I’m trying to remember the last time a major product launch like Windows Vista and Office 2007 was met with such universal derision. I won’t add to the chorus of yawns and "OSX did that first" comments. But I wonder, have we reached a tipping point where the cult of personality alone is not enough to sell boxes of Microsoft software?

Bill Gates took time out from his philanthropic duties to spruik the product around the world. And Steve Ballmer held court in New York City (see this Biz Week story). The media was always going to make a big deal about this — no self-respecting IT journalist turns down an opportunity to interview or listen to either Gates or Ballmer. But outside that media bubble, you get the sense no amount of "wow factor" they generate can sway the average consumer to abandon logic and upgrade for the sake of it.

Consider the fact that thousands lined up at midnight to buy the Wii, PS3 and Xboxes around the world. Harvey Norman’s midnight sales gig for Vista in Sydney apparently didn’t get much more than 100 people. So the buzz differential between these different consumer tech launches is like night and day. People "needed" these cool consoles. They don’t necessarily "need" Vista. And worst of all, where have all the Windows geeks gone? Amazing.

Update: I found a few! My colleague Joshua Gliddon pointed me to Jim Allchin’s blog (who left Microsoft post Vista launch as promised).

California has Silicon Valley. Sydney’s got Silicon Beach. Where would you rather live?

Joshua Gliddon has his first page one in today’s AFR - go get a copy! He’s grabbled hold of the "Silicon Beach" moniker coined by Tilefile’s David Bollinger.

I’ll tell you why this is a big story. There’s truckloads of money available for web startups in Australia if they’ve got a good business model. But many of the new companies Joshua quotes (such as Atlassian, Tangler, Quotify and the Freshview boys pictured on page 1 with their surf boards) are building companies with real revenues and real customers. That’s a good story now, but think about what value they are creating for the future. Any potential M&A activity will be grounded in discussions about real numbers and not just pie-in-the-sky evaluations.

And in case you’re wondering, the idea for this yarn surfaced when I met these guys at Stirr Sydney.

Two telling quotes from Time Inc’s mass sackings (NYT story here). 

Denial is eventually exposed as a non-strategy:

Mr. Hackett told employees that the cuts were “brought upon us by some real cold hard facts when it comes to how this business is run, and how media is changing.”

…and a sign that employing lots of journalists doesn’t figure when it comes to just relying on capitalising from the clickstream generated by big events:

People magazine’s investments in its Web site, for example, appear to be paying off. After the Golden Globe awards this week, people.com broke its own record for traffic in a single 24-hour period, with 39.6 million page views.

Back on deck this week, having re-entered the AFR atmosphere after three weeks on holidays and an unforgettable time in Hong Kong. I became something of a fan of their Octopus smartcard system over there, a card that lets you buy ferry, bus, train tickets with a quick swipe. It’s also in high volume retail shops like Maccas and 7-11. Add some credit to the card at one of said stores, and off you go. Hello cashless society. Man, have we got some catching up to do in Australia.

Other random geeky goodness. I bought my wife a Tom Tom satellite navigation system for Christmas. It’s already paid off. I’ve had zero distress calls and related transit arguments. She even made it from Sydney to Wollongong without a hitch. Sweet.

Meanwhile, my Christmas stocking contained a iPod video. So I’ve gone from listening to podcasts on the way to work to watching vodcasts. I guess that’s progress? The resolution is incredible, but the headphones included in the kit were dodgy. And upon learning about the iPhone, I wondered if the whole thing was redundant anyway. Turns out I’ve got until some time in 2008 before the iPhone hits Australian shores for reasons that escape me.

Finally, to subjects of information filtering, where has all the news gone?? Is it just me, or is the IT industry practically asleep this January?