Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

The latest Vonage ads ask if you are voiping yet, where the "oi" in voip sounds like "oi" in "noise".

Hopefully this will not catch on.

Confessions of a Brand Evangelist has a post about an excellent dining experience they had, based on the excellent service the received from one young waiter.

I'm surprised they didn't mention the young lady's name. Usually when I have that kind of service I remember the waiter's name.

That made me think about the fact that every time I've ever dealt with a customer they have always asked me how their account rep or contact is doing. They ask how Jennifer is, or what Dan is up to. These customers have had good, or even excellent service from these people and have developed a personal relationship with them.

To these customers, those people are the brand. They are living examples of what the customer perceives the company to be.

Of course, when these people leave the company, the customer no longer gets the service level they are used to, and their perception often takes a turn for the worse.

Jeneane Sessum explains how her reading habits have changed since she started using an aggregator.

I agree with almost every point she makes, except that I still follow breadcrumbs, probably because my wife would make me get my own bread.

Last Sunday's New York Times had a humorous yet poignant article entitled A Prince Charming for the Prom (Not Ever After Though), about how gay men have replaced cousins as prom dates:

LATELY I've become wary of the question "Frank, what are you doing next Saturday night?" In the month of May it can only mean one thing: I'm going to yet another prom. And no, I'm not doing a favor for a cousin. Cousins are out. I'm this century's new answer to the last-minute prom date: the gay best friend.

[...]

And unlike the goofy cousin who might arrive in a ruffled, powder-blue tux and tell embarrassing stories about computer camp, I'm a safe, chic choice. Neither of us will blush with sexual tension when it comes time to attach corsage to bosom. I won't make a fool of my date or myself with awkward straight-boy dancing. And I'll help her figure out the details of her dress and hairstyle. After all, we wouldn't want anyone committing social suicide on the biggest night of our tender young lives.

As the gay date, I also make one of the evening's most unpleasant moments a breeze. I have no problem meeting the girl's parents, a typical sticking point for most guys, because I know that wise and open-minded parents are smart enough to realize that a gay guy is their daughter's best and safest prom bet.

If I were a worried mother of a dateless daughter, I would scour the hip coffee shops of my town waving a rainbow flag in search of recruits. It might cause my daughter to die of embarrassment, but at least she would have a fabulous night out and wouldn't make me a grandmother anytime soon.

The author does wonder how some of these women end up without dates for the prom:

The one thing I can't understand is why many of my female friends, who are charming, attractive and fun to be with, don't have straight male suitors to accompany them. Surely the school halls aren't filled with date-snatching floozies offering the one thing no teenage guy, except the gay best friend, can say no to. So I've got to believe I see things in these girls that straight guys can't because with me the element of sexual attraction was never there to begin with.

ionrss warns that RSS infomercials are here. You too can make money with the SuperFeedSystem. Just don't mention it to the rightful owners of the content you are benefitting from:

When you see little buttons like these ...

(This is what an invitation to make money looks like!)

... it means that the owners of the content are inviting you to use what they've written.

Put blogs, articles, news, sports scores, humor - most anything you can think of on your site. It's free and there are hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of feeds available right this minute. And it's growing wildly with thousands more every week. There are giant search engines and directories with all kinds of free RSS feeds.

And the best thing about feeds is ...

SEARCH ENGINES LOVE THEM!

Paul at Marketing Begins at Home makes an excellent observation:

Alain Jourdier brought me back to earth with a great reality check on how traditional marketing is still with us and isnt going anywhere soon.

In communities like Alains and mine, we live or die by the Pennysaver and the local weekly and monthly rags. To a lot of very sophisticated, technically literate people in my community, The Patent Trader is still an important source of news and information about whats going on in our backyard.

And the Pennysaver - the best place to find just about anything - isnt blogging anytime soon.

What surprises me though is that most newspapers don't seem to understand that they could be the bridge between the Pennysaver consumers and blog consumers. Yet they seem content to let craigslist and the Pennysaver own those niches.

Paul at a crank's progress notes that Microsoft is doing away with the "My" prefix:

Those folders on your Windows desktop will still be yours — but in the future you’ll need to figure that out on your own.

Ending a longstanding tradition, Microsoft Corp. plans to stop using the word “my” as the default prefix for such folders as “My Documents,” “My Music,” “My Pictures” and others along those lines. Starting in the next Windows version, due out next year, folders will be known simply as “Documents,” “Music,” and so on.

