As Bill Gates prepares to walk away from Microsoft, both the man and the company he founded will face challenges getting along without each other, according to the new issue of Newsweek magazine.
Gates, who is stepping down from his full-time role at Microsoft this week to focus on his $37 billion charitable foundation, is the subject of an article that profiles Microsoft's successes and failures during his tenure, as well as the difficult transition the company and its founder will likely face. (CNET News.com plans to publish its own retrospective on Gates' departure, but in the meantime, you might want to refresh yourself with some stories from when the transition was announced.)
We will likely be seeing more of Bill Gates with people such as U2 front man Bono (like in this video), working on famine relief and education.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com)While the Newsweek story mentions Microsoft's challenges in antitrust probes, Windows Vista versus Windows XP, and the Internet search arena, the story also offers intimate perspectives from the people who know him the best, as well as Gates himself.
"He's not just Bill Gates, he's the Bill Gates," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO and Gates' right-hand man for decades:
He founded the company, he's accumulated this wealth, he's got this foundation, he's got this fame. That's irreplaceable. Also, Bill grew up with every one of the technologies in this company. He's got more capacity to remember things than anybody I've ever known. It's unlikely we'll have anybody again who has that breadth.
Gates was also responsible for stoking the fires of urgency at the software giant, said Ray Ozzie, who took over Gates' job as chief software architect:
A lot of the company's strength is that Bill created a culture of crisis--if there weren't a Google, we'd have to make one. This is a period of unprecedented strength for the company. If there had to be a time when Bill transitioned out, we couldn't have set it up better than it is right now.
Paul Allen, who co-founded the company with Gates, remarked from the perspective of his own departure from the company in 1983:
You don't always realize how dramatic that transition is going to be when people aren't depending on your decisions day by day.
So how about Bill? Is he going to miss being in the trenches, slugging it out with Apple, Google, and Mozilla? It doesn't sound like it from what he told the magazine:
This whole thing about which operating system somebody uses is a pretty silly thing versus issues involving starvation or death.
There are tons of Facebook apps, many that seem to be, well, silly and useless.
A new app that will help a nonprofit coordinate blood donation is really worthwhile and could make a significant direct impact on people's lives.
The app from New York nonprofit Takes All Types sends Facebook alerts to people who opt in and will send reminders for regular donation, according to The New York Times.
"We were reacting to our sense that most of what was on Facebook was too academic or frivolous," Ben Bergman, who created the program, told the newspaper.
However, one Facebook member who posted a comment on the Takes All Types Facebook page brought up some good privacy questions:
"Does TAT act as a confidential medium? Is contact information ever provided to third parties (blood banks, Dept. of Health, hospitals, etc.)? Suppose diseased blood enters (the) supply, and authorities know it is type AB+. Will TAT turn the data of all its AB+ users in a given area over to the CDC or legal authorities if required by court order? Or is there a purposeful level of anonymity built into the system to shield TAT from such responsibilities?"
I look forward to seeing more Facebook apps like this that enable people to do more on Facebook than just share photos and poke each other.
Trying to keep cool and get some shut-eye while waiting in line for the iPhone
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)High noon. The rain's stopped, thankfully, but now it's sunny and sweltering in New York. I stopped by the downtown Apple Store in SoHo right around midday, and the dozen or so people waiting in line for the iPhone were now using their umbrellas as parasols. Luckily, Apple Store representatives were walking around handing out free bottles of SmartWater (is that what they feed them at the Genius Bar?) to the queuers.
At the front of the line, as previously reported, is a group of volunteers from Keep a Child Alive, the foundation that had staked out the number-one spot as a way to raise awareness and benefit from the heavy media coverage that the iPhone launch is getting. Johnny Vulkan, from the Anomaly advertising agency that represents Keep a Child Alive, was on hand to fill me in on some of the donations the foundation has scored: Netflix and Six Flags have offered to "sponsor," meaning that in return for a donation to Keep a Child Alive, their logos will be displayed by the volunteers in line; and there's a possibility of eBay doing something as well.
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