3 small items from the week we lost a giant

Seemingly endless coverage of his passing last week offered the public an opportunity to learn everything it could ever want to know about Steve Jobs, including what would appear to be his favorite photograph ... of himself.

The latter required connecting a couple of dots. The morning after Jobs' death, I got to wondering about the status of his upcoming authorized biography, so I went to Amazon, where a forum contributor had noted that both the book cover and Apple's homepage tribute to Jobs were using the same photograph. Searching a bit more, I learned that it's a picture Apple has used for years.

That the photo had been chosen for both the cover and Apple's homepage might be a coincidence, I thought, but to even entertain that possibility you'd have to believe that Jobs was a man who didn't bother himself with details.

Benioff vs. Ellison

Before the week turned somber, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had been providing comic relief with their slapstick battle at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

Benioff was there to deliver a Wednesday keynote address, but couldn't resist tweeting a few jabs at Ellison earlier in the week. Before you could say junior high school, Ellison dropped a fail whale on Benioff by bouncing him off the conference agenda. Oracle claimed it was an unavoidable "scheduling change," which only brought on more brickbats by Benioff.

C'mon, guys, strap on the gloves and get in the ring; put it on pay-per-view and raise a fortune for charity. I'd pay to see it.

Page reappears on Google+

It had become a media-driven tempest - "Hey, look, Google CEO Larry Page has stopped using Google+" -- and, truth be told, this one got rolling on Buzzblog when I noted Sept. 16 that Page had not posted publicly on his social network for a month. While I was careful to note that an absence of public posts didn't mean Page had abandoned Google+ altogether, others were less concerned about fine points.

After remaining publicly silent for another 12 days, Page finally tossed the masses a bone. Among the hundreds of comments left on his post were: "Welcome back to Google+ Mr. Page." ... "Glad to see you here again!" ... And, "You didn't dump Google+ after all."

My initial point was that Page shouldn't have set up shop on Google+, been Mr. Chatty for a couple of weeks, and then gone publicly silent without explanation. That should be even more evident now that his base of followers, then 300,000, now tops a half million. And they're clamoring to hear from him.

I want to hear from you, too. The address is buzz@nww.com.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.

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