Or it could be that once Microsoft includes DRM in Office 12, the word "My" would be false advertising because your documents will now belong to Microsoft Office.

Lately I've been noticing an increasing number of people who seem unable to park within the lines of a parking space. Is it really that difficult, or are these people just that inconsiderate?

Take an interactive tour of Bill Gates' house.

I often read laments about the sorry state of sales in the retail sector. But then I go shopping and realize the lengths to which some stores will go to ensure that I don't buy something.

I was at Shoppers Drug Mart, a large Canadian pharmacy chain. They are doing their best to emulate US chains like Walgreens and CVS, though with higher prices. They have recently started to build superstores that carry much more stuff.

As my wife and I wandered through one such store, we kept seeing things that we might like to buy, only to find that they had no indications of price. To find out the price I had to go to the cashier, wait in line, and ask her the price. After a couple of items I decided it wasn't worth the bother, meaning that the store lost out in about $150 in sales from us alone.

This seems to be a frequent occurrence in the stores I've shopped in lately. At least some stores, such as Wal-Mart, acknowledge that this occasionally happens and put price scanners on the aisles for me to use.

Shoppers Drug Mart seems to be able to get away with this due to the lack of competitive choice in Canada. There is only one other (smaller) pharmacy chain. They are probably seeing competition from department stores though. Generic over the counter drugs like aspirin are about half the price at Zellers (a Target-like store) as they are at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Note to retail stores: If you don't care enough about your customers to help them shop in your store, they'll shop somewhere else.

Thanks to a crank's progress.

My kids have been spouting these random facts off for weeks now. Learn things about Vin Diesel you never would have imagined. For example, did you know:

Vin Diesel pays a homeless man to shovel hundred dollar bills into a furnace for him.

Rick Segal has noticed something about Starbucks that I've often noticed myself - Starbucks employees seem to genuinely care about my experience, and Starbucks lets them do just that:

Here's a good example of giving tools to the front line. I dropped by the local Starbucks in Aurora to grab a latte. I ordered a decaf and got it straight away. Hmm. This decaf is for the birds.

I walk back up and say, ya know, decaf isn't really very good, my fault, I should stick to the real thing. Person says, so sorry sir and goes immediately into making a new one. I say, twice, really not your fault, never had decaf, ain't doing that again. Yucking it right up.

In addition to my new drink, she hands me a coupon for free one.

Umm, it wasn't your fault, I ordered wrong thing. No worries, sir, we want people to have a great experience.

I've had plenty of good ones though. The other day the power wen out in my city while I was at Starbucks. I was about to use the restroom and without being asked the staff went off to find a flashlight so that I wouldn't be in the dark.

Whenever I've had a drink that didn't delight me, they made me a new drink AND gave me a coupon for a free drink. On Mother's Day they handed my wife a $5 Starbucks card. When I walk into my favorite Starbucks they remember me and automatically start making me my favorite drink.

They are always cheerful and chatty and pleasant to be around. I'm not sure how Starbucks achieves this but they are obviously doing something right.

A cell phone ringtone based on the sound of a revving Swedish mo-ped is going to keep Coldplay out of the number one spot on the British singles chart, outselling the band four to one:

"Crazy Frog Axel F," a ring tone based on the sound of a revving Swedish mo-ped, is the first tune being used on mobile phones to cross into mainstream music charts, said Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for HMV, the British music retailing chain.

Coldplay had hoped to go straight to No. 1 on this Sunday's British singles chart with its new song, "Speed of Sound." But by Saturday, it appeared that the ring tone - which is available for digital download and as a compact disc single - would prevail, said Castaldo.

This site looked serious until I started reading it.

The other day I mentioned a government decision to limit the hours of a suicide hotline to between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

It seems that the government has rethought that decision and will keep the suicide hotline open 24 hours a day. Perhaps their decision was motivated by embarrassment:

Yesterday, CNN's American Morning crew jumped on the item.

Makes perfect sense, crusty anchor Jack Cafferty told millions of viewers around the world. When are you most likely to be troubled by something? Noon on Tuesday, right? When you're all alone in the middle of the night, the suicide thing will be closed.

However, Prince Edward Island is apparently a happy place. The hot line only gets 50 suicide-related calls a year. The officials hope they'll all come during the day.

That is not a great way to be on CNN, winced one Islander familiar with the comings and goings in the provincial legislature. We should be on CNN for our great golf courses, not cancelling the suicide hot line.

