Monthly Archives: May 2002

General Chaos

Yet another axe at Ziff.

Smart Business is closing; they're turning it into a newsletter and website. It's all about capital savings– SB was a big hole into which money was disappearing. With Ziff trying to restructure its debt, and announcing a $10 million loss for the quarter, it's not really a surprise, I guess.

The problem with Smart Business was that it was neither (and that's not meant as a diss). The concept was good– to go after business people who aren't techies by job description, but “stake-holders” in tech projects, in the language of business people. But in practice, it had to compete against more tech-oriented and more biz-oriented books. It ended up being less than the sum of its parts.

The pub had improved a lot over the last few months. But they were cut of the same ad base cloth as Industry Standard et al– and considering Ziff's revenue was half of what it was for the same quarter last year, that wasn't enough.

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Administrivia

Um, is it bad when you see leaves falling up?

We just had a hellacious thunderstorm here in Baltimore–walnut-sized hail, sheets of rain, and–gulp–some cyclonic activity, including leaves falling upward, then drifitng down like so much tickertape. And now it's quiet again. God, the weather has been wacky here; La Plata had an F4 tornado a few weeks ago, so when a big thunderhead rolls through now, my fight/flight instincts keep tugging me toward my basement.

My kids ran out afterward and started scooping up the hailstones–they were still grape-sized by the time they got to them, and it's (now) 77 degrees outside. No dents in my cars, as far as I can tell (at least no new ones).

Update: It's official — a twister overflew us and touched down out east of the city. There were a few tornado touchdowns southwest of the city as well.

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