Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, has written a heart-felt piece on the value of branding for a company and its customers. I very much agree with him. A brand is not just a promise, it is an expectation, it is a theme to rally behind.

That has to be bad, isn't it? As per the definition I am really really obese, way beyond regular fat guy. Let's see what the heck is BMI. What is BMI? BMI is the ratio of your weight divided by the square of your height (metric system). BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems. BMI does not measure body fat directly, but research has shown that BMI correlates to direct measures of body fat, such as underwater weighing and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). As such BMI can be considered an alternative for direct measures of body fat. BMI is an inexpensive and easy-to-perform method of screening for weight categories that may lead to health problems.

Kind of gives you a clear indication where Sun (NASDAQ: SUNW) is headed, doesn't it? It does give me a warm feeling too knowing Sun is so much committed to Java, a language I have been working on since 1996. The change will go into effect on Aug. 27.

The message was a surprise coming from Ryze, which I thought was pretty sane and non-spammy. On investigating their link I realized they want me to subscribe to their paid services to see who wants to network with me! While I am fine with monetization efforts, I just don't get it. Why would someone sane would subscribe solely because some unknown persona wants to network with him / her? Does Ryze perceive us to be that desperate or maybe it just reflects that Ryze itself is pretty desperate for cash these days?

A Trojan horse, with a descriptive name Infostealer.Monstres, was used to steal more than 1.6 million records from several hundred thousand people who posted resumes on Monster.com, Symantec has reported.