In Canada, suicide accounts for 24 per cent of all deaths among 15- to 24-year-olds, and 16 per cent of deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, which does not break figures down by province.

The Canadian Newspaper Association has completed the first Freedom-of-Information audit across Canada. The audit was done by 89 reporters from 45 papers, over a two-month period from February to April. The reporters acted as private citizens attempting to obtain information that should be public. The results, which varied from province to province, weren't good:

Reporters visited city halls, police forces, school boards and federal government offices seeking public records on such routine matters as employee sick days, classroom sizes and road repairs. Government officials granted the information requested in just 32 per cent of in-person visits. Even when reporters paid fees for formal access requests, the information was fully or partially released in only 62 per cent of cases.

[...]

A disturbing trend identified in the audit was the degree of questioning by bureaucrats aimed at people requesting information. In some cases, officials became more forthcoming once they learned the person seeking information was a reporter. Canada's information laws stipulate the identities of those making requests and their reasons for wanting information need not be provided to access public records.

Try it here.

Tip of the hat to Ernest Miller at The Importance of...

Drink Guinness straight from the bottle. Brilliant!

Freeze a can of Guinness into a Guinnessicle. Brilliant!

Tip o' the hat to Boing Boing.

Netscape 8 apparently breaks the display of XML content in Microsoft Internet Explorer, so Microsoft is recommending that IE users uninstall it.

Why are people assuming that this is a bug? AOL is a competitor to MSN after all. Maybe they intended that to happen, not that I'm suggesting a competitor would actually do that. But didn't Microsoft Windows Media Player once break RealAudio when you installed it?

And maybe, just maybe, people who install Netscape 8 don't want to use Internet Explorer.

Mark Evans doesn't think many people are willing to pay for WiFi hotspots:

My thesis is there just aren't enough people willing to pay a premium price for the convenience of surfing the Web and checking e-mail at a coffee shop or restaurant. With free Wi-Fi hot spots, Blackberries, Treos and cheap Internet cafes, you can easily get an Internet/e-mail fix without paying $9.95 an hour or $20 a day for Wi-Fi access.

Williams, a Starbucks-like chain near me, gives out a userid for their free WiFi with every purchase.

Maybe Starbucks doesn't want to have to deal with this kind of thing. So why hasn't some enterprising company come in to offer turnkey wireless solutions to these places?

From the CBC:

Lotto winner Jim Blondeau says he'd like to get his hair cut by a barber for the first time, now that he can afford it.

The 69-year-old and his wife, Vera, claimed their $8.4 million Lotto 6/49 prize on Tuesday, the fifth-largest in Manitoba history.

"I always wanted to be able to go and sit in a barber chair," said Jim, a security guard. "I cut my own hair all my life with a little comb."

With all the talk of declining literacy, poor grammar and spelling, I'm reminded of something a friend of mine used to say:

I've never seen a resume yet where spelling didn't count.

A good friend of mine from New York City, knowing that I'm currently living in Canada, passed along this embarassing little item:

A Canadian province will shut its 24-hour suicide hotline and replace it with one that operates only during business hours.

Prince Edward Island, a small province on Canada's East Coast, says it is too expensive to operate the hotline around the clock. Starting June 1, it will be open only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

[...]

"How many times, when you get upset or worried or concerned about things, is it in the middle of the day? It's usually at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when you wake up," said Joan Wright, executive director of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention based in Edmonton, Alberta.

For American readers: Prince Edward Island is just a little larger than Long Island, but not as close to Manhattan.

Oh sure. People are still concerned that cell phones might give you cancer. But now Engadget notes that they're considering nuclear-powered batteries for cellphones. I wonder how we'll dispose of them. And you though used alkaline batteries were a problem.

From Angry in the Great White North:

Canadians are taught that our history is nothing to be proud of, and our need for pride in ourselves and our country is now drawn from pride in our large bureaucracy and our expensive government programs.

Perversely, Canadian politicians typically deride Americans for just that - the lack of healthcare and other social programs - whether they are effective or not. And they're all the more frustrated when Americans don't acknowledge their criticisms.

Heaven forbid anyone criticize any of those social programs though. That would be anti-Canadian.

Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash (one of my favorite novels), has something to say about the constant interruptions of email, cellphones, and such:

Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, has coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe life in the era of e-mail, instant messaging, cellphones, and other distractions. This curious feature of modern life poses a problem for a someone like me. Every productive thing that I do requires ALL my attention.

