If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all. Excellent advice for your interpersonal relationships, but it's not exactly the basis for a scintillating journalism career. Woodward and Bernstein didn't have a lot of good things to say about Nixon, but they still had a sordid bundle of muck that desperately needed raking out into the sun.
And so it is with a lot of e-business today. While news of the odd win does cross our messy little journo-cubes, that news is the exception, rather than the rule. So, in an attempt to make the news a little more palatable, we of a journalistic bent often inject a note of humor into a news story. Often, it's a note of black humor, a whistling past the business graveyard. We have mortgages and car payments to make, too, and don't relish the thought of being punted from our places of employment any more than the next prole.
Hopefully, that's enough of a disclaimer for this story. Now for the snarky part.
Not to make light of any company's difficulties, but we iSourcians believe we've stumbled on to a potential source of future revenue. Start storing, in as high-tech a climate-controlled environment as possible (I'm using Tupperware in my desk drawer) all the gadgets and giveaways you've accumulated from e-companies. Because I can't help but think that one day there will be an entire category on eBay for trinkets from defunct companies. Since most artists' work only appreciates posthumously, maybe the same principle applies to the Nerf rockets, t-shirts, labeled Frisbees and other puffery the halcyon days of the e-economy supplied in great quantity.
I mention this because e-procurement software provider Metiom seems to be the latest contributor to the relic pile of goodies. Following reports earlier this week that the company was filing for Chapter 11, the company's Web site is now inaccessible, and I'm thinking that those Metiom yo-yo's I have might just bring in some large green one day. Season football tickets aren't getting any cheaper.
