Candida Kutz's Blob, er, Blog

Well, my TypePad account has been resurrected on account of Vox shutting down. . .but blogging seems dead in this age of Facebook and Twitter

CTB McGraw Hill Lay-Off Rumors True

They've been flying around the cubicles for months. And today is the day the axe falls for about 100 employees at CTB-McGraw Hill in Monterey, CA. As the employment climate in Monterey County is very tight, I expect a lot of these folks will finds themselves having to leave this beautiful area for more lucrative climes

Google Takes on Microsoft Office!

Just in! Exciting news courtesy of Andreas Ramos' Google Adwords User Group:

Yep. Google Office.

Google will partner with SUN to deliver a complete suite of software to compete against Microsoft Office. This will include a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. It will be based on SUN's OpenOffice, which is open source.

If you've tried NetOffice, it's a Microsoft Office clone. It works just like Microsoft. And it works with Microsoft files. You can replace Microsoft Office ($600 or so) entirely with OpenOffice, which is free.

This was announced an hour ago (NOTE from CK: approx. 11 am PST) in a joint press conf at Google by Scott McNealy (CEO of SUN) and Eric Schmidt (quasi-CEO of Google).

This is a declaration of war between Google and Microsoft. MS Office is Microsoft's cash cow. By releasing G-Office, Google will undermine MS's revenues.

Flickr Group: New Orleans Refugees

The new Flickr group Katrinarefugeeneworleans is a public group to "Let folks know you got out and where they may contact you."

Very late addendum to BlogHer post

Re: the Flame,Blame and Shame session discussed below:
Moderator: Liza Sabater, publisher of culturekitchen.
Panelists:
Judith Meskill, Editorial Director of Weblogs, Inc.; personal blog here.
Ellen Spertus, assos. professor of computer sciences at Mills College. Named Sexiest Geek Alive in 2001. Personal page here.
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, best selling author of the Dirty Girls Social Club. Home page here.