After writing a “where are the women?” at Sun post last month, my partner Heidi reminded me that two high profile Silicon Valley CEO’s – Carol Bartz (Autodesk) and Kim Polese (Sun, SpikeSource) – are Sun alums. Last weekend, the Rocky Mountain News ran a nice profile of Barbara Bauer, VP of Software Engineering and Development at Sun’s Louisville, CO campus. Bauer (no relation to Jack as far as I know) was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and had some good thoughts about attracting new blood into the technology field.

EDS announced yesterday that it was awarded the majority of the five-year multibillion-dollar General Motors system integration services awards. This is worth $3.8 billion over five years and – when added to the existing GM business that EDS has that was not rebid – results in annualized revenues of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion of revenue for EDS. This is a huge deal for EDS. In early 2004 when EDS acquired the Feld Group (my uncle Charlie Feld’s company – I was an investor), the GM contract renewal was one of the major concerns that investment analysts had about the future success of EDS, as there was a substantial amount of business being rebid and there were concerns that most of it would go to companies other than EDS. While EDS’s share of GM’s outsourcing revenue will be reduced, the going forward revenue is higher then most people expected. As a result, a major long term concern about EDS has been put to rest. 

It’s a “two-fer” day on the Friends Blogging channel. Mike Hirshland – a partner at Polaris Ventures – has started blogging. Definitely worth following if you are into VC-bloggers.

My friend and almost relative (fiance of my wife Amy’s sister) Stacy Maxwell has started a blog. Last fall at the age of 28 Stacy was diagnosed with Berkitt’s Lymphoma and his life (and his fiance Wendy’s, and his family’s) was turned upside down. Stacy has handled things incredibly well, was dedicated to his treatment, and is currently in remission. He’s started to write about his experience – if you have a friend or family member with cancer, Stacy’s story will resonate and might be helpful.

I’ve been deeply involved in the email business for the past decade through investments in companies like Postini, Return Path, Critical Path, MessageMedia, and Email Publishing and have been involved in the challenges of separating spam from legitimate email for a long time. On Monday, AOL announced a set of changes that I think are a gigantic step backward for users of email. While their announcement – that they are phasing out their IP-based Enhanced Whitelist and implementing Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program – seems simple enough, I believe it is ultimately validation and support for “paid spam.”

If you are interested in Sling Media’s $46m financing by the likes of Liberty Media, EchoStar, and Goldman Sachs, my partner Ryan McIntyre (who sits on their board) has his view of it.

I decided today was a retro day at the office and decided to see if some of my old computers still worked. My dad cleaned out his attic last week and sent me all of my old computers. My Compaq Plus – which hadn’t been booted up since 1988 – started up immediately. While it had PFS Write and WordPerfect on it, there was no TCP/IP stack or Ethernet card. So – I downshifted to my old Apple II.

Niel Robertson, the CTO of Newmerix, has what I anticipate will become a legendary blog post up called I Pity The Fool that dissects Oracle’s recent “Half Way To Fusion” event. In addition to casting John Wookey (Oracle’s SVP of Application Development) as Mr. T, Niel does an extraordinary job of walking through what Oracle has announced and what he thinks it means for Oracle’s customers. If you use (or more importantly are responsible for managing and deploying) Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, or Siebel applications, you must read this. At the minimum you’ll get a great laugh out of it.

Other than reading a bunch of blog posts about the Google / China thing, I hadn’t paid much attention to it. Early today, I got an email that fits the proverbial “picture is worth a thousand words” cliche. Google Search for Tiananmen Square Google Search for Tiananmen Square from China I wasn’t able to try this using chinese characters (er – I don’t know chinese and I’m tired and lazy after running a marathon yesterday) so this might be a spoof. But – if not – enough said.