Dummies? I doubt it, but simple sells.

As you may know, Ipswitch recently partnered with Wiley Publishing to produce Ipswitch Network Monitoring for Dummies by Robert Armstrong. It’s not available in stores or even on Amazon.com, but if you visit us at one of our upcoming events, such as Network World IT Roadmap or Cisco Networkers, you just might get a copy.

When the idea was first floated, I was skeptical. Our customers are far from dummies. Some of them could teach classes on networking. Some probably do. But I was proven wrong (again) by the popular response. People with serious networking credentials love this book! Sure, it’s a tribute to the power of the “Dummies” brand, but it’s also a powerful message about simplicity and clarity.

Networking professionals have complex jobs supporting increasingly complex systems that make businesses run. Never underestimate their need for simple, clear, easy-to-use tools and information. This is a big part of what has made Ipswitch and especially WhatsUp Gold successful – making the complicated things easy, making the easy things effortless, and turning blobs of data into actionable information. This is what’s gotten WhatsUp noticed lately by PC Magazine, PC Pro and CRN, to name just a few.

Soloway locked away, Microsoft says “hooray”

Every time I see a spam message in my inbox or read about spam, I wonder, “who are these people who buy this stuff?” Somebody must be buying it, or spammers would give up and do something else. This news report from Yahoo shows that spam does pay, at least until they catch you.

Evidently, Robert Alan Soloway was indicted with 35 counts of various frauds and thefts, and is being sued for $773,000 having already survived at least $17 million in civil judgements. That’s a lot of male enhancement products, fake rolexes and pirated software.

As if being indicted, sued and generally reviled wasn’t enough, Soloway has to suffer being gloated over by Microsoft attorneys. You know you’ve sunk low when Microsoft’s lawyers say you’re a bad person.

“He’s one of the top 10 spammers in the world,” said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company’s Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. “He’s a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day.”

And I suppose I have to agree with those lawyers for once. Will this lower the mercury in the spamometer? Sadly, I doubt it will make much of a dent in the long run of junk email.

Speaking of email, I’ve just discovered an interesting blog about “…the challenges and risks of managing corporate email and IM.” The bit about “email bankruptcy” is especailly interesting.

Macro Hoo-Ha about Yahoo and Microsoft

PC Magazine, among others, weighs in on the increasing buzz around a possible merger of Yahoo with Microsoft. Of course, the real reason this is getting such coverage is that the combined entity might be a real threat to the dominance of Google in paid search and online advertising. Other than that, Microsoft using their enormous cash reserves (which they can’t figure out how to spend) to buy their way into a market they covet is not that noteworthy. The chart shows the change in stock prices Friday when the rumors broke out widely. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes today.