JAMES HARDING - VIEW FROM THE VALLEY
Build-to-order was touted the destroyer of the reseller channel and booster of vendor margins. Heavyweights like Compaq chief Eckhard Pfeiffer - and he's about as heavy as they get in the PC industry - said direct sales are the way of the future. Oh, and all these vendors are working in conjunction with their valued and adored channel partners, of course.
Many analysts said resellers and distributors must change to avoid defeat from direct sales. As usual, the industry proved the experts wrong because channel companies are more important to vendors than they thought. They needed the channel to help with assembly and delivery to fulfil the orders - the things they were good at in the first place, which vendors do not have the ability to do themselves.
Now Compaq admits it has too much inventory as a result of its build-to-order programme and direct sales. IBM and Hewlett Packard have also struggled to realise profit from their respective schemes. It seems the great white sales hope of build-to-order has proved it will destroy vendor margins.
Blame it on the plebs in Levi's
Money making machine Gilbert Amelio, former Apple chief executive, earned over $10 million for working at the company for just 500 days. Now he has found another way to wring cash out of his old job.
In May, he will publish a book, My 500 Days at Apple. In the book, Amelio claims that Apple founder Steve Jobs pushed the board of directors to fire him, despite Jobs' previous view that Amelio was the only man capable of returning Apple to profit.
He also accuses Apple staff and their culture of clashing with him because they dressed in a more laid back (less expensive) way. 'Brioni suits and Oxfords meeting Levi's and Birkenstocks,' he said. Charming.
It was all their fault, of course, and poor Amelio had to resort to writing a book to make sure he can retire in even more obscene luxury.
Amelio has also written a book about his time running National Semiconductor, where he amassed a fortune by getting the company out of financial trouble by drastically cutting costs. Its title is fitting: Profit from Experience.
Quite - he did.
Another Apple ex who hopes to make money by writing a book about his life at Apple is Gordon Thygeson, a former employee at the manufacturer's Cupertino headquarters. But his tone is a bit less cutting. He has chronicled Apple's history with photographs of all the Apple T-shirts he has collected over the years.
He has 62 himself and has photographed over 1,000 lurid, funny, boring and mainly unfashionable T-shirts for the book. I suppose that now Thygeson has left Apple it is a case of been there, done that, got the 62 T-shirts.
Bring down the bunnies
The latest obsession in the US and Silicon Valley over the past few days has been over football - the Superbowl - even though the San Francisco 49ers lost in the semi-final. TV ads shown during the game cost over $2 million per slot, but that has not deterred giants like Intel from splashing out on air time.
Famed for its Intel Inside campaign, the Intel marketing department has, of course, tried to upstage everyone. The company is showing the first half of its ad at the start of the game and is encouraging viewers to vote on which ending they would like to see. The ending which gets the most votes will be shown during a break just before the end of the game.
Comedian Steve Martin is providing the voice-over for the ad, which is set up as a mystery about a missing Pentium processor, but Intel will not say what the choices for the ending are all about.
Personally, I'm hoping everyone votes for a group of horseriding hunters to chase and massacre the Intel 'Bunny People', the shiny suit wearing, over-enthusiastic Intel technicians. Now that is what I would call sporting entertainment.
Ticket to ride
Many US cities have found a solution to a problem every city has - bureaucracy.
Nobody wants to work in places where people pay taxes or parking tickets, renew car registrations and fill in forms. Even fewer people want to go to places where all you do is suffer endless queues, unhelpful staff and fill forms in triplicate.
And the solution is not to abolish taxes, registrations and parking tickets, before you suggest that idea.
Cities in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas have introduced computer kiosks to handle all these things as an experiment. New York has also done it, except it is typical of New York and charges a small fee, while also covering its costs with on-screen ads.
I can only see one problem - computer-operated parking ticket kiosks don't listen to your excuses or let you off when you shout at them.
Dead as a doornail, but he can still croon
It could only happen in the US - Elvis is on tour. Throughout March, Elvis' musical director and conductor, his backing orchestra and his original concert cast and musicians will tour eight cities with 10 shows across the country.
And the blue suede-shoed, hip-thrusting, all shook up one himself? Let the press release explain: 'The late Elvis Presley, via the magic of computers and video, will sing lead vocal ... projected on a large video screen hovering above centre stage.'
Elvis sings, dances, makes stage entrances and exits, talks to the audience, interacts with all the live action on stage and even introduces the cast.
The King of Rock 'n' Roll's presence is so strong, you forget he isn't really there in person, according to the press release.
Perhaps the video is just an illusion and Elvis really will be there.
James Harding is US editor of VNU Newswire based in San Francisco.
He can be reached at [email protected] or on 00 1 415 306 0879.