I cannot put it any better than Donald Knuth, who writes on his website, "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. "

Knuth also provides the following quote from Umberto Eco: "I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages."

[...]

What with all of these different strategies, this web page admittedly gets somewhat long and wordy. Lest its key message get lost in the verbiage, I will put it here succinctly:

All of my time and attention are spoken for--several times over. Please do not ask for them.

I wish I could remember where I saw this so I could attribute it.

I gotten a rash of telemarketing calls lately both at home and on one of my cell phones from the 416 area code - Toronto, Canada. It seems that I'm not the only one.

I know I've seen complaints about telemarketing scams originating in Canada. Is Canada allowed to ignore the National Do Not Call List?

My simple answer is to not answer the phone if I don't recognize the number. Telemarketers never leave messages.

Apparently downloading a torrent of the new Star Wars movie is a threat to homeland security. Why else would the Department of Homeland Security get involved?

FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents executed 10 search warrants in nine states in a strike on Elitetorrents.org, a free, members-only BitTorrent aggregator hosted in the Netherlands.

[...] Another 10 suspects outside the United States remain under investigation, but were not a part of Wednesdays raids, said Sevel. Casual downloaders were also spared, but a Justice Department spokesman in Washington would not rule out future federal action against them. [...]

ICE, the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, spearheaded the investigation because of its international scope.

Andrea Learned has much to say about the way the Schick Quattro For Women is being marketed:

Why can't there just be a great razor, designed to suit everyone's needs better? Woudn't the "women's" rubber grip handle benefit both men and women? Doesn't the better pivoting and four-blade design (as promoted in the Quattro) be beneficial for shaving around and under men's chins, as as it would be for shaving the underarms of women?

Yes.

Do women really need a separate razor and a separate, girly campaign to be convinced? Not necessarily. Like all razor shoppers, I'd guess they really just want a well-designed product (4 blades and a rubberized handle sounds fine) that makes practical sense.

WELCOME TO TUBSIDE ASSISTANCE

We're really glad you pulled over to ask for directions. After all, this isn't a guy's razor website!

I'm Cindy Elizabeth-John, one of the operators here at the Tubside Assistance call center. We're standing by - in towels - to answer your Quattro For Women questions.

Certainly women don't appreciate being patronized in this fashion. Hmm. Call center operators waiting for your shaving questions - in towels. Come on now. I'm a guy, and even I know that's just dumb.

Tip of the hat to Confessions of a Brand Evangelist.

Canada's wireless companies are getting together to jointly create 500 WiFi hotspots across the country:

Rogers Wireless Communications Inc., Bell Mobility Inc., Fido and Telus Mobility already run more than 500 hot spots in locations ranging from coffee shops and stores to airports and golf courses, letting their subscribers access the Internet on the go.

Customers who use these hot spots, regardless of the wireless carrier that runs them, will be charged by their own wireless provider.

Robert Scoble and others are trying to get their children thinking about computers, science, and technology.

Why? Is it something they want to do? Or something their parents want them to do?

My dad was a tech guy - primarily radio. Fortunately he didn't try to get me interested in radio; how many people these days take radios apart. Instead I came upon computers by myself a couple of years before they were desktop units. I've been interested in them ever since, eventually getting and electrical engineering degree.

My brother, on the other hand, became a cardiac surgeon. I'm sure that the people whose lives he has saved are glad he didn't get interested in computers.

I have two sons. One builds mountain bikes from parts, plays all kinds of sports, and isn't sure what he wants to do. The other one plays guitar and may want to be a lawyer. They are both very comfortable with technology, having grown up with it. They are more likely to be on IM than on the phone. But they treat technology like an enabling tool - just like a hammer. They aren't going to become engineers.

Make sure that you expose your kids to everything, but don't push them into any one thing. They'll just resent you for it. Let theme experiment with lots of things, and give them plenty of support. Give them lots of opportunities.

Everyone is pushing their kids into "desirable" jobs like engineering, computer science, business, and medicine. What nobody thinks about is that when there are only a few mechanics or plumbers left, just imagine what they'll be making per hour.

Kids will find their own interests. As much as the world needs more technology types, they also need business people, artists, auto mechanics, plumbers, and occasionally even politicians.

I just saw a television ad for Covad VoIP that was made to look like a horror film trailer. It pointed to a site called TheRingingMovie.com.

The site has a pretty entertaining video, a mini horror flick with telephones trying to take over the office, until Covad shows up that is.

