Martin Veitch's Diary

Who knows the truth but it's certainly the case that Digital boss Bob Palmer is one mean hombre and knows the value of a dollar. I think he's going to get rid but there may be more suitors than Intel.

Tuesday

To Quaglino's, the hugely overrated restaurant in poshest central London, to talk Fire Wire cameras with Sony. It's pretty obvious that they'll sell half a dozen in England if they're lucky but digital cameras is a big bet that will only be realised in a couple of years. But when it pays off...

Stay late at work to catch the Sun teleconference. They're pretty angry alright.

Wednesday

Huge hype at the Nortel announcement but the conference in Bloomberg's astonishing offices in the City is thin gruel. Let's face it, this will be a footnote when ADSL kicks in. One financial journalist asks if the demo of Internet speed is using power cables for the data transfer. Ho-hum. They'd already said there won't be any trial until next year.

Thursday

AMD is the company everyone loves to love still can't build enough chips. More jam for Intel. Cruelly, AMD is having a press conference in Versailles but I can't make it. Always did hate their products.

Still, Canon have invited me to Rome for the football on Saturday. Always did like their printers

Thursday

Nice parties in the evening in darkest Soho but the pubs are going downhill. Have a drink with The Luncher - he drinks more Guinness than I write news stories. He reckons Borland is a company to watch. I try not to laugh. The poor sap.

Friday

Bags of work and not enough time. Like to visit those nice folks at AOL at their new offices but there's no time, sadly. Just enough time for my swordfencing lesson tonight. The bruises from last week haven't even gone down.