With an amusing coincidence of time, AMD and Intel decided to battle out their PR strategies, in my email inbox. Earlier today, Intel pushed a press release titled “The 4 on 4 Myths for April 4th” into my inbox – highlighting some myths about quad-core processors and why they rock. No less than 3 hours later, AMD also pushed a press release, “AMD releases performance benchmarks on upcoming 3 GHz Opteron processor” – highlighting why it rocks too, and why you shouldn’t listen to the Intel guy. It was like watching two kids arguing why they’re better than the other.

I thought I’d share some of that with you. From the Intel front,

Misperception #2: My systems are already equipped with Dual-Core – now I have to take the time and effort to install Quad-Core?

Advanced technology adoption is not a problem. Quad-Core is easy to install, with drop-in compatibility with Intel’s previous Dual-Core platform. This also makes it easier on data center managers by streamlining the path to server consolidation. In fact, business data centers can achieve significant cost savings/server thanks to the optimal utilization, lower power consumption, and lower software costs of Quad-Core systems.

By the way, you forgot that people actually have to buy the processors. So in fact, it really should be “now I have to take the time, effort and a loan to install Quad-Core”.

Misperception #4: Intel’s Quad-Core is ugly, and far from elegant

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When performance is as great as it is today, customers don’t care about the intricacies of how the cores are connected inside the CPU package. Intel’s solution allowed a much faster time to market and Intel will have shipped more than a million of them before any other x86 competitor has shipped a sizeable volume. Using Intel’s industry-leading 65nm manufacturing technology also allows for smaller die size, better yields and lower cost. This also means better supply. So, it is a careful choice of performance, schedule and cost. Intel is already demonstrating 45nm processors which will further its lead in processor performance, innovation and nanotechnology.

I’m not too sure the aesthetics of a piece of silicon should be regarded as one of the biggest misperceptions of this CPU. I’m sure once you’ve smothered it with thermal paste, mounted it under a brick-weight heatsink and fan, that the elegance of a computer processor might be the least of your concerns. Although my AMD Athlon is pink, just for your information.

Intel makes some pretty bald statements. What does AMD have to say?

Wow, right in the face! I guess rivalry has reached new heights.

So I was trying to dig up on what Hillel Cooperman has been doing for the last few years away from Microsoft, then I came across this. I’ve heard so much about how good of a presenter he is, but it’s always a void when you try to find a video of his presentations. So I came across this awful recording of him recently at Ignite Seattle on February 13th, talking about “How to Make Every Meal an Opportunity for a Memorable Experience”.

Click image to view video

It’s hard to get past the annoying buzzing sound throughout, but he drew me in to a topic I would otherwise never had a second thought about. This guy sure knows how to eat! And he even uses Live Search and Live Maps – a true patriot!

I wonder how you say “Hello Hillel” without sounding like a complete dork.

After an awesome tip by Speed who commented on the story I wrote about Jenny leaving Microsoft less than 24 hours ago, it all begins to make sense now like a LOST season’s finale episode. It wasn’t Apple after all, but apples are related. Jenny Lam has officially joined a start-up company in Seattle called the “Jackson Fish Market“. No, she’s not going to be selling fish, although its employees seem to all share a passion for good food.

Jackson Fish is a small software start-up formed in Seattle of November 2006, who its founder Hillel promises to put their “heart and soul into owning and running their own business”. Hillel claims he’s put together a “tight-knit group of folks working hard together to create and deliver fresh hand-crafted products to customers with a personal touch. Products that both address a core customer need, but also make them feel emotionally satisfied, content, and happy.”

Jackson Fish’s founders Hillel Cooperman (right) and Walter Smith (left) at TED 2007.
Photo credit: The TED2007 Portrait Gallery.

You might be asking, “Who is this Hillel person? And why is his name so damn hard to pronounce?”

Ironically, Hillel Cooperman, who some of you might remember from the early Longhorn development during the hazy-days, was also a Microsoft design director similarly to Tjeerd Hoek (who now has an unofficial fanclub). Hillel is also the infamous presenter for giving one of the most inspiring presentations at PDC 2005, “Getting Users to Fall in Love with Your Software“. He left Microsoft a few years ago do his own thing, and this “Jackson Fish Market” is it.

Apart from working at MSX together, Hillel and Jenny also shared a passion for food and writing about food. Hillel had been writing a food blog called the Tasting Menu for quite some time, gaining quite a bit of traction in the Seattle area if not around the world. This is also where Hillel and Jenny collaborated together for not one, but two cookbooks he was writing at the time.

“The tasks (of creating the book) were divided among Cooperman’s co-conspirators, including his wife and a core group of friends, most of whom work at Microsoft. …A week after the photo shoot, Cooperman had finished writing the text for the book. (Jenny) Lam had laid everything out.” writes the Seattle PI food writer.

The result, are two gorgeous cookbooks published for free by Hillel on his website. Check out “All About Apples” and “Autumn Omakase“. You could see how well they collaborated.

The company has been hiring at least since January this year, one role in particular advertised for software designers who “dream in Photoshop and Illustrator”. Yesterday, that position would have been fulfilled when Hillel announced on the blog that indeed, Jenny Lam was joining his software company as a graphics designer.

