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In the immediate wake of last weeks attacks on the world Trade Center towers and Pentagon, a couple of vastly different broadcast e-mails were sent out by tech-land officials that were worth noting. For example, about 45 minutes after the attacks, Nicholas Longo, CEO of Web design application company CoffeeCup, sent a brief e-mail to 1.3 million customers. In it, he conveyed sorrow for those who perished in the attacks and said, “We would like to say on record that if any country is found responsible for these attacks, we call for that countrys complete destruction and annihilation.”
The following morning, Longo posted a response on his companys Web site, which said, “I realize today that the word annihilate is a stronger word emotionally than I first realized. I received plenty of hate mail for using this word.”
Although Longos impulse to make use of his customer list to vent steam over an unbelievably horrific event is arguably understandable, the Kitty fielded another e-mail that seemed numbingly thoughtless in the wake of the tragedy. The organizers for Wireless World sent an e-mail minutes after the two planes had struck the WTC that read: “This naturally comes as a shock and we will try to find an alternative venue for the September 24-25, 2001 event.”
Now, His Hirsuteness knows that we cant let terrorism put a stranglehold on our lives or our livelihood, but how anyone could have felt anything but shock during the morning of Sept. 11 is hard to visualize.
Another e-mail that caught the Kittys curiosity was an offering of 9,000 square feet of temporarily vacant New York office space being donated by Bluefly.com to companies displaced by the attack. The Furball couldnt help but wonder if all the down-on-their-luck dot-coms in the Big Apple may ultimately be inadvertent saviors of the U.S. financial markets by having so much empty office space available for business and investment companies.
At press time, it seemed that a grass-roots e-mail campaign was starting to encourage donations of office furniture and computer equipment to also aid the cause.
Trying to get back to business himself, the Tabby heard from a tattler who said InteQ is rumored to be in trouble in the quickly consolidating MSP space. The tipster heard that the company let go of about 50 percent of its staff, including analyst Stephen Elliott—the fellow who claims to have invented the phrase “management service provider.”
“Gotta love that irony,” cackled the Kitty.
Noting the volume of excess IT equipment inventories showing up on eBay lately, the Tawny Titan was amused to hear that someone tried to sell a 20-person engineering department on the well-traveled auction site recently.
A smooth operator tells El Gato that Lucent may have gone too far in shutting down some of its Washington offices. The tattler claims the entire staff of at least one site was laid off during the companys recent cuts.
“For a vendor that makes equipment for a regulated industry, a presence in Washington is a pretty important site to lose,” said the tattler, who also tipped the Kitty that an ISP currently serving areas of the rural Midwest may soon go belly up.