CHANNEL TALK - PCSQUEALER
CABLE & DIRENESS
Apparently the cable industry is booming. Thank goodness. And who better to show us what a great industry it is then this crazeeeeee guy who has literally covered himself in cables. Ha ha ha. Also, the company where he works has sold so many cables, they could stretch the total length from Lands End to John O'Groats and back again. It's statistics like this that keep the world turning.
KNIGHT HIGH RIDER
Gloria Hunniford is alive and working in the channel, and PC Squealer has the proof. Please say hello to Mrs Tina Knight, managing director of Nighthawk Electronics, who has just received the Outstanding Women Entrepreneur Award which, PC Squealer was told, was presented at 'a special dinner to salute UK women chief executives'. Which isn't patronising at all really. Tina has also been a recipient of lots of other awards, including Business Woman of the Year, Bestest Woman of the Decade, Most Womanliest Woman in the Universe and Woman Oh! Woman. Which all goes towards continuing to put women in categories to be rewarded for being female high achievers.
Call us naive, but shouldn't people being rewarded for being humans who have achieved something? You decide.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Microsoft really is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its fight to defend itself against the numerous companies who are sick to death of being trampled on by the 'software giant'. Big Billy Gates is now paying his lawyers to get copies of emails sent round archrival Netscape by employees moaning about having no bog paper in the toilets and asking why there appears to be live things crawling around in the canteen's casserole. A valid question, indeed, although how this is going to help Microsoft's case with the Department of Justice, God only knows. Although Microsoft's lawyers are, in fact, arguing that Netscape's decline had nothing to do with Bill's company, but lots do to with management errors and weak products. Which is all well and good until you consider what one Netscape staff member said about the whole thing: 'Microsoft is going to pay some lawyer $200 an hour to find out that we hate our cafeteria food.' Such words of wisdom.
ROKKEN ROLL
Mulletts, axes and musicians called Sven. It's all beginning to make sense as PC Squealer rolls back those teenage years to when Whitesnake and Europe rocked you till you dropped and wearing fingerless leather gloves was a way of life. Which is fine until companies choose to remind you of the time that fashion forgot, like the vendor that sent in this abomination of a picture. While it might try to justify sending us this gut-wrenching sight by boring us with details about its work with Britannia Music, there's really is no need to remind us that bands with names like Stryper, Queensryche and - may God forgive us - Dokken used to exist.
CHARMED, I'M SURE
PC Squealer recently received some marketing guff telling us to 'stick our hub where the sun doesn't shine'. Which is kind of ironic considering we've been trying to tell various members of the channel to do the same thing for years.
HAPPY BUNNIES
The channel industry is not known for its morals. And just to prove a point, internet commerce vendor Open Market is trumpeting is latest contract win for - wait for it - Playboy Online. Not only can all those 90s men out there get to grips with their masculinity by gawping at pictures of numerous ladies with ''em oot', but you can also purchase lots of sophisticated goods on the Website - all made possible through technology by Open Market.
God bless it. Among the elegant goods on offer are a 14 carat cigar band ring for all those salesmen who think they're richer than they really are and a Zippo engraved with the Playboy's famous rabbit head. Best of all is the Pamela Anderson computer kit where the 'discerning' gentleman can decorate his PC with pictures of the Baywatch 'babe'. Included in the 'Pammy and her whammies' kit is a mouse mat, dream screen decoration and a wrist mat for when you get a terrible ache in your arm. Through RSI, of course, you saddos.
THE DEVIL'S OWN
The channel's most tasteful distributor RBR has admitted that it has a nickname for Mr Channel himself Richard Bradley, top nob at Cisco. Those wily chaps at RBR, who recently posed in the all-together with only a Cisco router covering their modesty, call the lovely Richard Satan. Why?
PC Squealer has been led to believe it has something to do with his sales targets. Or maybe RBR really did sell its soul to the devil when it promised to become a Cisco-only distributor.
WORD PLAY
Returning to PC Squealer's weekly Bill Gates diatribe, we notice that he seems to be suffering from a case of 'the enemy within'. If you type 'I want to kill Bill Gates' into Microsoft Word (apparently most effective when language is set to US English), highlight the text and click onto the thesaurus, it returns the answer 'hypocritical'. Need we say more?
ACTING ON IMPULSE
An anonymous tip-off had PC Squealer on a wild goose chase this week.
A little japster suggested that in a previous life, Ideal Hardware managing director James Wickes had been something of a thespian. Back in the early 80s, he was apparently the high-flying businessman in the 'That'll do nicely, sir,' American Express advert. But upon approach, the Wickester denied all afore mentioned allegations, which, of course, PC Squealer believes. But if anyone out there knows any different, please feel free to send in some information and, most importantly, some evidence of James' alleged life as an actor.
DI HARD (WITH A VENGEANCE)
Financial researchers The Investext Group kindly sent us a release entitled: 'One year on, markets affected by Diana, Princess of Wales', in which it treated us to such gems as: 'Marks & Spencer estimated that it lost #20 million of sales over Diana's funeral'. It's also found that while sales have dropped, the memorabilia and tourism markets have grown. Check out the brains on Einstein. The Group tries to redeem itself by stating: 'It remains to be seen whether those that have 'benefited' from the tragedy will continue to do so as time passes.' Like researchers that publish embarrassing rubbish on the back of a nation's hysteria?