"Bill's retiring from Microsoft is a big deal," Jobs told the New York Times. "It's a significant event, and I think he should be honored for the contributions he's made."

I'm guessing Jobs probably won't issue a Bill Gates edition iPod, but the two have been making nice in public, … Read more