It's an unusual approach, but it is catchy.

Apparently complex thinking is required to understand sarcasm, which may explain why so few men get it.

I missed this item in the New York Times, but fortunately Debbye at Being American in T.O. caught it.

Was Canada Just Too Good to Be True?

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: May 25, 2005

TORONTO, May 24 - The news from Canada has been very un-Canadian of late. Or has it?

A government program sponsoring sporting and cultural events in Quebec has been tainted by allegations of millions of dollars in kickbacks and money laundering. Witnesses before a federal inquiry into the scandal have described envelopes full of cash left on restaurant tables to advance the cause of the governing Liberal Party.

[...]

The discussion over what exactly is Canada's identity - and whether its favored definition is perhaps a piece of Liberal propaganda - is beginning to emerge in the political debate between the struggling Liberals and the challenging Conservatives.

At a recent Liberal party convention, Mr. Martin pledged that "our most important commitment to the Canadian people was our pledge to protect and defend the values that define us: Liberal values, Canadian values." To which Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, shot back at a rally of his own: "Corruption is not a Canadian value."

Seth Godin is musing about the possibility of building a podcast with a million subscribers, making it profitable to invest in.

I don't think that the real value is in a few A-list podcasts, no matter how many subscribers they have. The value is in being a podcast aggregator, helping people find podcasts of interest, and simplifiying life for advertising media buyers.

That's the power of radio and television networks. You can purchase ad time easily across the network and hit the major metropolitan networks. And the networks aggregate viewers, so they have a better volume offering. And they can then parcel ad revenue to their affiliates.

A Google-like network for podcasts would allow media buyers to buy ads on popular podcasts in the same way, only having to deal with a single organization that could then parcel out revenue to affiliates in the same manner.

Dealing with a single entity that represents a lot of podcast listeners allows that entity to maximize potential ad revenue by virtue of the sheer number of listeners, rather than trying to deal with one podcast at a time. And if podcasts used tagging to identify their content - essentially their market - you could then elect to but ad time targeted to you desired market segment.

Halley Suitt is worried (here and here) that bloggers may be losing their freedom of speech as they attempt to satisfy others.

Nobody - bloggers included - can "lose" their freedom of speech. The can either surrender it or have it taken from them, and I don't think that anybody is about to let that happen.

Freedom of speech isn't easy. Wars have been fought to preserve it. It's hard work. Write what you want to write. There will be people that disagree with you - sometimes vehemently, perhaps even violently in a metaphorical sense. But spammers and idiots who write derogatory responses are not unique to the world of blogging. Just ignore them as you would in any other medium, or set up your rules, and then delete posts that break them.

As blogging becomes even more mainstream, the level may sink even lower. As CyberJournalist.net notes today:

Consultant Vin Crosbie says what happened at VenturaCountyStar.com, which had to disable comments on stories because they became abusive, wasn't surprising because history has shown "unmoderated online discussions naturally degrade into cacophony."

David Isenberg quotes from an excellent article entitled "Is Low Cost WiFi Un-American?":

Forcing public broadband networks to ask permission from Verizon before offering service is akin to forcing public libraries to ask permission from Borders before checking out books.

Forcing public broadband networks to ask permission from Verizon before offering service is akin to forcing public libraries to ask permission from Borders before building a public library.

Jason Garms, who heads Microsoft's anti-malware product team, says that computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 are 15 times less likely than those running XP or XP SP1 to be infected by some of the most dangerous forms of malware.

Given that the lifespan of an unprotected PC connected to the Internet is a mere four minutes, does that mean than a computer running SP2 is safe for 60 minutes now?

Fifteen times better sounds good, but is it good enough?

A black 2002 Audi in Seattle's streets has a vanity license plate that may have gotten by the state licensing police.

The tag - C9H13N - is the formula for a number of compounds including amphetamine, and possibly methamphetamine.

In his plate application, the driver of the car suggested that the tag represented red food coloring, though the UW Chemistry Department disagrees.

State officials will be investigating.

Paidcontent.org admits taking the utmost pleasure in Fast Company's troubles as it is up for sale.

I too take similar pleasure. At the height of the dot-com boom, Fast Company's arrogance was only outweighed by the magazine itself, which got close to an inch thick at one point. As a software company, trying to deal with them was painful. So it was slightly pleasurable to see them suddenly shrunk down to size after the crash.

