Page views have become the key to my self esteem. I'm flattered to tears when the Rumor Mill receives more than the 30 or 60 visits a day I've come to expect from Grandma DuBaud and Vermel, but I won't leave my bed for days if the hits slip.
Of course, my ego would be the size of a refrigerator if I had Yahoo's page turns. The search engine-cum-media company boasted this week that it has become the McDonald's of the Internet, proudly serving up more than a billion pages of mediocre search results to Web-struck users last month. Incidentally, a dozen of those page views represent unsuccessful searches I did on Elvis Presley's eating habits; I confess, I didn't look at a single advertisement.
With that kind of traffic, it's obvious the Yahooligans are running their servers on more than hamster trail. Considering its high-profile m?nage a deux with Netscape, it's natural to assume Yahoo is powered by some glimmering HTTP server from Barksdale and Company.
Bzzzt! Wrong! Yahoo's sites are mostly powered by the freeware Apache Web server, I hear. Even Netscape Guide by Yahoo--an adjunct to Netscape's own Web site--is run by a trusty Apache 1.1.1 server.
Netscape probably doesn't care whether Yahoo runs the site on una Amiga as long as it gets the $25 million in ad revenue over the next two years Yahoo promised. Still, shouldn't a company that makes 37 percent of its revenue from servers be able to persuade a strategic partner to use its own goods?
Larry Ellison's chief good is, of course, his ego, not databases. Evidence of the former saturates the latest edition of the glossy, high-brow slam book, Vanity Fair. The ten-page piece documents among other things his Bill-envy, public groping, and unsportsmanlike conduct. But it's amusing to see Larry's I'm-the-Messiah-of-Apple schtick blown up into pull quotes. "By the time this article comes out, I should be chairman of Apple," he brags. Yeah, right. Dream on, Larry. Dream on. (Larry also got a two-page spread in Time this week.)
From one tycoon to the next: Bill Gates probably wishes he'd never heard the word Java. By now, the Redmondians' preference for Windows-specific Java programs is well-known. But it took a step towards absurdity this week when the company announced it had changed its guidelines for branding software with the "Designed for Windows 95 and NT" logos. Java applications, too, can carry the logo. (They must run and redistribute the Microsoft Win32 Virtual Machine.) Whatever happened to write once, run anywhere? Write to me once with a good rumor, and I'll run anywhere you like.