My ears are burning

My wife always says your ears are supposed to feel a burning sensation when someone's talking about you. This likely explains why my own oversized ears have been feeling so warm in recent days.

First, I was quoted on the Financial Post's front page yesterday (FP is the business arm of the National Post). David George-Cosh interviewed me for the piece, Microsoft vows to share its software 'secret sauce'. Coolness factor: they used my words for the headline. Even more coolness, he quoted me after Steve Ballmer and before Gill Gates. If you've got to be sandwiched, may as well be by them, right? The piece also published under the headline, Microsoft vows to share with developers. Here's what I said:

"It's like McDonalds releasing the recipe to its secret sauce," said Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting for AR Communications Inc. "Getting that ‘secret sauce recipe' out there, it's enough to stoke interest of the developer community which ensures the viability of its technology going forward."

Next up, I was quoted in another article on page 3 of the same paper: RIM leaps 9% on bullish subscriber forecast. Here's what I said:

With no visible damage from the stormy U.S. economic headwinds, RIM is entering 2008 with its guns blazing and Main Street consumers square in its sights, said Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting for AR Communications Inc.

"A one-cylinder car only has a certain performance potential and at some point you have to diversify your offerings," Mr. Levy said. "In the last year and a half, [RIM] has done a masterful job diversifying themselves from an exclusively enterprise company to one that plays in both enterprise and consumer markets split between them."

[Snip]

Maintaining its close partnerships with carriers around the world has given RIM the clout of a telecom provider without the risk, said Mr. Levy.

"The more you can integrate the offerings, the easier it becomes for carriers to partner with you," said Mr. Levy. "If you can do that, it makes it much easier [for customers] to latch onto the BlackBerry brand."

Third, and quite likely the funniest pickup I've had in some time, Paul Thurrott, noted geek-blogger, ran this somewhat mis-targeted assessment on his Windows IT Pro site: WinInfo Short Takes: Week of February 25, 2008. Here's what he said, and it's a scream:

Best Quote about the Microsoft Announcement: Looking over the news stories about this announcement, which usually relied very heavily on quotes from industry analysts because, you know, tech reporters are apparently too dumb to come up with their own analysis, one quote stood out. What's funny about this, however, is that the quote is great reasons even the quoter probably doesn't understand. "These announcements are like McDonald's releasing the recipe for its secret sauce," said AR Communications strategic consultant Carmi Levy. Actually, it's exactly like that, because McDonald's "secret sauce" was a big deal in the fast food market 30 years ago, when everyone in America knew the words to the Big Mac jingle the company used in commercials. That we now have Microsoft sort-of embracing open software today, a full decade after the open source movement went mainstream, kind of shows how far behind the company is when it comes to the hottest trends in computing today, including such movements as cloud computing and mashups. You know, the types of things that pretty much rely on interoperability. So let's hear it for Carmi Levy. My guess is you don't know how right you are.

Looks like I managed to press some buttons this week. Neat.

Your turn: Did you push anyone's buttons this week? Did you enjoy the experience?

One more thing: The weekly Caption This entry will be posted later on Sunday. Start your creative engines...