Mostly we code...sometimes we write. Every once in a while, we podcast.

There is a sequence in Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies: Dogbert's Big Book of Business that I've always liked. Dogbert, the management consultant, comes into a decentralized organization, and advises: "Centralize!" Next, he goes into a monolithic organization and advises: "Decentralize!"

I also am proud of my management philosophy. Years ago, Priority of the Day was trendy, where managers would shift priorities depending on how they felt that day. In the Internet age, that is clearly not fast enough, so I have devised my sure-to-be award winning strategy: "Manage like the Wind!(TM)", where you shift priorities as quickly and as arbitrarily as a gust of wind. My staff loves this, let me assure you 😊.

So I have spent the past year reciting "The Wind is Blowing Simple", as we have focused all of our efforts on simplifying our products and our web site to reduce confusion and really streamline the effort required to use CrossOver. So, yes, I have been directing everyone to remove all the complexities that I told them to put there in the first place. If you look hard at my picture, you can see the pointy hair emerging past my receding hairline...

However, I am very pleased with the result. I feel that our new web site is a vast improvement, particularly for someone that is new to CodeWeavers. I also feel that our single, unified product is much cleaner, and that our customers will find it easy to run any Windows application, including any game. Hopefully the world has gotten the message that we run games, so we no longer need to hammer specifically on that message.

Of course, all of that is windows dressing (bad pun intentional) - the heart of our work is Wine. And we have really made some amazing strides. Wine 1.4 shipped this month; with the DIB Engine completed, and audio working cleanly, we are running out of perpetual problems to joke about. Wine is so hard, and the progress feels so grudging, that sometimes it's useful to stop and look back at how very far we've come. When we first launched CrossOver, it ran Microsoft Word 2000 and Excel 2000, and not a lot more. Recently, I counted nearly 50,000 distinct applications in our voluntary usage database; we have truly come a long way. Of course, we still have a long ways to go, and I deeply appreciate all the support we continue to receive.

At any rate, I hope you like our new, streamlined look, and I invite you to check back and make fun of me a few years from now when the wind blows the other way... 😊.

Cheers,
Jeremy