The Insider: May the force be with Microsoft's RSS launch

Talk about being on the hot seat. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, endured a barrage of criticism Friday as he introduced the company's push into the content-delivery system known as Really Simple Syndication or RSS.

Speaking at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle, a gathering of 400 bloggers, podcasters and other techno geeks, Hachamovitch was frequently interrupted and asked to explain Microsoft's intentions. During one panel discussion, moderator Steve Gillmor joked that RSS should stand for Really Simple Shipping -- a dig at Microsoft's difficulties in releasing products on time.

At another point during the speech, an attendee said he trusted that Hachamovitch's heart was in the right place with RSS but he wondered about Microsoft's.

Hachamovitch, who handled the crowd with aplomb, said he was "assuming Microsoft has a heart."

Earlier in the presentation, Hachamovitch showed a photograph of the Death Star from the movie "Star Wars" and joked that it was the Microsoft headquarters.

The joke resonated with the heavily male, techie crowd. After Hachamovitch's presentation, public relations executive and blog publisher Steve Rubel said he thought Microsoft won some points. Still, given Microsoft's past behavior, Rubel said many view the company as untrustworthy.

"I do think they have a little more to do to convince us that they are Jedi Knights," said Rubel, keeping the Star Wars analogy rolling.

HOW TIMES CHANGE: June is employee appreciation month at Qpass, an 8-year-old Seattle software company that manages the delivery of ring tones, graphics and other services for 17 wireless carriers.

To reward the company's 300 employees and shed light on its amazing transformation and resiliency over the years, Chief Executive Chase Franklin posed what he thought was a difficult trivia question to the staff recently. The winner was to receive a $50 REI gift certificate.

The question had to do with the number of monthly transactions that Qpass handled for The New York Times five years ago -- at the time the company's largest customer -- and how that compares with the current monthly transactional volume at its largest wireless customer.

But Franklin, who admits to being distracted by coverage of the U.S. Open golf tournament at the time he sent the staffwide e-mail, bungled the question and asked for the current number of transactions -- a fact nearly everyone in the company already knew.

"I immediately got back 20 responses," said Franklin, who as of last week was still trying to come up with a new question.

So what was the answer? It actually says a lot about the rebirth of Qpass, which in May 2000 handled 38,000 transactions for The New York Times as people accessed archived articles and crossword puzzles from the newspaper's Web site. That compares with last month, when the company's largest wireless customer generated more than five million transactions through Qpass.

WHAT HOUSING BUBBLE? Everywhere you turn it seems there's another story about the housing bubble. But Seattle still looks like a bargain to some, especially those who are moving here from places like New York and San Francisco.

That was the case for Vertafore Chief Executive Euan Menzies -- who recently announced plans to move the headquarters of his Windsor, Conn., software company to Bothell.

Menzies, who bought a $1.9 million home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood last month, said his dollar stretched a lot further in Seattle.

"Everybody is thinking about real estate issues and looking askance at the stories in newspapers and magazines about the real estate bubble," Menzies said.

"But moving from New York to Seattle, the bubble looks a little less inflated here than it is in parts of New York."

P-I reporter John Cook contributed to this edition of The Insider, the P-I business staff's weekly compendium of quips, quotes, observations, asides, tidbits, weird facts and gossip.

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