We’ve already got a programmer – Walter, and I’m the “sweeper”, so we’ve only got one slot remaining – a designer. Luckily we’ve found not just any designer, but a world class designer and a world class person in Jenny Lam. With the addition of Jenny we now have our three co-founders in place and are excited to make the most of our small team. Everyone please welcome Jenny to Jackson Fish.

There’s not much to be known about what Hillel plans to do, but one of their experimental projects is something called the “Jackson Fish Market Test Kitchen“. A pseudo-alternate-reality-game sort of thing that ties in together some creativity and Chinese culture. It’s sort of cool, but sort of weird.

If I were to bet, not that I’ve ever bet in my life, I’d say they’re going to do some sort of online services software.

Now that we know where’s she’s gone to, it wouldn’t be so hard to track exactly what’s going to be up to. Congratulations to both Hillel and Jenny on their new venture! It’s certainly exciting times ahead.

Does anyone think Jackson Fish Market sounds a bit weird? Maybe like, missing an apostrophe S or something like that?

Update: CNet seems to have a better idea of what Cooperman is up to.

“Brands want to engender happiness and good feeling,” said Hillel Cooperman, founder of Jackson Fish Market, a provider of software and Web services that will enable advertisers to build communities around their brands. Cooperman, formerly with the Windows Vista user experience team, will be working with Microsoft in the future, but he declined to specify further.

Update: Looks like Jenny joined a Seattle start-up founded by another ex-Microsoft designer, Hillel Cooperman.

It’s no longer a secret, since everyone reads Microsoft Typography news. When I first heard about this, I thought this was a bad April Fools prank, but it wasn’t. Jenny Lam, the graphics wonder-girl from MSX (Microsoft Experience/Design) has officially terminated her work on March 31st, 2007.

If you don’t know who Jenny Lam is by now after reading this blog, then you should be ashamed of yourself. She is a graphics designer guru at Microsoft who worked directly on Windows Vista and Windows Live. When Chris Pirillio interviewed her in 2006, she said if she was given a choice to work at Apple or Microsoft, she’s choose Microsoft to have the most impact on the world. And she did.

She helped shape the Windows pearl/orb/button that’s probably right on your screen at the moment. She help design the aurora. She helped design the Vista swoosh. She helped design the icons. She helped design “Segoe UI”. She helped designed the Vista and Office packagings. She even picked the wallpapers. She also worked on branding Windows Live. She’s a brand guru and she’s done so much for Microsoft and millions of users worldwide.

Having met Jenny Lam in person at CES this year, I knew how passionate she was about her work. She’s not the sort of person who just designs for a living because it pays the bills and makes your eyes sore, but she was passionate about what she was doing and really wanted to change the world.

It is unclear why she decided to leave voluntarily, but don’t blame Apple – they didn’t steal her. I have my own theory, perhaps more on that at a later time.

Jenny Lam was ‘the friendly face’ of MSX. It’s a great loss for MSX, a great loss for Microsoft. Jenny, we’ll miss your work, but I’m sure you’ll continue to do amazing work elsewhere! Thanks Jenny! We’re geeks bearing your gifts!.

Now who’s the other Microsoft designers I need to start stalking? 🙂

Imagine being asked one day, “Would you like a free college degree?” You’d say “Yes,” right? But then ask yourself a different question: “Does that mean you’d be stupid to pay for a college degree?”

I recently got about as close as one can get to this experience. While rambling about Microsoft – a small start-up somewhere up north – the dossier that Microsoft and its outside public relations agency Waggy Dogg keeps on me accidentally ended up at my neighbor’s house, since they got my address wrong.

You see. An employee from Waggy Dogg and an employee from Eddieman were playing catch one day. Unfortunately, as friendly as they are, they tackled each other, spilling all of their inside trade secrets all over the ground. When trying to clean up the mess, they took each other’s secret dossiers with them. When Eddieman returned to the Eddie-factory to do Eddie-work, he accidentally Eddie-emailed all the people their secret dossiers whilst overlooking several Eddie-warning dialogs. Needless to say, that Eddieman is now 20% less employed.

After I was done reading all 20 words on my dossier, I could no longer feel my legs because I’ve been sitting for too long. I’ve been alive for less than 19 years and always assumed that the people I talk to Google me as I do on them. So the existence of a document like this didn’t surprise me. But that still didn’t make it any easier to read lines like, “He has an extra bone on his ear”. I knew my birth defect might have been an issue one day ear modeling, but I didn’t know it had become an issue for Microsoft’s PR machine too.

But it seemed clear from the memo that there were close to 2 people involved. One Googled me; the other dressed up as Tjeerd Hoek. Indeed, if you look at the memo from afar, you can almost see the face of Jesus.

Should I be embarrassed that my dossier isn’t as big as Fred’s? I’d like to think size doesn’t matter. But thanks to breakthroughs in enlargement technologies, size is no longer an issue.

The memo is mine! My precious. I’m not going to show it to you. Nah na na na!

This is a beautiful screensaver for a beautiful cause. Whilst it is a little ironic, but I think it gets the message across. I don’t know about you, but I always set my screen to turn off after 3 minutes of inactivity. I can’t wait for the photos from this life-changing event. It’s going to be a night to remember.