Honestly, Why Bother? We have a small competitor who has, on and off over the years (they just re-did it) blocked access to their corporate web site from one of our offices. Like we can’t see it from our other offices or from home or from wireless air cards sitting in our offices. Honestly, why would you bother going to that trouble just to irk a competitor? I guess I’m glad that’s how they’re spending their available cycles.
Archives / January, 2008
Book Short: A Must Read
Book Short: A Must Read Every once in a while, I read a book and think, “This is an important book.” Microtrends, by Mark Penn, was just that kind of read. Penn is the CEO of one of our largest clients in the market research business as well as CEO of Burson Marstellar and, more notably, the Clintons’ pollster and strategy director for much of the last 16 years. He’s a smart guy, and more important than that, he’s awash in primary research data. The premise of Microtrends is that America is no longer a melting pot, where lots of different people come together to try to be the same, but rather that it’s a big tent, where lots of…
Are You As Versatile As Running?
Are You As Versatile As Running? Today was my first day back in the city after two weeks working and playing at our house in the mountains. And a beautiful day it was — 46 and sunny! I went for a great run, reflecting on how incredibly versatile running is. Less than 48 hours before, I had also been running, but bundled up, in a 17 degree snowfall, wearing my new Icebugs (thanks for the tip, Brad), up and down the hills of a quiet country road at 6500 feet in Idaho. Today — sea level, flat, urban, sunny and crisp out, wearing shorts (I’ll let you guess which was easier). How versatile can a sport be? Are you as…
Mail Fusion
Mail Fusion For 8 or 9 years now, we haven’t received a single bill by U.S. mail. We use PayTrust (originally PayMyBills.com) for “online” bill pay. We have a P.O. Box somewhere in South Dakota that we’ve redirected all our bills to. The bills get opened, scanned, we get an email, we enter in a payment amount and date. No fuss, no muss. PayTrust even figures out which bills can be electronically delivered and provides an easy interface to set that up directly into the PayTrust account as well. I haven’t received a bill or written a check in years. I think we pay something like $9/month for the service. I just ran across a new service this week called…
It's Copyright Time
It’s Copyright Time Brad must be off his game this year, so…time to update all those copyrights to say 2008. Or as Brad gently suggested last year, make that field variable so you never have to worry about it again! (Thanks to our CTO Andy Sautins for the reminder here.)
Bad Side Effect of Tropical Heat Waves?
Bad Side Effect of Tropical Heat Waves? I love David Kirkpatrick’s weekly column called Fast Forward. In his most recent edition, he talks about the connection between technology and world peace, which is insightful. But it also led me to click on a link in the first paragraph to Wikipedia and its great map and listing of ongoing global conflicts here. I’m not sure if anyone has ever done any research on this — I’m guessing the answer is yes — but what jumps off the page for me is that all of the ongoing global conflicts today are clustered around the equator. I do know that crime in urban areas swells in the summer when it’s hot out and…