Digital Copyright Canada points to an article asking the question "Is the enterprise software business dying?" The article makes this point:

Enterprises still need software, and lots of it, to run their operations, but they are buying few new licenses. Part of the story is that the market is mature and buyers have enough software already. Part of the story is that offshore outsourcing makes it cheaper to build your own. A big part of the story is the appearance of more efficient alternatives, such as open source.

Companies often assume that building something like sales force automation software is easy, so they patch something together. But that initial version is beset by user requests for new features and support demands, so that over the long term most of the savings evaporate. The "cheap" solution becomes a development, testing, and support resource sinkhole.

Compare that to purchasing an off-the-shelf solution developed and tested by a third party, that incorporates a reasonable set of features based on the requirements of many customers like yourself, and then upgrading only when the features are beneficial.

The article rightly notes that the bigger threat is subscription-based application services:

Siebel is getting eroded by Salesforce.com, a highly configurable, rapidly deployable, application service. That's the Wall Street story, and it is true. You would be crazy to buy Siebel if you can get away with a much faster and easier Salesforce.com deployment. What you don't hear is that Salesforce.com itself is about to get eroded -- and severely -- by the open source CRM systems like SugarCRM (a Salesforce.com knockoff) and CentricCRM.

Kate at small dead animals noticed yesterday that the Canadian anti-Conservative Party site, bloc-harper.com, seemed to be owned by The Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto Foundation, as seen in this screenshot:

Oddly, that information is different today:

The Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto Foundation has some distinguished members. I wonder why they suddenly feel the need to hide their identities? Their mission statement:

“The Toronto Branch of the Royal Commonwealth Society is a diverse group of members and volunteers who are passionately committed to promoting international understanding and tolerance; celebrating successes and traditions of the Commonwealth; and promoting unity of thought and action among people of all ages in order to make a better world”.

I was reading Furdlog and thinking about Microsoft's inclusion of DRM in Office 12, and I noticed this:

[...] Gartner's Austin tried to make the case that, despite the recent shift to increased regulation, the ultimate trend in technology will be toward the democratization of information with less central control. However, that idea was shot down by both Greifeld and Ozzie.

Ozzie said that if a technology is to be successful, it needs to meet both the needs of the individuals using the product as well as the company's overall goals. Many a company, he said, has deployed a sales force automation tool that it thought would have great benefits, only to find that no one used it because it was too difficult.

Elliminating informating sharing or securing documents to satisfy Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is not a goal, but a regulatory requirement. It does not advance the company, or create more revenue, or lower costs. It doesn't add to the value of the company in any way.

I just can't imagine a mission statement that reads:

We will be successful by storing documents on the network and ensuring that employees cannot email them.

It seems that outsourcing might be a better analogy. If a company's core competency is not storage and security of sensitive documents, then why not outsource it to Microsoft. So Office 12 technology isn't really helping to advance your company's goals; it's just handling a bothersome detail so that you don't have to.

So you're better off to define your goals first and then decide what technology helps you to accomplish them.

All things considered though, some of this comes down to defining the policies and then trusting your employees, as Kathy Sierra wrote the other day. If you're doing this to help them that's great. But if you're implementing this technology because you don't trust them, then you have bigger problems.

There is a plugin available for Winamp - ml_iPod - that apparently provides a better was to manage iPods than iTunes does. iTunes in many cases limits the rights of the iPod owner, ostensibly to protect music creators:

To prevent iPod users from easily copying vast libraries of songs from computer to computer, Apple forbids tracks from being moved off the iPod -- songs can only be put onto the iPod. In addition, each iPod is associated with a single copy of iTunes. The association can be changed, but only if all songs on the iPod are erased.

iTunes has also suffered from a changing feature set, at the whim of Apple, without regard for the customer. It's good to know that finally some control will be returned to the iPod owner. You know - the one who paid for the thing.

With the upcoming Office 12, Microsoft is planning on exerting more control over your documents, and it will probably end up costing you more:

The company has not said exactly how it will lock down documents, but it has said that is a goal. Microsoft has been widely expected to introduce new server products in conjunction with Office 12.

Microsoft hasn't been entirely successful getting companies to upgrade recently, so it remains unclear if Office 12 will change that:

"There's no doubt that every time companies are facing these upgrades they're questioning the additional value they can get out of version 12 of a product," says Jim Murphy, an analyst at AMR Research of Boston.

"There have to be some very considerable changes to get people to upgrade, and Office 2003 did not have a major change."