I believe that MS should focus on software, be it service or licenses and not try to be a media advertisement oriented company . This has not  worked  and never will. They must fight Google, Oracle, IBM, Salesforce etc, but in their own field. Despite what everyone says, they are by far the top consumer-software company and come right after IBM in the corporate software market. So all in all, giving up a fancy media portal comes for the best.

(Thanks to IKEA)

Its market cap is US$20.2 billion (half of Yahoo´s), its core business is much more similiar to Microsoft´s and last but not least, Adobe owns a virtual monopoly of the tools to build a much enriched web (including the web 2.n.n.n, videos, animations, 3D graphics etc). Adobe has just released its Adobe AIR and FLEX 3.0 platforms (in their site they even say FLEX is free and open source! How about that?). These tools bring real multimedia capabilities to the web, one thing that Google  text-mining obsessed culture seems  to hate  the most. But hey, do you really think the web will remain this dull all-text environment? I´m betting no.

So wouldn´t it be nice for Microsoft to control  the new tools for the new web? C´mon guys it´s a beautiful monopoly, isn´t it?

Bethany and Roger basically discuss the lives of losers (as they use to say in America) through short entries in this diary. In the meantime Roger keeps writing Glove Pond (a glamorous novel with witty people from the last century based on him and people in Staples). Glove Pond refers to Gum Thief itself (in a sort of recursive way) because the young writer that comes to visit the older one is also writing a novel taking place in Staples, the guy has a slight drinking problem just like Roger. Subtle geekish Coupland: creating strange loops.

The book is fun, but I think I am growing a little tired of pop-geek couplandish structure. But in a way, if books were restaurants, I keep reading him because I was once a very satisfied customer; the meal is just now not so much a novelty anymore.