Month: January 2007

Boise State hopes for a bowl bounce

Boise State University is riding high on a victory over Big 12 football powerhouse the University of Oklahoma in last week’s Fiesta Bowl. Now, according to an AP report in Idaho Business News, Boise State officials are hoping a “bowl bounce” will help their campus gain more national recognition — and more students and private donations. (Link via University Business.)

If the increases in enrollment and donations following Cinderella runs by the George Mason and Gonzaga basketball teams can predict Boise State’s “Bowl Bounce,” the commuter school in Idaho’s capital city should expect the glass slipper to fit for months to come.

University President Bob Kustra thinks so. Thanks to the Fiesta Bowl victory, “It’s going to be easier to recruit topflight faculty, easier to recruit students and easier to raise money,” Kustra said. “It’s in a sense a coincidence because we’ve been preparing a comprehensive campaign for a year now.”

The school’s marketing slogan, “Beyond the Blue,” refers to the academics behind the signature blue Astroturf at Bronco stadium. A one-time junior college, Boise State already was slowly blooming into a research university as the Boise metropolitan area attracted technology firms and thousands of urban transplants throughout the 1990s.

Kustra hopes the bowl victory will accelerate that transformation, mirroring the experience of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., in the nine months since it captivated basketball fans on a run to last year’s NCAA Final Four as a No. 11 seed.

Ah, big-time intercollegiate athletics.

It’s good to be Google

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind, Google is now king of all things computer.

So says Rich Skrenta, co-founder of Topix.net, just one of any number of search engine/news aggregators scampering beneath Google’s behemoth feet. Google is more than the king of “the third age of computing,” according to Skrenta. It is also the environment in which we operate, the very air that we breathe. He writes:

Google has won both the online search and advertising markets. They hold a considerable technological lead, both with algorithms as well as their astonishing web-scale computing platform. Beyond this, however, network effects around their industry position and brand will prevent any competitor from capturing market share from them — even if it were possible to match their technology platform. To paraphrase an old comment about IBM, made during its 30 year dominance of the enterprise mainframe market, Google is not your competition, Google is the environment.

In case you forgot about life before Google, the kings of the first two ages of computing were IBM (1950-1980) and Microsoft (1984-1998). Google’s reign began in 2001.

The interregnum between the end of the PC era and the rise of the online world has concluded, and Google is the new king of forward market growth in computing and software technology. Major companies will succeed by working within the framework of Google’s industry dominance, and smaller players will operate in niches or in service to the giant.

“I for one welcome our new insect overlords.”

(Hat tip to if:book).